1973 Datsun 240Z -budget build or something

Car looks great.  Really surprised at the hate from the z community... In my experience they're pretty good.  From a 280zx driver (na-t swap with megasquirt)... no Rotas or MSA kit here.

I'm trying not to become a "Datsun guy" but cool builds like this make me want a Z too. 

mikeatrpi said:

Car looks great.  Really surprised at the hate from the z community... In my experience they're pretty good.  From a 280zx driver (na-t swap with megasquirt)... no Rotas or MSA kit here.

It's not everybody but you know the ones. The groupthink people who think if you don't do the same 5 things they've done then you're new, you're dumb, you're doing it wrong...etc. 

A lot are great but the growing number of low number VIN counters and investor elitists have made asking a simple question like "who else has 13s?" into a platform to E36 M3 on anything else besides the same old formula. In 2002, I could have asked about other pictures of wide 13s and got responses like "I have 13x9 Libres on my. 510. Here's a picture but tires are hard to find" and now it's just "They wont fit over your brakes" (false)  and/or other over the top negativity and attacks. 

It's easy to read my concerns as being overly caught up with what other people think about the car and that's not the case. I put a STI engine in a 308 GT4, clearly I'm not afraid of criticism from anybody when it comes to what I want.  It comes from my annoyance of how it has all changed specifically for the Datsun community. I won't harp on it anymore though as that crowd isn't worth discussing. 

Now that the car is tagged in GA again, I really would like to time one of my visits to overlap the Mitty and an autocross. That's originally what I picked this car up to do cheaply all these years ago now. I know some might think this is going to turn in to some kind of stance car and that's not the plan at all. 

This is a hilarious image to me:

You can really see why the "extreme low" version of the BC racing coilovers are extremely low. Besides the perch being really shortened up as they came of the box, the bodies are much smaller. Even at max height, these will be at least 2.5 inches lower than factory.

The front brake hard lines are getting replaced with stainless as well as with the flexible stainless Earl's lines feeding in to them.

Fronts welded on and installed. Still waiting on some brake parts but it's coming along.

Fronts on adjusted all the way up:

For the rears, leaving the control arms on and cutting and welding still on the car saved some time:

Rears on (Don't worry about the rear fuel line. That will get shortened up soon):

Time to put the car on it's feet at full height:

SS Brake lines on and LOADS of adjustment to go. 

So let's take out 4 inches:

A good place to stop is when the exhaust hits the ground:

Rear poke diminishing as the car gets lower:

And down to the ground:

Some minor exhaust work will need to happen in the middle of the car but surprisingly everything else has enough clearance. A few more suspension pieces are on the way and some road testing will be happening soon. Big thanks to my buddy Kyle (yellow 620 truck guy I've posted pictures of in here) for getting the suspension on for me while I'm out of state. Lots of people with zero experience with the 13s said they wouldn't fit. I'm happy I went with them and I think they go with the car perfectly. 

I'm loving it so far. 

That looks really cool! It is an interesting position to be in when one owns a car that has skyrocketed with the collectors. I think one sold for over 300k recently. This always feels like it changes the use and feel of a car when they become a precious commodity. 

I am glad you are building it your way. 

Pull a part flex pipe added and exhaust tucked up again.
 

docwyte said:

Dunno.  I'd consider those wheels as "not fitting" given that they're sticking out past the fender lip.

 

Then you're probably going to hate the rest of this whole thread. 

I'm not in town but the rest of my Datsun homies got the green car out to make the road testing tweaks for me when I get in town. 

My friends are that tall and the car is that small:

Knuckle dragging:

I have a couple of other suspension components to throw on and then it's ready to rock later this spring. 

Cusco front strut tower brace with the Techno Toy Tuning tri bar added on. Mostly to cover the tops of the strut towers that were opened for the coilovers and also because anodized blue things attract me like a skeeter to a bug zapper.
 

Still plenty of room for activities:

Mitty 2021 is finally here.

Hopefully all these photos aren't skewed:

Fly in to town and get to work.

New matching Techno toy tuning rear strut brace:

Those original snowflakes I had are getting refinished by a buddy but they are still around:

Coilovers and brakes are looking good but bushings are probably next.

Main jets back up to 130s from 120s.

