Project Theseus

[zedfoot]

Grannyknot, you need to chime in. You've done lots of these.

[Noll]

Consider that there will be less filler involved the higher up the c-pillar you go rather than the length of the quarter panel. Six inches of seam rather than 35 or more. Are the original spot welds hidden by the hatch that important?

Very true! It's not so much the original-ness of the spotwelded area that's important to me, but more the fact that with the way the panel wraps around to the spotwelded area, it may be a pain to get them all to lay flush. I suppose I should just bite the bullet and do it all, would be a bit of a shame to cut up my complete replacement panels.

[Casey_z]

This how we did the replacement

[Noll]

This how we did the replacement

Thanks for the pic, that will be super handy! Looks like you cut it at the top right where it L's down to the flange in the hatch area?

[Casey_z]

My brother has a body shop and did the heavy lifting.
The idea is to avoid the butt weld seams as much as possible

[grannyknot]

Grannyknot, you need to chime in. You've done lots of these.

Thanks Eric, I haven't seen this thread until just now, Noll, that's a big project in front of you and it looks like you have a good handle on it.
I agree with 510longroof for the same reasons he mentioned but also that upper body line is so visible that if it isn't welded, shaped and filled perfectly it will be the first thing you notice. From your photos I have a feeling you are going to run into more rust than you think, have you considered having the car dipped? Not cheap but it will save you months of scraping, sanding and cleaning.

[Noll]

Thanks Eric, I haven't seen this thread until just now, Noll, that's a big project in front of you and it looks like you have a good handle on it.
I agree with 510longroof for the same reasons he mentioned but also that upper body line is so visible that if it isn't welded, shaped and filled perfectly it will be the first thing you notice. From your photos I have a feeling you are going to run into more rust than you think, have you considered having the car dipped? Not cheap but it will save you months of scraping, sanding and cleaning.

Thanks! A lot of work ahead for sure, but I think I can get it all done. Yeah, I think I'm going to just bite the bullet and cut the spotwelds out and put in the replacement quarters as factory. May be a little more effort to get it all to fit nicely, but will be well worth it.

I would love to get the car dipped (I saw your thread on HybridZ when you dipped your grey car), but lack of $$ sadly prevents that for the time being. My plan for this build is to get the car rust-free, give it a half-decent rattlecan paintjob, and enjoy it as-is for a while, then when I have the cash, tear it down, have it dipped and painted professionally. As I'm doing all the work myself, so far the only real major expenses look to be the repair panels I still need (floors and such), wheels/tires, and all the misc brake/clutch/driveline revamping I'll need to get everything working safely. It sucks in terms of the sheer amount of time I have spent (and will continue to spend), but time and getting covered in old undercoating and grinding dust is free haha.

And yeah, I'm sure I'll find more hidden rust, but I think I've located the majority of it. As well as the floors/rails/rear quarters/rockers, and the usual misc front end patches, there also looks to be some just above where the seatbelts bolt in at the bottom (before the floor goes vertical to the tool storage bays), a couple areas of rear storage area floor, and part of the subframe rail that runs back there under the floor (thankfully behind the rear suspension mounting points). A pain for sure, but 80% of it is just usual Z rust, just on the rustier end of the scale.

[grannyknot]

I just finished going through the whole thread, I remember this car now. Do you have the car in Barrie yet? I'm half an hour south of you, I hope you got a good penny for those American Racing wheels, they are rare and expensive these days. I noticed you have the old replacement rockers, those were made in Quebec by a company that is out of business now, they are much a more accurate re pop than the rockers Tabco sells so hang on to them.
You might want to make a list of all the parts that you are going to need and post them up in your thread, there are a number of us in the club that have stuff squirreled away and might be able to help you. Make sure you keep Sunday the 28th of April clear, that is the Z swapmeet day, lots of goodies.

[Noll]

I just finished going through the whole thread, I remember this car now. Do you have the car in Barrie yet? I'm half an hour south of you, I hope you got a good penny for those American Racing wheels, they are rare and expensive these days. I noticed you have the old replacement rockers, those were made in Quebec by a company that is out of business now, they are much a more accurate re pop than the rockers Tabco sells so hang on to them.
You might want to make a list of all the parts that you are going to need and post them up in your thread, there are a number of us in the club that have stuff squirreled away and might be able to help you. Make sure you keep Sunday the 28th of April clear, that is the Z swapmeet day, lots of goodies.

Yeah, we talked at the Hamilton Z car meet back in August (I think?) 2017. Car is near Ottawa currently, I ended up leaving college (which is why I was in Barrie) last Jan, and traveled the world last summer.

All said and done I got ~250$ for the wheels, as I sold them together with the grey parts-car. A local 510 guy purchased both, and he did the work of getting all the stripped and seized lugnuts off for me and replacing with known-good wheels/tires, so that was nice. Eventually I'll snag the front windscreen chrome trim from him, as he wants to build that 240 into a rally car and won't need it.

Good to know about the replacement rockers! I knew they looked decent, but didn't know they were a better mold than the TABCO bits. They have a bit of surface rust from sitting on the roof of the 240 in a forest for 10+ years, but nothing a sandblaster won't clean up easily.

That's a great point too, and I'll have to make it a point to drive down for the swap meet!

