With the transmission all buttoned up, at this point, the car was ready to be moved from outside under my makeshift tent, into the garage to have the motor installed. I picked up a set of Yokohama S-Drive tires in 205/55/16 and had them mounted on some 16×8 XXR 513 wheels. This was a temporary setup until I could find what I was really after… Wheel and tire package ran me $800 out the door. Thanksgiving Black Friday deals were to be had! But a problem came up when adding the new wheels that warranted closer inspection.

This was not a normal droop on the rear wheel. Turns out the rear strut on both sides tore through the rubber mount up in the strut tower. I spent a good 3 days looking for this replacement part, but it was no longer available. Hitting up all the normal spots, I was given a super secret name… “Z Specialties” up in Washington. After some talking, the owner assured me some good rubber from a wet climate like Washington would last me several years of good use if taken care of properly. A deal was struck for a used set off one of his parts cars, the parts were on their way.

The next day I started working on getting the engine put together.

Competition Clutch Stage 2 clutch and lightweight flywheel. Didn’t want anything too heavy, but the car still needed to be “streetable.”

Weber DCOE45 carbs added, along with the MSA 6-2-1 coated header, 2.5″ diameter. Some dress up bits, as well as the CSR electric water pump and trigger wheel were mounted on the stock crank pulley. The bracket for the magnetic pickup has also been mounted. The heat shield came from z car customs jdm (zccjdm.com) It caused problems and had to be removed. I couldn’t get this to seat properly no matter what I did with the carb. It uses the bolts which mount the carbs to the Cannon intake to hold it in place. For someone looking for a perfect seal, it wasn’t going to be a very good idea for the long term. I later sourced a real JDM heat shield and bits which worked perfectly. It doesn’t require the mounting bolts for the carb to hold the piece in place.

All assembled and ready to get installed! At the time, I was going to run air conditioning. However, it has since been removed. I am sometimes regretting that being in AZ, but I decided it would be a fun car to drive when we have nice weather. I’m sure any dealerships would agree. Similar to how people in the midwest or east coast pack their Z away for the winter, I pack mine away during the summer months when it’s over 100 degrees. I removed the AC system, as I was looking for more weight savings. I still have all the parts, so it may get added later.

Always handy when someone has a crane in their garage… Getting ready to put the engine in.

After some wrangling, the engine was in! Now the wiring can begin.

In the next episode, we’ll check out the wiring, and see if it’ll fire up for the first time…

Questions about this build? Comments? Discussion here: Widebody 280Z discussion

With the interior in nice condition, it was time to get back into the drivetrain. I sourced a close ratio 5 speed transmission to swap in place of the 4 speed. It was a Craigslist find for $120. Not knowing what the condition was like, I got “vanmansam” and “tjyak50” off Desert Datsuns (local Datsun club) to help with a rebuild. TJ was racing his Z, and had already rebuilt his a few times with some ‘secret sauce’ – which we would be including in my rebuild. I bought all new synchros and bearings from nissanpartszone.com. I think it was about another $300 in parts, plus beer and pizza to do the tear down and rebuild on the 5 speed. Even though a lot of the parts didn’t need to be replaced, I opted to have it done.

I can’t even begin to tell you what all we did here, except for the complete tear down of the transmission.

This is part of the ‘secret sauce.’ New synchros ground down a couple thousandths. TJ has it well documented as solving his ‘crunching’ when shifting at 7000 RPM, or even popping out of gear. The tricks he learned at the time (which have since grown) were applied to my transmission.

All back together. The rods move the collars. You can see the brass synchros between the gears.

In Part 6, we’ll get back to the engine installation!

Questions about this build? Comments? Discussion here: Widebody 280Z discussion

With all the effort in the mechanical components of late, we needed to take a break and address some of the interior needs. The original interior doors were cut up pretty badly from the previous owner. From the looks of it, they had a 6×9 speaker of some sort in the door, with tweeters high up on the door. I opted to go out and find new door cards, and with a kit from zcarsource, I was able to recover the new interior panels to like new status.

There was a problem however… My 280Z wasnt just a 280Z, it was an extremely early model. This was a hard lesson for me to learn as I was trying not to spend money twice. The door card would not fit because of the lock placement. Do I drill a hole, or preserve this work and sell it? I opted for the second option.

I sourced new door cards, and bought another kit to redo the door cards after selling the others. However, they were in pretty good condition. Due to so many things going on, I just put those door cards on, and haven’t recovered them yet. This would become the first of many small issues leading to some major headaches in some other areas of this build.

The seats turned out awesome in my opinion. I bought a leather kit from one of our sponsors here, Interior Innovations. The deal included free embroidery, as well as any color stitching you wanted. I bought 240Z foam inserts from the z store, and wrangled with the seats until I gave up. I decided to have the pros handle it and went to a shop to have them do it. I don’t think I could have done it any better.

As you can see the passenger side rocker panel was totally destroyed. A new one would need to be put into place no doubt about it.

This is one part of the project I hope to never do again. But I learned so much during this experience, it’s invaluable now. I never knew how these cars were pieced together. It was interesting seeing how this car all goes together with the various pieces. Basically there are spot welds about every inch or so. You use a special drill bit that drills out around the weld. You do this all the way around, and then beat the panel until it comes off. You then grind down all the existing spot welds, and punch the new part every inch or so. Fit it into place, and then spot weld it back in. I followed up with seam sealer and hammered down the edges around it to create a clean fresh look. The seam sealer filled in any gaps between the metal and created a sealed finish on the part. It was then sprayed with a chemical to protect it from future rust, as well as painted. Interesting enough, when this was put in, it also fixed the passenger side door which had some fitment issues no one could fix.

