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

Now that the mechanical bits and pieces are more or less done (spare the details), we decided that it was time to get back onto getting the body ready for painting. It’s been quite some time since we did any work on the body, which is a good thing. This has given the body plenty of time to settle down and let any rust spots that we may have missed, reemerge. As it happens, we have only found one such spot, the passenger side wheel arch.

We ground off any repairs that we had done in the area and dug out the rust. There wasn’t much rust and we were be able to bronze fill the holes. With that minor rust spot repaired, we moved onto sealing all of the “hard-to-reach” places. We usually use fish-o-lean to do this, but we decided to use a product by the same guys that make POR-15. The new product is called SW-2 Oil. We were able to fill all of the cavities in the rear guards, the sills and a few other places. This should hopefully slow/stop anymore rust (fingers crossed).

We went over the roof and C-pillars to see if we were happy with the repairs that we had done. There were a couple of spots that needed a little fine tuning, but aside from that, we were happy with the work. So, we decided that it was time to put on the high-fill. Dad only painted the roof and C-pillars. He gave it a good thick coat and it looks fantastic. Whilst the paint was still wet, the reflection in the roof was awesome. We are both very happy with the results.

Well, as you can see from the date of the last post and this one, I have been a little busy (read lazy) and not updated the progress of the car. We have been busy on the car and things are moving along nicely.

Since the last post, I have completed installing all of the brake system. Everything went together nicely with the only thing causing me any trouble was bending a few new pipes (which wasn’t that big a deal). The brake and clutch hydraulic system is all together, but no fluid has been put into them yet. I want to leave this for a while, just in case I need to take things apart again.

The engine is also back in the car. And I have to say, it was the easiest installation of an engine that I have ever participated in. Everything just fell into place, and I only knocked the engine bay once. Dad was very happy with the way things went and was amazed that we had the engine in and mounted in under an hour. It’s really starting to look like a car again.

The one thing that I wasn’t happy with was that the car didn’t sink very much once the engine was back in. Maybe once I get the car back on the road again, the new shockers will settle down a bit. Time will tell.

The one drawback that we did have, and only a minor one, was that the seal in the speedo cog, thingy was worn and leaked oil. We had to take it out and Dad got a new seal from Nissan. He also got a new elbow for the heater hose to fit to the engine block whilst he was there.

I have also taken the Dash and center console to The Dashboard Doctor to get repaired. They are going to re-skin the dash for me and they are going to try to re-join and then skin the center console. The console was not skinned originally, but hopefully, they will be able to do a good job.

That more or less brings things back up to speed. I’ll try and be more diligent in keeping things up-to-date. I’ll process some photos that I have taken and post them up soon too.

During the week, my sister (Catherine) took the rear brake slave cylinders and shoes to BGT to get reconditioned. Dad picked them up for me on Friday. Now that I have all the bits and pieces done and everything is painted, I can start putting things back together again.

Well, I thought everything was painted. While I was laying out all of the brake lines, I found a couple of small s-pipes (for the front brakes) that I had not yet painted. I cleaned them up and gave them a quick lick of silver paint, and touched up on of the other pipes (missed painting under the rubber mounts).

I then started to put the brake and fuel lines back onto the car. This was quite a tricky task as the pipes had to go through the handbrake and over the diff. The free ends of the pipes kept on catching onto things. It took me a while, but I finally got them all in place and they look pretty good. The silver pipes on the black under body looks cool. With this done, I moved onto putting the handbrake cables back in place. This was a fairly easy task, right up until I had to put the wedge clips in to stop the cable ends from coming loose. This was an interesting task to do under the car. Got them in and then the last part that had mu stumped for a while was where the return spring latched onto. Dad noticed a very small black dot in the service manual and we finally got the spring in place.

The next task on the list was to put the half-shafts in place. This was a pretty easy task to do. I’ve tightened the nuts up most of the way, but was not able to give them a good hard tighten, as I had nothing to stop them from spinning. To help out in this area, I moved onto putting the rear brakes together.

The rear brakes went together fairly easily. Everything seemed to just fall into place as you would hope. Even getting the clip on to hold the slave cylinders in place went in easily. The only thing I goofed on was not winding back the self adjuster. We couldn’t get the drum on a first, but with a quick adjustment and a little bit of wobbling around, the drums went into place. I then attached the handbrake cables to the rear brakes and gave them a little test. Everything was working as expected. All that is left to do now is to connect the brake lines to the slave cylinders.

After painting most of the rear end mechanics last weekend, Dad and I were able to finish installing the springs and struts this week. We started out by compressing the springs and putting the new rubber boots and bump stops into the compressed springs. After a little fiddling around, we got the springs in and the top caps on and got the main bolt on enough to hold it all together. We then uncompressed the spring and used the jack to raise and hold the strut in place while we bolted it to the car. The procedure was then repeated on the other side. It looks good to see it back together again, cannot wait to see what the ride feels like.

With the struts back in place, I was then able to finish taking the brakes apart. They came off fairly easily, just one of the springs was a little tricky. The clips holding the slave cylinders on took a little convincing to come off though. My sister is going to take the slave cylinders, shoes and one of the brake lines into BGT on Monday to get them replaced/reconditioned. If all goes to plan, Dad will be able to pick them up on Friday so we can have the brakes together again next weekend.

The finally task of the day was to do a little more painting. When the struts were off the car, I was not able to get to a few places (like under the wishbones). After a little more cleaning, I finished painting all the components black. I decided to paint the drums silver and they have come up looking really sweet. I’m very happy with the way that it is all coming together.

This is a bit of a retrospective post, but, according to my notes, I continued work on the rear of the car.

I cleaned up the driver side of the diff and rear mechanics and then, once I had dried it all, painted them. I also painted the half shafts, springs, and other bits and pieces. It looks pretty neat all painted black.