280zx Project.. bringing a beast back from the dead.

[Z.]

So I have been lurking on this forum for a few years now while I've chipped away at my 280zx project between uni and work, always with the good intentions of getting a respectable build thread going but unfortunately never getting around to it...  until now! Before I start I would like to give a bit of a thanks to everyone on this forum whose given me advice as I stumbled through the world of Z cars, in particularly to Jason (dat2kman) who gave me some great advice when I was starting out as well as along the way.

 

Now to get to it..

 

Ideally to begin my project I was looking for a 240/260z however I knew that with my uni budget that was going to be a stretch. After a few months of poking around at rust bucket z's that were too far gone I decided to have a look in to the 280zx's, as I did still quiet like the look of this later generation of Z car. Despite being an acquired taste for some I quickly came up with a few ideas which I think would make one of these old 280's a badass Z car.

 

The Plans: I wanted to delete the rear bumper and fabricate my own from bumper similar to the earlier Z cars as I really wasn't a fan of the large stock things which molestered the look of these potentially sexy cars. I actually met a member during the build process who had done exactly what I wanted to the rear (Dave280zx). I was set on sitting it on genuine watanabe's with bolt on flares as I really liked that look on Z cars. As for the colour I want matte black paint with the chrome trimmings for badassdom as well as ease of repair when I track the old girl

 

As for power I plan on upgrading injectors to VL turbo injectors, aftermarket ecu, upgraded fuel pump, new exhaust system and a nice lumpy cam. Nothing to flash but just a bit of fun. Originally wanted to bolt on a Garrett GT35 and Greddy intercooler I have but I've decided to hold off on that for the time being

 

**I hope this satisfies luvemfast who recently called for new content on the forum.. sure gave me the nudge I needed to do this build thread**

[PB260Z]

 

 

Got any photo's of progress so far ?

[Z.]

The saga begins as a mate and I trip down to Torquay to check out a 280zx that has been advertised on this forum. After having a good look around the car we decided to try and fire her up. First attempt.. nothing. Changed the fuel filter, took the plugs out and gave them a good clean and had another crack. Cranked over a few times then coughed and spluttered and roared to life.. perfect .

 

 

 

 

 

We backed her out and let it run for a while and she seemed to run smooth enough and drive ok. I looked over the car again and the panels were all very straight and the paint was really fresh, I was not that naive though and I knew there could be anything underneath that fresh paint. However it came with a heap of spare parts and in all honesty I was keen to start my project and I didn;t drive all that way for nothing!  So a quick talk with Kathy and it was mine.

We filled her up and set off. This is where the fun starts.. Here's me enjoying roaring along in my new car only 3km's out of Torquay when my mate whose following in my other car flashes me and I start to notice the temp gauge start to shoot up. Joy.

 

So we pulled over to have a squiz and the radiator has blown a hole and pissing out coolant. By this point it's about 6:30pm and we're losing light. We decided to see if the blokes place we were out the front of would let us push it out the back of his for the night as it was missing the rear quarter windows and not very secure. After a long discussion with a very drunk and slightly dodgy seeming farmer we decided this was not the best idea. I didn't want to come back the next day to find my new car had 'disappeared'.

 

So we limped her down to a servo to see if we could find some gear to fix the radiator. Unfortunately all they had was heavy duty tape, silicon and epoxy glues. Deciding it was worth a shot we spent the next couple of hours removing the radiator in the dark in front of the now closed servo with very limited tools I had in the boot. Took quite a bit of patience but we got there in the end and patched her with a crap lot off everything. Got it all back together and fired her up and it worked!.. for about 30 seconds haha.

 

At this point I was not about to give up so we filled all the containers we had up with water and set off back to Melbourne determined to try and limp her the whole way. We got to a servo in Geelong and realised this start, stop, cool down business was going to take way too long. At least this servo was 24hrs so we asked the guy there if I could park it out the front until I could get it towed in the morning. So we headed home for the night and my amazing girlfriend didn't even mind when I crawled in to her bed 2:30am covered in grease she's a keeper!

 

So after a quick msg to a mate I got it towed to my house in Brunswick, where she sat for a few weeks while I organised with my grandfather to borrow a spot in the shed on his farm to fix her in. And so I finally got the Z to the farm.. Just a few weeks late.

 

[Z.]

As I'm at uni during the week and the farm is an hours drive from where I live the project progresses in weekends where I go out and work solidly for a couple of days straight. So I've broken up the first part of the build as such.

