Journey from Sydney to Brisbane. 72 240z story

I've owned my 280zx for just over 2 years and I love it to bits but for my 21st I decided to upgrade, I was approved for my loan so now the story begins.

Because I'm a bit of a flirt and the girl at the counter probably felt a bit sorry for me I was let through the gate first with dad. (Bit of a scrap book photo but being first on the flight was pretty cool)

Got to Sydney in just over a hour and met ray in the car park across the road. I apologise for not taking clearer pics of the zed i was excited just to get in and go for a drive.

Pics with the old man

I bored the gps from work, without it I would have been fkd. sydney is a nightmare to drive in

The interior is all red which I think is pretty unusual

Got out to the blue mountains, Topped up the 240 and got about 1km away before breaking down.. We were stuck on the side of the road for a hour before nrma came to have a look. Dizzy cap had a bit of carbon build up (which i cleaned up with a key) one of the sections of fuel hose had cracked and the fuel pump was apparently cactus. Franticly calling up all the automotive stores in the area I gave ben from otomoto a call and he had everything that i needed.

A familiar sight..

Luckily for us the president of the nsw Zed Craig just happened to drive past and was ultimately saved us. We went off to k-mart for supplies with no success so we ended up going back to his place. Got to see 3 240z today mine+Craigs early 1970 and his wifes silver z.

Thankfully we fixed it fairly easily. A bit of hose and the rotor made her good as gold.

Without Craig kindness we would have been f'd. Me and dad are so grateful!!

We got into bathurst at about 7 and had some kentucky

booked the hotel room and because its bathurst we went for a bit of a drive!

Off to go have a beer now! will take some descent pics of the fairlady tomorrow and do a bit more of a proper right up.

Today has to be the best day of my life tho haha

What a classic.

Buy an old Datsun in another state, sight unseen. And try drive it home.  Gold.

Lucky for Ben and Craig.

Makes for a great story. Well done.

Good luck with the rest of the trip. And keep us posted

Day 2

Bathurst was bloody cold.. Woke up in the morning and the bathroom window was open, there was ice everywhere it was pretty surreal (Never seen snow and not used to the cold lol)

A bit hard to see but the whole car was covered in ice.

Got most of it off with my socks lol.

Being so cold it took close to half an hour to get her started but once going she did pretty well.

After the previous nights venture it had to be done once more! Looks pretty at home on the track

Living the dream!

Everyone going for a walk had a good luck at the Z, Half because of what it is and half because the brakes were so noisy..

The views+roads+weather absolutely perfect. About 40k's out side of orange the lil l24 started surging, a mix of being lucky with mostly down hill roads and babying it up the roads we got to supercheap just..

$160 later, half a hour tinkering around and replacing various lengths of hose, topping up coolant, new rotor button and she was good to go once again.

At the shell servo in Orange (very much recommended) They have a bloke out front who fills up the fuel for you. Blew mine and my fathers mind. First time its ever happened for me lol, unfortunately i left my lead replacement there.. (Do the s30's need lead replacement?)

Apart from that heres a few extra happy snaps dad took (Have hundreds of pics if anyone wants some more scenic pics haha)

Some poor bastard caught by the cops..

We stopped at dubbo for lunch, the staff at Cobra street minimart were very nice and the food was very reasonably priced. Recommended

Let dad have a bit of a drive.. Was kind of terrifying lol, a few 3rd's instead of 5th's and he was a bit all over the place driving

He doesn't look it but he loved driving it, Z a fair bit better then a ford laser lol

After 20/30k's the surging returned.. The hose that I got from supercheap had actually expanded and one of the lines had kinked, It was like a balloon. I tried cutting it back to size but the whole thing was so brittle. Thought carby hose was different from efi hose but I obviously picked out the wrong thing.. lol new to carby thing, will only run efi hose from now.

luckily the old hose could be salvaged and it lasted the rest of the trip.

I took over driving from then lol, Travelled happily at 70-90mph. Got to 100mph but didn't feel like going any further, brakes incredibly sketchy.

Beautiful sunset.

