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So, after 32 years of countless track days and upgrades to every other part of the Zed, it was time to address the minor rust problem. This will be sorted by Lachlan of C.A.R. fame. Along with the rust repair there will be a new 5 piece G-nose, reproduction headlight covers, fiberglass rear bumper and factory copy rear spoiler. The Zed had a back to metal respray originally in 1990 (the only time mullets were fashionable), see pic of me in the car and mate with genuine mullets. I'll hand you over to Lachlan to continue the minor rust repair journey...

Pulled the LOLvo out of the shed so I could blast 33 years of crud out of the engine bay. Came up pretty well! The first cut......battery tray has to go to make way for forced induction device My nephew picked up the TH400 donor car on the weekend

Onto the fibreglass repairs. I little bit was needed to all the FG parts - mostly reinforcement. The bonnet was an issue - it's a FG item that Mr S glassed the vents into and had someone paint. The paint job was average and it had to be colour changed to Red, so the only option was to sand all the paint & filler off and start again: It's now ready for paint prep to begin.

New rear vision mirrors were mounted:

Mr S wanted his big Wang removed and the smaller sports option style Wang fitted instead. We removed the big Wang only to discover many, many holes, filler and rust: e So we decided to strip the paint and filler off outside: Oh dear... Rather than try and weld up the holes in the very thin (0.7mm) deck panel then spend hours panel beating it straight, we decided to make a new deck panel from some new 1mm sheet steel:

Doors were next - typical rust in the bottom corners, but they weren't bad enough to replace the shells with new ones. Sections were cut out, inside media blasted and painted, then new outer skin sections were fabricated and then welded in.

According to Mr. S, the previous owner was an 'interesting' individual and had some strange ideas about the Z - which included drilling holes in random places... These had been welded up when it was repainted originally, but unfortunately that wasn't done quit well enough so rust had started to appear... LH rear wheel arch: RH rear wheel arch: All cleaned up inside, treated and painted:

A few years ago, Mr. S asked me about repainting his monster of a Z in the future, and I said I'd 'definitely be interested, so let me know when you are ready'. Last year, the talks got more serious with Mr S wanting to add a new G-Nose plus other parts to the refurbishment. After waiting an eon for the new G-Nose to arrive from Japan, Mr. S fitted the new parts and dropped the Z off at my little shop once I had room. The brief is: Minor rust repairs and a full open door respray in Red. Plus some other bits an pieces. This is how it arrived, so on with the show! That large rear Wang is going...

And done. I forgot to mention, the hatch was stuffed but I obtained an 'ok' replacement that needed some minor rust repairs in the screen lip and lots of panel beating across the deck...

Finally the 'piste de resistance'. The RH door skin was stuffed - dented to the moon & rust holes everywhere. I couldn't get a decent rust / damage free Bus door locally, so I repaired frame which only needed a small section at the top & bottom... ...then made a new door skin from scratch. I'm not taking full credit - my employee Paul did 75% of the fabrication. Taking a paper pattern off the old skin: Cut out some 1mm cold rolled steel: Wheeling & folding up the new skin: 'Blocking' in the handle recess: Ti And fitting the skin to the frame:

Another long day of drilling out spot welds on the roof skin. I can see why metal works are the most expensive part of restoring a car, it’s so time consuming. can anyone tell me about the joint between the rear quarter and roof skin? Mine seemed to be oxy welded or brazed together, is this factory? There was lead wiping which I burnt off, I ended up cutting the joint with a grinder but wondering if there’s a better way. I also found the front corners were welded in, there was no other way so I just cut joint and part of the skin with my 5 inch, I really must get so Roloc attachments and small cutting discs for my die grinder. I managed not to damage any structures underneath. i found the front and rear of the roof skin easy to unpick, the LHS was just cut as there was barely anything left, I found the RHS rain rail joint extremely difficult to unpick, I came close to just cutting it with a grinder on more than one occasion, but I persevered and I’m glad I did. There is just no room to work, I tried modifying my scraper blade so I could hammer it along as I went, but that wasn’t effective. In the end I used a sharpened flathead screwdriver to break the joints after drilling. there was a small amount of mangling which was unavoidable but overall very happy with how cleanly I was able to unpick the roof. I’m hoping to sell the skin to someone who needs to fill in their sunroof hole as the center of the skin is excellent. Was surprised to find the RHS to be very clean, some pitting at the rear quarter joint but overall a good result. the LHS is a shit show, as expected, it’s going to take a lot of work to rebuild the whole structure, rear quarter join is completely gone. next up rear quarters…

Pretty decent order from Nissan came in. Consisted of various bushes, suspension gear, wheel/diff bearings, nuts, bolts, badges etc. Putting together the rear suspension struts was very fun. (This was before the wheel studs came in) I also had a go at "Cold Bluing" the steering column components. I think this was how it was done from the factory, someone correct me if i'm wrong. Came up pretty good. Sandblasted, cleaned, cleaned again, waited until it was 100% dry and simply rubbed the stuff on and washed it off under cold water. Pretty cool stuff! It's very hard to get a proper photo of how it turned out, but it came out pretty good.