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

Dad said that this is the slow part. Spent the day doing more shaping. Dad focused on the tricky parts (ie the rear quarter panel and sils) whilst I worked on the flat areas (tail of the car and the driver side door). I’ve not done any sanding of bog before so today was a learning experience. I think I’m starting to get the hang of it, but doing large areas is tricky. But as Dad said, if you take off to much, you just put more on and try again.

We had to re-repair a repair that we had done to the passenger side guard. There was too much pressure on the solder and it gave way. We brazed it this time and it is much stronger. We have to re-do the pitch in that guard now and start the shaping again. Luckily we had only applied the metal-mend and hadn’t shaped it yet.

Dad spent some time on the car this week. He’s moving along with shaping the panels and it is looking really good. He also had a chance to paint the petrol tank with POR-15. What a finish! He painted it on by brush and it looks like it has been sprayed on.

I focused on cleaning the surface rust off the rest of the car and treating any rusty spots with the POR-15 rust treatment. Dad also did more work on shaping the car today as well. We both hate this part of the job as it is so dusty. The sooner we get it done, the sooner there will be no more dust 😉

Today we started getting ready to work on the panels so that they are ready for etch priming. First thing we had to do was to remove the surface rust. With the car stripped back to metal, and being located by the sea, the car looked quite rusty. I used the orbital sander to clean up the driver side of the car first. The plan is to clean up one side if the car, do whatever panel beating is required, bog it up and etch it so that the surface rust doesn’t come back. Once the whole car is etched, we will be able to prime it and focus on other issues.

Whilst I was removing the surface rust, Dad was working on the tail of the car. With the petrol tank out, he could straighten out a few dings that the car had received in its life. He then pitched up the inside of the guards where there was little to no paint already. Under the car is looking nice and sealed up now.

Had the day off work today thanks to Labour Day (gotta love public holidays), so I decided to do a little work on the car. In preparation of a little panel beating that is required on the read end, I decided to take the petrol tank out today and to remove the exhaust clips so the exhaust could be moved out of the way. Read the rest of this entry »

Spent a little time on the car today. Mainly focused on getting the pitch from the floor inside of the car off. Took a bit to get it off, but I have revealed all of the floor now and it looks like that the passenger side is the worst side. The driver side had a few surface rust spots, but nothing as bad as the passenger side.

Edit: I’ve added a few pics of the passenger side floor pan to this post.

I also got some wax and grease remover to help with removing the contact glue from where the vinyl was glued. Gave it a quick test and it makes cleaning the glue off heaps easier.