Hello everyone. My name is Eugene and I am starting my research into the early z cars and what il need to start off and get going and what the cost will be. I come from having a 91 toyota mr2 with a t3/t4 turbo etc. I am a backyard mechanic but have access to a shop to use the lift, air compressor, paint gun, and have experience with doing a motor swap on the mr2.
I found out quickly that emission testing is tough to get around, and the Z is really the only older vehicle which i admire the looks of that will be exempt. My plans are to do an l28et turbo engine with 5 speed trans with r200 lsd. I think those are the correct terms. I also would like to know what the name of either of these "front air dams" in these pics are:
http://lh5.ggpht.com/_7G4xOBWkNEw/Su2rV ... C_5431.JPG
http://lh6.ggpht.com/_7G4xOBWkNEw/Su2rF ... C_5424.JPG
(is that a cf hood?)
http://lh5.ggpht.com/_7G4xOBWkNEw/Su2rQ ... C_5429.JPG
http://lh3.ggpht.com/_7G4xOBWkNEw/Su2vk ... C_5571.JPG

If anyone knows any good sites to shop for body parts or L28 performance parts please let me know. I really admire those cars I posted and would like to do a variation of them with my own custom additions. Im looking to pickup the actual project car early next year and start work quickly to get it running for summer.
Thanks!

No6th,

Welcome, please tell us more about yourself, where are you located? We have several members who have been down the modified 240z route and will have plenty of handy advice before and during your project.

Phil

Nice to have you aboard, Eugene, and we salute you for chooZing the early Z cars as a project.

You choZe the best time of the year to become interested in them, too. Altho most owners seldom part with their 240Z once they find one, those who do, usually sell them around wintertime. Those who buy, seem to do it around early spring. Almost NOBODY sells a Z during the summertime driving zeason!

We have a number of pretty nice 240s in this Club and a few are occasionally for sale. I know of one member who is just about to announce the sale of his entire Z collection (as soon as he can figure out how to Post them and enter pictures of them on this website). So your chances of getting a nice project are actually pretty good here.

Where are you from? Don't be shy about joining us, either ~ you don't have to actually own a Z to be a member, you just have to love them. To join, just press the Big Red Button on our Homepage. You'll instantly have 330 new brothers and sisters, who own 500 Z cars among them.

Lots of good folks and free advice in here.

I couldn't get any of those links to open for me, or I'd give a try at answering your questions.

Z ya ~
Frank T
MbrshpDir/CTZCC
Apr/70 240Z

Im from Bristol. If you copy and paste those links without the hyphen before them they should work. They are from the Z meet photo gallery from october 31 09 off the main page. They were pics of the orange z and red Z both with black fender flares. Also a blue z with a number 50 sticker in the rear quarter window. I look forward to seeing the pics of those Zs for sale.....

The red Z with flares sounds like Clive's "EVIL Z" 240Z;
The orange Z with flares sounds like Phrog's 280Z Fairlady "Carrot Car";
The blue Z with the "50" in the rear glass sounds like Bill Moreau's 280Z with the MSA Body skirt kit around it (ZZZZZZZYA?)

Might be wrong, but those are my best guesses until I can pry those links open. I think each of those cars has different spoilers, and one of them has a "snow plow" on the front!

*(YEAH ~ I just edited your entry by deleting the "dash" before each link and they opened right up for me. My guess was right ~ that's who these carz belong to).

Frank

evilz was on license plate. I think they may be 280z's. Im not too sure of the differences.

Easiest way to tell 240s 260s 280 apart from a distance is by:

1. location of the front parkinglights/turn signals (240Z had them at the exact corners of the front fenders, 280 moved them inside the front grille);

2. the bumpers (240 had skinny chrome bumpers which clung closely to the body and had minimal rubber strips; 280 had extended bumpers which stuck out away from the body and had lots of extra rubber on them);

3. the tail lights (240s had small "postage stamp" backup lights in one corner of the tail lights, later cars had "hershey bar" backup light strips);

4. and if you're looking for a 1970 car, (the first and lightest year), the 1970 has a "240Z" script mounted on the back pillar behind the rear quarterlight windows. Some people call them "wings". The later cars used this location to mount air recirculation vent holes, so the "wings" had to go. Also, the 1970 240Z had two horizontal chrome plastic vents on the rear hatch, just below the hatch glass. That was how they ventilated the cabin. The 1970 cars also had solid steering wheel spokes, while the 1971 cars punched out the inserts to make the wheel "perforated".