The car is on the ground and the mid pipe  from the header to the Ansa tip is just too low so once removed it sounds amazing/obnoxious (I love it). I will reimagine a better solution for that next time.

Alright let's go.

This thing has style!  I love the clean engine against the patina'd body.  Nice work!

Welp.

The 620 blew a radiator hose off and the fan ground got ripped. 15 minutes and gallon of water later we are on the road. Old Datsuns legit can be fixed with flatheads and electrical tape.

Arrived at Road Atlanta and the weather got weird. Torrential downpours Friday midday through Saturday.

Love this car. I'm pretty sure the owner of this Jag posted on here 12-13 years ago. He had what sounded like ignition issues but this car is one of the best sounding race cars ever. 

All the buds at camp:

Patrick Tremblay with Spark Plug Society captured us and I'm bummed it didn't show just how hard it was raining. Ha!

My buddy Pierce brought the Vandit instead of his 510:

Iggy brought the Sprinter instead of the Datsun 1600 roadster and it was perfect because we needed a respite from the rain and somewhere to go glamping  and microwave food:

Amazing weekend as always with my friends. Weather could have been better but it's not important. The camping and conversations are more important than the cars. The 240 behaved herself and made it around town just fine.

I even found a 2004 3rd place Georgia Z Club trophy for my old s14 while cleaning my parent's garage. Even I feel like a winner.

Fogged motor, sealed up, and on the battery tender:

At this point, I don't know what this thread is about. It's not like the other awesome builds on here. Folks building and taking cars to events to compete .....it was the original intent of this car. Buy it cheap and autocross it. So much has happened in the last decade and I just feel kind of like a poser at this point. This stickered up 240z that is loud as hell and spends its life camping at the the infield at Road Atlanta. Haha! I live on a mountain in Alaska so far away now. I can't work my travel into a schedule to race the car practically and I don't want to sell it but I just keep the thread going as a photo album basically. 90% of the views on this thread have to be from my office in Anchorage the rest of the year. So anyway, I used to be cool. I used to get cars on the track. I now just look forward to parking the car in the infield of race tracks and eating hotdogs with my friends. I'm not sure any of this is interesting to anybody on the planet but me but here we are. 
 

Until next time... 

Not all cool cars are race cars.  I like seeing this thread pop up and get a kick out of it every time.  Keep having fun with it and posting about it, even if its infrequent!

Sharing good times in a great car.  That's what it's about.  Looks like fun.

crankwalk (Forum Supporter) said:

 

 

 

At this point, I don't know what this thread is about. It's not like the other awesome builds on here. Folks building and taking cars to events to compete .....it was the original intent of this car. Buy it cheap and autocross it. So much has happened in the last decade and I just feel kind of like a poser at this point.

First off, your car is gorgeous, and something to be proud of having built.  Second, you're not the only one who suffers from Imposter Syndrome....I see so many gorgeous, over the top builds at GRM, and I just keep plugging away at the same little car....I originally wanted to build an autocross-able streetrod, and I still haven't gotten there after 13 years.   Now it is being parked at car shows, which is far from the original purpose. 

My life is still better for having done the work.  I can take pride in trying to do what others only talk about.  You are not a poser,,,,you have done far more than many of us will.

You might have answered this before in the thread and it might be a silly idea, but why not take the car with you to Anchorage? Maybe there's no races there, but at least you could drive it more than once a year.

Rocambolesque said:

You might have answered this before in the thread and it might be a silly idea, but why not take the car with you to Anchorage? Maybe there's no races there, but at least you could drive it more than once a year.

Yeah I've answered that one before but the answer kind of shifts. Originally I was going to bring the car up and do wheel to wheel ice racing if I decided to stay in AK. Paying $3k to ship a car that was worth half that 8-9 years ago didn't make sense. Now it makes sense value wise but still it's a lot.  I'm attached to the car and the values are 10 x what I paid for the car so that's not feasible to have it as a budget wheel to wheel racer anymore anyway. Tanacross has track days with Arctic SCCA but it's hundreds of miles from me in the middle of the state. Gravel and weather would just beat this car to death....

The main thing is that I like to hang out with my car buddies with it and they are all in Atlanta. If we move to the lower 48 at some point, I would probably ship it  but I would hate to ship a car up here then need to get it out of Anchorage in a year or two. 

