Around November '06 I went looking for a 240z. Budget was vey small and I was looking for a resto job. So of course the first cheapy I came across was going to be the one. It had a smattering of surface rust to go with the last of many poor resprays that was now powdery and flaking, and only a smattering of rust bubbles, though they were in some odd places as well as the expected.
After it arrived home dismantlement began and as I proceeded I started poking screw drivers into some of the odd bubbly areas...
...and it just got worse and worse as I started stripping back the layers of paint and bog, and started digging out the chucks of expanding foam filling corners and crevices where metal was no more.
I even had to drill the head off one of the screws holding in the RH sunvisor, it was rusted in solid!
In the end the floors, sills, doors, A-pillars, radiator support, entire tail-light area, fuel filler region, aft of quarter windows, inner rear guards, outer rear arches, spare wheel well and of course the bloody roof were all found to be either badly rusted or very poorly and nastily welded up.
So by January 2007 it was rolled out of the shed and up to the carport where I've been mostly trying to ignore it ever since.
In the meantime I picked up another 240z ('73) in a very lucky find and spent the last couple of years patching it's body work up:
http://www.viczcar.com/forum/index.php/topic,3987.0.htmlI enjoyed myself so much and felt such a sense of achievement that I began to look guiltily over at the poor '71. Ignored for the last few years, but not to the point of being dumped, I started wondering if I might yet be able to resurrect it from such a sorry state. Better cars have been set to the crusher for sure, but it's an early shell, and there's still lots of good metal in there, sort of...
There's no denying there is a lot of rust to deal with, but most of it is in the common areas. I've done a badly rusted Mini in the past and watched the Mull videos. So a plan was conceived, if I can fix the worst of the uncommon, odd areas where there are no replacement panels then it'll be all down hill from there.
So the starting point is the roof. The skin had already been removed so the extent of damage was easy to see. A chop top or donor were the only real solutions. I seriously considered a chop top but in the end decided that repairing rust and engineering a reinforced shell would be all too hard. So a couple of months ago I picked up a 2+2 shell already stripped of everything the bloke I bought it from wanted for his project. Hard to beleive this car was registered and on the road in 2008.
Got a bit worried when I got to here and found evidence of the roof already having been repaired!
It was pleasant surprise though to find the rear arches and spare wheel wheel in very good condition.
So with the roof skin removed I went to work drilling out spot welds until I could remove the entire windscreen frame and roof rails down each side. Unfortunately I've lost a whole bunch of pictures.
Here are the 2+2 and 2+0 roof skins hanging side by side.
On both cars I left the inner sheet metal of the A-pillar and roof rails to give me a reference for mating the two together. I was all to aware that I was trying to fettle a 2+2 onto a 2+0, but guestimations showed it should be workable.
Here's the 240z with the outer windscreen and and roof rails removed.
There's a couple of days worth of back and forthing as I would put it in place mark a bit more to be removed and so on...
When it was getting close the real test came with a trial fit of the roof skin.
Now this was quite a moment, for the first time since it was removed the roof skin was sitting in place where it belonged. Yes, it was just held together with lockgrips and clamps but the daunting impossible now actually seemed possible! I had to stop for a few minutes.
Later that evening I tacked the frame in place.
The windscreen frame has now been solidly plug welded to the inner frame
You may or may not have noticed in the earlier roof skin shot that the 2+2 roof (obviously) does not have the same profile as the 2+0. The drip rails are bout 60mm longer and are much straighter with a more acute angle at the top of the door.
The end result is that even after trimming, when you trial fit the roof, there is a gap...
...but it's not as bad as you might think and with a bit of gentle persuasion can be made to match. (Note that I slotted the vertical sheet metal to make the bending easier.)
and made permanent.
There is more work to be done, some additional fettling of the drip rails and where the a-pillar joins are, and it needs to be stitch welded along the top of the roof rails on each side.
To conclude, the drip rails and windscreen frame from a 2+2 can be used as donor replacements for a 2+0 if needed. It's not simple and requires a lot of bravery and customisation but it can be done. The same cannot be said of the roof skin which is both much longer and a little wider.
