Gordo

Some of the things I added. Just because. Rear tow hooks made with a chain link welded to backing plate and powder coated. 260zed switches put into the top of fuse box lid. Alloy peddle covers. Recessed front guard indicators. Shortened front bumpers. Rear quarter interior panels moulded to fit speakers. Battery cut off switch. Full hight grill. Front tow hook. Recoil seat belts. Nissan Silvia front seats. Rounded rear quarters. (No bumper bar ) Fluted bonnet. Speedo in kph. Fresh motor. Adjustable coil over suspension . With Bilsten shockers. Disk brakes all round.

I've always taken the bonnet off and taken out the radiator when doing engine swaps. This was the same, gives you heaps of room and easy to move around. Lining the imput shaft up with the clutch took a bit to tighten up. After it was all in and bolted up I'd discovered the adjustment rod on the clutch slave cylinder was to long. And that's what gave me some grief mating the motor and gearbox. I shortened the rod about 10mm and all was good. First start up. I drained the fuel tank and put some fresh 98 in. I couldn't figger out why it would start and then stop the moment I took my hand off the key. Then I discovered the wire was off on the ceramic resonator near the alternator on the inner guard . Then away we went, but with out the full exhaust on things where a bit loud. So it was three days before the VicZed BBQ . Mission accomplished .

Once the piston and rod assembly was done we put them in one buy one each time checking the crank for rotation.. All good. Oil pick up and sump went on. The head rebuild was next. I'd numbered the valves for each cylinder and incerted them with the valve springs. Then sliped the camshaft in and fitted the rockers with the correct clearance . Piston one to top dead centre and fitted the head. The front timing chain and associate parts where next with the timing marks lining up. Oil pump drive and dizzy. Setting up the timing was easy. I copied my other zeds timing marks at TDC and gaped the dizzy the same. Job done. Bolted all the accessorys , headers and twin SUs. The fly wheel and clutch went on after I'd taken the motor off the engine Crain. The gearbox was all ready in the car, so it was ready to go in.

Putting to motor together was fun. My youngest son is 16 yo and the only one that looks like he may have an interest in my passion with cars. He's doing a vet course next year at school on engines . They did the lawn mower engine this year. Anyway he's my only hope. The other 2 have there drivers licence but only automatic . No one else can drive my cars in the family. Sad face. So Joel was keen to come out to the shed and help me build the engine. I had the block and head hot tanked buy an engine shop. We cleaned everything and put new welsh plugs in after we had painted it. Oiled up the bearings and dropped the crank in. I tried putting the piston pins in the freezer to shrink them for pushing in the rod ends. After I had heated the rod ends and pushed the pin in they heated up to quickly and I only got them in three quarters of the way. lol. Bummer, so I took them to work and pressed them in.

Fast forward to October 2017 and it was time to get that original L28 rebuilt and in the car for the VicZed BBQ day. The motor was craned into the wheelbarrow and delivered 50m up hill to the main shed for the rebuild . The strip down was one weekend. I have a lot of engine bits about the place . i used the 280zx oil pump and a new Bosch startermotor.The N42 head would get what I call the Gordo Port. Inlet matched to the manifold and the exhaust was ported to match the headers. Flat top pistons from another motor where selected for a bit more compression. I was going to put the 74deg cam in but decided not to, as I didn't want to go chasing new lash pads. Ash from Moorabbin Auto Spares helped me out with all the rebuild parts. Bearings , gaskets, rings, water pump and filters. I ported the head and laped the valves. New valve stem covers where fitted. I used a 280zx electronic dizzy. Had the valve cover and timing cover powder coated in silver as I think this Is the easiest way to keep them clean.

So this was 2007. For the next 5 or six years this car was started and parked in the line up with the VicZed clubs annual Xmas BBQ . Never driven. Then the Peter Mac car came along in 2013 .That's another story. Here. http://www.viczcar.com/forum/topic/13590-gordo-takes-over-the-peter-mac-build/ So the good engine that was in my Red race car went into the Mac zed. The old race motor that was in this car went back into the red race car now on Club Reg. got that. With this car engine less it was on the back burner again.

The original motor was sitting in the corner of the shed. Would need a rebuild. The old race engine was still good and ready to go. It was a no brainier. This was the engine to go in minus the triples. The stock 240 SUs would go on. Motor in with the original 5 spd box. Exhaust was made and fitted. After market headers and 2 1/2 in exhaust .

Some other things that went into this car. I' wanted to do a grill with a few more blades in it. The full length of the radiator opening. Wasn't that hard, striped the grill and took all the blades out. Welded extra length to the upright blade holders and added three or four more blades . Then it was decided to cut the middle or the bumper bar out to give the full grill look. So little quarter bumpers where made. The door trims where made when the seats where done in the same material . Front and rear spoilers where fitted. The gold ROH Wheels off the red zed fitted nicely . 16x8 front and rear. After all these bits where fitted it was time for the engine to go in. Pictures are lowering the car down off the rotisserie with the wheels on and getting ready for the motor.

Hi Jeff. IRS great watching you working on the zed. I'm sure we can all relate to your panel alignment problems. It's like no two zeds are the same shape. There are a lot of custom tweaks to make a zed look good. Nice work.

