Project: RATEDZ SR20DET 260Z

So it begins...again

Ahh yes it all happened over 10 years ago; fuel was 87 cents a litre, Carlton "empire beer" had just hit the shelves, and one could still smoke undercover, if of course one chose to smoke. My bro purchased a 260z after a thorough hunt online and in the papers.

We went and picked the car and started to drive home, but about close to home the front end started wobbling, and vibrating like all hell. We pulled over and found that only 2 of the four wheel nuts remained on the front wheel, and both were loosened too. Crisis averted ( stole another nut off one of the other wheels) we got the car home

It ended in our hands as a red coupe with beige interior, manual converted and with a dodgy looking sunroof.

The car needed a few things for a rwc, so no biggie, change a tyre here, replace a wiper there...."oh whats this?" "Rust? Rust!"

What ensued after that bombshell was almost a year of strip-down, and rust repairs, hey even the sunroof magically disappeared, dont know where that went...

A rotisserie job was done on it, places like the foot wells, battery tray, lower rad support, outer door sills, rear hatch cowl, tail light supports and even the fuel filler supports were all gone over, unpicked and repaired.

Fast forward to the present, and waiting around for a few years has seen some spot surface rust coming back, but with no vengence that a wire wheel cant quell.

The roof area had lost some shape from the welding, although done correctly and with utmost care still managed to shrink.

I started working that to bring the shape back and am now 90% there. still a bit to go, but the hard part is over and should only take a few more hours of hammer work and a shrink here or there.

So whats the plan?

Engine and mechanical

VCT SR20

6 Speed S15

R200 short nose in helical S15 - bought, ratios im on the fence about.

FMIC and v mount rad

Std computer- for now

WHP billet wheel axle 5 stud

Custom CV's

16"? wheels, undecided due to engineering, brakes ditto

Oil cooler and filter reloc

Strut brace

Power steering conversion

Interior/ exterior

Black/ charcoal retrim, in leather with brown, silver or white detailing

GPS or Stock gauges (brand-not to be confused with OEM)

Mx5 seats-potentially

Nardi deep classic or Momo MOD 08 suede in black

Alpine 5" speakers, underseat sub, if one can be found that small.

Battery potentially located in storage bucket

Fiberglass door cards with speaker pod

F1 style mirrors

BRE wing

Bolt-on flares

GP / F1 mirrors

Front chin bar spoiler

Light tint

Blacked out chromework

Satin or glossy solid grey

H3 type headlight conversion

LED hi mount stop light

Budgeted 15k eventually, with doing work ourselves, what do you guys think? achievable?

Thats it for now, getting late

Cheers

Darius

Good stuff mate. Id say $15 k would be spent just on parts alone, if not more. Then you have all the aux parts to make them work. Custom parts like tailshaft etc.

Have you thought about engineering costs?

Brake upgrades would be required...$$$

Is the car rust free now?? More $$$ if not..

Going off the listed requests you've stated, Id assume closer to $30k... at least.....

15k may sound acheivable but i think you will struggle. I'm near 20k at the moment and have yet to lay down the paint or do my interior or fine tuning but everything else is nearly sorted. My mods are very similar to yours but i went with a l28et which would be cheaper than a sr20. I also have done absolutely everything from engine, electrics,rust repairs and bodywork myself with tools and skills i already had.

At the beginning i had a 1 year time frame and 10k buget starting from a 1.5k shell and is now near 20k and 3 years so far and will need another 5k and a year to complete it to a good standard. The hard part for me was finding good parts and undoing some dodgy work from previous owners. But goodluck with it all

Thanks for the replys!

Haha the cost votes are unanimous!

I believe you all when you will say that it will lean more towards 20k, but if i dont aim low, and spend the big dollars on what matters to me most than its open slather on all the bling and shiny brand new gear.

Some parts have already been collected over that past year since i have introduced myself like complete long motor and accessory's , loom, computer, gearbox, diff, even a sound system bought on sale, though this was a rushed purchase i have to say.

These are just my costs as the rust work has already been done, rubbers kit purchased, and small accessory's like badges and what not.

So in that sense the cast has been set, and am working from not only a good physical car base, but a financial one too seeing as all this has already been done.

We (my bro, my dad, and myself) will all contribute to either labour or funding in out own way, but will play it by ear.

Im a boilermaker by trade, and my dad is a toolmaker, and my bro is experienced in both so we are more than capable to tackle this in the right way.

I have drawn up a spread sheet so far tallying what the current costs are, what amount has returned into the project from stuff that has been sold, and what the expected total is going to be, albeit not incl car purchase and work done in the past.

So far this has cost $3.3K with all the parts, and once the build is closer to running, items like the original motor, box, diff and what ever will bring the soaring prices down a notch.

