Zedback

How did you go with night nav run? Did you get lost and give up or find your way to the end? Really wanted to be there but instead spent the weekend removing a remarkable and frightening amount of sludge from the radiator So probably for the best...

1. More than anything else accident damage, it can bend bits of the shell nowhere near the impact and will often cause rust where seams have parted or sheet has creased. 2. Rust 3. Rust that's worse than you thought (ask me how I know) 4. Rust that you completely missed 5. Incomplete car or a car that comes in unmarked boxes Get it back to as new stock condition. In particular: rebuild the brakes to new, new bushes, new shocks, new tyres and maybe put in an electronic dizzy. You either need deep pockets or lots of time and skill (or willingness to learn). I'm in the latter category and am still expecting to spend around $8k over 3-5 years on the '73. Bump that up to $12k or more if I ever tackle the '71. I'm also leaning towards "renovation" rather than restoration and I'm not expecting to produce a car as good as those spending $30k or more. If you do it yourself you also need space for both the car, AND for a whole cars worth of parts, AND room to work on the parts as you go. Neighbors can also be a problem if you are grinding/welding/painting/cursing, thankfully mine are distant (for all of the above reasons). Good luck!

Guys if you're talking about 2 pac then I've got no idea, it's toxic and not for the DIYer. If you're talking about acrylic then everything is in the surface prep. I really don't understand why people don't like acrylic, it's really easy to work with and really easy to repair if you do something silly. Runs you just sand away and respray, same with any surface prep failure (bugs, gum sap, etc). If you do something particulalry dumb like spray on a humid day when the sun is setting and your whole boot lid blooms... You just sand it back and have another go... even you could do it Lurch. (Crappy scanned film images of my MGB http://s729.photobucket.com/albums/ww294/zedback/1965%20MGB/) Surface prep is everything for the color coat. You can also run into problems with products that don't react well. If you go down this path then you should ask your painter what products they use and use the same.

Leon, it sounded like the budget is tight but you might have a fair amount of time you can spend on it. Of your $1500 I think you mentioned, a good approach might be to find and go to one of the TAFE panel beating/restoration night/weekend courses that someone was recently posting about. Then beg or borrow a mig welder and renovate/restore it yourself, whatever your budget allows for. The more you can do yourself, the less you are paying for someone else's time. Good luck, it's your car and there is a lot of projects you can review for ideas on how to approach it.

Ditto! Do it yourself. I don't care what anyone else says, I've done 3 cars in acrylic under a tree (Morris 8, MGB, Mini) and they all looked fantastic. Time = money: if you haven't got enough of one you use the other. For me it's the former, plus I get a kick out out of doing it all myself. It's all in the prep work...

I'll try and make it, but where exactly is it!

I'm seriously jealous!

Just caught up on your journal, great work. You are definitely not alone, my '71 is in a similar state. I went and bought another one to do while I work up the courage to tackle it. Please do keep it coming, and I wish you all the luck in the world in hiding the credit card statements from the wife

POR15 is one of a number of coatings designed to stop and prevent rust. I haven't tried the others they may or may not be better but I've had good results from POR15 in the past so I've stuck with it (http://www.ppc.au.com/) No wasn't me The sorry thing has been sitting in it's shed waiting for me to put the brake cylinders back on since Xmas. It lives in the Goldcoast hinterland too and very rarely goes further. There are a scattering of them around though. Woohoo, got most of another day in, despite the demanding assistance of my new helpers;D Figured I best get something finished, so on with the RH floor. Here is the RH chassis rail underneath the holes that were in the floor A simple rectangular patch cutout with the nibbler (and cleaned up a bit with the grinder) Cut the worst of the existing rust out... ...and bend the patch to fit. The magnets make holding it place easy. Stitching it in place from underneath was not so easy, but finally it's done. Words were said More of the underbody will be cleaned away and then all exposed metal will be covered in generous amounts of por15, but that will happen later when I'm ready to do a bulk job. In the meantime I've swapped sides and it's on with the LH dogleg, which at least on the outside is no where near as bad as the RH was. It had been fixed in the past just using bog. After nibbling the worst out into a pair of nice holes to be patched, I then spent the next 10 minutes scraping out a whole heap of dirt rust and rubble. And after all of that I did actually cutout some more patches and tack them in, but bugger me if I forgot to take any more pics. All in all a very satisfying weekend of work on the Z

In my view you've got three options: 1) Quick bodgy repair with body filler to get you through 2) Renovation where you are looking to patch what you've got rather than replace 3) Restoration where you are looking to replace all rusty or damaged sections I'm going with option 2 for mine. I wouldn't recommend option 1 except as a short term measure when doing a rolling renovation. My '71 is a result of someone taking a bodgy approach with an expanding foam that retained moisture, not pretty.

