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

Now that the engine bay is painted, we shifted our focus back to getting the last of the welding done. There was not much to do, but we wanted to get it done today, as Dad is going to be out of commission for a little while.

We hoisted the car from the front again to make it easier to weld. The welding that needed to be finished under the car was part of the floor pan replacement that we had done a few weeks ago. With that done, we lowered the car and moved inside to weld the front seat brace on the passenger side. The last of the welding was to strengthen the rear seat supports on the drivers side, as the metal had fatigued.

With all of the welding done, I can now get to work finishing off cleaning the under carriage and getting it ready to pitch up and paint.

The undercoat came out really good. It needed a quick rub down to get some roughness out of it, but was pretty good. I rubbed it back fairly easily and it ended up feeling very smooth. The battery tray came out pretty good too. I bolted the two pieces together (using some seam seal in between the items to reduce the risk of rattles) and marked and drilled the holes in the engine bay for it. Ended up putting in 6 bolts, I’m sure that it is never going to move! Read the rest of this entry »

Big step today, the engine bay has been undercoated. The high fill dried nice and I gave it a rub back and it has come out really smooth. The car is going to come out awesome once we do all of the panels as well. Once the high fill was sanded back, I wiped everything down with prep wash to get rid of any dust and stuff.

Dad and I are really happy with the way that the engine bay is turning out. As long as the weather holds out tomorrow, we will be spraying the top coats on the engine bay. Cannot wait to see the colour on the car.

Today I did a little work on the battery tray. It is quite rusty, but thankfully, is still very solid. I sanded it down with a coarse grade of sand paper. Dad an I modified the tray so that it is now a removable item, rather than being welded to the firewall and guard wall of the engine bay. I treated it with some POR15 rust converter and will paint it with POR15 black tomorrow. In the end, it will be painted the same colour as the engine bay.

The area under the battery tray that I had been sanding is looking pretty good. We decided to put a bit of high fill on it to get rid of a few bumps. We brushed it on, as for the small area that needed to be done, it wasn’t worth getting the spray guns out. It doesn’t need to be perfect, just good enough (with the battery in place, it’s going to be pretty hard to see anyways ;))

As the engine bay is getting close to being ready for a bit of paint, I bought some paint that is going to be the colour of the car. Nissan Silver 901. The colour looks pretty good in the can, cannot wait to see it sprayed on the car. I bought 1L of base colour, 1L of thinners, 1L of clear and hardener for the clear coat.

Did some more work on the car today. I sanded down the body filler that Dad applied to the engine bay, under where the battery tray is. It needed more body filler to get a few ripples out (we put the heater onto it so I could get it finished today). After the body filler was sanded down, I continued sanding the chassis rails. Just a little more to go and it will be ready for some paint.

I finished removing the last of the brake lines and soaked all of the nuts and bolts that I could see on the front suspension and steering with Penetrene. Once the engine bay is painted, I’ll be reconditioning all of the bushes and giving parts a lick of paint to freshen them up.