1973 240z the smurf

[phillay]

hey guys I've join the forum since August last year and I thought maybe it's time to put my build thread up here to keep a diary of the work I've done on my z.

 

 

Things to do that are outstanding to get to club rego (phase 1):

 

New brake switch

Make Switch panel and move fan switch

Install relay harness'es

Convert to H4

New ignition switch

get wipers working

 

 

it's gonna be a long post so please bare with me.

 

I acquired my z through a swap mid last year

 

I had this car for a while

 

 

swapped it for this

 

 

after some paperwork, took it back to my mates workshop for storage away from the harmful rain

 

 

the car wouldn't start, I've never played with carbies before so Lurch helped out and it fired into life.

 

 

but it still has a loud tap, im thinking that the rocker arm is stuffed, will look into it later, I can live with it

 

[video=youtube;h0LdFBrWx68]

 

whilst in storage, I collected parts as I see them for sale for cheap.

 

picked this one up, it;s a set of triples 40mm, although I wanted 44mm these were $600 delivered, I thought it would be enough for me.

 

 

after a while in storage my mate had some time and he gave the smurf i quick check, and told me the brakes were not working, so he ordered in some rebuild kits and I was off rebuilding the cylinders and calipers at his place, it was good because if I needed help he would be there, but it was quite simple and striaght forward, for $6 a pair it was cheap and was a fun learning experience.

 

 

I had some spare time at work so I printed the FSM

 

 

park of the brake system repair was to also replace this

 

 

lots of white stuff in the booster, might look at getting a new one to replace this.

 

 

not very clear but the plastic wrapper has a new master cylinder, it costed me $70 (i get stuff at cost price for my mate - god bless him)

 

 

after that was done and got the final ok from my mate from a safety point of view, he allowed me to take the smurf home so I could continue on with the minor work from my garage and also for me to have a peek every now and then to remind me of the smurf is under my roof, although my mate prefers the smurf to be at his place he loves the car and misses it.

 

 

garage needs a clean (ps has been clean since)

 

 

some of the rest of the pictures are ones I've already posted on my eletrical woes thread, but I would like to post them here to tell the whole story.

 

so after a few months of storage I decided to do some electrical work, having done all the stuff on the S13 on my own I was ok with the basics like cutting and soildering etc.

 

first thing on the agenda was to clean the indicator stalk, it doesn't go up or down.

 

so I took it out and it looked quite old, i decided to polish it with a dremel and also take out each of the screws to clean out thje contacts with some air flow meter cleaning stuff i had lying around.

 

all new now and you can hear it click when you push it up and down

 

[phillay]

continuing the first post...

 

now the lights work! but only the rear ones

 

 

whilst looking for random stuff on gumtree i noticed a set of r type watanabes for sale, there was 2 ads, from the same seller a pair of 16x8.5 and 16x9.5 he wanted $1000 each pair they had brand new tyres and were only ever test fitted, the tyres were continentals something 255/40 and fronts were falkens 225/40. these were my dream wheels of all time and I contacted the seller and offered him a significantly lower price as I had a limited budget and he accepted, wow i was surprised, as it was interstate i was a bit weary but once i had spoken to him I realised he was also a member on this forum but has since sold his Z and moved on.

 

he dropped them off at the courier depo and i had my wheels not long after. shipping was $100 with insurance woudl have been $50 without insurance.

 

 

test fitted them

 

 

at around the same time I also found an L28 off a 280zx for $50 but it was in QLD and he lived quite far from the city, I ended up getting a courier which costed $275 door to door. I found an engine stand that was used once for $40 and now this lives at my place.

 

I plan to have a go at rebuilding what I could myself and farm out the stuff I can't do

 

 

 

so continuing with the electrical stuff

 

I took out the fuse box and polished all the terminals cause they were all cruddy, the middle one of the left column had some heat warpage but looks to be ok.

 

 

my park lights weren't working and I found out why

 

 

when I couldn't work on it cause there was no light or I was over looking at the wiring diagram i was working on the relay harness for the headlight and parklights

 

 

I also cleaned these panels and primed them.

 

 

I painted them a satin black colour

 

 

also did it with the grills

 

 

the wheel seller gave me a set of flares as he wasabout to throw them away I test fitted these and I like the look so I just ordered some rivnuts and rubber seals to get ready to cut up the flares.

 

 

I have a list of things to do and once they are done I will get an rwc and get club plates.

 

[George]

Looks Smurftastic!

[Retro Z]

Good job on the car. Will you be keeping the car blue or planning to change it?