 

Weekend 1:

 

I couldn't wait to get stuck in to ye old beasty and work out what goodies I would find stashed in the pile of parts in the car so I pulled it all out for a look. Plenty of spare parts, quarter panels, doors, service manual, owners manual and even a family of dead mice :/. Oh and a good amount of change, cars already paying for itself!

 

 

 

 

 

[Z.]

Next I set about pulling out the radiator and try to repair it so I could flush the system so the crap didn't have to wash through the new one. Much quicker when you have tools and daylight. The daylight also helps one to notice that the belt for the water pump is missing. *facepalm* how I missed that is beyond me (although I'm going to blame it being dark). Definitely wouldn't have helped with the over heating/bursting radiator issue. Water pump belt replaced. The split down the radiator was reopened as you can see. So I patched it up with Rapid Fix (I swear by this stuff, it is amazing) and dropped it back in the car. No worries wouldn't have even known it had a split. Gave the thing a good flush until the water stopped coming out brown and we were back on track.

 

 

 

 

[Z.]

Weekend 2:

 

I spent most of the next weekend stripping out the interior and inspecting the rust. It took ages to chip out all the sound deadening in the front so I could check if any of it had rust under it. But with the help of a mate we finally got there. There was a lot of surface rust which I wasn't too worried about.

 

I then set about trying to remove the dash. Apparently the steering wheel doesn't like coming off without the proper tool it shows in my service manual. I tried a number of different gear pullers grandad had out at the farm (as well as belting the crap out it) but the steering wheel wouldn't budge!

 

Fine, I'll just make one of the bloody pullers -_-

 

 

 

After getting creative with a gear puller, a couple of bolts and a bit of scrap metal I slapped together a similar idea to that in the book. Wouldn't have even known the wheel was stuck on there, just slipped off.

[Z.]

After meticulously labelling all the wiring so I could put it all back together I finally got the dash out. Interior was now completely stripped. Stoked.

 

[Z.]

Weekend 3:

 

Some pics of the rust I found around the interior.

 

 

 

 

http://i1293.photobucket.com/albums/b583/l33r0y7/311_zps7a5da6c3.jpg

 

After many hours with the wire brush on the angle grinder cleaning up the surface rust. I found the front area of the floor pan at the seam with the firewall on both sides had some heavy rust with some holes. There was also a small patch behind the passenger seat where the rust had eaten through to make a bit of Swiss cheese.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Got the angle grinder out and went to work cutting out the rusted out floor pan in the front. Got it out no worries but it looked like it was going to be fun trying to make the passenger side replacement plate as it ran up the trans tunnel a little way.

 

The rear section of the car was fine so after cleaning it up and didn't have any serious rust so I managed to get that all sprayed with fresh black paint. Looked so much better already.

 

[Z.]

Weekend 4:

 

I managed to make a patch for the floor pan on both sides but I ended up having to make the passenger side one out of 2 parts to accommodate for the curvature in the trans tunnel. Only problem now was the arc welder out at the farm was too high powered for this sheet metal and kept blowing holes. So I had to leave the patches out for now.

 

Next I jacked the car up off the ground and put it on stands at all 4 so I could start disassembling the suspension. Some of the bolts were stuck on there pretty good after not being touched in how many decades, but nothing a big hammer couldn't fix . Dropped the rear suspension in no time. Took about 2 hours trying to get the bolt off that holds the stub axle in though! Finally worked out all that was needed was a bit of heat and a nice long extension on the wrench.

 

 

 

 

Found the sway bar bush brackets had been absolutely mangled. Somehow a previous owner had managed to bend them from square to being on a 45 degree angle? We had a go with an oxy trying to belt them back straight but decided it'd be get new ones because they're probably softened from being bent around.

 

Next we went about burning out all the old rubbers.. Needless to say it was good bit of fun blasting them out with the oxy. Even managed to make one of them metal sleeves explode out the other end? No idea how but it was cool as shit. Did almost give a nasty burn though!

 

 

 

After disassembling it all we set about cleaning it all up.. Good scrub followed by the wire brush sorted. Painted it up all nice and new.

 

 

 

 

I ended up staying awake til 3am that night dropping the fuel tank and the heat shields and other crap left under the rear of the car. Well worth it though, the entire underside of the car up to the engine bay was now ready to clean and respray.