This fortnight i have taken to dimensioning mounting points for the diff cradle to run the shortnose, and HEAPS of background research along those lines. essentially measurements for clearance, fitup, pinion angle (got a thread to chronicle this here: http://www.viczcar.com/forum/index.php/topic,14156.0.html)

The shell was towed to a panel shop to check for body alignment, and in that time i have spent a night marking up the concrete in the garage as datum points to reference the shell against for when engine install comes about. This will help with all the small incremental measurements for diff alignment,  transferring of existing body measurements such as gearbox mount and diff stopper etc.

Plus i can check the reference points that the panel beater gave me to keep him honest. We were told the body is within 1 mm vertically aligned which is excellent news, and diagonals are fine too, except for the panel mounts up top which need to move over 5 mm or so, its just that i noticed a deflection in the passenger rail just aft of the cross-member which has moved the area around the castor arm buckets that with a string line is about 6-8mm out. That needs sorting as it can clearly be seen.

On other news i finished making a diff support for the short nose last week. It is made perfectly square to the jack stand and is level too! There is a pinion adjustment screw where there is a recess in the cast nose of the diff. It can get me about 4 DEG adjustment with about 25mm screw length, need more angle? just add a longer screw!

This well help in  the layout of the diff mounts and even help with final install as its a heavy bugger.

Its little sloppy but thats good as one side can be wedged up or down as needed.

Attached are the diff mount pic and an artsy pic of the dimension sheet used.

Till next time

Darius 

Hey mate any particular reason you chose to go with the 6 speed S15 box? how much power are you chasing eventually? Because they don't particularly like anything over 250kw. If possible, stick to the 5 speed.

6 speed boxes have a flaw from factory where the actual 3rd and 4th gears in the box are held in place on the counter gear shaft by circlips. From factory the circlip groove in the shaft is not machined deep enough, and the circlip is prone to break or fall off, then all your gears fall off. Also after time, they have an annoying issue where its hard to select reverse, you have to roll forward then engage reverse and they are all noisy from factory.

Since you already have to make a custom gearbox cross member and  tailshaft, I would personally choose a R33 RB25 box or 300ZX Z32 box from the start. The only extra outlay would be a adapter plate, from SR20 motor to the RB box which could be had for the $600 mark (powetune make a excellent kit). A 6 speed box will set you back $1000 mark, where a RB box is only about $1500.

It would be peace of mind knowing that you will never have any issues with the drive line for around a extra $1000-$1500 outlay.

Rudolf.

Hey CROS13

Im going with it simply for the fact the engine came with the box and doesnt seem to have any issue with engagement.

I have toyed with the idea of the Z32 box as it has a external gearlever mount, and its inherent strength.

With the conversion /adapter to the SR, what donor clutch and flywheel do these use?

Do you happen to know the length of the box from bellhousing to shifter?

Cheers

Some pics from way back over 11 years ago...

This what the chassis rails looked like before any work was started in this round of work. Straight enough to drive but not something i was willing to accept.  Considering that the motor will be dropped in on the rails, plus a visual OCD thing we are working toward getting it as straight as can be done at home...

Good news, its already dog powered...

I built an engine cradle in the mean time as the garage needed to be cleared up so we dont trip over every tool we own.

Build page here: http://www.viczcar.com/forum/index.php/topic,12221.0.html

Then purchased a s15 black top and built a stand for the SR20 in that time too (notice the preset angle on the support head to allow for sag).

Next step for the stand is to make a copy of the nissan oem sidemount stand KV10115300 and adapt it to work on my current flange setup to give access to the rear of the block for clutch install. This is also a bonus as it brings the engine closer to the support and stops it from bouncing when working on the timing, water pump, pulleys or whatever is in front.

I believe this would be useful on the L series as i see there is a substantial re-enforced area on the manifold side around the same location as on the sr block  A/C pump area. Has anyone had any experience with this?

Here is a longitudinal view of the passenger rail that was bugging my OCD.

We got some 65x65x4mm RHS tube and packed it up to support the drivers rail. As luck would have it, the rail is exactly the same depth as the tube sizes available in AUS, i.e: 65mm not 60mm.

I have no idea how we ended up with a mitsubishi triton bottle jack, but the thing did the job well!

I have been brushing up on my CAD drawing by using the r200 short nose diff as a good basis for practice when its too late to work on the car, and im rustier than the datsun was i swear!!! Its a frustrating struggle for now anyway. Hopefully i can extend the skills i aspire to grow to draw out the structure i need to fit the engine, gearbox and diff, as i still have a heap of time to spend on body work.

Thats it from me for now.

Peace out

Darius

PS here is one to "visualise" the wheels

Update

Its been close to 3 weeks since I've updated, and the holiday period was put aside for the 260.