Based off the passenger side damage from rust, I patched a few holes in the floor pan rather than replacing both sides. Thinking about it now, I should have, but it should be fine for a long time. Floors were prepped, treated and then I covered the entire floor and doors with sound deadening / heat-blocking insulation.

The dash was freshened with a new full face dash cap. I wanted the vintage look, so I kept the original wood grain steering wheel. It is quite thin compared to normal steering wheels. A new center console was also sourced.

With the bulk of the interior work completed for now, it was time to dig back into the mechanical bits…

Stay tuned – Up next, the Banzai Runner gets a 5-speed!

Questions about this build? Comments? Discussion here: Widebody 280Z discussion

All new suspension components, bushings and bearings would be installed. Found a set of Tokico Adjustable Illuminas on Amazon before they went unavailable.

Got the rear diff pulled in about half a day. I definitely needed some help from my father in law on this one. We pulled it out all in one piece.

One thing I knew for sure I wanted to do was get rid of the drums on the rear. So I went with getting a brake conversion kit using the maxima calipers so I could retain the use of the parking brake. Getting the stub axles pulled apart was not an easy task even when it was out of the car. I should have just cut the brake dust shield, but I pulled it all apart. A hard lesson learned. I found my rear end ratio was 3.54 R200. I did some research and was able to source a 3.91 R200 differential from an 1982 automatic turbo Z here in town.

Knowing I wanted an LSD, I went on the search to find one. I read about several that are available, but some had me worried about reviews I read like the OBX, and others cost more than I wanted to spend like Quaife. I ended up finding a good compromise with a genuine NISMO 2 WAY 38420-RS660 for $350. I took the new LSD and R200 down to Differential Specialists here in town, and they put it together for me for 70$. They did the bushing conversion so it would fit. The ring gear was 10mm, while the nismo lsd was 12mm. It would need bushings to make it fit correctly. The shop used 4 bushings to keep the ring gear centered, and then the rest would not be, but would provide for clamping force as needed. It was filled up with Redline MT90 and Redline LSD modifier.

At this point I knew I wanted to keep with the L28 engine, but have it beefed up a bit. I wanted ‘old school cool,’ so I opted to go the triple Weber route on some kind of modified L28. I found an Ebay seller selling a longblock for $3200. High compression, P90 head, and F54 block. Oversized pistons as well. Everything on paper looked great, so I did the buy it now and waited for it to come in. In the meantime, I was able to get the rest of the suspension put into the car along with the MSA Type 3 air dam. I opted for the big brake kit up front using the well-known toyota 4×4 calipers. I was a bit surprised how easily they went in compared to everything else. Slotted and drilled rotors on all four corners were another performance modification I wanted as I planned to track this car on occasion.

More parts started arriving during the week… New ignition system – crank-fired. A more modern ignition system that would remove the need for a distributor, sourced from TopEnd Performance.

New engine showed up:

…as well as the triple Weber 45 DCOE carburetors from TopEnd Performance.

Next up – We take a break from the mechanical upgrades and tackles some interior work.

Thanks for following along so far! Questions about this build? Comments? Discussion here: Widebody 280Z discussion

I found this 1976 280Z from a place called Copart here in town in 2013. Oddly it was painted the exact same way as my ZX. Original light sky blue with dark blue on top and bottom. Part of me wondered if the same guy may have owned this car. Also I saw it as a sign that I needed to get this car! I have never seen this paint scheme before other than on the ’79 I had. This car was listed as a donation car, and that all proceeds went to a foundation for kids. I paid $800, sight unseen, just pictures on the internet. I got extremely lucky on this, as I’m sure lots of people are wondering about rust. It’s always been an Arizona car. Sure, for a 40 year old car, there is going to be some rust, but turns out it wasn’t bad at all. A little up front by the headlights as normal. But the passenger side rocker panel and door were completely rusted out which would be fairly easy to replace, and a little back behind the rear tires on both sides.

Pictures of the 280Z at the auction lot:

Pictures of the 280Z finally at my father in laws shop, and found some new wheels on craigslist that will help with moving the car around as the restoration progresses:

So the first operation of business was to get the old engine out. Got it pulled out fairly quickly and realized the engine was done for. Coolant had sat in the engine, and rotted away the passages over the last 12yrs. It was brittle like paper, and crumbled without any effort.

A lot of the rust you see, is just surface rust. It all cleaned up very nicely with minimal effort. The battery tray had no problems whatsoever – always a good sign!

The hard part was what to do as a replacement engine. So many choices to chose from… V8, L6, RB, SR, KA… lots of research was done at this point since I hadnt figured out what I wanted this car to become. Everyone was pushing me towards RB, but I wasn’t so sure just yet. Cost was a major factor in all of this as well. I tend to like to be different than everyone else. Something original, something my own creation… So while I was on that task of figuring out what to use as its heart, I continued to tear down the car.

Click here for Part 3 – We dig into the suspension and brakes!

Questions about this build? Comments? Discussion here: Widebody 280Z discussion