 

 

Lesson for the weekend: Don't be gentle! If it don't budge you're not using a big enough hammer

 

[Z.]

Weekend 5:

 

Did a bit of investigating around the body and found rust below the rear passenger quater window, some previously patched parts on the rear and rust had eaten through below the petrol cap.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

I called in a favour with one of the neighbours and got him to come around and mig weld the floor pan patches in for me. I sprayed all the seams with rust guard as well as the patches where there had been surface rust. And then went to work with seam sealer on all the new welds as well as some of the other seams I had to clean surface rust off.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Only managed to start painting the rest of the interior with a coat off black when the cheap electric spray gun I had found in the shed stopped sucking the paint up. Ah well just have to leave it there for now until I get a proper spray gun next time.

[Z.]

At this point the clutch went in my daily (little banger Honda Prelude, say what you will but she's like a little go cart to drive and still brings a smile to my face!). This unfortunately meant my Z had to take a back seat while I sorted the prelude out. Which I ended up rebuilding the engine as well as it was end need of some love.

 

It's a coupe and a utility vehicle

 

[Z.]

Back to the Z!

 

At this point I was sick of these rushed trips out to the farm to cram in work on my 280. It was going to take far too long to get it all finished if I kept it up so I came up with a new plan and loaded it up on a trailer to take home to my parents house in Mildura where I would be for the summer (2013/14).

 

Arrived in one piece thankfully. Although in the rush to bang the rear suspension back on I had forgotten the bolts to hold the rear shocks to the control arm :/.

 

 

Naturally the Z decided to lower herself on the ride up from Melbourne to Mildura..

 

 

 

Snug in her new home.

 

 

[Z.]

Now to unload all the crap I piled in her and re-assess where I was up to.

 

 

 

 

With the parts all unloaded I pushed her out of the shed and gave everything a good clean down with the pressure washer.

 

Next job was to disconnect everything a rip out the engine. This only took me about 2 hours all up. So much quicker than the bloody front wheel drive prelude!

 

 

 

[Z.]

With the engine out a made sure I documented where everything went and labelled all the wires with masking tape.

 

Stripped the wiring loom out of the engine bay and gave it another blast with the pressure washer.

 

 

 

 

I then put the car back up on jack stands and pulled the front and rear suspension back off (I hadn't torqued any of the rear suspension to spec as well as I wanted to respray the underside of the car in stone fleck).

 

[gav240z]

So we limped her down to a servo to see if we could find some gear to fix the radiator. Unfortunately all they had was heavy duty tape, silicon and epoxy glues. Deciding it was worth a shot we spent the next couple of hours removing the radiator in the dark in front of the now closed servo with very limited tools I had in the boot. Took quite a bit of patience but we got there in the end and patched her with a crap lot off everything. Got it all back together and fired her up and it worked!.. for about 30 seconds haha.

 

Did you try putting eggs in the radiator?

http://www.discovery.com/tv-shows/one-car-too-far/videos/radiator-egg-fix.htm

 

I've never tried it, but I will next time .

[Z.]

Completely stripped engine bay...

 

 

 

Time to start stripping the old paint out of the engine bay. As you can see it was just spider webbed with rust under the original paint.

 

 

While I was at I came across this nice surprise.

 

 

Not exactly what you want to find! Kept digging and it got worse the entire 'panel' was just 20mm of bog sitting over swiss cheese metal.

 

 

 

 

Also found a few more bits eaten through below the windscreen.

 

[Z.]

Did you try putting eggs in the radiator?

http://www.discovery.com/tv-shows/one-car-too-far/videos/radiator-egg-fix.htm

 

I've never tried it, but I will next time .

 

Haha, no! I should have though we were pretty desperate :/

 

I want to know who came up with that to start with, I mean what sane person goes "oh my radiator is leaking, I'll just bang an egg in there and that'll fix it" 

[Z.]

And a quick search of the car with the wire brush  on the angle grinder turned up plenty of goodies. a lot of which were unnecessary as a simple beat with a hammer or even half the amount of bog could have fixed the problem but I guess the previous owner had his own method.

 

 

 

 

Not so surprising I guess. I started this project to learn about auto restoration, and looks like I was jumping in the deep end as per usual! Wasn't going to let this phase me and set aside the rest of the body for after I finish the engine bay.

 

[Z.]

