240z.drago.com.au - Adventures of rebuilding a 1973 Datsun 240Z

Today I spent a bit of time working on stripping down and cleaning the struts. There was not much to do on them initially. I used some spring compressors and took everything apart. The compressors slipped on me at one point and the spring jumped up and nearly got me ;).

With everything apart, I cleaned all the dirt and grim off of them. I tested out each of the shock absorbers and found that one was okay, but the other was only coming part the way back out. On talking with Dad, I decided that it would be best to just replace them both whilst I had it all apart.

We attempted to take off the gland nut, but to no avail. We put penetrene on it and let it soak, made the length of the lever as long as we could, but try as we might they weren’t going to budge. One thing of concern was that one of the gland nuts was only on by a few threads. We decided that I should take the struts to Pedders and get them to crack the gland nut for me, before I did some damage to either the struts or, more likely, us!

Today I spent the day cleaning and painting the front suspension and steering components. I took all morning and a little of the afternoon to scrub all the caked on muck off the components and to give them a light sand. Once they were all done, I washed off the soap residue and let them dry in the sun.

Once again, the POR-15 was brought out. I finished off painting the cross member and engine bay that I had not completed last weekend. I had hung all of the components off the block-and-tackle chain, sort of like hanging out the washing ;). The steering rack was not hung up though. Dad reminded me to wear gloves once I started on painting the components. Lucky that he did as the gloves were pretty painted once I had finished.

All of the components look real good now that they are painted black. The only thing left to clean up and paint are the strut housing, springs and brake calipers. I’ll have to see if POR-15 is heat resistant, or if I have to get special paint for the brakes.

Today I dropped in to ZSpares and bought the bushes that need to be replaced on the front of the car. I ended up buying the D-mount bushes for the sway bar and the steering rack mount bushes. I probably don’t need to replace the steering rack mount bushes, but I think I want to change them, as one of them feels a little flimsy.

Today I focused on getting the engine bay ready so that I can start putting the steering and suspension together again, once they are refreshed. I needed to spend some time cleaning the cross member a bit more as when I did my last clean, I focused more on the gearbox tunnel and under the car than I did the engine bay.

With the last of the crud removed from the cross member, I went to work sanding the chassis rails, cross member and engine mounts. Dad and I decided that the chassis rails and lower would look great painted black, rather than the silver of the rest of the car. We thought that it would break things up a bit. Once everything was sanded and wiped down, I got out some POR-15 and started to paint. It went on really nice and had hardly left the brush before it started to smooth itself out and come to a mirror finish. It was interesting trying to maneuver under the car, paint and not get too much on me (I should have worn gloves).

I got most of it done, except for the back of the cross member and a little across the front of the engine bay, this will have to wait till next week. Dad and I think that it has come up looking really good and breaks up the engine bay exactly the way that we thought that it would.

Today I spent the day taking all the assorted components to do with the front suspension and steering off the car. I had soaked most, if not all, of the nuts and bolts with Penetrene a few weeks ago. This helped a lot as all but one nut came off easily. The only component that I couldn’t get off was the cross member. One nut just wouldn’t budge and started to strip. I decided that I could paint the cross member in place and left it on.

With all of the bits and pieces off, I could check all of the bushes. Most of them look pretty good and Dad said that they had to have been replaced and could not have been from new. Maybe they were replaced when the Peter got the road worthy for it. The only bushes that need to be replaced are the D-mount bushes on the sway bar.