We got over the border and had some maccas for tea, Looking set to arrive home at 12:50 we continued to motor on.. As some of you may have seen at about 10pm 60kms away from warwick both headlights cut out. Was terrifying, Luckily we got to the side of the road, didn't hit anything and was far enough off the road. After a 1.5hour wait we were picked up by a tow truck and carted off to Warwick and given a nice room at a motel (can't remember the name..)

Called it a night at 2am.

Which leads us to today, We woke up had a coffee and trecked off to meet up with the fairlady (5 minute walk away). She started up straight away, let her idle and away we went.

A few more purty pics

This i didn't even notice

No further dilemmas to get home.

In the arvo i took it around to a few places near dads work, She's booked in at the auto elecs for wednesday, booked in for something special saturday and its currently sleeping overnight at a brakes place.

about $900/$1000 for disks, pads, hoses, fixing the callipers and labour. Its pretty expensive but it sounded like a train to drive and every time braking it sounded like an abortion. Brakes I won't touch for now lol

Thats about it for now, will update when a few more exciting things happen. thanks for reading so far!

Got some balls man! Great story. Car looks really good too.

Oddly enough, such a simple thing as picking up a car. Can make for enjoyable reading.

Let the fun continue 

Great story,You and your Dad will never forget that trip. Well done!

Good to see you only have the old AM radio too.

Regards

Peter

Congrats Stevo!  I reckon your old man has earn't the bit of a drive he got 

I doubt you'll leave it that way for long but looking at the pics I really like the aged look and the steel wheels - it's got a real look of classic history to it 

Hope you'll get yourself out to some motorkhana's in it.

Nice job man. You and your new car (and you and your dad) had some great bonding time.

Reminds me when I flew from Townsville to Armidale (via Brisbane) to pick up a VL Turbo just from looking at heaps of pics.

Me and the missus drove it approx 2000kms home in two days. This was before I got to know how dodgy the electrics are on VLTs and I didn't have one tools with me, but never needed one the whole way. Very lucky. Had to top up every 350kms though as it had the wrong type of coolant temp sender and was running extremely rich, plus we were flogging it to get home.

Keep the story going.

Got some balls man! Great story. Car looks really good too.

Good on you mate, Brings back memories of when I was you age and doing road trips in a FB Holden, 64 Cortina and my favourate Datto 1600. Drove that Datto from Roma to Canberra and back one year and only broke down once. The Cortina could drag off Toranas with the 1600GT cross flow I had in it and only had to stop now and again to fix the carby linkages. Anyway if you want a hand or advice on fixing your 240 up just give me a call.

Thanks all!

I can pretty easily say (even with the minor hitches) last weekend was the best weekend of my life. Roadtrip+hanging out with the old man and coming back with the dream car. Was awesome

Might have to make a thread about epic car pick ups. Sounds like everyone has stories lol

mike when's the next motorkhana? I'm keen z would love it, The lil daily might go all right aswell haha, I won't mess around to much with the looks either, She is going to get a new paint job and the rust cut out, hope that doesn't effect the classic history look

Peter I may take you up on your offer one day I'm pretty sure the old girl will be quiet a bit of a handful in the not to distant future lol

So monday afternoon the 240 got all its brakes done and now stops pretty well, If i said it stopped on a dime i'd be lying lol but its not bad,

The headlights work once again, dad took it off to the auto electricians, they fixed it but sadly he didn't ask what was the fault. I'm still curious.

That brings us to yesterday:

The exhaust had a few pin holes and it was pretty noticeable from inside the cabin so something had to be done, also the clamped on extra bit of metal didn't do the z any favours, added a bit of character tho lol

I have been fascinated by the 432's, Not that i'm making a replica but there was one piece I liked the most, so I had it made up

Its a 2.25" piping with a resy (to keep her quiet) into a muffler with dual 2.25 tips.

I would of hated a big loud obnoxious exhaust on such a nice car lol

and not that this is z related but afterwards I replaced the clutch+fly on my daihatsu mira. Started at 2 finished at midnight.. The whole k-frame had to be dropped to get at the box, was a bastard of a job but the cartons of beer and the $50 maccas run did help a fair bit haha

and because i could lol

Next on the agenda is rust and paint, Anyone here happen to be a panel beater? I already have a few replacement panels. they just need to be tacked in

Been a fairly quiet week, Been buying a few bits and pieces from ebay and calling up lots of panel beaters.

