FIRST MODIFICATIONS (FALL 2003-WINTER 2004)

I drove up to Montana, purchased the car and towed it home without incident.  After having the car for a few days it quickly became clear that some work was in order.  The electric fuel pump leaked when the car had a full tank of gas.  The brakes worked okay as long as stops were planned a few days in advance.  There was about 45 degrees of play in the steering, which made it good sport trying to keep it centered between the lane lines.  Here is what it looked like underneath looking front to back.

And low and behold, the x-member was still there!  ...albeit with two more holes punched through and some notching for the tranny pan.  

And here's a view from back to front.  In addition, the front cross-member was untouched (Whew!).  And the big concern with such old cars: RUST; was not visible anywhere!  

I drove the car around for a few days and noticed that the brakes were becoming progressively less effective.  Oh, by the way, did I mention the car had no emergency brake?  Thus, I decided I needed to take the car to my mechanic.  I drove there with my hazard lights on and spotted the car at stoplights by throwing it into "park".  

I had recently visited Les Canaday at Classic Datsun Motorsports and he strongly recommended I upgrade to bigger brakes.  He sold me a kit consisting of 300ZX rotors, Toyota 4-runner 4-piston calipers and custom made caliper mounting brackets.  Of course, I had to wait a while for the brackets to be fabricated.  I purchased a 280ZX 15/16" dual master cylinder from AutoZone.  Once all the (correct) pieces were pulled together, everything bolted right on. 

I did have one snafu that had to do with the master cylinder (MC) and how it is connected to the brake pedal. On the stock roadster MC, the "plunger" (i.e. my name for the thingy-dingy that connects the pedal to the MC) is connected to the MC with a washer and spring clip.  On the other hand, the 280ZX MC was mounted in front of a power brake booster and there was no physical connection.  Les indicated I could replicate the type of connection used for the stock roadster MC, but warned that I may have problems because the MC would be actuated by the thickness of the washer.  I blew off his concerns.  How could such a small amount of travel possibly be a problem?  Good grief! This is a car, not a Swiss watch!  

Sure enough, I had a huge problem.  This slight actuation of the MC, caused a feedback loop to develop and the brakes would become progressively more engaged to the point of being locked up. If you let the car sit for a while, it would relax.  I remember the drive home being quite harrowing.  I came real close to overheating the engine.  

Thus, I had to develop a way to connect the plunger to the MC without physically connecting it.  I purchased a piece of perforated bar stock and bent it in the shape of a tight upside down "U".  I bolted this homemade bracket to the top bolt that holds the MC under the dash.  The bracket keeps the plunger from accidentally falling down.  It also has the big advantage in that the MC can be removed without disconnecting the brake pedal; and conversely, the brake pedal can be removed without messing with the MC.  (I will add a sketch of this soon.) 

The Autolite carb that came with the car had no choke and didn't run that well.  I purchased a Holley 2-barrel universal carb with an electric choke, which worked flawlessly. In addition we also ditched the points and went with a Pertronix electronic ignition.

It was also at this time that I considered whether or not to keep the Empi wheels.  I believed that they were not likely to fit over my new big brakes.  Plus, the Empi's were two-piece wheels and thus required inner tubes.  I talked to a few people who tried to use a gasket and run tubeless, but they indicated that the tires leaked slowly anyway and most resorted to going back to tubes.  Also the wheels needed some restoration. The finish was pretty rough and dull.  Plus, the previous owner had drilled new holes in the wheels because some of the screws for the center caps broke off in the wheels.  I took the wheels to Advanced Wheel Repair in Santa Ana.  It was going to cost at least $500 to do the work.  

So I concluded that new wheels were in order.  I purchased 15" Panasports from Les and bought Yokohama AVS ES 100's from Service Specialists in Irvine, CA.  I decided to be a little avant-garde on the tires.  The tires that came with the car were 185-60's on the front and 215-70's (!!) on the rear (the Empi's were 14").  The rear tires rubbed a tiny bit, but I really liked the look of the bigger tires on the back.  Thus, I decided to get 205-60's Yokohamas on the back and 205-50's on the front.  I figured that if the old 215's rubbed a tiny bit, the 205's shouldn't rub at all, right?

Shortly after I got the car out of the shop, I decided I needed to get around to re-chroming the bumpers. I found out that my rear bumper was not correct for my car because it had a license plate lamp.  The '69-'70 roadsters have lamps beside the license plate and thus don't have a lamp on the bumper.  I picked up a rust-bucket of a bumper for cheap on Ebay from a guy in Florida and headed to South Bay Chrome in Santa Ana.  The shop does a lot of work for Jesse James' West Coast Choppers.  There turnaround is only 2 weeks and they take any form of payment as long as it is CASH.  The guy behind the counter took his thumb and pushed it right through the corner of my rear bumper.  Nonetheless, he said it was repairable.  I decided to nix the overriders and have all the holes filled in.  

Sure enough, two weeks later, the work was completed and the results are fantastic!  I did notice, however, that the rear bumper became about 3 times as thick (!) as what it was before on account of the multiple dips to ensure no underlying blemishes would show.  Here are some pics of the car after this first bout of work was completed:

Here is a shot under the hood.  Note that the brake master cylinder is mounted where the clutch MC used to be located.  In fact, the old clutch pedal is now the brake pedal and the gas pedal is where the stock brake pedal used to be located.  The smaller of the two brake MC reservoirs had to be trimmed down a bit so the hood would close.  This shot also shows how the firewall was moved back 5 inches. Two hood pins at the corners secure the hood.

The result of all these improvements is that the car was finally drivable!  The brakes worked pretty well although the pedal feel was soft.  And the engine ran great!  Because the car had the stock rear end, it was a jackrabbit off the line.  Of course, freeway driving at 4500 RPM was pretty much unbearable. 

I decided the car was in good enough shape to take to the 2004 Solvang Roadster show...  ...the key word being "take" as in "tow". I was not comfortable enough to drive it there.  The car would heat up at stoplights and I was really queasy about the wiring.  I had poked around underneath the dash and found the whole thing was just a mess of tangled up old wiring.  The original wiring was still in place, and new wiring for some items like the headlights and taillights was also used.  Thus, there was a mess of abandoned wiring and several melted connectors.  I kept having a problem with losing the brake lights.  My hot wire to the brakes would die.  I would then go and poke around with a current tester and find another hot wire and hook it up.  This happened a few times.  I was convinced that I needed all new wiring unless I wanted my investment to go up in smoke!