Leaderboard

Inside of the guards have had stone ship applied, and along with the inside of the doors & hatch, had a coat of colour laid down:

Got the front end off completely intact. Sat it onto the front of the Z today - slid straight on without much hassle. I've cut the supports for the transport jig but I ran out of time today to make sure they are at the right height. I'll have to confirm this before I weld them all together. Overall pretty happy with how it fits, now I can finally get to doing that firewall patch/drivers kick board area. Received my restored dash back. Had to trial fit the NOS Stereo surround and the factory AM radio. Looks very nice, would like to find that NOS map light area next - I've still got the old ones but the plastic "Push" button has snapped in two. I started to restore the dash gauges, starting with RPM. Pulled it apart, thoroughly cleaned the lens and tachometer and painted the surround in Satin black. Very happy with the results - was worried the black wasn't going to be correct, but it came out perfect. Have already started doing the other 4 gauges now the same way. Before: After:

Went to this event yesterday. Really good turnout like normal and lots of Datto's and Z's. Not a lot of really modified cars but this RA23 caught my eye......rego plates were ITB-02J. Very cool pipes!

A bit has been happening in the background but I've slack on posting so this one is a big one. It was time for suspension to be done, and after removing the struts from the car I found 3 out of 4 shocks were leaking - I guess that's what happens when you have a project span the better part of a decade. I wanted to do the wheel bearings at this point as well for peace of mind so I figured why not go the whole hog and do the coilover installation instead of replacing shocks, so it was one and done and I wouldn't have to touch the suspension / brakes again. After a fair bit of research I landed on MCA coilovers. They're Australian based (in Brisbane like I am) with a good reputation and local support. I went with the 'Pro Sport' option for a good mix of street performance without being too harsh. I removed the front and rear struts from the car and stripped them down. I had an absolute nightware with one side rear spindle pin on the LCA - I broke a few homemade spindle pin pullers before biting the bullet and resorting to the hacksaw blade method to cut the pin. After receiving the order from MCA, I took them to a local fabricator in Ipswich (OTB Performance & Fabrication) and they cut and welded the coilovers to the struts. I was pretty happy with the welding and the finish (they were TIG welded) and after some paint on the bare metal surfaces I fitted the fronts to the car. I then went about doing the rears including cleaning and painting the LCA's and installing new wheel studs and wheel bearings in the rear hubs. And finally installed the caliper adapter to be able to fit up the 280zx rear disc brake conversion. I rebuilt the calipers and I'm just waiting on new rotors to arrive to fit these up. Also picked up some Z32 300ZX calipers for the front - they're a big upgrade from the stock front calipers. Photo for comparison: Waiting for the caliper adaptors to turn up from the US to fit these up and will also need to modify some rotors so that they will all fit up properly (increasing the centrebore and redrilling for the 260Z mounting pattern on the hubs). I have a 1" MC ready to go on for the brake upgrade as well. Looking forward to fitting these up and getting it back on the ground! Got some new wheels that I think will really set the car off. 15x8" mini lites. 0 offset on the front and -8 on the rear so will be interesting fitment wise. Finally, something that I've been eyeing off ever since I started looking at Zed's is the 'JDM' style exhaust. I picked one up from Z Story recently and have mocked it up on the car, but still need to make an adaptor piece between the headers and the exhaust system for it to be complete.

Dash areived today, quite happy with the finish. Has some imperfections at the inner glove box section but will be hidden once the glove box door goes on. iC7 fits quite snug and now looks complete. I wasn't sure how it would look when finished and Im suprised how well it looks complete

One other job Mr S asked us to do was weld in this Apex Engineering fender braces to stiffen up the front end a bit:

Dashboard is heading down from Dashboard Dr, looks amazing. Big difference from the broken dash it was Not sure why the photos are upside down