Shan

Hi Guys, This is my car. Benny was selling for me as I had it at his place. Is now at my house, so I have taken photos and posted on ebay. http://cgi.ebay.com.au/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=251339556826 No time for it anymore, so she needs a new home. Price is reasonable given the all that's been done to it. Cheers, Shanan

My project - to remind anyone who is interested....http://www.viczcar.com/forum/index.php/topic,8350.0.html Well. Interesting times.... My car has been in hibernation at the mechanics shop for some time. He was supposed to be hooking up the fuel injected L28 we dropped into it. This was also supposed to include wiring up the L28 CPU, connecting the new fuel pump, welding some of the exhaust, PLUS some other bits and peices. Was also going to get R30 brakes past RWC for me as well. Anyway - he was taking his time with this, so while the engine was out - we pulled out the dash, suspension and I started working on all that stuff. I recovered the dash, new gauge faces, worked out the suspension. Got my R30 rear disc brake kit sorted out. Everything I was committed to doing - for this part of the project - was finished and ready to go back on the car. Mechanic on the other hand....pffffft.... Guess who is out of business now? One hint - it is not me. That's what you get for being INFINITELY patient with someone you are paying to do a job. He got some of my money, but not all of it (fortunately) and was kind enough to leave me with a car that is unfinished and undriveable. Worst thing is I am living in a townhouse at the moment, so cannot park a car that cannot be started and moved. Business across the road from said mechanic has kindly allowed me to store the car, but they have only allowed it to stay for a VERY brief period. Days. So yeah - not sure what to do! I got to get this sorted somehow and get the car to a shop and have it completed - at least so it is driveable. Frustrating thing is I know a lot of the hardwork has been done, just needs skills I do not have to get it running. Auto Electrician or Mechanic? Even better - a mechanic with a bit of electrical expertise thrown in! Can anyone provide me with a recommendation? Just need a place who do not mind an odd job and know what they are doing. I am not some 17yr old kid with no clue and no cash either. I am a 35 year old bloke, just discovered I got engaged to bridezilla , planning a wedding , working stupid hours and unfortunately have no time and no place where I can work on the car to try and figure it all out myself! This unfortunately has happened at a VERY bad time for me. I cannot park the Datto where I live without it running and I need arrange a tow and move it (quickly) from where it is currently being stored. So yeah - need some help and do not expect anything done for free. Any recommendations? Melbourne based of course. I live northern suburbs and work in the south east suburbs - so either or anything in between will work for me. Other option would be a place to store said vehicle until I get my game together. Offers? Happy to provide some form of payment for any kindness offered in that regard. Would prefer to get her up and running though. Thanks guys. Shan

Hi Guys, Odd request - I know - however trying to chase up a pair of clevis pins. These are the pins utilised for handbrake mechanism - same as here: http://cgi.ebay.com/ebaymotors/Datsun-Hand-Parking-Brake-Clevis-Pins-240Z-280Z-NEW-_W0QQcmdZViewItemQQhashZitem483f25774cQQitemZ310297065292QQptZVintageQ5fCarQ5fTruckQ5fPartsQ5fAccessories Would buy these, but seller does not deal to Oz. Rear R31 Brake conversion I bought uses them with an extension bracket to get the handbrake working. I seem to have misplaced two of them.... Any assistance get two of these appreciated. Shan

Sounds like you got a good bargain on that Zed! Glad I could help mate.

Giving my previous post a nudge. Gotta be someone on here who can provide some direction on my above post i.e : "QUESTION - what is the easiest way to correct the negative camber which is a result of lowering in a Zed?" Strut tops? Adjustable Control Arms? Camber/Castor necessity on rears? Really need some advice here. :-\ Thnx! Shan

Cheeeeap...fuel injected as well.... http://cgi.ebay.com.au/Datsun-260-/250761181900?pt=AU_Car_Parts_Accessories&hash=item3a6287facc

