Here´s my car´s new powerplant on it´s way to machine shop. Or at least some parts of it. And what would be better transport vehicle than my trusted old Z.

Hmm something seems to be different than in my old L28...

Last month we had small S30 get-together. 6 Z-Cars in same parking lot may not sound so much, but in Finland thats a lot.

Going Up!

Its been long time since last update. Mainly because I haven´t done anything else to the car except driving it. 2500km in about 2 months and everything has worked better than I expected. I just love how it drives and driving through small country roads has become every week thing for me. Brakes are powerful enough and suspension works very well. All it needs is more powerful engine...more on that later. :)

I have been visited few car shows e.g Sports Car Breakfast Club in Vantaa and Concours d'Elegance in Turku. Here´s one nice pic taken at SBC.

                                      Photo credits goes for Sami Inkilä.

Now that car has worked so fine I had time to assemble car lifter that I bought about year ago. I bought it very cheap from local trade school as they changed it for newer one. It is about 20-25 years old but works great and has been serviced regularly. It really helps working under car and first thing I did was to replace those MSA twice pipes. I kinda like how those look, but  they are very loud.

As replacement I used 2.5" exhaust with Dynomax muffler. Sound is deeper than with those twice pipes and there is much less highway drone. However it looks little bit dull compared to twice pipes.

New springs for coilovers

Originally my BC-Racing coilovers were meant for Nissan S13. Spring rate was way too hard for S30, so I changed softer springs. Originally springs were 8kg/mm in front and 6kg/mm in rear. I used 4kg/mm in front and 5kg/mm in rear and now it is perfect.

Also tried few laps in our local car club track day.
Photo credits goes for Ville Järvenpää.

Six months after I started this project car is finally in driving condition. There is still some interior parts that are not mounted but at least I can drive it now.
Also found out that suspension is way too hard, so need to get new softer springs.

If you compare these pics that were taken when car was still in US I hope you can find some improvement. :)

Brakes

Originally 240Z has brake disks in front, and drum brakes in rear. In my car drum brakes were already changed to brake disks and master cylinder was upgraded to larger originally found from 280zx turbo. However front brakes were original with non-vented disks and also brake booster was smallest that S30 has to offer, so I decided to upgrade those.

As brake booster I used largest that S30 has had, it is 10" diameter and found from 2+2 260Z. Master cylinder is 15/16".

In front I used Outlaw 2000 4-pot calipers. They are aluminium and weight only 1.3kg/piece. As disks I used Audi A4 312x25mm front disks that were made smaller with lathe so they can fit inside 15" wheel. Final diameter is 290mm.

Caliper carrier is cut from 12mm steel.  I used new EBC redstudd pads and braided brake hoses.

Rear brakes are from 280ZX turbo.

Interior

When I bought my Datsun it has interior that was not in very good shape. Dash and seats were cracked and all floor mats needed to be replaced.

Seats and floor mats were easy to repair. You can buy new covers for seats and new floor mats and in my opinion they also look quite good. There is some wrinkles in seats but at least they are crack free now. Seat straps were also in bad condition, so I replaced them.

For dash there is available new covers that are made from plastic and are glued in. However I took different approach repairing my dash. I cut and taper those cracks so that they were little bit wider. After that I used fiberglass to fill those cracks and on top of that I used fiberglass filler to smooth everything.

After filler was sanded I painted whole dash with plastic paint. It turned to be quite good and time will tell how long it will last. However if it cracks again I could always use that plastic cover.

I also replaced my original speedo and tach. I used Speedhut gauges that are said to be good quality. And those can also be customized different lighting color, different tick style, font, etc. Both my gauges are 4" Revolution series.

In place of original speedo I used GPS speedo and tachometer. Because it is GPS I don´t need to use speedocable. In place of original tacho I used quad gauge where is oil psi, water temp, fuel level and volt meter. Both are with green background light to maintain original look.

Coilovers

To get ride height that I would prefer I needed coilovers for my Datsun. There are not many off the shelf coilovers for S30, so I decided to try Nissan S13 BC racing coilovers. To use them in my Datsun I needed cut original strut tube and use threaded collar that is pressed and welded in.

My friend made those collars with lathe and I just welded them in place. 

I made camper plates that can be used with original strut tower. S30 strut tower is much smaller than S13, so there is not that much adjustment than these originally have, but at least some.

The Wheels

Here are new wheels for my Datsun. Well not new as they are maybe over 20 years old, but new for me anyway. I bought these wheels even before I got the car, but now I finally find time to refurbish them. I have always liked these old BBS multi-piece wheels. In my previous project car I had BBS RS´s and these are RM´s.  While they might be played out, at least in German car scene, I like them and I think that they suit my Datsun perfectly.

Wheels are BBS RM 029 and they are 7.5 x 15” ET30. Bolt circle is 5x114.3, so I needed to change original 4x114.3. In front I used Z31 hubs and in rear there were drilled new holes. Originally these wheels have 1.25” lips and I wanted to have rear wheel wider than front so I bought two new 2.5” lips. 

Centres were in pretty good original condition and I also liked that gold color, so I didn´t painted them. Only thing that I needed to do was remove old lips, polish those two that I was using in front and then put all parts together again.

First I needed to part lip from center barrel. I used VW/Audi jack (AKA the Widowmaker) which makes it very easy. That might be only thing that jack can be used for.

After that I removed original lacquer with some paint remover that I could find from our local hardware store.  

After few hours lips looked like this and lacquer could be easily washed away.

Then I wet sanded and polished those lips and after that wheels could be re-assembled. I used new stainless steel bolts.

And of course I had to try them to car. Tyres are Toyo Proxes T1R 205/55 in front and 225/50 rear. I think that I get small spacer, maybe 5-10mm, in front but rear fitment is perfect. I have never liked wheels that poke 20mm outside fenders so this is perfect fitment for me.

This is drive height that I would like to have so I need to use coilovers, but more from that later.

Paintwork finished

Finally after countless hours of wet sanding and polishing my paintwork is finally done. It´s nowhere near perfect, but considering it was painted in my garage and there was lots of imperfections  i´m very pleased with the result.

Here´s few before-shots. First is roof and all those white spots are dust and other trash.

 C-pillar was maybe the worst. Lots of orange peel and large drip in lacquer.

Door before wet sanding.

Here´s door after it is wet sanded with 2000 grid.

And here´s body after wet sanding and polishing.