Off the top of my head, this is what I need (I'm sure there's more I'm forgetting):

- 5spd trans
- front lower valence and turn signals (early 260, so 240 bits will work)
- 240 front/rear bumpers, a bit dented is fine
- 2 amber sidemarker lenses (i'm going to delete rears, so just need fronts)
- driver's seat (condition not important, I have a good pass. seat I can swap the rails with)
- both headlight assemblies (not the sugarscoops, the light buckets/etc. that bolt to the inside of them )
- radiator
- lowering springs (I'd like to go coilovers eventually, but $$$)
- 15x7 or 8 wheels (I'm currently thinking of getting rota RKR's, but if something used that's interesting catches my eye that's great too)
- clutch and brake master cyls
- throttle linkage end that encapsulates that metal ball section near the firewall
- exhaust from the back of the headers to the rear

I haven't gone thru the brakes or engine yet, so I'm sure there's a lot of little stuff I'll need there too.

Sheetmetal I need:
- floors/subframe (will go with Zedd Findings unless someone has parts they never used)
- seat mounts (Bad Dogg makes these, but I'm not adverse to some cut out of a parts-car)
- inner rockers (they are good until just below the dimple-die'd section, so I may just make the bottom section and weld on)
- rear lower valence (zedd findings makes too, but I've heard mixed things about how the curve fits)
- rear taillight area
- rear hatch slam panel
- lower seatbelt mounts
- possibly the lower rad support, will see if I can salvage mine 1st

Some of the metal bits a guy with a parts-car in Colorado has, but he's not able to cut them off for a while as he just had leg surgery; I don't mind waiting, but if I could get the rear taillight area sooner, that wouldn't be a bad thing, as I need to weld that panel on before the rear quarters can go back on over top of it.

[Noll]

Progress at long last! Got the car into the garage today, which was quite the process given that the rear brakes seem to be half applied. Easy enough to tow, but nigh-on impossible to push the last bit into the garage.





With that done, I wasted no time doing a preliminary cut into the rear quarters. Obviously the final removed section will be cut much higher up, I just wanted to see if any more rust was lurking behind there.





1st order of business will be to remove this shoddy patch and weld in some good metal.




This will need replacement too:



Conveniently I purchased a similar section for my Niva that I didn't end up needing, so I'll re-purpose it for this:



I'm going to 240z bumpers, so the bumper mount (already rusted out and hanging by a tiny bit of metal) went too:



Similar cut on the other side:

[grannyknot]

Noll, just a word of caution, if you remove all of the rusted panels at once there is a good chance of the body sagging with so little metal left to support it, then you run into big problems went you start welding new metal in and things don't line up like they should.
Always wise to work one area at a time until it is done and supporting itself again. Ask me how I know

Also when you go to re install the doglegs make sure your door is hung with proper spacing, sooo easy to have quarter panel body lines that don't match the doors lines.
That's some nice rust porn.

[Noll]

Noll, just a word of caution, if you remove all of the rusted panels at once there is a good chance of the body sagging with so little metal left to support it, then you run into big problems went you start welding new metal in and things don't line up like they should.
Always wise to work one area at a time until it is done and supporting itself again. Ask me how I know

Also when you go to re install the doglegs make sure your door is hung with proper spacing, sooo easy to have quarter panel body lines that don't match the doors lines.
That's some nice rust porn.

Thanks for the advice! Yeah, part of the reason I cut where I did was to retain at least some rigidity (the inner and outer skins werent really connected anyway).

I'm thinking order of operations will be rockers, then quarters, and go from there; should maximize the remaining rigidity with any luck.

And yeah, I'll make sure not to remove the doors until after the rockers are replaced so as to get that gap right.

[Noll]

Only had a couple hours shop time today, but made some progress.

Started by replacing a section of front inner wing that was pitted all the way through. Not my cleanest work, but it's strong and will never be seen regardless.



I then wire-wheeled the d/s inner wing to get it to bare metal. It's not that bad, all things considered:



Some pinholes here to fix:





I also started scraping the undercoating off the inner arch, and it is in surprisingly OK condition.



Next up will be to finish getting it all to bare metal on both sides, then I will replace the rockers, and do all the patches necessary for the front end (rocker needs to go on 1st so I know lengths of some parts).

[Noll]

Had some more time in the garage today.

Discovered this wonderful bit of handiwork:



All cleaned up. With the majority of the undercoating scraped off, next up will be to wire-wheel it all back to bare metal, then start on repairs.



Cut the driver's side floor out. This was way easier than it should have been, as it was only tacked on in 7-8 places, instead of being actually welded. Still, ,made it easier to remove the shoddy work.





This is a truly odd place for rust to form, can't say I've ever seen this in all the build threads I've looked through:



Wasn't AS bad as I thought though. Will drill out the seatbelt mount, then make a new section after fixing whatever the box-section in there is (I believe it may be part of the swaybar mount, which would be a pain):



And cleaned up the inner rocker:



I'm thinking I may cut like so and make my own lower section:



Plan is to cut the outer rocker off tomorrow, get my replacement to fit, and make all the panels that need it as a reference point.

[zedfoot]

You should remove or thoroughly cover the dash and any glass you are keeping. All the grinding sparks will do an amazing amount of damage before you notice it.