Old School...

[MyEnquiringMind]

Thought I should start a build thread, as this one has a bit of a story to it...

 

Back in the early 90's, I was a bright eyed and bushy tailed teenager, the Z car captured my attention in the state rally series... it was love at first sight... and so commenced the obsession...

 

I soon discovered that a bloke I went to school with, his old man had a Z car, it was a newly purchased, fairly stock 260Z, with the beginnings of all the usual problems, some rust etc etc... and through the local rally club I was exposed to it on a number of occasions. The old man was a top bloke and on occasion would talk Z cars with me. Over 15 years I watched it slowly morph from a standard car, to having rust repairs, triple webers, worked L28, 4 wheel disc brakes, power steering and of late an RB30 transplant...

 

The old man had been a Z man through and through, having a long history in Motorsport racing Datsuns, and even an old Holden Dunnydore in the Repco round Australia trial of the late 70's. My mate had raced a Z car in state rally series with the old mans support through the late 90's and I was plenty exposed to Z cars coming and going through the garage for one reason or another.

 

Just recently a mate asked me to give the old man a call... there was something we had to discuss, and in disbelief I came to understand that the red Z was up for grabs. I am a sentimental soul, so the decision was easy... this is one of the first Z cars I knew, and I was shocked to realise that I had known it for over 20 years.

 

I had also come to appreciate the old man was fighting a big fight with a chronic degenerative disease and in some aspects the old girl was slowly being let go as he could no longer love it like he used to... So make no mistakes, all is not rosy with this picture. The car takes a great 20 footer... but it is full of imperfections, and a distinct lack of originality in lieu of its multicultural history.

 

I have come to appreciate this moreso in the early stages of owning at as I have come to appreciate that it is a bit of a mongrel of parts. The rear end is from an early girl 240Z, with rear 280ZX discs fitted. The steering rack is from a Subaru (but a highly recommended transplant for anyone interested...) The engine is an RB30 which was picked up from the closure of the local TAFE automotive department, (independently validated) an engine donated by Holden for use with teaching that had never been in a vehicle before, even at this stage given the lack of use it has had is thought to have done about 500kms from new... along with the usual interchange of R31 parts from the Skyline. The interior is from a 77 model 260Z, but looks in good shape. The body is showing the signs of 20 years since a respray and despite its being garaged some rust bubbles are starting to appear. The gearbox is the original Z item with the 2.9 first which is a bit of a bonus, but mated up to the RB30 bellhousing. The diff appears to be a 3.9 or 4.1 single spinner R180, in keeping with the early 240Z rear end.

 

I'm a bit of a purist at heart, but I'm happy to say that I actually love this car already, it is a nice blend of bits and pieces that are improved for the sake of the driving experience and in discussions with the old man we talked about my desire to modify the vehicle with a bit of an old school race car theme, which is in keeping with both my own, and the old mans rally history and to make it a car to enjoy on a Sunday drive through the hills. Initial thoughts are to improve, suspension, braking and paint. I still have a few rally goodies in the shed and so will need to work out how to make best use of them in this setting... I have been lucky enough to pick up some nice bits over the last couple of years in keeping with the JDM theme that we so often see and love... and obviously in the back of my mind if money/time permits ill hopefully try and do things a little different to the rest in keeping with the old school theme...

 

I wanted to keep a thread of the (mis)adventures I have in modifying/restifying this car, I have already come up against a few little problems that I will document as I move forward in honesty of reflecting on the journey of building a car, I can already this one is going to come with its own share of headaches, but isn't that the point of owning a chrome bumpered car and not buying something off the lot...

 

[dat2kman]

What is the name of the old bloke, and son?

[260DET]

Great story and thanks for telling. If you wouldn't mind, what is the name of the old bloke and son?

 

[boyblunda]

Great opening to a build thread.

 

(Speculation on identities deleted in light of comment in next post.)

Edited September 4, 2015 by boyblunda

[MyEnquiringMind]

I don't want to have misconstrued the relationship between the Datsuns and the Commodores as being someone well known by any stretch of the imagination. The family are well known in South Australia, the son being a two time South Australian Rally Champion, and the father prominent in our club level rallying over many years.

 

The Datsun relationship is a reflection of having seen many Z cars in particular pass through the garage, both by virtue of a love of rallying, mostly at the grass roots level and by the death/repair of the odd Datsun by misadventure. A family clearly knowledgeable in building Datsun race cars and repairing Datsun race cars for the love of the marque. 

