Zedback

The thought has crossed my mind once or twice I must admit... :-\ Hope it gives you some ideas. I've been staring at it for more than 12 months wondering how and where to start. Finally decide to just jump in!

Thanks all for the encouraging comments. I love bringing a wreck back to life. Having a good day today building a new dogleg panel from scrap, posts with lots more photos to come.

If I can make it I'll be there. Won't know until Saturday arvo if I'm stuck with the kids or not but hope to be there. Had a 2+2 in Canberra, it was fabulous to drive. I've never driven a 2 seater even though I've got two of them Cheers, Mike

For external surfaces I find acrylic is very easy and gives a good result. I've sprayed up 3 cars out in the open and they have all come up very nicely. Acrylic is very forgiving for the DIY'er, very easy to fix if you make a mistake or get a run and you can get a good finish straight of the gun if you thin out the final top coats. I use POR15 as much as possible on the inside bits. Remember that the ordinary stuff (which is expensive enough) is not UV stable and will yellow if exposed. I brush it on, but with home equipment won't ever be spraying it. It's hard enough to get it off your skin, let alone your lungs I haven't got to spraying yet on the Z, still doing rust work. If you look in my project thread you'll see where I've por'd the inside of the front guards. Cheers, Mike

I had to revert back to paint stripper for the cowl panel, those vents just cannot be done any other way! The wire cup brush was still useful though. Nearly there, but I still have more work to do cleaning out the vents... You can see the pitting where foam pads were glued on. What have people replaced these with? Along with the door the RH sill panel has taken a hit. I've cut two vertical slits with hacksaw And now I'm slicing the crease across the top The sheet parts easily along the crease and then fold it down I've decided this is the most useful tool in the workshop! It's being used to straighten out the outer sill Ta-da! It worked a treat A bit if work with hammer and dolly and it's folded back in place ready to be welded in Very exciting, the only new steel in the Z. Got it off ebay but I think it's the Rare Spares item Stripping headlight scoops is particularly tedious! The right one is pretty good But the left one has the telltale sign of bodyfiller appearing Two scoops stripped, damn! Sure enough, the front of the left one is a little crumpled. Got it off ebay but the seller is unlikely to have known, I couldn't tell until I started stripping it. Started in on the left dogleg. It's just a little worse than hoped for, but isn't that always the way with rust... Now this is the danger point where a renovation can verge into a restoration. Do I close my eyes and weld a bit of sheet over the top? Or do I start tearing the dogleg apart? It's too much to ignore, dive in! Spot welds Horizontal cut More spot welds and it'll pop off Fold it down and... this is why everywhere you read or hear about rust, they say it's always worse than looks on the outside. My '71 240z stands testament to that too. Yuck, rust, dirt, bog, wax sealer, holes, it's a mess. Time to toilet train the Z, it's just left a pile of crap on the floor Take out the remaining spot welds along the bottom and tear the junk off Wire cup brush helps clean it out and shows up where the holes are And a bit more cleaning up with a grinding disc Patch made up for the easy hole where the dogleg meets the sill. It's held in place by a small Neodynium magnet. I picked up a bunch of these off ebay. Very strong and very useful. Great for holding sheet while you tack weld. Don't let them get too hot or they lose all magnetism and become useless ceramic pellets. Tacked in place Shape a bit with hammer and weld in Clean it up and "hey presto" There was a small hole on top of the sill, this one I just bridged More on the nasty dogleg when I figure out what to do next, but I did a bit more on the LH door. Bridged one small hole Made up some small patches for the others and again using the little magnets, tacked, Welded, and cleaned them up! Progress is good at the moment but I'm back to work next week. I'll see how far I can get before the weekend is over and it grinds to a halt.

Missed your post on the front bar. It'll look good! No more than 0.9mm I hope. I once beat a spare wheel well out of 1.1mm sheet and it was damn hard work.

Excellent! Very interested to see how you are handling the notched corners. Absolutely! What is the plan for the front bar?

Lurch, I did the same thing to the windscreen on the first Z, (big crack) this one I'm just cutting the seal away since I'll be replacing it anyway. If it's of interest there is a guy up here (Greg) who is borrowing my hatch glass and getting perspex ones made up. He's calling for anyone interested in a group buy: http://thezgarage.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=1497 Cheers, Mike

mmmm, peak hour munchies Just make sure you don't use the same finger you used to scratch your arse

Yeah, specialist auto paint supply place. It was somewhere between $95 and $100, can't find the receipt. They are also the only place I know of that stocks the larger stripper discs. I haven't tried ordering direct, I will for the next tin.

The B-pillar cover attaches from the inside. If I remember correctly, you need to take off the interior B-pillar trim and undo the two nuts accessed from holes in the B-pillar. There might be 2 screws as well, it's been a while. I thought they were all plastic, mine were chromed plastic, I just painted them black. Nice looking zx, have fun! Intake, exhaust and Megasquirt it!

Started doing my 240z, it's posted in the projects section. Using por15 on all unexposed surfaces as already suggested. Have used it successfully in the past. I just brush it on. It seems to come off easily with a stripper disc too. After wire brushing I did hit the rust with a phosphoric acid based rust converter, the type you wash off. Best of luck with your Z, Mike

I've used por15 without using 'marine clean' and 'metal ready' first with no problems, but I've also had problems when I haven't. In my experience it has depended on what the surface was exposed to before hand. Plain rusty metal (ie. inside of a panel) has come up well after a wire brushing to remove flakes. On the other hand, a rusty engine bay area with heavy exposure to brake fluid which I power wire brushed till it was bright and shiny... the whole area peeled off in one perfect big sheet Very interested to know more about peoples practical experience with rust bullet, never used it, and I have a lot of rust to deal with How does price compare, 1L of por just cost me $100.

