fly-s30

Hey everyone. Just a heads up to those those that might be interested but unaware; my bros car is up for sale. Check out the sale thread here: http://www.viczcar.com/forum/index.php/topic,15779.0.html

Can you post up pics? Cheers

To flare, or not to flare; that is the question...

Pretty great idea, and this would have a great turn out with a mixed crowd which is good for the car scene in general. Thanks for the link! Yep thats the one

Now that's a smooth operator Great stuff!

Nato, if you make these 260 floors and rails, this might actually be a world first, as after an extensive search online I found nothing close! I hope you succeed as there might be projects out there stopped due to simply lack of aftermarket support.

I can see what your saying locky.. No disrespect but can you suggest a format that is flexible enough to work? I mean Dimitri put up a poll, of which only several people made a choice of dates, and others were happy whatever the outcome, then there was a location and time put out there, with no other suggestions from others. Maybe a fixed location and time from the start would have been better, that way people can be prepared hail rain or shine? Also someone said earlier about putting up meet up threads in a more "visible" location. That would most definitely help. My .02 cents

Looks like a good restart, booth and all! Your very fortunate as most of us users don't have that luxury. Keep up the updates!

You too mate! Keep up the good work on your 2 seater. Your making good progress.

Agreed, it just shows lack of integrity. Lurch, it was organised as you can see...it relies on others to make good on their word.

Yup just pulled in. No Datto though

Just to clarify, 7:30 at fat bobs or at your place? Kind of confused by where you meant.

Can I recommend a time after I'd say 7:30? Bobs doesn't open until 6 from memory anyway. Anyone coming from around Melbourne, or on the other side will be greatly affected by traffic before that. Dimitri, are you making the booking if a booking needs to be made? +1 for me.

I can vouch for fat bobs, I was there few weeks back, and found it to have really good (and big) burgers... regardless if its not on the main hangouts, or near trendy hot spots. Its an alleyway redbrick nostalgic eatery. Its a pretty casual setting, and out doors has some awesome heaters to boot. +1from me

Meet up or bust for this week? If so, has a place been agreed upon?

Hehe thanks David, my style is glacier slow so bear with me Hi Richard, and thanks mate; the engine swap isn't for everyone, but bang for buck...not bad at all.