Hi Raj, Like the guys have said - right buyer will be difficult to find. Unfortunately most of the fun is in the journey of building your own zed and putting your individual stamp on it - as I am sure you are aware. My personal opinion? To sell yours - you will need to offer it at a price that allows a buyer to budget for some modifications to make the zed their "own". Whether it be individual touches like different paint, change of interior interior, new wheels, ZG flairs or different spoilers etc, etc - paying 30K for the zed means someone will need to fork out another 5K-10K (at least..prob more) to make it their "own car". At your price - probably out of the average zed buyer budget to purchase AND modify. So yeah - maybe keep that in mind with your advertised price. Lower it a bit to allow for a potential buyer to dream of some mod's and find potential in your car to make it their own. Also FYI - there was an awesome, engineered red V8 zed for sale earlier last year (carsales/forum). I was told the owner had spent close 100k on the car over the years he had it (not verified with owner, but I believe it). I understand it sold for somewhere around 35K. Yep. :'( Good luck with the sale though Raj. She looks like an awesome car. Shan

RB30X - replacing the stut tops with custom should lower the height I think. Depends on which one's you go for though obviously. To be honest - this camber/castor adjustment does my head in a little! :-\ QUESTION - what is the easiest way to correct the negative camber which is a result of lowering in a Zed? Otomoto HSD "Universal" camber tops are no good for Zeds as RB30x has advised - so my initial plan is out. Withoutout going "weld-in units" - what are our options? Mentioned so far are: 1. EMI - http://www.betamotorsports.com/products/products_main.php?cat=10&scat1=47&scat2=39 2. K-Mac - http://www.k-mac.com/pages/newprods/datsun/datsun.htm 3. Motorsport Auto - http://www.thezstore.com/page/TZS/CTGY/PSDC15 4. Ground Control - (limited castor adjustment) http://www.ground-control-store.com/products/description.php/II=151/CA=191 I got some prices from Ray Bell for the K-mac option. $400 per pair. Dunno. Pretty pricey, but they look the business. Bolt-on option is attractive. Since I am a massive rookie when it comes to this stuff, I would not mind some more advice on what other options there are? The technotoy (http://www.technotoytuning.com/productlist.php?vehicleid=11) control arms must provide some camber adjustment as well though yeah? Or am I way off there? So which options will provide the most benefit for camber? I assume going strut top style adjustment for front is more necessary for camber AND castor (castor is pretty important for effective steering). Is castor as important for the rears though? Camber only ok for the rear perhaps? Any advice here appreciated. Shan

I got the non-EGR manifold from the USA. Pretty sure they never released them here. As for the K-mac strut tops.....yeah - I recall them being a bit pricey. Will see what price I can dig up for them.

Hi Guys, I am considering a purchase of 16" RS Wats (-19/-13 offset) and want to see what they look like on a 2+2. Based on what I have seen other members do with Rota's - these 16" -19/-13 offset should squeeze under the guards with a bit of guard rolling. For evidence of this - I see: http://www.viczcar.com/gallery/displayimage.php?album=lastup&cat=11663&pos=1 However - I am wondering what the hell 16" Wats will look like on a 2+2 without ZG's and you reckon I can find an image??? No chance. Anyone got anything that they can show/share that may help me in my decision. I haev googled the hell out of it and am getting nowhere now.... Thanks in advance.

Serious??? Should not call them universal camber tops then should they?? A little misleading! Will have to find something else then I suppose.....will keep you in the loop RB30X. Technotoy make some weld-in units....bit of work to fit them though.... Will look around - see what I dig up.

I hear you RB30X - I am still leaning towards 17's and ZG's. Although that being said - I reckon some 16" RS wats would just maybe squeeze under the 2+2 guards with some rolling.....mmmmmm.....wats... Strut tops? I should have mentioned that. At this point in time I have the lower 240z/front strut tops (as mentioned in Lurch's sticky in suspension forum) on all 4 corners. If you are meaning what I am doing about camber adjustment etc - have not quite decided yet. Pretty sure I will use the Otomoto HSD Universal Camber Tops. As for the rest of the steering and wheel alignment stuff - thinking of installing the TechnoToy bits AFTER I get the roadworthy. Some things I can get away with for RWC (got a friend helping me out), however really concious of not pushing that arrangement too far. Rocking up for RWC with upgraded brakes, coil overs AND technotoy upper/lower control arms may stretch that friendship! http://www.technotoytuning.com/productlist.php?vehicleid=11 Anyway - not cheap though....need to work some extra hours to pay for that kit... HSD camber adjustment for sure though.

