AZGhost623

Yeah, I got that alot. quite a few people were like whats a corvette doing here, until they saw the engine... lol Spoke with a guy for a bit about the car and said to leave it badgeless. Maybe do a datsun emblem on the dash, which is what I might do. Also suggested maybe doing a vinyl sticker on the light for the license plate, or a license plate frame that says "Do it in a datsun" or "Datsun Dare to be Different" I like the frame idea. Now just to find one or have a custom one made.

Showed the car at Import Face off the other day. I was the oldest car onsite, and in my opinion the most original and best car there amongst all the other modern day cars... Picture is quite big, so please click here to get the full effect. 5312x2988 http://imgur.com/3MZQeSe Safe for website, resized. 1024x576

Last pic for now. I'll be showing the car off in its final form at Import Face Off in Chandler/AZ on 12/13. This was taken right out of the paint booth after it dried then color sanded last week. Keep in mind this is extremely rough, there is no fishing, and its been gone over with sanding equipment.

Getting closer. A little more work on the nose and some trimming, then paint next week. Then the sanding starts all over again. Lots of changes, you can probably also see them here in this picture below. But some of the more subtle ones I posted below. Rain gutter delete Rear valance fill (its sitting weird because there is a jack under the car) Z Emblem quarter panel hole fill/removal:

heh.. easy enough to fix.. would take this over rust anyday. B)

Just a small update... Got the car stripped down this weekend to the metal. So many layers of paint, bondo, and paint again. I am not even joking when I say the hood had atleast 1/4" of bondo on it. The car has to be atleast 5lbs lighter now. The hood took 5 hours alone just to get it to the metal using a pro-grade 3M Stripper wheel. I have quite a bit more work to do with prep before I cant paint it, but its going to be soon...

Before we put the front on, my wife also thought it looked very 'Porsche-ish" as well in the rear. Im super happy how this all turned out so far. I still have a lot of minor details and things to take care of.

Saturday work: Lots of prep work on the rear quarter fenders. Cut the top fender away showing the inner fender. Sawzall'd the inner fender into 1" widths and cleaned up the metal for welding. Interior removed/opened up to ensure nothing caught on fire and could be watched with a water bottle just in case to put out any flare ups. The driver side has an antenna line that runs over the hump. I deleted it out. The passenger side has a cable harness. Disconnected it under the passenger seat, and pulled it out through the body to the rear of the car. We tied a string onto is, so it could be easily pulled/fished back into the car after everything was welded up. The interior of my car is trashed, but it gives some good access to the inner fender to do some body sealer and/or some insulation. John at Ztrix did the welding, looking good for someone who claims to be an amateur welder! :) John rounded down the metal pieces because it was pretty sharp after we wiggled the tabs and they broke off. This way anyone working under the fender might not accidentally cut themselves. Traced the outline of the new quarter panel with a marker, and then used some wicked SEM epoxy on it to seal it to the car (30$ per 7oz bottle). It has a 90 minute cure time, so it gives time to work with the part for fitment. Used dry wall screws to screw into the panel and into the car to hold it into place while it cured. When it cures, its hard as a rock... serious industrial grade stuff! Fitted the tires, and trimmed as necessary. Took it for a short drive around the block, making it squat to see if anything rubbed, and trimmed as necessary again. That was pretty much the day which seems like simple tasks, but the prep work takes forever! I drove home on surface streets, hitting potholes and other things on purpose just to make sure if it was going to rub somewhere it could be trimmed. That was Saturdays work... 7 am until about 5-ish. Had to be home before dark, because I have no headlights! ============================ Sunday Work: Sunday was getting the front fenders rough fitted, and the imsa nose fitted. Lots of trimming work. This was the first time John ever cast this mold, so we were learning a lot of of these as to what needed to get done. Lots more measuring drilling holes, and trimming. The hardest part was lining up the fender headlight buckets to the gnose buckets and getting the headlight centered. That took A LOT of time figuring out how that was going to work. The front tires didnt work. With the adpater on it, it didnt fit and hit the corners. We felt it best to not trim the fenders as it would ruin the look. So I went back to my 16x8 tires as a temp solution. Ill get the front hubs converted to 5 lug hubs so that will remove the 2" adapter I have up under there and will suck the wheel in. It will then be right where it needs to be. Ill get some better pictures where the body doesnt blend into the floor so much later this week. Its a 20ft beauty queen right now. Lots of work still needs to be done. Im going to start getting pricing from a body/paint shop to see what its going run as well as getting a wrap done inlieu of paint. If anyone knows of a good place in greater Phoenix Area let me know. As far as wrap material goes, anyone who could ship me stuff and/or install is fine too. Big thanks to John Washington at Ztrix.com for all the help and assistance. This entire kit will be for sale up on his website once he gets it updated. Im sure it will include a lot pictures from this build as well as more that I didnt include up here.

Here they be... Installing on Saturday. Rear Quarter panels, Front Fenders, and GNOSE.

Fresh meat from tirerack. Never used them before, but they were the most affordable, and had the best selection of tires and quickest turn around time. Nobody in town had anything this large, without going special order. So tirerack drop shipped the tires to Firestone out by me. They then called me up told me they had them, and I dropped my wheels off tonight. They were all kinda in awe on how big these tires were, and ot gf course... they asked what car was ioing on? Provided them the pictures, and they couldnt believe it was going on a Datsun. I showed them a picture of an instagram follower I have who is also running 345x40, but in an 18. I think their heads blew up at a that point haha toyo proxes TQ - street/drag radial 345x40x17

Shape is down. Need to work on the gas tank area. A little bit of more work, and then Ill have the final piece that will go on the car.

I towed it to the shop on a flat bed trailer since its kinda undriveable with the big tires on the rear prior to the fender cut. Drilled out all the spot welds, and punched the new piece, and spot welded it back into place. It definitely is an integral part of the car. It fixed a minor door issue I had once the part was replaced. Just thought it was a weird door issue.... Thanks man! Its a lot of measuring and more measuring plus some geometry work. Just getting it mounted up on the car, and looking at it from the front, sides, and rear also helps a lot in looking at the symmetry of the two parts. We did make some small templates on some cardboard sheets, that we were able to flip on the other side to get the right depth correct and shape of the wheel well. There is a cool link on a IMSA 240Z restoration back in 2014. Looked at that page quite a bit when making the shape to come up with someone unique of our own. In particular the rear flare covers the entire wheel. I kinda dig the tappered look on the rear like the original datsun works flares had, so thats what we went with when coming up with this design instead of the entire wheel being enclosed. The RWB Porsche stuff was also an inspiration when coming up with the design as well. http://www.carbuildindex.com/34701/imsa-gtu-datsun-240-z-restoration/

Reaction Research is now Ztrix. We actually used his YZ fender as a base that wasnt nearly as wide as I needed. We then threw on another fender of his on top of it which kinda worked, but not really. So we chopped it up and remade it to be what we needed it to be.

LOL I think Ill pass..

like barbie pink? LOL