New 280Z owner

A forum for owners of S30 and S130 Datsun Z's... 240Z, 260Z, 280Z and 280ZX!
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boatdude13
Posts: 44
Joined: Tue Mar 01, 2011 11:08 pm
Car: 1995 Jeep Cherokee
1977 Datsun 280Z

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These are all of my pictures so far http://s1190.photobucket.com/albums/z442/boatdude13/




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That's right. It's going to be a VH

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300ZXttZMAN
Posts: 7807
Joined: Mon Nov 22, 2010 4:07 pm
Car: 1990 300zx Twin Turbo 5 spd pearl white.

My Daily: 2008 Frontier NISMO package, 4x4 Crew Cab.
Location: Sulphur, LA 70665
Contact:

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:welcome: !!!

I love S130's

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boatdude13
Posts: 44
Joined: Tue Mar 01, 2011 11:08 pm
Car: 1995 Jeep Cherokee
1977 Datsun 280Z

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Thank you! Wouldn't S130s be 280zx's?

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300ZXttZMAN
Posts: 7807
Joined: Mon Nov 22, 2010 4:07 pm
Car: 1990 300zx Twin Turbo 5 spd pearl white.

My Daily: 2008 Frontier NISMO package, 4x4 Crew Cab.
Location: Sulphur, LA 70665
Contact:

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Yea your right!!!! my b real busy at work. You are correct. Just trying to welcome new members.

S30
S130
Z31
Z32
Z33
Z34

LMAO

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gmac708
Posts: 1913
Joined: Thu Jul 31, 2008 1:59 pm
Car: :o)
1970 240Z
1972 510

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Welcome :wavey:
Could end up being a great build thread. Please keep us posted.

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boatdude13
Posts: 44
Joined: Tue Mar 01, 2011 11:08 pm
Car: 1995 Jeep Cherokee
1977 Datsun 280Z

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I'm sorry, I didn't mean to come off as douchey. I'm pretty new at Z stuff so I was worried I was misinformed. Thank you for the welcomes.

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300ZXttZMAN
Posts: 7807
Joined: Mon Nov 22, 2010 4:07 pm
Car: 1990 300zx Twin Turbo 5 spd pearl white.

My Daily: 2008 Frontier NISMO package, 4x4 Crew Cab.
Location: Sulphur, LA 70665
Contact:

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boatdude13 wrote:I'm sorry, I didn't mean to come off as douchey. I'm pretty new at Z stuff so I was worried I was misinformed. Thank you for the welcomes.
No man it was my mistake haha i was in a hurry and had my head on backwards haha.. But yea dude I hope you stick around!!!

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boatdude13
Posts: 44
Joined: Tue Mar 01, 2011 11:08 pm
Car: 1995 Jeep Cherokee
1977 Datsun 280Z

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Right! So...sorry for the lack of updates, there has just been a lot of other stuff going on. I do have pictures for you though. I was living in Gainesville, FL and moved back down to south FL with my parents for a few months and couldn't make any progress. Then I moved into a house and taking care of that has been taking a lot of my time.


I have been making some progress though, and now it is the summer and I have a part time job just for the car. HA! You will have to bear with me, a couple of pictures are missing because my camera is missing and might be in the laundry.

This is her as she sat in my apt complex for a few months

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My dad came and helped me get the engine down and we took his van and a borrowed trailer for the ride down south

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I got her to my new house using a U haul dolly like I had at first. Once she was in the garage (yes a garage!!!) I started separating things from the engine in order to get it out. Separating body and mechanical electrical, disconnecting vacuum lines, heater hoses, and fuel lines.

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You can see the engine under the blue tarp above. Also, two pictures up, you can see some wood covering the wall. I was modifying the garage to make it easier to work in and make it strong enough to lift the engine out (no engine hoist) I took a shelf off of the wall and found a big structural hole, so my dad helped me fix that.

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While all the moving was happening, VH heads were in the car and developed some corrosion on the cams. and there were metal shavings from where I had to drill out one of the head bolts after it stripped.

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I took the heads to a great machine shop (Specialties Machine down in Pompano) and they cleaned them up and polished the cams.
They look gorgeous, but those are some of the missing pictures. The pics didn't pick up on the magnificence though, so you aren't missing out on much.

I also picked up a transmission (VG 5 speed) from a local salvage yard. It came with a shifter and the price was okay so I went there. The customer
service was terrible though, so they threw in a starter to make up for it.

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the starter
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That's it for now. I'm trying to get the driveshaft and transmission out so I can lift the engine. The driveshaft is giving me trouble though. I'm almost at the SawsAll point of frustration, but not quite. I'm also going back and forth on the Mazworx plate and machining or the elwesso plate. I need your advice.