I know I keep smashing these posts up - trying to do it while I am on a roll though. Catching up on what I should have posted earlier basically. Engine stuff...... Normally aspirated, turbo, fuel injected, V8, etc, etc, etc. Plenty of options if you have the cash and time. I was thinking of going a V8 and was well aware of the engineering costs. Looked into the engine mounts from http://www.rodshop.com.au/nissan/nissan_datsun.htm, giving it all some serious thought. Was also thinking about a possible RB conversion. Plenty of engines around once you get the engineering done. However, depending on the power you choose engineer may make you look at brake options. Additionally, they may also make you get some sort of chassis "stress" test done which is more $$$. Depending on the outcome of that they may make you reinforce the chassis to their specifications. The list goes on. None of this was cheap though. Decisions, decisions.... Finally I read a comment that struck a note with me. Why not keep it simple? The L Series engine is a solid platform to begin with. Whether it be triple carbies, factory fuel injection or even factory turbo - the L Series already has a heap on configurations with PLENTY of bolt on bits available at low cost. Gearbox mod's are easy enough as well, so my final decision was to keep engine more original and NOT complicate things (well not until later on anyway ) The L Series was going to be my starting platform. Configuration? Sat down and thought - what was important to me? Decided that "driveability and simplicity" were important factors. I wanted easy cold starts and did not want to worry about having to balance carbies/tuning - so fuel injection was the only way for me. I waited a little while and decided to purchase a complete L28E on the forums. Only had some very mild work and low k's done according to the previous owner and I was inclined to believe him as he had a good reputation and history on the forum. Came with standard ECU, Electronic disti, extractors, intake - the lot - all very clean, neat and tidy. I got a little lazy with pictures around this point of the restoration, but have attached a picture of old engine and new engine in the car below. One thing I was not really taken with was the fuel injection and intake manifold. What a mess! Did some research and discovered there is another type of L Series manifold without all the anti-pollution rubbish. You add a nice fuel rail to this and you go from one extreme to the other. Pic's below...

Since I had all the suspension out, decided to have a looksy into brake options as well. All sorts of options out there (mentioned frequently on the forum), but I was lucky enough to come across a guy selling it all as a package. Was track proven, but he had decided to go bigger. Suspect brake fade on hot track days, but since I am not using the car for track - seemed like a good deal to me. Front Calipers - Toyota 4 pot, Front pads EDC yellow racing compound, Front ventilated discs 280zx with spacer. Rear Calipers - R31 single pot slider with hand brake mechanism (keep it legal), Rear disc Skyline R31 rotors, rear pads Ferodo Excel pads. Ready to bolt on basically. The hard work was already done to the R31 brake bracket - original mounting holes were welded shut and new one's with 260z offset were drilled. Centre hole (where the half shaft goes through) had also been widened to match Zed. Also came with braided hoses and some custom brake lines - so was happy with that. I decided to beef up the master brake cylinder as well with the 1" from Nissan Patrol. Guys on the forum mention it here and there (PBR part no: JB1419). Not sure about brake bias? Will have to wait and see. Hopefully not too bad though. Had to do a little grinding with the dremel to bottom of strut where custom R31 brake bracket bolts on. If you look at the corners in "small brake2" image - you can see where corner needed an edge off it. I could have modified the R31 bracket, however there was more metal to play with on the strut and I felt that taking anymore from the modified bracket may compromise the integrity. Decided to clean and paint the calipers since they were in my hands. Will post up some more photo's when I have them. Below is rear setup....will post front when I have a chance....