 

Also the picture of your car driving, is that Ballarat rd heading towards Deer Park? Looks very familiar as i use that rd everyday.

[PB260Z]

Looks nice, you have been busy 

 

Thought that was the Lurch's head in one of the shots. He can be a helpful fella 

[lightmaster240z]

That not lurch that the international man of mystery

[gav240z]

Another Z being saved, awesome. Good work mate.

[phillay]

Good job on the car. Will you be keeping the car blue or planning to change it?

 

Also the picture of your car driving, is that Ballarat rd heading towards Deer Park? Looks very familiar as i use that rd everyday.

 

yes that is correct I live in Cairnlea regarding the colour at first I thought it was horrible but it kinda grew on me, I quite like it.

 

Looks nice, you have been busy 

 

Thought that was the Lurch's head in one of the shots. He can be a helpful fella 

 

yep lurch is good, I need to get the floors cut out and redone. it will go there if he is not busy.

 

 

[CroS13]

dam looks like you got a good deal out of that trade, the S13 would only depreciate, now you have a car that will only increase in value!

 

Looks good, I like the color. As im sure you have found out, 99% of your electrical issues will be corroded terminals and bad earths. Nothing electrical worked in my car when i bought it, i must have gone through about 10 dremmel wire wheel brushes cleaning everything up.

 

Rudolf.

[phillay]

I did have a loom at the loom and it's in pretty good nick, the part number tag from nissan is still on it although the writing is a bit faded it can still be read. I am going to buy a can of OXdeit from jaycar on the weekend and give each plug a good spray to clean it out. I don't really mind cleaning and dremel'in the plugs. it gives me a satisfaction when its all done 

[gav240z]

Guys I would love to see a tutorial on reconditioning an original wiring loom and any tips and tricks you have in this regard. If either of you have the time of course.

[dat240z]

dam looks like you got a good deal out of that trade, the S13 would only depreciate, now you have a car that will only increase in value!

 

Looks good, I like the color. As im sure you have found out, 99% of your electrical issues will be corroded terminals and bad earths. Nothing electrical worked in my car when i bought it, i must have gone through about 10 dremmel wire wheel brushes cleaning everything up.

 

Rudolf.

[phillay]

I will post up what I get done this weekend when I clean out all the plugs and sockets. I've been using a dremel with a wire brush head and air flow meter cleaner spray but I find that it does leave a whitish finish on copper, I am going to grab a can of Deoxit contact cleaner http://www.jaycar.com.au/productView.asp?ID=NS1434&w=deoxit&form=KEYWORD and try that stuff out.

[Riceburner]

That color is great, it really makes the stainless pop!

 

Make sure to test the contact cleaner on an spare bit of plastic. It does react with some plastics, eating them or turning it white and very brittle.

[CroS13]

Guys I would love to see a tutorial on reconditioning an original wiring loom and any tips and tricks you have in this regard. If either of you have the time of course.

 

throw it in the bin and make a brand new one. All you can do is either remove all the pins in the plugs and clean them ( which would take forever) or cut off the plugs and fit new ones, which would make the loom essentially shorter, and you might have issues with everything reaching where it needs to go. Either way, there is no point as the wire could be corroded half way down the harness. I know you want to keep everything nice and original, but unless you can find a NOS harness, i would not even bother. Just make a new one, you could do it one section at a time.

 

Rudolf.

[phillay]

cros13 makes a good point, I haven't started on cleaning the contacts but I did went and buy the deoxit and left it there because I was too sick this weekend to do any substantial work on the smurf. Although i was sick i did get up to testing the wiper switch and plug and I can report that my switch is working correctly. there is resistance at the plug but the plug has a chipped corner and it's going to require unpinning the plug and putting a new one in. not sure if that counts as recondition.

 

discovered my wiper motor has 6 wires I think it's been changed before. I will do a proper update in a week

[phillay]

when i first got the car, apart from the starter motor working as well as the speedo, none of the eletrics worked.

 

yesterday I finally got my headlight rubber gasket delivered from the US so I plugged in the relay that I had made earlier in the month and tucked all the wires

 

fired her up and boom nothing, blew a fuse lol

 

 

then i remembered i should have rubbed down the grounding point so 10 mins later this happened

 

 

I am taking the night off going to the gym to replace the rear rubber gasket for the tail lights and give it a clean and screw the tail light trims.

 

I am waiting for some wipers that alan is sending me and also getting a set of koni reds and king spring need to get the konis rebuilt. Carpets are on their way hopefully by next week and by the end of May I can get the floor pans cut out and replaced. Once that's done I think it will be time to find a club to join and go for a CH plate.