The hope is that I can get it to a level of tune/have a schedule that coincides so autocross could happen on my trips to GA. I think autocross is a good fit for the car now but with carb tuning happening in short increments while I'm there (and now a new exhaust will need to be in the works) it will probably do terribly at it. I'll probably need to send it to a shop again to get it fine tuned then miss the Mitty one year and just do another event instead. It's a bummer they stopped the old skidpad event at the Mitty on Sundays. At least it would be an excuse to drive the car like a jerk close to home. Haha! 

Read through this for inspiration and came away jealous. I definitely envy your wheel collection. 

How is the ride quality of the BCs? I had them on my LGT once upon a time and they were awful. 

And, did I miss the post were you acquired or painted that valve cover? Engine looks fantastic!

birdmayne said:

Read through this for inspiration and came away jealous. I definitely envy your wheel collection. 

How is the ride quality of the BCs? I had them on my LGT once upon a time and they were awful. 

And, did I miss the post were you acquired or painted that valve cover? Engine looks fantastic!

The BC's are great. I also went from blown struts and 35 year old Tokicos to coilovers, front and rear strut braces, and down to 13 inch wheels making it 4 inches closer to the ground. This was all at the same time so it was a pretty drastic change. 

Valve cover was powder coated when the triples went on. I wanted the whole engine bay to look right (to me) when I pop the hood. 

Love this build #stance4life especially when you drive them

December update. Two in one year!

This update was supposed to include a few little changes but they mostly didn't work out.

I had a set of SSR center caps shipped in but they are a hair too big to fit the wheels. They are 74mm -ish and I need 71mm I guess.

So back in the hatch they go.

I also ordered a set of clear headlight covers from MSA and I didn't like how they looked (on this car) or how they fit so on the shelf they went. 

What can I do that is productive on this thing?

Replacing the almost 9 year old Champion spark plugs is something:

Oh wow, those were terrible. New NGK BPR6ES go in:

Let's wake it up, wash it off, and burn some of this fuel out of it:

One shot not in the garage to prove it does get driven. Down to a childhood favorite- Curt's cafeteria. Fried chicken for breakfast and mac & cheese is legitimately classified as a vegetable. 

I put about 50 miles on the car and it didn't miss a beat. It's still open header and the rockers are 2 inches off the ground but I still don't find it impractical at all. 

The Valero outside the neighborhood has 90 octane non ethanol fuel which ironically is the same as the premium pump fuel in Alaska. No fuel contains ethanol at all in Alaska and instead of 93 octane with ethanol, we have 90 octane ethanol free as our premium. It seems to run about the same but stores much longer. It also smells like gas did 25 years ago if that makes sense. 

Topped off, engine fogged, and sealed up:

Back on the battery tender and in storage mode:

On an oversharing quasi-blogger personal note, the real reason for the trip to GA wasn't for additional family time OR car time but something totally unrelated. I originally attended Kennesaw State University from 2004-2009 mostly part-time and I just worked 50-60 hour weeks instead of putting a priority on my education. Eventually, the economy took a crap and I really just wanted to work as much as possible to keep paying bills and buying cars and I dropped out. Fast forward to 2020 just before the pandemic and I decided to go back to school. I wanted to attend KSU again if I could and surprisingly they let me keep all my old credits. I signed up online and once Covid hit, everything went online anyway. I took classes at night and on the weekend. Having a 4 hour time difference made me have to do assignments at 3 a.m. sometimes but as of 12/15/2021, I graduated.

I decided to fly in with my wife for the commencement instead of just getting an email saying I did a thing. At 35, it was sort of a 70/30 mix of pride and embarrassment. I was able to graduate at with no student loan debt which I was very adamant about never taking on. My secret was to attend sporadically and stretch it out over seventeen years so....  

If anybody reading this wants to go back to school and thinks it's just been too much time away , stop talking yourself out of it. I found an adult that has been out in the real world has roughly 200% the motivation of the average 20 year old and you will do much better than you thought you would.

Annnnnyway, I had tires and a chain shipped to GA for my CBX 1000 in AK. I was able to have them flown back with us for free instead of paying $200 in shipping directly to Alaska so double score. 

Another small update with not a ton of Datsun content but it was my most productive trip back I've made so far.

In reply to crankwalk (Forum Supporter) :

Congrats man!

Congrats! At 41 I've talked myself into and out of finishing my degree ten times.