 

The Repco trial stuff was when the old man and his brother (Incidently who also are another father and son team who are both well known in Victorian rallying.) raced together in one of the Holden dealer cars, (I am unclear if this is means the same thing then as it does today, as their entry was sponsored by a Holden dealer, but I dont believe they were a part of the "Holden Dealer Team"). They did in fact DNF with a blown engine.

 

I apologise for the allusiveness of the old man references, but I also want to be very clear that in the context of respecting their privacy, as I have written this without any permission that I want to be respectful of the progression of a chronic disease scenario and so will not name them publicly.

 

I apologise for that, but I feel it the most respectful thing to do...

[MyEnquiringMind]

Ok... first stage of the project was centered around getting the rocket registered with the RB30... I had largely underestimated the amount of work that I needed to do to get it back to square one in lieu of the highly likely probability of it needing to be roadworthied...

 

I rang "Regency" that is our engineering base for RTA here in South Australia in lieu of the possibility of it requiring engineering and they confirmed that this was not the case, due to the inherently same configuration of the engine, i.e. single overhead came, same number of valves per cylinder etc etc... that other than keeping it in standard form, i.e. it must have the original ECU, with the original injection system, intake runners etc etc... and that it must run a catalytic converter.

 

The cat converter that I installed was a VZ commodore item, second hand, $90 from the wreckers which has a nice triangular shape and sits up under the car neatly. It doesn't seem to have changed the power of the engine, but has taken some of the harshness out of the exhaust note giving it a sound that I rather like...

 

The ECU ended up being swapped out for a standard VL commodore item, which to keep the long story short, the car had a small miss at higher loads, that we struggled to reason around what the problem was... it ended up being a partially blocked fuel return line to the swirl pot, which once repaired uncovered that the ECU was buggered as well. The Skyline ECU runs the fuel pump as a variable speed motor, which it inevitably wasn't doing correctly, so the fuel pressure was being maintained by the blocked return line, with blockage cleared, it was no longer able to maintain fuel pressure. A change to the VL ECU which runs the fuel pump at a constant speed rectified the problem, and now it runs like a new one again...

 

While I was playing with electrical things I replaced central locking motors, which were already installed in the car, but buggered. A quick trip to "Tonkins" and $20 later, brand new central locking motors installed without much drama, central locking now works fine after lubricating everything up with RP7.

 

Gauges on the old girl are all standard, and some of them worked and some of them didn't, so with a little fault finding and a replaced oil pressure sender that was incidentally sourced off of a GQ patrol (if my memory serves me correctly), has the oil pressure reading correctly again. The tacho is currently a work in progress, having confirmed that we have the tacho working only under cranking, I'm hopeful that finding a ignition power supply under the bonnet will rectify that one without too much grief. Incidentally for some reason the distributor power wire was extremely low voltage when trying it in series with the tacho, this caused the spark to the engine to drop to an unusable level... the search will continue...

 

Brakes felt pretty good on driving, but a desire to roll it back onto original 260Z allow wheels for inspection unearthed a world of headaches on the braking side of things, it was clear that a lack of braking maintenance outside of just changing the pads was required, and in some cases some discrepancy between the way the left and right rear disc brake conversion had been installed, really left me no options but to pull things to bits and replace with new, or newly sourced bits to ensure all of the correct brackets and/or retaining clips were used. This included having to remachine the face of the hub that had been damaged by someone 'chiseling' the face to remove an old disc, it wasn't too far out of square, but I was chasing a squealing brake on that side, so I wondered if it had at all contributed to that picture. While in that process, new discs were installed, new brake lines, new wheel bearings just to get it all back to square one, which was done without too much trouble, but just ate up bucket loads of time.

 

I am going to be back into it in a couple of weeks as time permits, but all of the paperwork is now in for transfer of the new engine number. Pending tasks include installation of a new radiator, installation of some new seat belts, but that is about it for the moment... ill update with some more of the build plans when I get a chance...

 

Cheers, Jarrod

Edited September 15, 2015 by MyEnquiringMind

[gav240z]

So will the RB motor be part of the Rally Car replica? To give it the LY-engine feel? Sounds like good work so far, looking forward to more updates.

[dat2kman]

Fairly well knwn in the SA and Vic rally fraternity!