One bloke is keen to paint (3k but doesn't do rust)

One is keen to do rust and paint (atleast 4k rust and 6k for mining truck paint..? lol)

and lastly one is keen to do both but i haven't recieved a quote yet. they should be the cheapest out of the lot, Apart from that the other dozen panel beaters didn't want anything to do with me lol

I did pick up a kameari air dam from d3c0y. he lives on the steepest hill I've ever driven on lol. Love seeing other peoples zeds

At first the fit looked pretty average but apparently its just because my bumper is so bent.. It was actually pulling my guards out, Drivers side about 2 inches and the passengers side 1 inch

going to order one of the ebay bumper bars unless someone has a spare one in good nick floating around? lol

For something me and my mate elliot installed it went surprisingly well. Had no problems at all and the fibre glass didn't crack or anything

Day:

Night:

I don't like how it looks without the bumper and the weird lil indicators don't really suit the car.

Going to track down some orange bulbs after lunch and change my parkers to indicators and put the parkers in 7" domes.

Next (if it doesn't get sent off to the panel beaters this week) is my bush kit and headlights, Not putting halo's on this one btw lol

I think Jeep Wranglers have rakers built into the headlights.

Just check at the wreckers 

I ended up scoring some 7" headlights for $20 off the bay they are a bit different as well *stirs pot* lol

It's been a while since i posted anything about the z.

last month has been flat out.

Here's a bit of a tease

more photos to come. 

Off to work on the 240 now haha

What colour are you going for?

What colour are you going for?

Going to keep it white My first car was a 1982 white 280zx with the red interior. It was a bit of a eye sore and had more rust then steel but i loved it. Hurt when i was made to sell it lol

Gav

I Promise I'll keep it pretty original. Not going down the flares/tail route, not putting in the after market seat/wheel/gear knob or any of that stuff in. I may sneak in some modern speakers somewhere and hide a head unit somewhere in the back but i won't be drilling/cutting anything.

even now i'm a bit 50-50 on the air dam lol. I'm getting both the air dam and the original lip painted so i'll have the option Everything I do will be reversible and whats wrong with my 432 exhaust?

RB

I hope you and your dad will go to pick up the next zed it will be worth it. Nothing quiet like going for a road trip in a car thats not quiet all there haha. Couldn't imagine going for a drive with nothing going wrong, it would be boring lol

So Down to business

About a month ago i went on the pursuit to find someone to tackle rust repair and paint. I neither have the time/experience/tools/courage to do it myself lol. I visited close to a dozen panel beaters, some referred by my dad and some through my own work contacts (I sell bosch batteries)  and only 2 we're keen to tackle the job. Their minimum quote was my max to spend, the perks of being young and poor lol.

I came up with the idea of going to the local car meet at munchies with a sign saying "i need rust+Paint, do you know of anyone that can help?"

and that's how I met Will.

Probably the only bloke to admit he loves rust. I've been really fortunate with the people I've found so far. Faith in humanity restored lol. Luckily as well Will was happy to have me come round on the weekends and give him a hand. He had previously owned his own restoration shop and the other cars there were absolutely brilliant.

I dropped the car off on Wednesday and this is how it was on Saturday morning

Front all off

lots of sections with paint removed to expose the z's past

As you can see here its had a hit in the back and someones drilled heaps of holes and pulled it out the ding by pulling out the prang and bogging over the top

Same with the other side, its a bit hard to see tho

drivers side dog leg not to bad

Passengers side much worse lol

A dodgy repair that started rusting. I was all excited thinking it was a plate covering where a fender mirror would go but apparently it had only been done a dew years prior.

Both arches about the same condition, lots of little bits and pieces.

Stripped the interior while Will was busy burning all the rust out. he fixed up the guard and the smoothed out all the holes.

Bit of a action shot

around the tail lights

passengers dog leg opened up

Its just about 12:30 and my brains cactus (as you can probably see from the decline of writing lol) I'll polish up this post tomorrow and post up the repairs and not just the rust.

Cheers for looking, night all