Datsun280z

Rad man.

 

Did you used to have a red 240Z with the number plate [sAMURI] or something?

 

The garage seems kind of familiar.

Na man, this is the only z I have had

Finally got the colour on it. Came out ok for a rangi garage job. Looks better than it did so I'll take it.

Managed to get the correct colour code which made matching the colour easy. Installed a few parts back on again.

Started stripping down motor to tidy a few things up.

Polished a few old alloy bits

Starting on new brake lines this week.

So what was meant to be a quick engine bay clean and repaint has somehow got a bit out of hand. I decided it would be a good idea for some stupid reason to weld up all the holes in the firewall and smooth it out as best I could which has taken longer than I expected due to the fact my car has had a LHD to RHD conversion.

This was the state of the firewall after engine was removed. Note the brake lines all over the place due to the conversion. I am guessing when they did the conversion they just relocated everything to wherever they could make it fit easily. Also patched up the old AC pipe holes etc.

Started by cutting off all the old unused brackets and welding up the hundreds of holes that have been drilled into it over the years.

Made up some of these little guys to weld to the firewall for mounting stuff too rather than holes through the firewall to try and keep fumes out. Just a steel rod drilled and tapped and cut into 10mm sections.

One half of the firewall semi tidy and in primer

Another issue I had was that the brake master cylinder was hard up against the inner guard previously. This is another result of the RHD conversion. This caused an issue of the brake lines having virtually no clearance coming out of the master cylinder so my fix was to cut a big hole and weld some stuff

.

Came out okish and now I have plenty of clearance for everything

The old radiator that was in it was stuffed, copper core was falling to bits and it was leaking from the top tank so throwing in an alloy guy. Quick test fit looks ok.

Next thing I decided to tidy as it annoyed the crap out of me was the front radiator support. It was bent and beaten up and looked rough as.

Cut out all the damaged metal and patched. There was no rust in behind which was a bonus. Treated inside as best as I could before welding shut.

Quick grind and its done, not flash but looking better than it did at least. Removed the stupid wire holder bendy things at the same time.

A million hours on the wire wheel and sanding and it finally has a first coat of etch primer down.

Long way to go yet....

So after waiting forever for replacement R31 brake rotors from OZ they finally arrived. Old ones off the donor car were past minimum thickness and had pretty bad score marks so didn't want to waste time with them.



Rebuilt callipers with new seal kits, tidied up and threw in some new pads.



Then throw everything back on the car and bleed the system. All looks ok so far with no leaks etc.



Just modified handbrake bracket to go back in then the brake mission is finally sorted. Not sad to see the end of rear drum brakes....

Finished off front brake upgrade, new R33 GTST rotors and SP500 pads



Started on rear brake conversion also. Am using R31 rear callipers. First job was to pull the suspension arms and tidy them up, more of the horrid blue to get rid of.





After degrease, water blasting, wire wheel and sanding they looked a bit better. Don't want to do that job again any time soon. Didn't have the balls to attempt the spindle pin removal...



New poly bushes thrown in



Made up some brackets to mount the handbrake cable to suit the new callipers. I am mounting them at 12 oclock as they are stock on the R31.



Handbrake cable and calliper bracket mounted up.



Now waiting on calliper rebuild kit and new rotors and pads to arrive from OZ. Hopefully finish it all off this weekend.

So after taking the cars to Taupo for a track day and doing a bit of this





It confirmed what I already knew, my brakes are mud. The rotors were stuffed and the pads were an unknown quantity and pretty much turned to dust. So decided to have a crack at upgrading them. Probably should have gone the tried
and tested route of the Toyota upgrade but I wanted to try and fit Nissan callipers/rotors due to the massive choice in pad and rotor selection available aftermarket. I scored a really tidy set of callipers and 280mm R32 rotors
and got stuck in.

The biggest issue was to make up an adapter bracket to fit the Nissan 4 Pot to my 280 strut. These brackets can be sourced ex Japan but it is not entirely clear what rotor they require (possibly Honda Odyssey?)
Shout out to Mikey who had already started down this road and had drawn up a basic profile for the bracket. I took his design, tweaked it a fraction, had it CADed up and rapid prototyped at work so I had something to start with.



I used this as the basis for my measuring to make sure everything fitted ok and offsets were correct.



In order to make a Nissan rotor work a few things need to be done. I plan to run with R33 GTS25T 296mm rotors so bracket is designed to fit them but I used the R32 rotors for testing fitment etc (both are identical offset and thickness)

First rotor needs to have the centre bore opened up to suit the 260/280 hub and re -drilled to suit. I am lucky that my work has a very advanced engineering facility with NC Mills and 5 Axis CNC gear and the boys down there hooked me up.



Next step is hub needs to be milled down fractionally to set correct rotor offset and clearance





When happy that everything was fitting right with the prototype brackets I had the boys CNC me two new brackets which came out super sweet!





I gave the Nissan callipers a bit of a tidy up also



Then bolted everything together and it looked pretty good. The Nissan callipers came with hard lines (from an S14) which I was able to use with a few tweaks to fit up to the stock 280 strut brake hose connection point. The old stock
280 ones would never have worked.



And this is how it came out. I still have to install the R33 rotors but you get the idea. From a cost perspective it has worked out pretty good because I have access to all the gear at work. I think you would definitely
be better off buying a known brand kit or going the Toyota route if you had to pay for all the machining and fabrication.





I still have to install the 15/16 Master Cylinder (Shot to Mike and Ben for helping me out there) which I stripped down and cleaned.


 

So with track day coming up next weekend had to get a few things sorted on both cars. The 260 getting new rear shocks and springs. Mine getting new Konis in the front to replace the Koni Reds to give me a bit more travel as I didn't have any.



Went with the Koni Sport 8641-1115s after seeing some of the guys on this forum having success with them.



Everyone has seen the process 1000 times.. cut strut tubes top off



Cut out section of unwanted tube



Weld strut top back on



Grind down welds and paint



One of the boys at work machined out the original gland nut to take the new Koni and made me a spacer for the shaft. Also had the strut top isolator drilled out and tapped so shock screws into it as the new Koni is not keyed like the old one.



Reassemble and job done. Have gained around 45mm of travel so worked out pretty sweet.



Threw new oil in diff also, Redline 75W90.



So ready for something to explode at the track day....

So decided I need some sort of stereo in the car as driving on a long trip gets pretty boring.

Installed a super budget JVC USB/AUX only head unit

Needed to make something to fill up the nasty holes a previous owner had hacked in to the rear plastic back in the day. They had wood screwed in some sweet old pioneer 5 1/4 speakers.

Made up some really basic speaker pods to cover the mess and hold some basic Fusion 6X9s. Painted satin black to try and match plastics. Random shape is to try and match plastic panel where possible and cover all the hole.

Lined the back of the panel with foam to try and make it sound a bit less crappy. Mounted it all up and now I have some very basic sound.

Back to top

After driving a little over the holiday break I had an issue that needed sorting.

I hadn't done anything with the block breather pipe so oil mist and splatter was ending up on extractors and fired around engine bay.



So made up one of these



And fitted to some hose and braided line



Connected to block like this



And to catch tank



Problem solved