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

Wow! It has taken a long time and a lot of hard work, but she is finally all one colour. Okay, it is only undercoat, but it is soo good to see her starting to look like a car again. We spent the day doing a few final touches (we had forgotten about the battery inspection doors and petrol filler flap). The weather was very nice, a bit of sun with a light breeze, so we decided to give her a coat of undercoat.

This is a big step as it means that the body work is (more or less) done. The only things to be done for the body now are a few repairs to the floor pan and inside the engine bay. We have decided to move on to the mechanics next, fixing up these few body flaws as we go.

Dad spent some time this week undercoating the interior side of the doors and tail gate and the sills and door frames. This allowed us to re-hang the doors and tailgate today. We had to make a few slight adjustments to the passenger side door so that all the gaps look spot on. We are both very happy with the way the doors are hanging.

We also put the front skirt on and lined things up there. All in all, it is great to see all of the panels on the car again. We did a quick scan for things that need minor adjustments and found a few lines that need to be touched up on the front guards and the rear driver quarter panel. Once these are fixed, we should be ready to undercoat the rest of the body.

Spent a little time today cleaning all of the excess fish oil and pitch of the doors and tailgate. Our current aim is to get the interior of the doors under coated and then rehung on the car. Before we could do that, as mentioned, we had to clean them up a bit. After a light sand to ready the painted areas for the under coat, we discovered a few little spots of rust that needed to be taken care of, nothing major, but it did set our plans for the rest of the day back a bit. At least they will be ready to be sprayed and hung the next time we work on the car.

Today Dad and I focused on getting the front guards bolted on permanently. We had a little more work to do to line up the front panel that the parkers/indicators attach to and a few places that needed to be pitched before final bolting together. We put on the new rubbers and foam that are under the guard. We also sprayed some hard to get at places before finally bolting on the guards. We do not expect to have to remove the guards again.

Once the guards were done, we moved onto cleaning the excess fish-oil out of the doors. There was still a bit of dust in the doors, but the fish-oil clumped it altogether, making it interesting trying to get it all out. Once the doors we cleaned up a bit, we used some thinned pitch to seal inside the doors. It will take a while to dry, but it should seal up nicely. We went a little overboard with the fish-oil in the tailgate and have set it up on the bench to let the excess oil drain, before we pitch the inside of it as well.

It has been a long time since I posted anything, which is not to say that we haven’t been working on the car. I just got lazy with the posts.

We’ve been busy getting all the dints out and shaping the body filler, etc. Well, I’m glad to say that at last, the majority of the car is done. On the weekend just gone, Dad sprayed the driver side, roof and tail in etch primer, and yesterday he sprayed the passenger side, doors and tailgate. The car looks neat to have some colour on it again, even if it is just etch primer. There are a few little pieces left to get ready (like the battery inspection doors), but the major panels are done 🙂

The next stage will either be fixing up some rust that we found on the floor, or starting to spray undercoats and block sanding. We’re just glad that the dusty part of the job is done.