5/25/11 The Striptease Begins

Yesterday, the stripping of my car began in earnest.

Removing the parts and panels of a car is very much like taking the clothes off of a person. It is great to see the muscle, bone and sinew that holds someone together and makes them move. Unfortunately, that mole, scar, or cellulite that is usually hidden by clothes becomes glaringly obvious when all is off.

So it was with my Z last night.

I got ahold of another set of jackstands, so I started by taking off my car's shoes wheels.

Then it was on to the Zero's shirt fenders, exposing the arms and hands upper frame and front suspension.

Once there was a pile of clothes parts on the floor, it was time to take a closer look at what I'm working with.

With a little poking around with a screwdriver, it became very obvious that there was a lot of cellulite fiberglass rust repair and rusty metal in structurally important places.

I could try to fix this, but I would spend hundreds or thousands of hours cutting and replacing metal. At this point I think it's best to cut my losses and get a clean chassis. Luckily I have a clean chassis lined up and ready to replace this one.

In other news, the Big Body Benz has a very very dirty intake manifold. Everything downstream of the throttle body, shown here, is absolutely caked in carbon. I mean the dirtiest I have ever seen. Very very strange, but this absolutely could have kept it from running well in the past. A deep clean is in this cars future.

Finally, Meet Harley Davidson.

-W.W. SBSS

5/15/11 Project ZERO

Finally, my Datsun 240z is in the shop.

As I said before, I spent much of last week preparing my pad for the Z. Here's a sweet picture of me cutting a bolt.

Saturday morning I borrowed the keys to K.Y.'s van, and drove to the U-haul center 4 blocks from the shop. After renting a trailer, buying a hitch ball, and fiddling with the trailer wiring for a bit, everything was ready to go.

Once we got to my house in NJ, A.Y. and I rolled the Z out of the driveway and, after much cursing and sweating, onto the trailer.

A.Y. followed the rig in his pickup and we were on our way back to SBSS.

Once I got to the shop, J.B. and I pushed the Z into the shop where I started charging the battery. It was pretty clear that I was never going to get the Z parked unless I had it running. The Z fired right up once I had enough juice to crank it.

I moved it onto the pad and called it a day.

Sunday I started taking the car apart, pulling off the hood, hatch taillights and airdam. Amazingly, I already found fiberglass rust repairs....great.

Next I need to pick up some jackstands so I can take the suspension off the car.

- W.W. SBSS

5/12/11 Preparing for ZERO

This Saturday I am going to bring my Z, nicknamed ZERO, into the shop. This is a big day for me, as I haven't wrenched on a Z in many many years. To this end, I have been preparing the elevated slab designated for my car in the shop.

There were many pipes and conduits sticking up out of the slab. There were also about 60 threaded rods set into the concrete. After an evening with the angle grinder and a hammer the slab was relatively smooth.

In order to make it flat, however, I'd need to pour some concrete. I hopped in the G35, and took a trip to our local home depot, which is luckily only about 10 blocks away. 7 80lbs bags of concrete stowed safely in the back, I drove home blasting Major Lazer through the Bronx.

Once I got to the shop, I prepped the slab for the pour, filling the holes with insulation to keep the concrete from falling through. I wheeled out the mixer and filled the shopvac with water ( It's great having the right tools for the job).

I only ended up needing 5 bags to fill the slab. I leveled it with a 2x4, floated it smooth and called it a day.

When I was cleaning up, I looked down at my boots and felt a bit proud. My boots are scuffed and dirty. They aren't even that old, but they look like they've been used for years. I love it. This is what boots should look like. Boots are the shoes you wear when you're doing something special. They're for building or riding or going somewhere unpaved. I think every man should have a pair of boots that look something like this.

Also, we now have a couch.

-W.W. SBSS

5/9/11 Quick Update

I've been busy with other things lately so I haven't spent as much time as usual in the shop. Between a bachelor party in Chicago one weekend and a major deadline at work, my time has been spent elsewhere lately. Big things are about to start happening in the shop in the next few weeks, so I thought I'd post a quick update before I forget.

I did the final work on the Miata top. I made a strap to pull the lowest strut up when the top is closed. A little addition but it makes a huge difference in the tautness of the top. I'm gonna wait until I get it in a good rain to install the rear carpet, just to make sure there are no leaks.

I made more boxes...

I bled the clutch and brakes on the FZR, with my new handy bleed bottle

And we started tearing down the Porsche.

We also got a big white sectional couch, haha. This week I am gonna finish cutting the bolts on my slab. After that I'm gonna pour concrete to flatten the slab. The plan is to move my Z into the shop for disassembly this weekend.