Restoration Planning

[pigeonman]

Hey guys, im new to this forum as u wud obviously realize. Im planning a restoration and modification project of a 240z to create an everyday driver with power and style that will turn heads with style and a beautiful purr of the engine that can rival any new car. Im a young driver and my experience with mechanic work is minimum but luckily im surrounded by folks who know their thing. I doubt that at the appointed time i will have a large budget but i wanna map out my plans from now  ill probably be looking to swap the 2.4l engine to the 2.6 or the 2.8 and install triple Webers on there and custom headers maybe but other than that im not sure how to increase the horsepower of such engines without have to spend too much. With the body i wanna duco it midnight blue or jet black, black leather interior, flare the fenders probably, new sound system and make sure I have a working a/c. What are your suggestions?

[mrp69]

 

leap into dont think

 

cross the bridges when you get to em

 

the only thing is how quick do u wanna have where you want it to be.

 

i gave my self 6 months cause my cars has rego in VIC and im in NSW my checklist is

 

respray in jet black

new suspension ( shocks springs and all bushes)

Upgrade all brakes www.silverminemotors.com

new exhaust system with headers

LSD diff

nsw engineers (my 240z is a v8)

 

ive got 3 months left and my respray is about to finish

 

peter

 

 

 

[DevilZ]

Hey guys, im new to this forum as u wud obviously realize. Im planning a restoration and modification project of a 240z to create an everyday driver with power and style that will turn heads with style and a beautiful purr of the engine that can rival any new car. Im a young driver and my experience with mechanic work is minimum but luckily im surrounded by folks who know their thing. I doubt that at the appointed time i will have a large budget but i wanna map out my plans from now  ill probably be looking to swap the 2.4l engine to the 2.6 or the 2.8 and install triple Webers on there and custom headers maybe but other than that im not sure how to increase the horsepower of such engines without have to spend too much. With the body i wanna duco it midnight blue or jet black, black leather interior, flare the fenders probably, new sound system and make sure I have a working a/c. What are your suggestions?

 

Sorry but there's no such thing as building a good, fast cheap Z to rival new cars. As you will find these things cost a lot of money to get perfect. The problem with running webbers is that you can either tune it (jet it) for bottom end power or for top end power but never both. If you build an L-Series race engine using webbers the car wont pull till well after 4000rpm. If you have is streetable (good bottom end torque) it will drop power before 6000rpm. The only way to get the best of both worlds is fuel injection but that alone could set you back 9k.Then you have all the engine work ontop of it.

If you go down the path of building a Z for what it is......a 70's car then you could be really happy and not spend a packet. A Z with over 200 engine HP is good enough to give most thing s a decent run on the street and still be a bit of fun on the track. You can get that from running a L28 with 10:1 compression, extractors, a decent cam, mild port work and even twin SU carbs. The engine will probably cost you less then 3k to build and last a very long time. Then you could do suspension and brake work.

By the way webbers drink fuel like crazy too but they do look and sound the part.

[sexual_sushi]

i found my tastes changed quite dramatically from when i first got my first zed till now. i was 19-20ish when i got my first 260z (not knowing the difference between the body shapes of 2 seaters and 2+2's). back then i didnt have anything to do with cars so I wanted the obvious, red paint and black interior with red trims. nothing wrong with this but then after i already had the seats upholstered i wanted to change the colour to yellow but the seats already had red pipping. so its hard to plan it cause like i said, over time your tastes change. then as i learnt more about the cars i wanted to do more things (brake upgrades etc) so the plan of a quick $4000 job to get a dialy driver on teh road turned into a $20000 show car... as a result it is stil in the shed 5 years later....

 

[pigeonman]

as i said im a beginner so any advice is welcomed and im learning a little everyday. Devilz i dont know how much time u have on ur hands but cud u please explain all the suggestions u just made in as much detail as possible so i can understand them as i am in the learning process. Thanks much.

-The Pigeonman

[zedevan]

the cheapest/fastest/easiest way for you to get a 240z that matches your description, is to buy one that's already been done, ie has had a respray with an l28 thats had some engine work done to it. however it means you can't be all that picky about the colour unless you get lucky...

 

then with the money you have left over you can upgrade the interior to leather (which alone could cost over 5g) and work on the sound system and the other normal things people do to their cars to make them that bit nicer.

 

on a side note it is nearly a general thought that black doesn't look that great on 240z's as it kind of hides the lines, although there are a couple of nice ones!

 

[mrp69]

 

that black 240z will look similar to mine when finished but with the rota rbs painted in a light gold minus rear spoiler

 

thats looks hot

 

peter

[DevilZ]

as i said im a beginner so any advice is welcomed and im learning a little everyday. Devilz i dont know how much time u have on ur hands but cud u please explain all the suggestions u just made in as much detail as possible so i can understand them as i am in the learning process. Thanks much.

-The Pigeonman

 

Hey.

Well an L28 is just the 2.8 litre L-series engine. They came in things like a 280zx and a few other cars. There are also 280zx turbo engines which came out of a 280zx turbo. Both of which stock dont produce very impressive power but can be moddifed as with anything. With cheap good power the best option is to use an L28 as they have a fairly large compacity and bolt straight into a 240z. They are the same engines as an L24, L26 etc... just larger capacity. There are a lot of things you can do with these engines as the cylinder heads are interchangable with 240z and 260z ones etc to give higher compression etc... Lots of different people around Datsun will have different opinions on how to modify your Datsun and what head is best however as you'll find they are often biased to what they own and drive. Almost every Z owner wants to have the best and fastest Z. Thats were it starts to get expensive.