The old man, and his brother ran a Commdore, that had backing from some regional Holden dealers, but were not part of the three car

factory HDT team.

Their car cooked ots motor in Kununurra!

The son was fairly active in 90's-2000's, in State based events, mainly in Mazdas.

 

This Z has come from a motoring enthusiast family!

[PB260Z]

Gidday

 

Sounds like SA Regency guys have a rather different approach to that of the RMS (or whatever they are calling themselves today) in NSW.

Always liked the idea of an RB30 powered Z.

 

Cheers

 

PB

[MyEnquiringMind]

So will the RB motor be part of the Rally Car replica? To give it the LY-engine feel? Sounds like good work so far, looking forward to more updates.

 

Yeah Gav, that is the plan,

 

I wont get too far ahead of myself, but that was definitely the plan... I will probably never own a real LY, so I felt that a cross flow would be the next best thing...

 

I am in a world of pain finding a webber style (or any style for that matter) manifold for the RB30, so we will see what magic is required to get it sorted...

 

Cheers, J

[MyEnquiringMind]

Frustration was the name of the game right from the get go...

 

2 days off and a planned 2 days working on the Z... but only to spend one day on the Z and another whole day fixing wiring issues with little gremlins that came out of left field...

 

Things achieved...

 

Radiator: The radiator was changed over to a 260Z item, a mishimoto radiator I had previously picked up from another AusZCar member a year or so back was given the task of replacing the old Skyline radiator that had simply been cut and shut into place. It was genuinely squeezed into place with cut outs around the chassis rails where it was sitting, and with no evidence of rubber mounting it had to be replaced. The issues with that were that the RB30 has the inlet at the top on the other side, so this was cut off the old radiator and moved over to the other side and pressure tested. I cleaned up and replaced the inlet and outlet of each and made various attempts at replacing cooling system hoses that needed replacing and new hose clamps where needed.

 

The block, heater core and radiator were all flushed several times due to old antifreeze still being present in the coolant, despite direct water and compressed air being applied directly to the inlet and outlet hoses of each of the block, heater core and radiator in succession, I have no idea where it was still hiding coolant, but it was still pumping out old coolant even after 2-3 attempts at each.

 

The radiator cap was replaced with a 16psi item, down from the 19psi supplied with the radiator. Still to do is an overflow bottle, which I plan to install at a later date, due to needing to move high pressure fuel lines and fuel filter from inside the engine bay.

 

Seatbelts: Item no 1 for frustration was set about by the requirement for the use of a factory bracket which in case you were aware, has a slight lean to the outside of the vehicle. I purchased aftermarket items from APV corporation (http://www.apvsafetyproducts.com/) which were said to be a direct bolt in, which was true up until the point that the said factory mounting bracket appeared to have greater than the 2 degrees required for the retractor to work safely. It has a nice ratcheting system with ball bearing in situ that moves when the tilt of the base is greater than the said 2 degrees locking the seat belt, and rendering it useless for anything other than visual inspection. The guys at APV were very helpful from a customer support point of view, but useless in supplying anything that would do the job without modification of the seatbelt brackets. Insert many hours of time making/modifying the old bracket in here... and at the time of writing, they have just finished being painted again ready for reinstallation.

 

Electrical: Now electrical wasn't on the list of things to do... and so with the beginning of writing this I can feel my frustration levels begin to rise... it had been 2 weeks since the car had been started, and it had not been moved since I last saw it, but an attempt to start the old girl was met with stony silence. No fuel pumps was a quick diagnosis... (insert a couple of hours here of the usual pulling things to bits in some sort of structured fashion, trying to find where the power to said fuel pumps come from...) only to discover that a dodgy connection through a sprung loaded fuse holder was the problem... a simple fix despite the time wasted... the car fired up again... (insert another hour putting car back together)...

 

Day 2... turn key and stony silence again... this time it ended up being the power supply for the injectors being connected through a VERY dodgy crimped terminal that was obviously knocked by me in the process of putting the car back together... by this time with the best part of a day spent fault finding the bloody car for dodgy wiring issues, I had had about enough... (insert more hours going over the whole ECU loom, replacing with soldered connections where relevant... and for good measure a new isolating battery terminal.) I feel comfortable with where the car is at electrically now, but I can see that a full rewire is on the cards, probably in next Winter... it is getting too close to Summer and with a plan to enjoy the car and just put some kilometres on it, to want to start such a project that could unfortunately end up with the car off the road for an extended period...