There are several other differences, but these are the easy ones which can be noticed from a distance.

Nowdays most of these cars have been modified so much it's difficult to find any of these distinguishing features at first glance.

Ah i see, So these cars I See with open headlights instead of with the glass enclosing them in the front is an aftermarket addition im guessing. Il assume they have very similar body styling then. Which one would you suggest to pickup for the swap?

Hi Eugene. Welcome aboard!

Not to take you away from my favorite Z Forum , but here are some other great resources, which you may have stumbled across already:

A wikipedia primer (not that wikipedia is the be all end all):
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nissan_S30

Great General Resources:
http://www.zhome.com/
http://www.classiczcars.com/
http://www.zcar.com

Here's a huge resource for swaps - there's probably an encyclopedia's worth of documentation on L28ET swaps here:
http://forums.hybridz.org/

PartZ:
Most folks order from Motorsport Auto (thezstore.com) & Black Dragon Auto (Victoria British), but here are some other suppliers:
http://zhome.com/PartsService/Vendor/Classifieds.htm
http://www.classiczcars.com/viewcategor ... order=desc

PS - Air Dams/Spoilers:
http://www.thezstore.com/page/TZS/CTGY/7AD1

Best of luck and welcome!

Cheers,
Colin

_________________
Colin F. Gentle
1970 Datsun 240z #11137

Yes, the headlamp covers are aftermarket add-ons. Most of them are pretty costly but they look great and really help with aerodynamics. Those "sugar scoop" headlamp bezels catch the air pretty good at speed.

Depending on what you want to do to the car, your choice boils down to the lightweight early 240Z or the better-built and more-rigid later models. If you intend to put gobs of horsepower into the car, the later year body shells were far more solid and rigid than the earlier cars. Once you get above about 200hp, a few more pounds of weight are not going to make much difference in perceivable performance, so you would want to go with the latest year you can find, I would think.

You should NOT carve up any 1970 Z car to make a hotrod! There were so very few of them made to begin with (and today so very few of them left), that it is considered "socially unacceptable" to chop one up or modify it drastically. They are worth far more today if left as stock as possible, and you would incur the wrath and disdain of many "old school" purists if you used a good one for a RestoRod project.

Clive's beautiful red "EVIL Z" 240 is a 1972 or 73, which was built stronger than the early 1970 cars. He has Niagara Falls as a power plant, putting something like a Bazillion horsepower to the rear wheels, so a few extra pounds of body support certainly make no realistic difference to his performance. If he was building the car for Bonneyville or something, it might matter. But as a street machine, his EVIL Z has more power than he can realistically put onto the ground thru any type tires he could fit on the car.

If I was going to build a "Z-Rod", I would begin by looking at any of the later 240s, or a solid 280. The 260s were only made one year, so they're pretty scarce too. I've seen a few pretty nice conversions made from 260s, but my personal guilt-meter wouldn't allow me to carve one up for a hot street project.

There are plenty 1974 240Zs left around. They were pretty solid, but lacked the performance of earlier years. They had some pretty practical refinements over the early cars too, which made them somewhat nicer to live with, work on, and drive. If you were gonna put a hot engine in any 240 body shell, your Z friends might love you better (or hate you less?) if you picked on a '74 body shell as your platform.

A lot of this boils down to simple personal conscience. Many of us feel protective of the older cars and wouldn't consider cutting up one of the few remaining early Zs. Others of us don't suffer from such conscience and want to stuff the highest horsepower into the lightest possible body shell. It's been my experience that MOST people who begin "street projects" on the 240Z don't actually finish them. They run out of time or money or workspace or motivation or get married or have kids or move away or start college or some other excuse. That leaves the car in pieces, un-driveable, to be sold or parted-out to the highest bidder. Effectively, the well-intentioned owner has then "killed" another 240Z which will never again see the road. That's sad to me.

