Garage San Maru

[d3c0y]

It's not the factory Maroon GP, more of an updated homage to it. I'll detail the colour in my next post, with lots of pics of the car

[260DET]

So shiny, so sleek, makes me want to put grubby finger marks all over them

[d3c0y]

So much for my door to door racing aspirations haha.

[d3c0y]

Last of the grey was sprayed today. Only the front guards, hood and hatch left to go now!

 

 

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[d3c0y]

For those of you who aren't subscribers of the BookFace...

Obligatory text wall:

 

It's been back for months now and I've just had other shit to do than write about my garage gratuity project.

 

As I've probably mentioned, I went through three sets of flares to get to the ones I've fitted now. A lot of people probably think that a majority of Z-G flares are all the same, but if you are thinking of 

fitting them make sure you know the measurements you want because all three sets have been widely different and on top of that both Matt and I have bought our flares from Otomoto who have supplied us with three different sets of flares. For reference the ones I currently have fitted are Restored brand and are 60mm rear and 70mm front. This size will fit the 16" Watanabe R-Tyre the closest. They are attached to the body using aluminium Rivnuts and M8 allen cap screws. The holes in the flares needed adjusting with a round file to line up some of the holes in the flares with the ones drilled by the panel beater in the body. The cap screws also burred up some of the paint on the flares when tightened, so they will be fitted out with nylon washers to help stop this happening (If you want more detail on the rivnut stuff let me know). So far I have decided to not fit any welting on the flares, as they fit pretty close to the body and it would be introducing a third colour into the mix and that would detract from the clean look. Also welting 

seems to be a somewhat American thing, as you really don't see it on cars in Japan.

 

The Z-G nose has gone together really well for aftermarket fiberglass parts and will need minimal fettling to get a decent fit. It's more Restored parts bought through Otomoto and was worth every last dollar of the $1200 it cost. I first wasted a ton of time and money, with another generic five piece g-nose from Japan and just was not even close to being able to fit. It wouldn't even bolt together properly. As Doug always says, if you are going to buy fibreglass, buy the absolute best you can!

My panel beater lost some parts in his tenanture of the car; half a lower door hinge, corner of the rear window trim and a whole lot of screws for the door catches and the hatch hinges. It really has highlighted how hard it's becoming to get second hand parts for these cars in Aus now, with the current boom in interest with the model.

 

The front wheels aren't staying and are being swapped to the same size as the rears: 16 x 9.5 -19. As it sits, they are 16 x 8.5 (-9 i think?) Hopefully when the lower control arms are adjusted to have sufficient camber they will fill the flares enough.

I have a pic of the plates I got for the car. Not sure if they are crap or not. Leaning towards crap tonight, you decide and let me know below.

 

[d3c0y]

Double post! But not the usual bad kind.

 

Even though I should be focusing on buying parts the car actually needs to get on the road, three parts came up that I couldn't resist. The first of items are a pair of reproduction Japanese racing buckets. Matt found them on GumTree for a price I couldn't pass up, after looking at them longingly on Yahoo Auctions many times. Having now sat in them, I can say they are definitely way more for aesthetics than function. You don't need a "No Fat Chicks" sticker with these bad boys as your manly friends won't even be able to ride shotgun with you. They offer no lateral support and would probably break your neck in any sort of accident. Definitely a no-no for any serious track day action. I will be buying a race seat and putting it on another set of rails to swap in when the car goes to Lake Side.

[mossy]

My Kameari seats look way cool in the 240, my skinny butt just fits although my previous Recaro pole position seats were definetley more practical.

Edited August 31, 2015 by mossy

[d3c0y]

My Recaros are really uncomfortable, feels like there is no padding in the back. They will most likely be going back in first for re-rego.

[gav240z]

I sat in Marks car with the Datsun Bucket seats and found them quite good. But I have a slim behind haha. I agree the no head rest thing is not so good. But you can fit 1 to them. I actually like them in terms of support over the standard seats.

[d3c0y]

If you look at the pic of the seat in the car i have the headrest sitting on it.

[mossy]

Not much padding in the pole positions either but the shape must have been right for me. I fitted japanese aftermarket head rests to mine Gav and they dont really do anything, you can flex the whole headrest back and forth a huge amount.

[d3c0y]

I don't know how tall you guys are but i'm 6 foot and the headrest is like around shoulder height on me. And that's probably why they give me no lateral support too.

[mossy]

Im only 5'9 but the headrest is still pretty low. I remember when I first fit the seats in my car without headrests and looking from the front of the car it looked like there were no seats in there.

[d3c0y]

OK so bit of a San Maru hiatus due to moving house and so on, Matt (Deus Ex) took me to Cars and Coffee on the weekend and reignited the zed fire for me. Even though I haven't been posting, as I have said before, I have been taking a few pics along the way and I finally have some time to post some new content and progress on the various projects.

 

First up, one of the things that was really holding up my Z-G reassembly was the lack of new bolts and a collection of old rusty bolts and catches, half stripped by my panel beater. Since the US dollar has gained so much strength, it has made ordering parts from the US a not so cost effective endeavor these days.The next best thing (and sometimes the best due to parts being NLA or ridiculously expensive) is to get your old parts cleaned and re-plated with zinc. I found a couple of places willing to do my parts and for a pretty reasonable price, however i had to clean my parts first and the minimum order was $85 and 6kgs.

 

While looking into the zinc plating on the net I came across away to not only make your own zinc plating setup at home, but the same principal can be employed to make an electrolysis cleaner.

Basically you are just pushing all the rust off the parts using the power from a power supply. One of the best things is, that because it's using electricity, you don't need to remove any rubber or plastic parts! It's also non-destructive cleaning, literally removing only the rust from the good metal. In saying that, if you have a heavily rusted part there might not be much metal left by the end of process. After you pull the part out, simply give it a quick scrub with a scourer under the tap, as it ends up with a black film on it.

