New mirrors!

I am super excited because I just found some of the bullet fender mirrors for my car! I got them from a friend for a great price, and they are ready to go on. I don't know if I'm going to wait until the paint job or not.....

These are the mirrors.......

....and here is what they will look like.

Some door rust and new door seals

My car was going to be parked outside for a few weeks because my family was doing a kitchen remodel and my garage side was being used for storage. I decided that it was time to install the door seals that I had sitting in a box in the garage that had come with the car.

 Here you can see the top of the door, with no seal in the channel. There are scraps of the old seal on the ground, I had to scrape it out with a screwdriver. You can also see the rust treatment on the door sill (the purple gunk). This stuff stops the rust and converts it back into metal again. This rust had been hiding under the scuff guard. So far, it is the only rust I have found on the car.

Here is another better rust treatment picture.

I ended up replacing the door seals on both sides, and the rear hatch seal in the back. I saved the various hood seals for later on because my original ones were in terrific shape. I also saved the glass seals (for the front and back windows) for when the car gets painted and they are pulled out.

Mini update - shift boot and handbrake boot!

Just a mini post here, when installing the new carpet I ripped the original parking brake boot. It was old, tattered, and faded from sunlight. I found a new one online and today it came.

Here is the boot fresh out of the packaging.

And here is a picture of me in the car. You can see the shift boot and knob, as well as the whole interior. Photo credit to Alister.

New carpet!

Let me start off by saying this was by far the biggest thing I have done to the car yet. It really turned the car from a old junker into a true classic.

 I started out by ripping all the old carpet out. This was pretty easy on the passenger side because there was almost none there to start.

 The rear deck carpet was basic house carpet, so that came out easily too. The driver side followed similarly.

 Here is a view from the rear showing the bare floor pans. My dad and I decided that we should give the floors a coat of rust-inhibiting paint to prevent any future problems. We then followed that with some basic black paint for a finished look.

 Here are the removed seats, scraps of carpet, center console, and other junk I found in the car.

 A picture in the middle of the progress showed how exploded the car was.

 Here is the installed rear deck carpeting. This was the only carpet that came cut to shape. We secured it down with velcro patches so the hidden spare tire would be easily accessible.

 After many hours, we finally cut the carpet to shape and had successfully hot glued it all in. We were going to use carpet adhesive, but because it had to be applied all at once, we decided against it. Hot glue proved to work rather well.

 During this time, I did some trim touch up with a black sharpie and used some plastic trim restorer compound to give the center console a good sheen.

Here is a view of the rear from the front. There is a trim piece that goes over the tail light assemblies, but I was cleaning it up at the time of the picture.

During this install, I decided to run some speaker wires to the rear deck. I had plans at the time to put in some speakers in boxes on the deck behind the seats. Pictures of that later.

Another afternoon project - valve cover paint

I had another spare afternoon and a need to get something done. My engine valve cover was looking faded and boring, so I decided to give it a coat of heat resistant grill paint. Regular paint would melt off because the engine gets so hot while driving. I decided to use grill paint because it was obviously heat resistant, and it had a nice matte finish to it.

I cleaned the whole valve cover with engine grime remover (powerful stuff!) and dried it off. I then gave it a few coats of paint and let it dry/harden. After that, I took a screw driver and scraped off the paint on the letters and striping, just to give it a cool look. It turned out pretty well.

I also took a few pictures of under the valve cover to document the condition of the engine. Unfortunately, it was a bit grimy and the engine should most likely be rebuilt within the next few years. I had planned on doing that at some point anyways, just not during my senior project as it would be too much work.

Dent documentation

I took a few pictures of the major dents just to lay out what needed to be done. There are multiple small dents on the car, but those will be fixed with bondo. I have to actually pull out these dents, either with a hammer or with a professional company (if I'm smart).

 There is a large dent behind the driver-side door....

....and a smaller one in the driver-side rear fender.This one almost isn't noticeable, except when compared to the other side.

Bumper problems!!!

I got my fiberglass bumpers in the mail and the rear one doesn't line up at all! After talking to the seller and sending him some pictures, he concluded that he had a problem with his fiberglass bumper mold and said he would send me another rear one. I'm angry that this happened, but also relieved that he will send me another one for free. Now to wait.....

Here you can see the gap between the car and the bumper, where it should be flush.

Same gap on the other side.....

Here's the bumpers laid out on my hood just to give a full size view of them.

Bumper removal

One of the only things I have never liked about the car was the big chunky bumpers. They are too bulky, and they were starting to fog up and rust. They also weighed about 50 lbs a piece, so I figured I would try and find an alternative.