So the other reason to post all this up is to embarass myself into keeping the work up and not letting it slide into the "too hard, too many other things to do' basket. At this point time I'm taking the most useable bits off the 2 cars. From the '71 z I'm pinching the RH door and the fibreglass bonnet. You would think a fibreglass bonnet would be rust free, but no, the hinge attachements are steel, at least it is only some surface rust! Haven't decided yet whether to use the steel or fibreglass headlight scoops. Unless I find a front spoiler I'll also be using the lower front valence panels. So to bring you up to date: Left door has been stripped and other than dents isn't too bad. There is a rust hole which I haven't yet decided whether to weld up or fill over for now? The right door has had previous repairs to the front lower corner and rear lower edge. These had rusted over again and the filler had cracked and fallen out. They've been cleaned up as well as possible and por15'd. The area where the mirror bolts to had rusted badly. This area was cut out and a new piece of metal inserted. I'm using lap welds on all of these, but welding proved impossible. After cutting out the piece I recess the area as best and minimally as possible. Some areas are easier to do than others, this area of the door is very difficult. There will be a good layer of filler required over the top. And this is why I'm using the door off the '71, this one will get reskinned at a later date. Tailgate shut panel was removed earlier and a new one has been ordered. At the moment this is likely to be the only new panel. Area has been cleaned up and por15'd. When the new one arrives I'll look at where I need to strip it back to weld the new panel in. Advice welcome from anyone who's replaced this panel before? Yet to be done are the right and left doglegs / sills. Both need some work and I'm yet to decide how best to approach them...

LOL, THAT's not a basket case, THIS is a basket case (my 1971 240z) :'( If it's brown, it's rust. It's the next project

I'll get on the bandwagon and share as much of this renovation as I can. I call it a renovation because I'm more keen on getting it back on the road than doing a "proper" restoration for which there isn't the budget anyway. So if I take short cuts that offend, that's my excuse and too bad. It arrived Xmas before last after sitting under a house since 1988... Where it was tucked away in the shed while I was distracted by the 280zx. Before tucking it away I thought it wise to first remove the engine. Though it had been sitting this way for 20 years, it had just traveled across Brisbane on the back of a truck. (There is a few bits missing: gearbox, front guard, seats, radiator) So finally after 20 years under a house and 12 months in my shed, it's out and work has begun! Stripping is a tedious process, you can do it financially, chemically or mechanically. Haven't go the $$s and can't stand the smell of paint stripper, so I choose mechanical. These stripper discs are very effective If I could get the photos off my mobile phone I'd have more detail here, but basically the bottom and rear edge of this guard were rust damaged. Replacement panels were cut from useful sections of a 280zx guard and welded in with a cheap 2nd hand gas-less mig. Por15 has been painted into the weld area and then stripped off the surface The entire inner surface of the guard has been stripped and painted with por15. Expensive stuff but I've had good results with it in the past so I'll stick with it. More to come...

Thanks, will be making one of them when I do the door skins. Looking forward to your tutorial.

Lurch, what are you fixing on the door, I'm doing a pair of mine (roughly) at the moment. Would prefer to replace the skins on both, but for now I'm just patching the patches.

Stevo, you're a girlie girl! Get out and drive it and stop worrying, odds a pretty good it will be smashed/nicked/sold due to GF/kids before it rusts to nothing. Do be a little bit conservative though and treat obvious spot rust. Strip the area, POR15 it, and respray it. Give me a call and come around, I can help you figure out a plan of attack. I can show you what I'm doing on my 240z. I've had a couple of British classics which rust worse than Jap (though not as bad as Italian). Cheers, Mike

Amen to that! I'm trying very hard to resist the jag s-type project that's about to finish on ebay. Always had a thing for jags, but I've finally started on the bodywork of the better of the 2 240z's I've got, :-\ argghh...

Beautiful cars, what a great collection. That Tatra is worth having just for it's bizarreness - rear engined, air cooled v8. The mind boggles

Spraying really is easy, you just wave the gun back and forth... acrylic is very forgiving. The only recent stuff I've done is the bumpers and bumper fillets on the 280zx, but you won't want to look at them because it will make your eyes sting

Just started stripping panels on the '73 240z, good therapy for the shoulder! If it ends up too expensive I can show you how to do a backyard spray job in acrylic. Not hard, just time consuming. Hell if you do all the prep you can bring it on round and we can spray it up...

Where do you pick up the blocks of craft foam? I really should give it a proper go, a block of foam could be carved to fit the join lines nicely and to fit snugly against the headlight buckets. Would also as you suggested make moulding indicators in much easier. Thanks, Mike

Would love to see someone else have a go at this. I had an attempt with fiberglass and made a godawful mess, ended up shaping them roughly in aluminum and smoothing over with filler. I don't think the shape and fitment of the front spoiler I have helps either, it doesn't come up high enough to meet the front fender and requires the lower quarter panel to be in place, too many fiddly bits to juggle. I think you are both right about the indicators not being quite right. I don't think I'll do any more with it for a while. Trying to get into fixing up one of the 240z's instead, they've been sitting for too long.