 

happy days

[fly-s30]

Thank for sharing your ride, it looks great in the blue, plu the wheels and flares tops it off!

Well done on a good purchase.

Also what are you planning on doing to do to retain the flares? Nutsert? Rivets? Double sided tape?

 

 

[phillay]

hi mate, cheers for the comments the flares have been attached on the car using nutserts. It took me a while because I was using some washers and a rachet to rivet them on the body

[Stivva]

Looks great! Reminds me of when I was getting mine ready for reg. Keep up the good work.

[phillay]

thanks stivva,your car is on another level I am taking alot of shortcuts just to get the car into a state where I can drive it, some days you just get over the whole thing lol and lately that's the feeling.

 

anyways moving on, today was a really nice day in Melbourne. Instead of taking the boat out to port philip bay to fish I decided to have a go at fixing the horn as it never worked. So out comes the multi meter to perform continuity test to see if the current wiring is still good and not broken. Previously I already managed to identify the 3 horn wires and also the horn relay.

 

 

there are 3 letters on the relay they are H S B, I thik they stand for H for Horn, B for battery and S for steering wheel im not sure so I will just refer them as their letters for now.

 

so from the wiring diagram red/green wire to the 10amp fuse is for the horn. so I unplugged the plug and poked one of the multimeter probe thing in there and the other one to the B wire. meter showed resistance so all good. Next was to test the E wire, this was green and black, so I followed this through to the steering column, so 1 probe to the horn bit and one on the wire. nothing..

 

then I realised that there is this thin copper strip that's meant to touch the wheel so there is a connect between the button and the wiring. I had previously straighten this out when I cleaned up the combo switch. so out comes the switch and I just bend the copper strip into place.

 

*pic place holder*

 

I then proceed to test the thing and *bam* numbers appear so all good for the S wire. last one is the H wire. This one was very strange for me as I never found the same colour wire at the front of the car, the original horn was wired with a yellow and green wire which doesn't appear on the wiring diagram. I assumed this was simply connected somehow so I never really paid much attention to it. so hooking up  a strand of wire to the probe as it wasn't long enough to reach from the relay to the horn I did the test and nothing came up. I was pretty pissed at this point and though fck hrmm.. what;s going on.. then I noticed a loose wire of the same colour as the one in the front and thought "no way"..

 

note the yellow and green wire

 

 

so I did the test and yep, so this wire was put in by the PO. so I go and hook everything up and press teh horn and now it works

 

I replaced the old horns with these Fiam ones, they were $29 from autobarn, they sound pretty loud and look ok.

 

**pic place holder**

 

only thing left to get rwc is to get the reverse lights working, I might have a go at that next week if I recover from some minor surgery on Monday.

 

 

meanwhile my carpets came in, I got them from allcar carpets, took 2 weeks, I will put them in once I get my floor pans replaced this is to happen on Monday

 

 

I got them for $410 that includes floor mats

 

currently the interior of the car looks like this

 

 

I've taken a few things out getting ready for Monday, once that's done it will be cleaned up and painted black or something

 

Other stuff I did was cleaning the mirror and giving it some black paint, it looks nice and smooth now before it was all cracked and was really ugly.

 

 

Other minor thing that got done was the wipers, I got the motor working by replacing some wires, and also with the help of Alan (he sold me his spare stash of wiper arms)then replaced these with generic bosche ones, I am not really happy with them but I don't plan to use them (not driving in the rain)

 

[phillay]

not much work being done, been really sick, I had some rust patched up on the floor pan, it's alot stronger now. Waiting for a reverse switch if anyone could point me to somewhere in australia before I get one from thailand ebay.

 

I had removed the valance because the wheel was rubbing, went to sydney on the weekend and dropped by otomoto to get a kameari lip, had it painted satin black for now and fitted it on. The fitment is perfect, I just gotta repair my indicator and it's all good to go, it feels a bit soft so I might need to figure out some sort of reinforcing on the back of the lip.

 

went for a drive today because it's a nice day and I am currently not working, feels great/

 

 

picked up a cheap boot spoiler as well, gave it a quick sand and rattle can sprayed it for now.

 

need a badge to go on the boot spoiler

 

[dat240z]

I love the way your cars coming along mate. The colour is great. What did the front bar cost you? Was it a pre order or they stock a few?

[phillay]

Thanks mate, i pm'd ben on the forum and asked him before i went to get it. I think he still has one more?  He don't have arear spoiler in fiberglass but it was a blessing in disguise as soon as i returned to melb a friend had one for sale cheap