Now that the rails are parallel, the next item was removing dints from the under cabin rails. This was a slow and tedious process, and took over 4 full days to complete. I'm glad its done now, but i don't want to have to do it again.

Whilst working on the belly of the beast i noticed surface rust under the passenger seat mounts, and under closer inspection i found the previous owners repairs were really substandard.

Essentially, not even a steel cutout and repair, just a patch plate over the existing rust, and under the forward mount, next to the tunnel its a 3 sheet sandwich!!!

This means that new steel will be bought and a fresh floor made up.

So out came the tools that my dad made up for the task:

From the left its a spot pin punch, 2mm drill on a long shank for locating the spot cutter, a 8.3mm drill but fahioned into a spot cutter, and a punch to separate the two sheets once cut.

Closer one of the spot pin punch, what you will notice is that this has a square shoulder on it to locate the punch in the weld depression:

I found this tool and "the body shop"

Its a flanging and punch tool, and i believe once underway this will come in handy with the new floor install

This is what i saw down on the floor pan:

The rear seat frame:

Close-up of the inboard rear seat mount

In lighter news a package with my nae on it came knocking on the door, this was a welcome delivery from japan courtesy of RHDJAPAN.COM

This website was a good tool to help with OEM nissan parts and aftermarket parts, and can be quite cheap on some things.

The turn around was about 2 weeks, and this was in the middle of the easter period, so ill say thats pretty good.

RHD is an excellent source for modern jap stuff, not so much earlier models, but you can be surprised.

What i got was a s15: URAS 6 speed solid shifter, and CUSCO engine mounts.

The mounts are a beauty to look at, captive and well isolated on 2 bushes. Its a really well made unit.

The solid shifter is good to get the final height of the lever location, plus it doesnt have a rubber isolator, which is a bonus if it needs to be bent.

The mount speak for themselves as i cant start the engine install with out these.

Family shot together:

Now just the mounts...pose...

Today is the start of the floor cutting, and what the plan is is to make it in 2 parts; the first being near the chassis rail inboard to the tunnel in 1 piece, and the second piece being the part that extends to the inner sill. Remember this in on a 260z with a non flat floor pan. The only saving grace is that this side is that the repairs are on the passanger side which doesn't have a rail with different flange lengths.

I have an idea in mind on how to make it, and this will require a pan folder and a bit of sectioning and development... aka CAD...aka project Binky  he-he.

So stay tuned, ill let you know how this turns out!

Peace out

Darius

Edit: sorry im struggling with imgur and all this photo upload stuff, but its sorted now.

Howdy!

Update time...

Started the week(end?) by grabbing some Cold Reduced/Rolled steel in 1.2mm for the floor and seat mount rust repairs

$55 later:

I always get stuck into something, half finish...then the idea of taking progress pics comes to mind...damn...

But i got tucked into repairing the forward seat support, and it came up well.

Dummy install of the outboard support to measure the section required for repair after being cleaned up, due to a previous owners shizen rust repair. That made the leg of the support too short to be reused after it had to be removed to be able to replace the floor pan.

Inset piece measured and cut:

Plate section inserted:

Finished article:

Now snooping about o the net has it drawbacks...antisocial behaviour, isolation, lack of sunlight yadda yadda yadda...but the up side?

New OEM original LHD 280z center console delivered from the U.S of A

I took a gamble on purchasing the center console by eyeballing some 280z consoles from images, and comparing it to that of local RHD consoles for the 260z

Seeing the hand brake location hasnt changed on either platform and after seeing that the trans tunnel area is rather symmetrical; I went for it.

Damn its nice, clean...new

Fingers crossed as i have yet to dummy fit it up. I will post up pics once mounted.

Part number 96911-N4725

On the SR side of things i went and picked up some parts for the shift lever as the gearbox never came with any of the shifter assembly parts.

Parts were a wave spring washer # 32876-03G61, and retaining snap ring #32204-V5004

Bolt #32152-89F05 is NLA from 2011. Ill have to get something similar.

Stay tuned for the next episode: Inexperienced restorer goes rust hunting.  "It'll be riveting i tells ya!"

Ahem

Darius

As promised RE: console

http://www.viczcar.com/forum/index.php/topic,14324.msg151715.html#msg151715

Update time!

So its been a slow few weeks of work on the datto; mainly due to indecision, so rather than tackling issues head on and getting them over and done with, iv been busy procrastinating.

Main issue of contention is the floor...my world for a new floor!!

The plan of attack boiled down to maybe 3 options

1: Make a mainly flat floor from pieces, split lengthways above the chasis rail, with bits cut and inserted to pick up the chassis rail and remove all rust

2: Make a buck/pattern, with shapes and elevations to replicate the existing pattern and make out of one piece of sheet.

3: A combination of the above. Check!