 

I literally made this setup for $3 for Bi-Carb Soda and things i had lying around the garage. You can find really good instructions at the link below, so I won't bother going into detail here on how to build it. However, you can see in the pictures i'm using a 99c bucket, 3 bits of scrap metal and some wire I had lying around. The multimeter is put in series and set to Amps so I could keep track of the current draw.

 

http://www.instructables.com/…/Electrolytic-Rust-Removal-a…/

 

For the power supply, you can literally use anything from a car battery charger, to a hobby power supply or even an old laptop power pack with the end cut off. The more I play around with the setup the better you can make it work, I am currently using a 7 Amp hobby power supply and have manged to get it operating at around the 6.25A mark. The more surface area the parts have, the more current you will draw and the current draw also went up the more bi-carb I added to the water. At 6 Amps the water starts to get warm so i wouldn't want to push this small bucket setup much further. In the second picture of the bucket you can also see a third big bit of plate steel in addition to the two steel bars i was running. Again big surface area is best and the closer you put your item to the anodes the bigger the current draw and the faster it works.

I plan on getting a big rectangle tub and setting up a mesh i can just place parts on for the next setup.

 

Don't be intimidated if you want to have a go as it is super easy and you can try different things to find the setup that works best for you. I'll be trying out the zinc plating setup next so I'll give a run down and some pics of the results from that experiment too.

Edited January 6, 2016 by d3c0y

[260DET]

Well whose the clever boy then  

[d3c0y]

Can't wait to zinc plate some stuff tonight using my boat anode haha.

[gav240z]

That's awesome mate, I am looking forward to your zinc plating. Are you going to do a yellow chromate finish also?

[d3c0y]

Well i don't have any chromate at the moment, so short term no, but I do know where to buy it. The only thing that is still yellow zinc in my car is the new g-nose bonnet hinges at the moment so i was thinking of just stripping them back to silver too.

[jeff43]

Nice work. I have tried the electrolysis once before with a rusty motorcycle fuel tank and it did a pretty reasonable job. I also look forward to seeing how you go with your zinc plating.

[d3c0y]

I spent part of my Australia day, doing the same thing as the previous two years working on the zed! At least it was something exciting, finally getting start piecing together the brake system.

 

You think that bolting on new rotors would be easy, but as with everything there were multiple things that had to be done just to be able to do this:

 

- Buy, sandblast and painted a pair of 260Z hubs

- Install new wheel studs

- Install new wheel bearings

- Remove old gear

 

The RX-8 sport rotors really make the 16" Wats look small when you are looking at them in person and as you can see there is no room to spare to the inside of the wheel. The calipers have a nice flat front on them and have no trouble clearing the spokes even on the 8.5" wide wheel which isn't what i'll be running. The rotor offset was designed to try and position the caliper as close to the stock one, so mission accomplished there!

 

I'll go into more detail on the brakes when I do a post on how I got the mounts done, but for now you get a gratuitous shot of the calipers behind the wheels (even though they are just zip tied there). Interesting note, the stock Z brake lines screw into the Porsche caliper; shame they are ruined...

 

P.S. i know the caliper is on the wrong side.

 

[d3c0y]

Damn i made two posts, if you haven't seen the brakes yet, go back a page!

 

Oh and I reinstalled the fender mirrors way too early, because JDM bling improves motivation!

Edited January 28, 2016 by d3c0y

[d3c0y]

P.S. to anyone that has been on the forum for a while: I moved the mirrors when i repainted it

[Riceburner]

P.S. to anyone that has been on the forum for a while: I moved the mirrors when i repainted it

They look like there in the wrong spot ? hehe.

 

What's left to do on it Jake, is it just reassembly or are there still mods to be done?

[d3c0y]

• Complete interior is out bar the roof lining which i'm considering replacing
• Heater core is stuffed
• fix fan duct hoses ( one is split)
• reinstall dash
• reassemble doors
• refit doors
• swap R180 to R200
• make CV companion flanges
• fit CV axles
• fit all rubbers
• fit tail lights
• fit tail light trims
• fab up new fuel tank breather 
• fit fuel tank
• mount fuel reg
• modify fuel line
• remove return line
• wire out voltage reg
• get smaller alternator belt
• make front caliper brackets
• make rear caliper brackets
• figure out what rear rotors to use
• figure out handbrake caliper setup
• refit exhaust
• wire in rev limiter
• install temperature switch in thermostat housing for thermo fans
• zinc plate all old hardware
• fit headlight assemblies
• fit bonnet springs
• fit lower nose section
• fit front spoiler
• make brake ducts
• get panel beater to align the front of the bonnet
• setup coilovers
• setup front and rear adjustable arms

 

Should about cover it.

Edited January 30, 2016 by d3c0y

[d3c0y]

I've managed to score a couple of interesting Z parts recently that I am fixing up for sale that i thought i would share.

First item is a "Calendar" clock made by Citizen, which was a factory option for RS30/S31/260Z/280Z series 1 models ('74 - '76). It uses a quartz movement unlike the electric motor driven motor in the 240z and is way more reliable. This particular one looked like it had taken a hit and the pendulum shaft had fallen off the locating screw and the electromagnet coil had been bent against the magnets. Luckily this was a pretty simple fix and the clock is ticking away again. It has had the light cut off the plug for some reason so i'm going to reattach one from a spare to complete it. Shoot us a message if you are interested in buying it.

Item number 2 is an Nissan Type B works rear spoiler I bought off a guy that pulled it off a car he is restoring. From the back story i got it's probably from the 80s and half a chance at being a somewhat genuine item. But as always who knows? It will cop a sand, fill in the rivet holes and a prime.