 

What wasn't complete this trip due to the electrical issues was getting the tacho working... I had made a plan in my head to be able to utilise the original coil power supply from the Z for the power to the ignition, which worked to a point, i.e. the tacho works while the engine is cranking, but it appears that there must be a ballast resistor or something in series with the original coil power supply while running that drops the voltage supplied to the coil sufficiently to drop the voltage low enough for the coil not to work correctly... I downloaded a wiring diagram from the web, but there was not enough time in my couple of days off to have a thorough crack at this... next time...

 

The car is slowly getting closer to a point where I can see myself driving it with no imminent concerns for my safety, despite the obvious concerns that I have missed something in the electrical department. I am excited to know that the car is looking like being back to square one, and despite the fact that I got my registration in the mail the other day with the RB30 engine number changed...

 

I am aware that this is a bit of a coup... and despite the car being very much ready for a roadworthy inspection in my mind, my awareness that it may open a can of worms far outweighs my concerns that the engine is completely changed to a later model engine with fuel injection, independent of the fact that so many RB30 engines are turbo charged, without so much as a roadworthy is of concern to me... ill comment no more here, but leave it be said that I am bemused by this, with many an arm chair expert commenting on that it was because it was less than a 25% capacity increase of engine, I will carry on with the rest of my build after putting some kilometers on the car and working out what it does and doesn't need before attacking my planned replica works rally car theme...

Edited September 26, 2015 by MyEnquiringMind

[George]

Sounds very frustrating but good to see persistence win the day. I can just imagine the look on your face when the car wouldn't start on the second day...

[MyEnquiringMind]

Body work...

 

The old girl was in need of a little TLC and the opportunity came up to take advantage of a mate (Thanks Mick) who was keen to do some work on it in lieu of a trade of parts and some cash... and I am aware that he has gone above and beyond to get the old girl looking a million dollars...

 

Initial plans were to do a quick paintjob and body kit, in lieu of the 74 works rally cars having flares, but in all honesty, the idea of flares without a front lip/rear spoiler doesnt sit well with me. I then took the view that I would like to do a works styled tarmac spec rally car, this was largely inspired by a pikes peak Datsun 240Z i recollect from Speedhunters.

 

http://www.speedhunters.com/2010/06/car_spotlight_gt_gt_pike_s_peak_datsun_240z/

 

I am well aware that I would like to rally the car proper, but the budget and time isn't going to stretch to maintaining a dirt car. So the decision to go Tarmac is in keeping with where it is likely to get more use, both hopefully as a Sunday Driver, enjoying the company of the South Australian Datsun community and then for blowing off a little steam out in the Adelaide Hills as stress levels necessitate.

 

So body work wise, I sourced a Kevlar front lip from Paul and then went about trying to source flares and rear wing. Initially I purchased a set of flares/rear Spoiler from Alfa Motorsports but neither parts actually ended up on the car. The flares were simply too wide for what I was looking for, and in lieu of the proximity to Adelaide Datsun Day, it was decided that the flares would be left until a later date.

 

The rear spoiler shared a similar fate given its poor fit, despite the best attempts, there was a large bow in the middle of the rear spoiler, which along with the obvious eye sore, meant that the spoiler was going to vibrate and wear the paint off of the corners of the rear panels, so another was sourced and fitted from top stage.

 

Also with this the rear light surround panel was given a bit of love with the black as it was starting to be faded and a bit under the weather looking.

 

The door mirrors were painted and replaced with a GT style mirror from rarespares, which are actually a great quality little mirror with a cast base and a great look.

 

The stickers down the side were a bit of a last minute thing, with Mick having a spare set destined for one of his own cars and in lieu of an ongoing in joke with a few of the local lads about my preference for stickers down the sides of the car, it was a must do... I borrowed some wheels in lieu of alignment issues with my own wheels. (i.e. I need longer wheel studs, it was decided that the wheels/studs. will have to wait until the planned brake upgrade is under way...

 

The car obviously then got a buff/polish and this has left it looking in my mind a million dollars over the look of it originally. I want to extend my sincere thanks to Mick in lieu of going over and above in the preparation of the car. I am looking forward to the next chapter with flares and lowering once I get on top of the suspension/brakes next planned.