4 long months since I've done any serious work, but I finally got one whole day in The fabricated dogleg sitting on the shelf for so long is finally tacked in where it belongs Clamp along the bottom lip and weld first and cleaned up Then welded in properly and given that I'm using a "useless" gasles mig, cleaned up again. Done, woohoo! One of the few things I managed in the last few months is remove the windscreen. The rubber seal was glued in with a rock hard black substance. Rust in the top corners of the windscreen like on my '71 often occurs when the paint is breached during a windscreen replacement. To minimise this in the future, strip it back to bare metal and por15 it. Of course just when you think everything is going well... sunlight where it shouldn't be Underneath is unbroken underbody sealant, on top unbroken sound deadner, in between more bloody rust holes! :'( As previously declared this is a renovation not a restoration, therefore I am patching. Floor replacement can happen in another few years. So... make a template Cut it out of your favourite piece of sheet steel This patch I've made to slip between the foor and the cross rail It's not beautiful, but it'll do Will I get any more done tomorrow, or will it be another 4 months... :-\

I'm still ignoring my '71 with the rust in the roof rails. Too hard for now, but it'll get fixed one day. What is your goal for the car, take it off the road and restore/renovate, or get it roadworthy and back on the road as quick as possible?

No it's not legal, however I figured it was arguable because they were easily removable. Not that I ever got pulled up. High beam was still bright enough to upset oncoming traffic. I'll be getting clear ones next time. If you are sticking with the black paint job I reckon clear will look good. Tinted ones are needed on lighter colours.

Oh, and stripper discs like these work well too for chewing through paint and bog. I find the ones for grinders tear apart too quickly, either get a 9" polisher and matching discs or stick with the drill mounted ones.

Leon, is that last picture (rust4.jpg) on the edge of the roof above the rear window? If so, it is probably the nastiest bit, the rest looks like typical Z rust which as reverendzed has said will be more extensive than it looks. If that last one is where I think it is, then behind it the roof rails will be badly eaten as well. This is what it looks like on my '71 240z:

Smoked looks good but if you drive at night you will need to remove them. I had smoke tinted covers and the effect on the headlights was ruinous. I had US ebay ones which were held in by a single screw at the front so not too hard to remove but still annoying.

Have you checked the timing at higher rpm to see if the mark dances around? A worn dizzy (rather than the advance) might be playing havoc with your timing. Another thing, is the timing mark on the crank pulley still where it is supposed to be at TDC? It can slip if the damper is starting to disintegrate, in my case the outer ring completely separated but pauly_adams said his has just slipped.

That was my biggest hurdle, being game enough to start cutting into a working system. For me MS ended up being a much easier system to understand and diagnose than the stock system. From what I remember, the 280zx is fully advanced low down in the rev range, (2500-3000rpm ?) I wouldn't have jumped at that for what's holding you back at 5500

At $600 you're 75% of the way to a Megasquirt system where you lock the dizzy and program the curve against both RPM and vacuum. It requires patience, a lot of reading and some basic skills (none of which the idiot I sold mine to has) but to me it would seem to be better value than recurving the dizzy. (I'm assuming you are talking about your 280zx and not a carby Z?)

I'm going to follow reverendzed's lead and retreat. Gas vs gasless has been discussed with some heat in many other forums as well. I think universally professionals and anyone who regularly welds will go with gas and will consider gasless as useless. I'm not a professional and I do a few hours every 6 months or so doing nothing more than patching panels on my Z. My gasless mig is adequate for the job and I don't mind having to clean up the mess. It also cost me peanuts to get started with and make my own decision on which way to go.

Congrats on getting it running

Been there done that with success for a mini. I used lengths of fencing wire. Take either the old fittings or the actual components to make sure they fit the right threads and fittings. Try to find a larger brake and clutch supply workshop rather than your run-of-the-mill suburban brake shop.

I'd be guessing then that they're quality copper (not aluminum) wired cores capable of winding the current back down to near 20 amps. I think they are $2k+, but I haven't looked into it for a couple of years.

My old man use to sell them. He advised for panel work, that a copper wound core is essential and to look for something that will go down to 20amps. Then you can use 0.6mm wire. One day...

I'm using a cheap ($120) 2nd hand gasless sip 120n, with a tired sheath and a busted shroud. It's slow, makes a mess and I have to be careful in how I approach what I'm welding. But it's adequate for what I'm doing at the moment and for the snails pace at which I'm working, I'm sure a professional would never tolerate it. One day when I have better power to the shed I might get something more sophisticated.