As many of you are aware; the 260z came with a different and more complex floor structure.

Great for torsional strength! Bad for your average diy-er restorer.

Hell its even too hard for the big nobs like rare spares to make it!

So what happened was i have started to take templates of the existing flooring to use to make the patterns that are used in the original floor. This is going to be a compromise of the 2 options as it will still involve the use of the pans and stiffening brace, albeit in several pieces.

After making the template from paper, it was transferred to steel to have a more solid piece to work from, then onto a wooden buck for shaping. Luckily there was some plywood that was of perfect size just lying about.

The recess on the stiffener is ~6mm? so a piece of 10mm board would suffice to be used as that allowed for the material thickness and bend to get the correct depth.

Before any real work on any manufactured piece was to unfold, a test piece was required, as this is really my first venture into this type of work. Really i needed to check and see if my theory's would pan out and see what i was setting out to do would work, and avoid over committing to something that would be a waste of time.

This was also the time when i found out that a "buck" is solely for checking you have the right shape, and not for working steel over it...aluminium maybe, but not steel. On and btw the test piece was 1mm whereas the actual steel used would be 1.2, so something needed to change. The buck can take a few hammers thrown its way, but slowly and surely it would start to collapse and fall apart.

You can see the damage here after just one corner of the template was formed

Tools for the job were in order to make the floor the right way!

Started with an anvil. Made of some scrap 10mm rod, and some 60x6 plate that was lying about, this is designed to form the radius' on the folds and straighten the bent up sections once formed. It has a bent horn, and a 90+ deg piece to be versatile enough to use in more than one instance.

Luckly a spare 2mm thick sandwich plate donated itself to centering the 6mm plate against the 10mm rod.

The finished product was ground down to make the faces flush later on

Next up was the folding bed, which used in conjunction with a smoothed brick bolster, would do a cracker of a job putting in straight folds.

30x30x3 x 140mm angle was used for the bed, and the same 60mmx6x 100mm plate used for the support which will be clamped down to the bench vise.

I mucked up, as turns out that the shallower the fold needs to be, so-to the shallower the bed needs to be.

No loss as this can now be used when fabricating pipework as the angle is longer than the support plate which means a pipe clamp can have somewhere to clamp to.

So using the same material with a longer support, the "bed" was cut down to the height required.

And the test piece with the fold in place. Its slow but the result is good for smaller pieces that dont require too much finesse. The only problem is that the bolster needs to be square with the vee block to create an accurate fold, but for all intensive purposes this will be good enough.

So anyway back on the rust repair section

Having made the template cutout, i proceded to make the actual piece and add 20mm to the outside of the template with a set of dividers to act as a flange which will rest on the new floor section/s. This will then be punched or drilled out, and plug welded to avoid any butt welded seams which inherently attract their own issues. Plus from the outside this will look almost factory. Score! Any excess will be trimmed off later once the final cut is made to the floor much later on.

During the forming stage i learnt that the ends with a radius were difficult to shape effectively by hand as i dont have a shrinker/stretcher or a hydraulic press.

What i do have are sockets, and random bits and bobs to accept the sockets as a sort of form and a bench vise to press them together.

It worked rather well! But the bench vise took a fair bit of abuse and it wasnt as smooth as before, so i wouldnt recommend to do this more than a handful of times. 

The original template included marks that identify the forward and aft location relative to the front floor seam, and transferred chassis lines to line up the pressing in the correct location.

This isnt just ocd, but more due to the fact the original rails have depressions in them to accommodate for the folds. Otherwise i could put these wherever, and made to look however!

I used this template to check against the pressings and see as work progresses that all is well.

I also have the newly renamed buck to do the same.

On other fronts i picked up some steel recently to make a simple folder for the straight sections that need it. Hopefully its simple enough to finish in an afternoon and be ready for action in the coming weeks.

Plans ahead are to finish off this section of the foot well, start by making up templates for the remaining sections, hammer and dolly work on the rear quarter/ fuel filler area that was patched. Thats the plan anyway.

Stay tuned and thanks for stopping by!

Darius

I like your style!!!!

Keep it up Darius

Great work Darius, like your SR20DET concept too, definitely one of several very viable engine changes. And probably the most balanced choice of the lot.

I like your style!!!!

 

Keep it up Darius

Hehe thanks David, my style is glacier slow so bear with me  

Great work Darius, like your SR20DET concept too, definitely one of several very viable engine changes. And probably the most balanced choice of the lot.

Hi Richard, and thanks mate; the engine swap isn't for everyone, but bang for buck...not bad at all.

Hey everyone. Just a heads up to those those that might be interested but unaware; my bros car is up for sale. Check out the sale thread here:                              http://www.viczcar.com/forum/index.php/topic,15779.0.html