I am still deciding what wheels and such to get. One day I am all for chopping the guards, getting some ZG's and going some fat 17's, then the next I am thinking I do not like ZG's and want to keep the lines if the car original. Bit like my girlfriend trying to figure out what dress to wear :-\ Hmmmm.... So - to give me as much choice as possible - decided to go coilovers. I did a heap of research on this - forum link can be found here: http://www.viczcar.com/forum/index.php/topic,7161.0.html In the end went Koni yellows with Otomoto HSD Sleeve kit and 5KG springs. Although I may not be dumping my zed to ridiculously low levels - I also decided I would section my strut tubes whilst they were out of the car - giving me that "extra" bit of flexibility later. Was all a bit of a mission to be honest. Once you decide to section - it becomes a bit more complicated. These are not in the car yet. I am hoping to christ that I did everything right.... The results were as follows:

One more....

So..... Since I had most of the interior out - I decided to pull the dash as well. There were cracks in my dash which bothered me, so it was going to come out eventually anyway. Took the dash to The Dash Doctor for a full reco. Cost a fair bit of $$$, but I reckon the Zed dash is one of the main features of the car - so deserved a bit of attention. I stripped out all the gauges and gave them a Speedhut face uplift as well. http://www.speedhut.com/gauge_products-gauges-ELGLO-auto-Datsun.htm I know people have already posted about these - so won't go into too much detail. Also took the opportunity to replace ALL the globes. The ELGLO gauges I chose light up "blue" in colour, so I also went for a Blue globe to match that. http://cgi.ebay.com/ebaymotors/DATSUN-510-1200-240Z-260Z-280Z-BLUE-DASH-GAUGE-BULBS-_W0QQcmdZViewItemQQhashZitem483b72436dQQitemZ310234989421QQptZVintageQ5fCarQ5fTruckQ5fPartsQ5fAccessories I checked into getting my own glass paint and painting my own - cheaper to get them off this guy at ebay. Can only hope they are ok quality. I read a bit about LED's and came to the conclusion that I did not understand anything about car electronics. They require different level of power to run than the normal globes and I think you have to play around a little to get them running with resistors and such. Too hard. Added to that, LED's throw light around at different angles to a normal globe, so I read some people had dark sections on their instrumentation with LED. Anyway - decided to leave well enough alone. I also read somewhere that painting the back of the gauges with a fresh coat of "white" helps intensify the light. Was a practical and simple way of reflecting the light from these globes a little more efficiently, so I painted the back of gauges (behind the face etc) with a fresh coat. Polished the plastics with a light auto polish as well. Got rid of all the hazing and they came up crystal clear.

Thanks for clarifying Benny. Pretty sure I checked the areas on concern in my 2+2. If there was a seam - I obviously did not find anything concerning. I reckon I would have chipped away the deadener from the seam if I suspected anything.

Hmmmm.... Between the seams? Anywhere in particular you can point me to so I can double-check? If I know exactly where a common problem point is, can check it and be sure I did the right thing. My car floors appeared really clean and mostly surface rust free, but your comment concerns me a little. Cheers.

Hi benny, Thanks for the tip. Had no idea you could get the grommets from clark rubber! Will have a looksy when I get a chance - pull up my carpets and replace the old one's. Hmmm...seems a lot of people pulled up the existing sound deadener like you have. I am confident that water has had no way to get under the remaining deadener in my car. Aside from the points I mention - my floor was pretty clean. I also thought that the "more" deadener there was on the car - the better (aside from weight issues). After reading about many different type of deadeners/sound proofing, I already decided to go with Dynamat. I heard other stuff was cheaper, but was harder to apply, had weaker adhesive qualities and was generally considered to be less effective. Dynamat is NOT cheap though, but I figured if was going to do it, might as well use what seemed to be widely regarded as the best. It is VERY sticky though! Applied easily (even over the top of old deadener) and rolled on nice, but I hope to god that I do not have to pull it all up again.....could get VERY interesting. Anyway, currently have this Dynamat on all my floors and doors. Also added it to the back of some of the rear plastic trim. I found this had the benefit of adding strength to what had become fragile and brittle plastic. Like re-inforcing it. Plastic rear quarters in particular benefited and were much stronger when I stuck this to the back. So if any of you guys are concerned about the structural quality of your old plastics, add some adhesive soundproofing to the back. Makes it feel a LOT more solid.