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boatdude13
Posts: 44
Joined: Tue Mar 01, 2011 11:08 pm
Car: 1995 Jeep Cherokee
1977 Datsun 280Z

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UPDATES!
I finally found my camera and some pics on my phone.
I see that for my last post I was having some trouble getting the driveshaft out. The problem was that the four nuts were soft as lead and were rather inaccessible due to the differential crossmember and the swaybar. I solved this with some nut blaster (great stuff) and a couple of friends with girlishly slender fingers.

It's out
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Right. so next up was the transmission.
I used a scissor car jack to hold up the rear of the transmission while un-doing the through bolts for the transmission crossmember. That was really easy.

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This is where it gets a bit weird. I don't have a transmission jack, so I thought I could use two car jacks (one for the front of the bellhousing and one for the output flange. Then I put those jacks on a dolly so that I could play with it to get the input shaft out of the engine. The problem was that my dolly was triangle shaped, three wheeled, and shorter than the transmission.

So I put a board on the dolly so that the jacks could actually fit on it. Then it became a game of balancing the jacks front to back, side to side, and lowering them at rates that would keep the weight of the transmission even on both of them.

Sorry about the phone pictures.
Rear.
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Middle
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Front
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The main problem with taking out the transmission is that it is one of three mounting points of the engine. The motor mounts are forward of the center of gravity so the weight of the engine kept binding up the input shaft of the transmission in the engine. I also had to take out the center console to give the shifter a bit of breathing room and we had to cut out the exhaust.

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A couple of weeks later I took out the radiator in order to get more room to take out the engine. This shot shows (a bit) the crazy angle the engine had without the transmission.
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So I bought this engine crane instead of doing the whole use the roof to hoist the engine out thing.
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This is my best friend Brandon, and he's been giving me loads of help. The hoist had issues like not having enough wheels, not being long enough, and leaking.
We had to take off the bumper and spoiler to get even remotely close enough to lift the engine. When Brandon's brother came over a few days later to help me actually pull the engine, I was constantly pumping to keep it in the air.

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I actually have some pictures of it out of the car. The engine is for sale as well as the transmission. They will be listed later. I wanted to clean up the car a bit and took her out of the garage and gave her her first bath since November.

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evildky
Posts: 14713
Joined: Sat Jan 31, 2004 9:23 pm
Car: 71 240ZT, 87 300ZXN/A-T, 06 350Z GT, Tundra TRD RW
Location: Louisville, KY
Contact:

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It's generally easier to pull the engine first then the trans. If you want to pull just the trans I found the easiest thing to do is to run a ratchet strap from the cowl down under the engine and back up to carry the weight of the engine. Lots of practice on my part ;)

BadQ45t
Posts: 3249
Joined: Fri Jul 26, 2002 7:54 am
Car: 21' Leaf SL Plus (wife's car)
05' X-Terra S 4x4
97' Q45t SOLD! Miss the old girl
84 300ZX (Original Owner)
2016 Mercedes Benz S550e V8 Power and 35 MPG
Location: Half Moon Bay, CA

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What a project!!! I am an old fart and I actually test drove this car brand new in 1977, the 280z was my dream car. I had a 5k inheretance in my pocket at age 16 and convinced my dad that buying a great brand new Japanese car would get me through high school, college and beyond. The 77' 280z cost $7800 bucks which was a MILE from my 5k, so I had to settle for a Toyota Celica Liftback GT for $5,400 (it was a dealer car as the sticker was $5,500.

I finally did get a brand new Z in 1984 (I still have it in my garage), but still thought that 280z was an awesome car.....good luck finishing this project and post up more pics. I wish I had a dad as helpful as yours (my dad did lend me the $400 bucks I was short in 1977).

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boatdude13
Posts: 44
Joined: Tue Mar 01, 2011 11:08 pm
Car: 1995 Jeep Cherokee
1977 Datsun 280Z

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Thanks for the support. I've just been working on the engine bay. Getting rid of brackets, battery tray, rust, fuel clutch and brake hardlines, and such.

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boatdude13
Posts: 44
Joined: Tue Mar 01, 2011 11:08 pm
Car: 1995 Jeep Cherokee
1977 Datsun 280Z

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Small update. I've been buying things! It feels like an early Christmas. I got rid of the hardlines in the engine bay and the motor mounts. There was rust under the battery tray, so it was cut out. The fuel pump was removed along with the hardlines to the back. I had the car outside for a while and all of the metal dust that was on the car rusted. Please advise on how to deal with this. I bought Wes' adapter plate and it came without surprises. He was really great to work with. I also picked up a clutch kit from Jim Wolf. It's A nice full face clutch and sprung hub. Should be nice and smooth. It's rated at 600ft*lbs. Oh, how should I keep the pressure plate from rusting without ruining it before it's installed?

On to the pictures!!
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