An alternative I found was a swap for a set of 240z bumpers. The car was made earlier when safety was less of an issue, and the bumpers were much slimmer and streamline. Buying real ones was far too expensive (over a grand) so I decided to find some fiberglass knock-offs. After ordering a set of them from a seller in California, I set to work getting the old ones off.

This process proved to be fairly easy for the front. I just sprayed some WD-40 on the bolts, let them sit, and popped them off. The bumpers came off within an hour. The part that took forever was the bumper mounts. There were shock absorbers that held the bumpers in place which needed to come off in order to mount the new bumpers. The front shocks came off fairly easily, again with WD-40 and a wrench. The rear ones were a HUGE PAIN though. I had to drop out the gas tank of the car in order to even get close to the bolts, and even then I spent at least three hours messing with one rear shock. In the picture above you can see the gas tank dropping down (really obnoxious to do) and my friend John trying to fiddle a wrench up inside.

After I had called my friend John to come help we managed to work it out after a while and some pizzas. This so far has been the hardest part of the project, but also the most satisfying, despite the size of the accomplishment.

Here are some pictures of the bumpers after they were removed.

 The rear one......

....and the front one.

Rear tail light bezel painting

The rear bezel of the car was looking faded, and until I got the whole car painted, I wanted a temporary fix. One of the spray cans commonly found in my garage is something called plasti-dip. It is a rubber spray that is usually used to re-dip the handles of tools. I have found through online sources that it can be used for a variety of other uses. It peels off, it has a nice matte black sheen to it, and it causes no damage to anything underneath. I had already sprayed the wheels on my truck and had good results, so i figured I would give it a go. The results were decent.

After masking off a good part of the car with paper towels and tape, I sprayed a good four coats. After it dried, I peeled it off of the tail lights and from the edges. The result was pretty cool, and would do until I got a real paint job.

I will post complete pictures of the finished project later on, when there is some sun out.

Mini afternoon project- license plate frame

I had some spare time on a weekend so I decided to tackle something small. When I first saw the car I noticed that it still had it's dealership plate frame from 36 years ago. The cool part was it was from Datsun of Bellevue. That dealership is now Nissan of the Eastside, so i figured that I would try and make the plate look nice. I took it off and cleaned it with rubbing alcohol. This is the before picture.

As you can see, the letters were faded and the black background was looking more like a faded ball point blue color. I took some basic acrylic paints from my sisters art set and set to work. It took about two hours to finish, mainly because of all the minute detailing. In the end it turned out really well.

The little things on a car make a big difference when you take into account all the details.

Exhaust

The second thing that needed to be done (in my mind) was getting a new exhaust put on it. I looked around online for full exhaust pipe kits that I could get and was prepared to buy one. That was when I got a huge deal from a company called Dan Fast Muffler. My family has gotten new exhausts put on three of our cars and when we told them we had another car needing a new exhaust they were happy to cut us a HUGE deal. I provided the muffler ($30 on eBay) and they did all of the labor and pipe bending for $100! It was a deal I couldn't pass up.

When I got the car back from them they were all grinning from ear to ear. They were so excited for me to hear the car, and when I turned it on for the first time, I knew why. It sounded amazing. The car was one step forward towards being finished.

More pictures of the end product later!

New wheels and tires

The first thing I did when I got the car was take note of all the things that were unsafe about the car that needed to be fixed before I could drive it regularly. This was an oil change and new wheels. The oil needed to be changed because the car was sitting for a long time before I got it, and the seller had recommended I do so. This was done by taking it down to my local Oil Can Henry's. I had no idea how to do it myself at that point, so I figured I would leave it to the pros. I also had an awesome conversation about the car with the employees there while they were working.

The next issue was the wheels. Some of the wheels were bent for unknown reasons and were in need of replacing. While driving down the road I would feel the car shiver and shake, and I decided that would be the first big fix.

I ordered myself a set of Konig Rewind wheels from a website and hunted around for good deals on tires.

I ended up taking them to Discount tire to have the tires put on, and then I took it home and swapped out the wheels. This was done using a jack and a tire iron. The whole process took about an hour.

The car now drove beautifully. It was very smooth and a lot of other unknown issues with squeaks and rattles magically sorted themselves out. It was starting to feel like a true sports car now.

Here it goes!

So I have decided to document everything on a blog. I was keeping pictures on my phone and adding details for each one, but I feel that publishing them like this is more interesting and easier to share. I hope you enjoy watching the progress!

This is the car the day I got it.