Update time! So its been a slow few weeks of work on the datto; mainly due to indecision, so rather than tackling issues head on and getting them over and done with, iv been busy procrastinating. Main issue of contention is the floor...my world for a new floor!! The plan of attack boiled down to maybe 3 options 1: Make a mainly flat floor from pieces, split lengthways above the chasis rail, with bits cut and inserted to pick up the chassis rail and remove all rust 2: Make a buck/pattern, with shapes and elevations to replicate the existing pattern and make out of one piece of sheet. 3: A combination of the above. Check! As many of you are aware; the 260z came with a different and more complex floor structure. Great for torsional strength! Bad for your average diy-er restorer. Hell its even too hard for the big nobs like rare spares to make it! So what happened was i have started to take templates of the existing flooring to use to make the patterns that are used in the original floor. This is going to be a compromise of the 2 options as it will still involve the use of the pans and stiffening brace, albeit in several pieces. After making the template from paper, it was transferred to steel to have a more solid piece to work from, then onto a wooden buck for shaping. Luckily there was some plywood that was of perfect size just lying about. The recess on the stiffener is ~6mm? so a piece of 10mm board would suffice to be used as that allowed for the material thickness and bend to get the correct depth. Before any real work on any manufactured piece was to unfold, a test piece was required, as this is really my first venture into this type of work. Really i needed to check and see if my theory's would pan out and see what i was setting out to do would work, and avoid over committing to something that would be a waste of time. This was also the time when i found out that a "buck" is solely for checking you have the right shape, and not for working steel over it...aluminium maybe, but not steel. On and btw the test piece was 1mm whereas the actual steel used would be 1.2, so something needed to change. The buck can take a few hammers thrown its way, but slowly and surely it would start to collapse and fall apart. You can see the damage here after just one corner of the template was formed Tools for the job were in order to make the floor the right way! Started with an anvil. Made of some scrap 10mm rod, and some 60x6 plate that was lying about, this is designed to form the radius' on the folds and straighten the bent up sections once formed. It has a bent horn, and a 90+ deg piece to be versatile enough to use in more than one instance. Luckly a spare 2mm thick sandwich plate donated itself to centering the 6mm plate against the 10mm rod. The finished product was ground down to make the faces flush later on Next up was the folding bed, which used in conjunction with a smoothed brick bolster, would do a cracker of a job putting in straight folds. 30x30x3 x 140mm angle was used for the bed, and the same 60mmx6x 100mm plate used for the support which will be clamped down to the bench vise. I mucked up, as turns out that the shallower the fold needs to be, so-to the shallower the bed needs to be. No loss as this can now be used when fabricating pipework as the angle is longer than the support plate which means a pipe clamp can have somewhere to clamp to. So using the same material with a longer support, the "bed" was cut down to the height required. And the test piece with the fold in place. Its slow but the result is good for smaller pieces that dont require too much finesse. The only problem is that the bolster needs to be square with the vee block to create an accurate fold, but for all intensive purposes this will be good enough. So anyway back on the rust repair section Having made the template cutout, i proceded to make the actual piece and add 20mm to the outside of the template with a set of dividers to act as a flange which will rest on the new floor section/s. This will then be punched or drilled out, and plug welded to avoid any butt welded seams which inherently attract their own issues. Plus from the outside this will look almost factory. Score! Any excess will be trimmed off later once the final cut is made to the floor much later on. During the forming stage i learnt that the ends with a radius were difficult to shape effectively by hand as i dont have a shrinker/stretcher or a hydraulic press. What i do have are sockets, and random bits and bobs to accept the sockets as a sort of form and a bench vise to press them together. It worked rather well! But the bench vise took a fair bit of abuse and it wasnt as smooth as before, so i wouldnt recommend to do this more than a handful of times. The original template included marks that identify the forward and aft location relative to the front floor seam, and transferred chassis lines to line up the pressing in the correct location. This isnt just ocd, but more due to the fact the original rails have depressions in them to accommodate for the folds. Otherwise i could put these wherever, and made to look however! I used this template to check against the pressings and see as work progresses that all is well. I also have the newly renamed buck to do the same. On other fronts i picked up some steel recently to make a simple folder for the straight sections that need it. Hopefully its simple enough to finish in an afternoon and be ready for action in the coming weeks. Plans ahead are to finish off this section of the foot well, start by making up templates for the remaining sections, hammer and dolly work on the rear quarter/ fuel filler area that was patched. Thats the plan anyway. Stay tuned and thanks for stopping by! Darius

I'm interested too! My local dealer was saying all Datsun parts are now N.L.A. please prove this wrong

Haha! yeah im of the same mind! looks tough! SRS being the american manufacturer? No not them by the style of them. Gav, they are an acquired taste thats for sure.

Matching numbers 260z 2+2 http://www.gumtree.com.au/s-ad/huntingdale/cars-vans-utes/1976-datsun-260z-coupe/1047609455

when i saw this bad boy...the most unusual louvre design and looks to be made of all metal, rather than the aunger type plastic we all know about. Messaging the seller and he responded by saying "they were screwed on"...for real? IMHO this would look incredible, if you like the look of louvers of course. Has anyone ever seen anything like it?

Bit late but i found these...if anyone wants to blow any idea of a conservative budget to smithereens ~$220 landed f.a.s.t part # 54055-N3700 http://www.ebay.com/itm/DATSUN-240Z-260Z280Z-FAIRLADY-Z-S30-SHOCK-DUST-COVERS-54055-N3700-COVER-DUST-JDM-/200936320073?pt=UK_CarsParts_Vehicles_CarParts_SM&hash=item2ec8bcec49&vxp=mtr

1 up for the 6th....I got your back

Minus 1 for Friday. Got a b day.