Starting on the interior . It had to be blue. The 240z seats where in bad condition. I went searching for a replacement option. Found some Nissan Silva seats that would fit and had them retrimed in black and Blue. I glued a thin under foam and lined the tunnel and other parts with blue vinyl. Cut out templets for the carpet and the seat guy made them for me. One piece all the way under the seat. Did a few mods the the fuse box in the consul and added some 260z switches for driving light and thermo fans etc. mounted four speakers and a radio. I even put the 2+2 reel type seat belts in. Lap sashes not for me. I even found a steering wheel to match.

Front struts and shortened with coil overs and Z32 callipers.

Suspension was going to be totally up graded. Front lower control arms where made buy cutting the old ones and welding in threaded nuts and using aero grade rose joints. This would give me adjustable camber . The front brakes would be Z32 four piston callipers and vented discs. I cut the strut legs down 50mm and used adjustable shortened Bilsten shocks. Welded on some threaded coil overs with smaller diameter springs. The rear strut legs got the same treatment with the Skyline R31 rear disks and hand brake. Pics are the front control arm with rosé joint. Also a well known suspension mod is to relocate the mounting bolt for the lower arm that will give you more neg camber and help get some bump steer out of a zed that been lowered 50mm. Other pics are rear suspension mods.

Some other bits I was working on. Tha 240z speedo is in mph. I hate driving my other zed with mph. So the spare parts car was used again for the kph. The 240and 260z have different speedo housings , so it was easier to swap the internals into the other housing. And while I'm there set the speedo to zero. Job done. I put the peddle box and steering columb in. then it was time for the dash. The 260z glove box was also used as the 240 one was broken.

Your right Simon. It's a bit wearied. It was 95% finished at the end of 2007, but never finished and it just sat there in the shed because I didn't really need it. The only reason I'm doing this is to share some of the things I've learned over the journey . And I like doing the thread like this. It won't sit for months with nothing happening. lol.

Some more pics

While waiting for the body to curer or dry in the hot summer weeks I tackled all the other car parts and prepped them for paint ,powder coat or just restore. The two pack undercoat was rubbed back and some parts needed a little more attention . The colour was chosen straight of a Paint chart. I liked the bright sky blue , picked the colour and that was it. The inside was painted first then the out side. After a few days a plastic cover was put over the car and paint began on all the other panels and doors. I went to the trouble of hanging drop sheets from the shed walls and ran water through the shed floor to stop dust getting air Bourne .

Now all the panels and parts where in under coat I wanted to give the body filler some time to cure and shrink if that was possible . So time to move to other jobs. The dash board. This was the typical dash . 4 or 5 cracks. Time for a re skin. I'd prepped a dash before and new the steps. First was the groove out the cracks so the body filler would hold. Fill and sand back to shape. Fiberglass one or two sheets over the top of dash. Then go with a thin coat of filler again and sand to shape. The Fiberglass is the strength and will not crack again. Now it's ready to be re skinned . These days the wraps are good enough to heat stretch to shape. Job done.

When the bonnet came back I was a little worse than expected. The parts car was looking a bit better and also had the fluted bonnet that would suit my kind of build. The hatch was in good condition and required minor work.

Now that the body was in under coat it was time to focus on all the other panels and doors etc. the doors needed rust removed from the lower edges, so after rubbing back and paint striping it was decided to take all the lose panels to a mate for sand blasting. This way everything would be revealed and no surprises . The front guards needed rust removed from the lower sections. I also filled the forward indicator holes and mirror holes. One of my little modifications was to put the Holden indicator in the front guard . This was a bit of a gamble but I think it works ok.

Thanks Gav. The car never came out of the shed. This was by far the most extensive car resto I'd ever done. This however was the third car I'd painted over the years. Most of the guys on the forum do as much work as they can on there cars. Other wise the costs get out of control. Finding the time is the hard part.

On the inside all the body deadener was removed. And in the rear luggage floor area I used some body filler to smoothen out the creased body work. I welded steel plate over the top of the rear shocker tower to clean it up. After weeks of filling and sanding the edge primer was sprayed on. Was such a relief to get the body all sealed up and not having to worry about moisture and surface rust a peering .

So after dealing with all the rust ,it was time to get the body nice and straight with some body filler. I had decided to run the car without the rear bumper. So I welded a plate of steel over the concave section for the rear bar. I also cut the rear lower section with a slight curve up, like a rear defuser behind the petrol tank.

Apologies for the pictures. I found an old tape that I made of this zed rebuild. It goes for about 4hrs. This is where I've found these pis from. But you get the idea. So it took awhile to get the shell rust free. But we got there.

The rear spare wheel carrier was next. This was taken from the donor car. As was the dog leg and front section of the passengers side. Even though its a 2+2 you can still use it.

After the sun roof it was time to replace the floor panels. Rare Spares had the replacement parts. From memory about $95 each floor. The chassis rail section is then welded over the concave section to form the rail. I also shaped and welded a 3mm thick plate of steel to the lower chassis rail at the front. That's where most of the jacking is done and I wanted to strengthen this part. This section of chassis would get crushed and creased.