If you can find an already "dead" Z car, that's best to use for a resto-rod project. If it's driving on the road when you buy it, you *probably* shouldn't start tearing it apart to stuff a small block V8 into it, UNLESS you already have SEVERAL THOUSAND DOLLARS tucked in your sock drawer to spend on doing the entire project correctly, once you start.
In other words, ("IN MY OPINION"), you shouldn't begin a project unless you REALLY intend to finish it. To do otherwise is to effectively "kill" a classic Z car needlessly, which might effectively take it off the road forever.

Be advised also that these cars never seem to be "FINISHED". I can point to any Z car in our Club which I consider to be "perfect", and the owner will probably tell me the NEXT PROJECT he is planning to "FIX" on his car.

It's an affliction. An addiction. A compulsion.
But it's true love.

LONG LIVE THE Z!

Frank

all of that info from last 2 posts is exactly what I was looking for. I dont need a light car....thats not my big concern. I would rather find a dead z thats an abandoned project to work on. Better deal than a running one I would say.

I like this guy already!

Hi, Gene (that was a sanitary thing to say!)

I agree completely w/ Frank, with the exception that I wouldn't tear into
ANY 240-Z, since there were only about 170-something-thousand of all
years 1969-73 to begin with, minus attrition over a 40-year period. And
the earlier the Z, the more adamant I am about my position, because:

In very round figures there were produced 540 '69s, 17000 '70s, 30000
'71s, 50000 '72s, and 70000 '73s. So the earlier the Z the
fewer there were initially. The '69-71s were almost like factory hot
rods, they were so peppy and so light. A lot were wrecked by un-
skilled drivers who simply tried to drive beyond their capabilities.
And being lightweight (2307 lbs), the sheet metal was quite thin
and rusted out easily since Ziebart and Tuff Kote Dinol were virtual
unknowns at the time. It amazes me that Carl Beck has found as
many surviving '69s as he has (152 out of 534 or nearly 30%).

I think Frank meant 260-Z for 1974, not 240-Z, since '74 was the
first and only year for the 260 even though they had some mid-
year changes: the early ones looked a lot like '73s, while the
later ones looked a lot like the 280-Z which arrived in 1975.

Frank is also correct that in the S30 Series (240-260-280Z), the
later the better for a stronger platform for a high performance
vehicle. Please go for the 280-Z; you wouldn't want to make a former
Paratrooper/Ranger/Martial Arts guy cry now, would you?

All Z Best,.........................Kathy & Rick

_________________
All Z Best,.......Kathy & Rick

1969 Z.CAR (#00013 10/69) 8/30/76
1969 ITSA.Z (#00171 11/69) 8/24/73
1970 OLD.Z (#06289 6/70) original owner
1971 510 2dr since 12/31/75
1969 1600 rdstr (our 160-Z)
1971 (#19851 1/71) sold
1975 75.Z (#01343 1/75)

You're right Rick ~ thanks. The 260 was 1974, and I wouldn't carve one of those up, either.

Plenty of old 280s left around, and if Gene wants a 240, there are far more 1973 cars available than 1970s.

HOWEVER ~ Gene, if you ever get the "bug" to do a total restoration back to near stock on any Z, PLEASE try to find the earliest one you can afford. There are so few of them left, they each deserve a dedicated restoration if you can afford it.

(and NO Rick, I would NEVER want to make you upset! I only LOOK stupid! )

I met someone who actually has a 260 shell. Both rear quarters cut off, has 2 new rear quarters ready to be welded in. Part of floor board cut out but said some sheet metal could be welded in. Other than that its in ok condition. Said engine could run with lots of work but swap is probably best. All for 300 dollars?

I also have some questions from reading forums:
fuel tank issues with hard corners
MAF sensor / throttle body/intake manifold hinders power
z32 transmission is better? needs bellhousing adapter/custom driveshaft?
does any t3 turbo bolt to the engine?
Is the wiring harness much different with the turbo motor?