Well my bodyshop is an excellent guy, but he surely takes his time to get all the details right. I love that, but i want my car back before i retire. That’s why i always search for the best possible solution to make life as easy as possible for  him. Lately i often saw those yellow panels from UK popping up on various sites. One of the “problematic” areas is stil the Rear lower valance. I got one from MSA so far and it’s ok for most of the “american” restaurations i guess, but not for me… The main problem beeing that the Curvature from the original lower valance is missing. I thought i’d give it a try and got it today:

I’m surprised about how different it is and how great it looks. Also got confirmed that it’s the original sheet metal thickness as the cars came with. You can clearly see the “curvature” in this picture.

The main difference aside from that is the “lip” at the bottom end (see first picture) and the more accurate shape at the exhaust area.

Here’s panel from MSA, see the differences? All a bout the details..

I really can recommand the yellow one above. They don’t have a website but i often see these (and many other 240Z parts from them) pop up on ebay and various facebook pages. Price is also nice if you ask me 🙂

Nothing big, but finally something car related again 🙂 I recently got contacted by a nice guy in Czechia who just made sets of OEM reproduction stickers for all those inspection and small supplier stickers which will need replacement when the car is done for the people who know. Got them today. From the first sight they seem pretty nice with those glossy finnish, etc. But will compare them at another point. Nevertheless. something to keep the project alive. Also bought some more stuff which should arrive here by next week or so.

It seems like currently nice parts are looking for me, rather then i’m looking for them 🙂
But lets start at the beginning. The garage-build is coming along nicely, with temporary lighting now installed:

With the House-build as a first priority now, i don’t look for parts atm. But then (as with the mikuni’s i bought lately) something popped up for a great price which has been on my shopping list for quite a while: A NOS splash under guard panel, which arrived today:

I think now i have officially all the body panels together, including the “optional” parts, or parts that are, say, more functional than visible. This will prevent the engine bay from getting too dirty and wet. Since these panels are prone to stone chips, most of them are quite dented and rusty, or completely missing (as it was on both of my cars), so it’s rare to come along a nice piece like this one. And for a reasonable price that too..

The seller in Hungary was also nice enough to add a free set of what i assume are reproduction Datsun / Nissan colour code stickers. I need to investigate further on these. Paint is still far away in my project so i haven’t spent too much time investigating on all those small details like stickers. But i absolutely love them. Thanks a lot for those!

I haven’t got much to show you honestly. The House / Workshop / Garage build is coming along nicely and keeps me distracted from the car projects. And that for at least another 6 months. And the panelbeater is recovering from a broken nose and i’snt able to work at the moment.
However This saturday was a milestone in that: I went to check out some potential new garage lifts. The grey one is actually my favourite so far:

However i felt like i HAVE to do something for the cars every now and then. so i decided to take apart the FET intake manifold. so i can have the parts cleaned and replated with my next load. Before:

During

And after. It surely does look good in my opinion 🙂 Will be even better once it’s blasted, cleaned and all the parts are plated and back into position…

I randomly seem to stumble on nice stuff by accident. I always dreamed about triple Mikunis for my Z, but i thought that in the current situation with the house project, work and other things going strong, i save them for buying them later, even with rapidly rising prices. Then, lately, i came accross these nice carbs for sale on an Austrian ads website, when i was actually looking for something totally different.
A bit of negotiation back and forth, a payment and they arrived here today:

They are genuine japan made Mikuni (Solex) PHH40 S5 (5-screw) carbs. You might wonder why PHH40? I don’t plan to run any crazy numbers, so the PHH40 should be sufficient according to my calculations. we’ll see. I think i can swap them for PHH44 when i figure out that i was wrong. The deal was too god to say no. It was a once in a lifetime opportunity.

They have been beautifully restored. Probably will zinc plate all the bolts on the outside, but not sure yet:

It even gets better: They came with a free set of intake side gaskets and beautiful velocity stacks.

After all i’m very happy with my purchase and i think my engine setup comes along nicely with the FET Intake manifold and the Kakimoto valve cover. The whole engine side of things is still on a bit on hold, but when i find good parts like this, i just have to save them for the future 🙂

While having all the grille pieces disassembled, i thought i better take advantage of it and straighten all the pieces before i have them zinc-plated.
So i pulled out my best (nonexistant) panel-beater skills and hammered the parts as straight as i could. A few examples:

Before:

After:

Before:

After:

Before:

After:.