Back to stripping the engine bay. I managed to get it back to shiny metal with the help of a mate. Also welded up all the holes and removed the brackets as I'm hoping to have a clean engine bay with minimal wiring etc when I'm all done. As you will start to notice I have some great mates who I have racked up quiet a few wrench hours with. One of them can be seen below after he got a bit too close to the paint stripper fumes :/.

 

 

 

 

 

Put the engine bay in a rust guard primer. I wasn't sure if this was a done thing in the auto world but I figured with all that rust we cleaned off I'd rather use rust guard to help protect it.

 

 

 

Also reapplied seam sealer to all the parts it had been stripped off while cleaning the engine bay. good trick I found to do this was to put tape on a plastic bag, cut a hole in it and squeeze the seam sealer out through the hole to get a nice clean line. Beats painting it on. (Alternatively a snap lock bag seams to not require the tape to prevent the bag from splitting).

 

 

Next I sprayed the engine bay in a nice satin underbody black as I wanted a relatively tough paint to prevent it from scratching too easily. This actually turned out more matte but I think that was to do with the spray pressure I was doing it at as I'm still fine tuning my skills with a spray gun. I was happy with the outcome either way!

 

 

[Z.]

As the car was originally an auto and I wanted a manual, I had picked up a gearbox out of an s13 for $100 which supposedly had a busted bearing that whirred at high speed. As well as an L series bell housing for it to do a manual conversion from a 71c box like a lot of blokes seem to do. Below you can see a few pictures of me meticulously pulling it down to rebuild it.

 

 

I quickly discovered that it was not a bearing causing the issue but one of the c shaped selector forks which had snapped off a small portion of the end. I'm fairly certain the guy would have known the grinding sound that would of made was not a bearing but hey $100 that's what you get. I decided to put this aside and see if I could get another box from a cheap wreckers I know in Melbourne to save trying to weld it back together. A spare box never goes astray anyway.

 

[Z.]

On to some rust repairs!

While I was still in Melbourne I had found a zcar member (dave280zx) who had a shell he didn't mind me hacking up to try and fix the holes in my rear quarter under the window. Thanks Dave!

 

Although the one I scavanged still needed work, it was much better condition then mine so I thought what the hell. Hindsight says I probably should have waited for a perfect panel so I could just put it straight in. But I knew this was a common issue and I hadn't found much else. So I bent up a few sections to weld in to the rusted through parts of the donor panel. Not a bad job for a first timer I thought!

 

 

 

The finished product has a piece welded in to the three rusted through parts

 

Unfortunately I don't have any pictures on my phone of the panel welded in but I will get some when I next work on the car!

 

I have also made up a panel for the swiss cheese that was under the windscreen section I found earlier and a patch for the old antenna hole. But I'll upload pictures for these later too.

[imackz]

Nice work in progress, all the best with getting your s130 back from the brink 

[Z.]

Next I moved on to the block out plate for where the old rear bumper sat. As I'm new to body work I just kind of dived in and started cutting pieces to fit and tacking them on. You can see the beginnings in the pictures below as well as a section I cut out on the left side of the rear which was cactus.

 

 

 

Bending up all the bits of metal and trying to get all the angle right was a fair steep learning curve for a beginner but I think I did alright. I did get one section suck in a little on me after I tacked it all. But only slightly so I could fix it with some high fill later.

 

 

Here's the panels fully welded in. I just spot welded it little bits at a time working my way around to prevent too much heat from transferring to the metal. In the pictures the lower corners hadn't been bent up yet and look like they hang too low but I have since fixed that.

 

 

As I wanted to go the bolt on flare look with some fat rims on the rear I set about cutting out the rear flare sections. Which you could see from earlier pictures were cactus anyway and all bent up covered in bog.

 

 

Once they were cut I put slits in the inner guard and bent them up behind the quarter panel to re-weld back on later. You can also see what happen when I stupidly left the rear section unpainted for a day in the humid Mildura weather. Better clean the surface rust back and put some cheap paint over it to protect it!

 

[Z.]

Nice work in progress, all the best with getting your s130 back from the brink 

 

Thanks mate

[Z.]

Shot over to Adelaide on the weekend to pick up some rims from a bloke selling some genuine Watanabes :) . I was after 14's with large offset to fill the flares. Preferably 10.5's for the rear and 8's for the front, however these were only 7's on the front. But for the price and everything else being so close to what I wanted I jumped on them!

 

 

 

 

The bloke was even nice enough to trial them on for me on a friends 280zx before I came to get them...

 

 

 

This is what I'm planning to paint them up like.