There are a huge number of ways to modify a Z so you really need to think about what you want the car for and how much your prepared to spend. There are Z's out there with over 40k spent on modifing them.

If you after something thats fun to drive on the street and cheap to build I suggest using an L-28 with some higher compression pistons. A mild camshaft grind. Good extractors and exhaust along with twin SU carbs properly tuned and balanced.  That should give you an engine with lots of torqu and good power to about 5500rpm. Very cheap to make and useable on the street. The car wont be the fastest thing around but to get more gains it costs big money.

You'll really have to make a decision on how long you want to spend building the car, how long you want to keep it, how much you want to spend on each area of it and most importantly what is the purpose of the car?

Hope this helps but just some advice from past experience.

[260Coupe]

Pigeonman.....As it has been said before.....there is nosuch thing as a "cheap fast Zed"....what is your budget ??..........if you are starting from scratch with reasonably intact 240z that still needs paint/bodywork/rust repairs......mechanicals such as engine and  gearbox rebuild.. brakes, suspension etc etc..........then expect to spend plenty!!

To do the work properly expect to spend:-

10K on body work is not unusual

4K on a strong engine build

1K for gearbox and driveline

1k for brakes and suspension .

 

Or buy a Zed ready to go for mid teens ($15k +) .....where some one else has spent the big $$$

 

cheers

 

Alan

[pigeonman]

Thanks much everyone especially Devilz for the help so far. I know about which engines were designed for the different cars all I am really interested in is the technical stuff. You were saying something about a camshaft grind, what does that really mean? Does that make the cam lighter? And when you refer to "higher compression pistons" what exactly do you mean? These are the things I need to learn and I was hoping  that you guy with years of knowledge could help me with. It doesn't need to be over the top fast or supercar fast, just like really zippy. I was driven in a Ferrari 550 Maranello, the acceleration was crazy, but I don't need that kind of power, just something I can be proud of. All the body work will be done by me and family members, and engine work as much as is possible so I guess that will drop the cost (I hope). Its a project for the men in the family, for bonding and something to do so yeah, but I wanna learn as much as is possible. Thanks

 

-The Pigeonman

 

[DevilZ]

Thanks much everyone especially Devilz for the help so far. I know about which engines were designed for the different cars all I am really interested in is the technical stuff. You were saying something about a camshaft grind, what does that really mean? Does that make the cam lighter? And when you refer to "higher compression pistons" what exactly do you mean? These are the things I need to learn and I was hoping  that you guy with years of knowledge could help me with. It doesn't need to be over the top fast or supercar fast, just like really zippy. I was driven in a Ferrari 550 Maranello, the acceleration was crazy, but I don't need that kind of power, just something I can be proud of. All the body work will be done by me and family members, and engine work as much as is possible so I guess that will drop the cost (I hope). Its a project for the men in the family, for bonding and something to do so yeah, but I wanna learn as much as is possible. Thanks

 

-The Pigeonman

 

 

That's okay. No problems. A lot of the answers to your questions could be found through the web on things like wikipedia and places tho.

A cam regrind is where the cam profile (lobes on the cam) are grinded to change the profile of the cam. There are a tonn of different cam grinds and what it basically ends up doing is shifting your power curve so it makes more power in different areas. The cams whats opening and closing the valves so by regrinding it to a different profile you can change the lift (how far the valves open) and duraion (how long the valves are open for) which will changes your engines characteristics along with power.

As for high compression pistons. When the piston goes down the cylinder it draws air into the cylinders. When it goes back up it compresses the airs its drawn in, into the cylinder head chamber. So you can increase compression by making or getting a smaller cylinder head chamber (hence different cylinder head combinations) or by increasing the displacement (engine compacity eg 2.8litres, two ways of achiving higher displacement, increasing bore or increasing stroke. You'll find this on wikipedia) while keeping the smaller size chambers. The last way is to use higher compression pistons which are pistons that have a bigger top to them. So basically when the piston moves up to compress the air mixture since the top is larger on them it reduces the chamber size effectively. As there is less area for the air to be sqeezed into due to the larger top of the piston. This results into an increase in power however if you go to high you need to increase the octane of fuel etc.... to stop engine detonation. It gets complex after that. But basically 98 octane fuel is good for around a 11:1 max compression ratio safely.

[pigeonman]

wow Devilz thanks for your help, you seem to be a nice guy. thanks much

[pauly_adams]

i also started off like yourself i had no idea i wanted a jet black z with a monster of power but things soon change. if your after a daily driver like myself i would buy a 2+2 they are very comfortable have ac and you can get enough power out of the L26 to rival commodores. so far i have spent $2650 on the car itself due to it having very little rust and a very strait body, about $4500 in parts just to get it upto scratch and prob another $1000 in little bits and pieces to get some performance out of the old girl, it prob has about 140hp at the wheels now which im quite happy with. my advice to you though is take your time finding a good car and be willing to pay $$$ for it.

 

 

cheers pauly

[Robstar]

Don't be too shocked to find certain aspects of restoring a Z more expensive than you had planned.

 

If you're lucky enough to find a 240/260/280 without some severe rust problems, then at the very least you can channel most of your funds into suspension & engine work.

 

Ultimately, if I was to add my two cents.. Be patient, be smart about it and give it your all or nothing. Everything else can be answered when you get to that stage.

[pigeonman]

Thanks much guys, anymore questions I have I'll know who to turn to.

[yellazed]

Why do I get the feeling that Pidgeonman is giving you guys the bird?

[stevo_gj]

Why do I get the feeling that Pidgeonman is giving you guys the bird?

 

[Robstar]

Your mum. Ooeeerrrrrrrrr