I just realised I was VERY lazy in taking photo's. Thought I had been on top of that.....oops. No photo to show, but in removing the above painted items, I had continued to pretty much strip the inside of the car. All trim aside from roof and dash were pulled out. I wanted to focus on the floors. Fortunately my floors were undamaged aside from some surface rust here and there. What I noticed was surface rust mostly occurred where the rubber plugs (bungs) appear in the floor. As the car ages the rubber hardens on these plugs and I am assuming some water slowly creeps in through the bad seal. It's really the only place water can get in on the floorpan. Problem I found is the water got through these plugs and then appeared to be slowly creeping under the tar based sound deadener that is all over the floor of the car. Visually everthing looked perfect, but once I started to pick away at some of the deadener (mostly near the floor plugs), there was some significant surface rust starting "under" the sound deadener itself where the water had been trapped. I was suprised by how far under the deadener the water had managed to migrate. I decided to remove this sound deadener from around all the rubber plugs on the floor of the car. I peeled, prised and chiseled the stuff off wherever it rested near the floor plugs. I did not remove "all" the sound deadener though, I only removed it where I saw the possibility of moisture getting in and being captured underneath. I left the majority of it on the car. I read forums and I know some people remove it all, but I thought the stuff seemed to have been applied VERY effectively at the factory. I also suspect it actually PREVENTED rust from starting on some of those failed plugs and only started capturing moisture in areas due being subjected to water for the last 7 years or so (at a guess). So - I removed the deadener only where I saw potential for it to trap moisture. Left the rest. I used some silicon and put the old floor plugs back in, I treated the areas where I found rust with a neutraliser and I then proceeded to get the entire vehicle floor as clean as possible. I grabbed a hard scrubbing brush, some boiling hot water, and proceed to scrub the entire floor of the car. Scrub/dry, scrub/dry. Anything that would not scrub off I picked off with my nails. I also went over it with wax and grease remover - so I got the floor as clean as humanly possible to make ready for aftermarket sound deadener.

FYI - SEM Vinyl paint results were surprising. Seems to bond quite well to the vinyl pieces. So - all the "soft vinyl" items appear excellent, with a quality bond. The product is also supposed to adhere to hard plastics, but I am a little suspicious of how "robust" it will be over time. I think any decent knock or scrape on the plastic will quickly remove the black paint. I am not given the same impression with the soft vinyl items like shock tower covers etc (maybe they are more pourous?). Once I have some real life results on how these wear - I will update the journal and review accordingly.

Yeah - she was straight and clean. Like you say - put some thought into what changes I wanted to make. Well and truly down that path.... First thing I needed to do was alter the interior. I knew I was eventually going to replace the brown poo with whatever original black trim I could find. My interior trim was in excellent condition, so figured it would take me a while to find suitable replacements in black that were in a similar condition. So while the search was carried out for original black trim, I started doing some research on vinyl/plastic paint. I was sceptical about the results, but saw no harm in giving it a crack. After lot's of forum trawling over the globe, decided to settle on a brand called SEM Colour Coat. Also purchased their preparation cleaner. Might have been unecessary to get the cleaner (forums had varied views), but I wanted to make sure this paint bonded as tight as possible. I washed all the interior items TWICE over - (wash/dry, wash/dry) and scrubbed lightly with a scourer and then cleaned with SEM prep cleaner to ensure all old contaminants were removed. I then used my Supercrap Auto cheap ass compressor and paint gun to apply it. Hmm...I thought I had more before and after photo's....will try to get more up here when I find them... This should give you an idea of result though:

I have had the car for the better part of 12mnths now - so thought I should start contributing to a journal! Thought it might help others going down the same path, as well as be a record for my own benefit. She's still a work in progress, but this is how it looked when I bought her.... Interior, exterior and engine... Car was in very good condition and had apparently been in the same family for 20years. There were receipts for body work and various maintenance tasks, although I suspect in more recent years had been somewhat neglected. She was by no means perfect, but it was a very driveable. What I disliked the most was the original colour choices - gold and brown interior - yummp. Still - I was happy with what I got.

Very kind offer. I also will be using your services VERY shortly. Cheers Kobes!