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Wasn't a scam, saw it IRL. Someone bought it out from under me as I was there. Sight unseen. I don't think they had taken into consideration the rust on it. Needed a good 10-15k on it. (According to my professional Datsun expert)

It's about time I documented my 240Z restoration project. People have been hassling me to do youtube videos, but since I hate the sound of my own voice, I have decided that words and pictures set the tone considerably better. I'll start by introducing myself, then documenting what little history of the car that I know, then plow into "the rescue" and then document progress to date. After that, just like the awesome Jeff blog, I'll document progress as I go and be hitting you guru's up for advice on various things. About me: I'm Mike, and I grew up in the Bombala region of NSW, firstly right on the border south of there, then in Bombala itself and then a bit north of there where my parents still reside. Although not a native of the area (i was actually born in Wollongong), growing up on a farm in the middle of nowhere tends to make one super-practical and resourceful. I now live in Sydney where I use my resourcefulness in the IT field, but am constantly doing side projects or hobbies - everything from electronics, to building new mountain bikes to race, to playing golf etc. Zee History: As it turns out, my kid brother is an *actual* mechanic based in Canberra. He did his apprenticeship in Bombala in the mid 90's, where he bought this Datto off a local car enthusiast (who was also trying to offload a Bollwell at the time too). It had no engine, but was otherwise complete. My brother did the usually rear hatch slam plate rust restore (provided from the z factory in Vic), and bought an l24 engine from an engine builder in Newcastle. Apparently, the engine was designed and built for a particular class of the Bridge to Bridge boat race, and was designed to be supercharged. Being an apprentice, my brother couldn't afford a supercharger, so he shaved the head, changed the pistons and put triple delorto's on it. He also put in a brand new kmac suspension kit, some saas seats and a dodgy stereo system. And Jelly Bean wheels of course. The car was started, run in, and then parked outside on the farm where it sat for years. I bought it off him in about 2000 when I was living in London, and I think at around 2002 it moved into my parents hay shed. 2020 Bushfires: I had wanted to get the datto up to Sydney for years. When I moved to my new house in 2013, one of the pre-requesites was to have a big enough garage for me to work on the car. Unfortunately, for years, it contained all those boxes of stuff that we can't throw out but at the same time, never open. After slowly purging these and shuffling and reshuffling stuff in the garage, I made room for 2 cars! The next thing was getting it up here. Enter the bushfire season of 2019 / 2020. In Jan '20, my parents were literally surrounded by bushfires. The Vic fires had jumped the border and were heading north, and the Bega fires where heading south and south-west. And then, for kicks and giggles, a bushfire started at the other end of the Valley from my parents where burning leaves from the west were landing. So, like a scene out of almost every armageddon style of movie, I went south with my Daughter, driving through pea-soup smoke while every other human being was heading north. Yeah - a tad unnerving. With chainsaw in hand, I cleared and cleared and cleared, to first protect the house, the water tanks, then the sheds. The last thing on my list was to evaluate the Datsun. The Rescue: The 240Z was in the left bay of a 3 bay open hay shed. It was covered in bales of wool, and surrounded by wood. In the middle bay was all wood for the house that Dad built, and the right hand bay (where the northern fire was coming from) had hay in it. So, yeah - hay catches alight, burns the wood, and then takes out the Datto. Not a good scenario. To add fuel to the fire (so to speak), in front of the hay shed there were about 50 containers of used cooking oil from a failed bio-diesel experiment - just to add some more excitement to the predicament. I needed to get the Datto out of there. A hammer took care of the seized brake drums, and the tyres still kinda pumped up. The front seats were out of it, and there was 10mm of dust on the windscreen. A wombat had decided that the best place to dig its hole was under the front left wheel, and that covering the LHS in dirt was a cool thing to do. Wombats are like that. Dad got his tractor in behind it so we cold drag it out, but then the tractor broke down, blocking its exit. So, we executed a perfect 496 point turn by hand, and eventually got the old girl free. My daughter volunteered to be the first one to drive it - and by drive, I mean squatting in the front where the seat should have been, steering it while peering out of a window that you couldn't see through, while being ready to hit the brakes (that didn't work) to avoid running into the back of the outback that was towing it with some straps. What could possibly go wrong. But, with a sense of adventure and a bit of luck, we pulled it out and dragged it into the middle of a freshly plowed paddock, and heaped dirt around the tyres to stop cinders from getting in there and burning it down. The following weekend, we trailered it to Canberra, and then 2 weeks after that the fires finally hit my parents place. I'm glad to say that nothing burnt down except some fences and a wood trailer that dad left out in the bush somewhere. I feel for so many people who lost everything in those fires. A few weeks after that, Jo from Get My Ride trailered it from Canberra to Sydney, where I parked her, complete, in my Garage. It only took 20 years... Next day, my Son and I gave her a clean, scratched around a bit to ascertain the rust, and at the time I remember saying something like "wow - there's hardly any rust at all! I dodged that bullet!". If only I'd touched some wood... Next chapter - the engine, and putting together an inventory of work to be done. Cheers, Mike

Thanks. $40K plus $10K in rust repair is still a good buy if everything else checked out, do you think? Matching numbers, full history, one owner, older lady owner, etc Did all of that check out? I could not get anything out of them after the first two discussions so I called it a scam.

Completely false. It's an old panel beaters excuse they use because they can't weld and can't 'afford' the time to butt weld a panel in correctly. There's no AS for 'vehicle restoration' - feel free to look it up. Also repairs to a vehicle over 10 years old don't actually require an inspection or engineers report, unless significant chassis modifications have been made. I do however need to state this: unless you are competent welder and have some idea rust repairs, it's best left to professionals.