Chris Hammondhttp://www.chrishammond.comRSS Feed for Chris Hammond120I'm going back to Cali, no wait...https://www.chrishammond.com/Blog/itemId/745/Im-going-back-to-Cali-no-waitInstead of my usual trips to the West Coast, 2007 is a year of trips East! Tonight I'm heading off to Washington DC for some DotNetNuke training with a client, and then on Wednesday I take a train (first time since I was probably 4 or 5) up to New York City. I've been to Washington a few times, most recently last June for the ProSolo event, but I didn't get to do any tourist type stuff, Natalie took all the photos in the link. So I'm hoping to at least walk around for a few hours Tuesday evening taking some cool photos. I've never been to New York, so I'm hoping to get to do some of the major things while I'm there. See the Empire State Building, which I think is a block over from my hotel, as well as visit the site of the World Trade Center, as well as any number of other things I can think of, and hopefully fit in during my alloted time! I'll be back in town on Friday, feverishly working on the 280Z so I can get rid of it this weekend and pick up the 240 from Illinois to get it back home in the garage. In April I'm headed East again, going to Opening Day at Fenway for the 2nd year in a...Mon, 05 Mar 2007 16:56:00 GMTecd41d3b-d776-4b40-a249-2e2a985793e0Soldering the MakerShieldhttps://www.chrishammond.com/Blog/itemId/2283/Soldering-the-MakerShield<p><a title="Maker Shield Soldering" href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/17726343@N00/6058462360/"><img border="0" alt="Maker Shield Soldering" align="right" src="http://static.flickr.com/6075/6058462360_bb045b6b9a_m.jpg" /></a>Back in May I picked up a variety of parts from the MakerFaire in San Mateo. One of those parts (2x actually) was the <a href="http://www.makershed.com/ProductDetails.asp?ProductCode=MSMS01">MakerShield</a>.</p> <p>I don’t think I’ve ever soldered this much on a circuit board before. I did plenty of soldering for the <a href="http://www.project240z.com">Project 240z</a> back in the day, but it was all just joining wiring together for the Megasquirt and the fuel injection system. You can see some photos of the MakerShield here.</p>Chris HammondFri, 19 Aug 2011 02:36:42 GMTf8219ee7-c706-4c52-b49a-e2dfed854b09Hello World, Welcome to BicycleTips.comhttps://www.chrishammond.com/Blog/itemId/2236/Hello-World-Welcome-to-BicycleTipscomSo here we go, yet another blog for me, but this time for something a little different than what I usually (<a href="http://www.project240z.com/" target="_blank">project350z.com</a>, <a href="http://www.project240z.com/" target="_blank">project240z.com</a>, <a title="DotNetNuke Tips and Tricks" href="http://www.dnndaily.com/">dnndaily.com</a>, <a href="http://www.solo2.org/">solo2.org</a>) blog about. Bicycles! Read the full post for all the detailsBicycleTips.comMon, 27 Jun 2011 02:30:38 GMTc0d81864-5ee8-435d-abc6-ac6be94fc583A new project! 1973 240Zhttps://www.chrishammond.com/Cars/240z/itemId/483/A-new-project-1973-240ZDave and I went and picked up the newest project today. A 1973 240Z, and also a 1983 280ZX motor. Here are some pics. More blogging about this project and its future later tonight! I'm off to take part of the L28ET motor apart and see what it looks like on the inside. http://sccaforums.com/photos/christoc/category1050.aspxposted from...Sun, 07 May 2006 17:10:00 GMT9f490ffe-627f-4e39-912c-a0622230f19dProject 240Z Update for July 8th 2006https://www.chrishammond.com/Cars/240z/itemId/527/Project-240Z-Update-for-July-8th-2006Well, it's been nearly a month since I last worked on the 240Z, had a few events in there, July 4th, and various other activities keeping me away from the car, but mostly it was just me being lazy. So today I spent a couple hours out in the garage wrenching. I got just about everything left that needs to be disconnected to pull the motor disconnected. Pulled the rusty exhaust out from under the car and threw it into my junk pile outside. Here's what I know I have left to do to pull the motor/tranny. 1. Disconnect the shaft from the transmission. 2. Put the mounts for the hooks from the 83 motor onto the 73 motor. 3. Disconnect the transmission mount 4. Disconnect the engine mounts and lift it out. Hopefully I can get that done next weekend! posted from...Sat, 08 Jul 2006 12:40:00 GMT112284d0-14e4-42b3-a371-6c3b5bc13d3bProject 240Z Engine is almost ready to pull!https://www.chrishammond.com/Cars/240z/itemId/532/Project-240Z-Engine-is-almost-ready-to-pullProject 240Z Engine is almost ready to pull! I got the driveshaft disconnected today and the transmission is free of its mount. I just have a few things left to do, mainly hook the hoist up to the motor so I can pull the whole assembly free. To do that though I need to go buy a new change. The chain I've got now, from Krek, has some huge hooks on it, but the L24 motor doesn't have a good place for a hook on the rear. So this afternoon I'm going to head out and get some more chain, bolts, buts and washers to hopefully get the job done tomorrow. I'm also going to take a look at Autozone for a car cover for the 78. I need to get that covered to keep the birds/sap from killing it. I spent 30 minutes today cleaning it with mcguires cleaning wax to get all the bird crap off the hood. Also, once I have the motor out of the 240 I'll need to roll it into the driveway so I can get started on the 78. I'll definitely need to cover the 240 though, as it doesn't have all the body work and I need not upset the neighbors! posted from...Sat, 15 Jul 2006 16:33:00 GMT2186c1ef-459c-43c1-8958-847a10c09f25240Z Ideashttps://www.chrishammond.com/Cars/240z/itemId/570/240Z-IdeasFound this link to http://www.tunerzine.com/articles.php?id=188 and the build site http://www.geocities.com/projectzt/ posted from...Tue, 22 Aug 2006 01:24:00 GMTc252da33-11bb-4bce-aa62-e7b3f6429d30Project 240Z work begins again!https://www.chrishammond.com/Cars/240z/itemId/622/Project-240Z-work-begins-againI finally got to working on the SM2 project today. I didn't do much, but I got over a big hurdle.I got the 240Z moved out of the garage and moved the 280z 2+2 into the garage so I can start tearing the motor out of it. I also removed the hood and hinges from the 280, fit the hood onto the 240. That was another concern, if the hood would actually swap nicely between the two. So far it looks like it will, though I didn't bother putting the hinges on it and onto the 240 as I will just have to remove it when I go to put the motor back into the 240Z when ready.Hopefully this week I'll get started on pulling the motor out of the 280, though I'm going to have to see if I can get someone to buy the 240Z motor first, It's taking up too much room in the garage.  posted from...Sun, 08 Oct 2006 18:24:00 GMT52473ac8-748d-4ac1-84d2-2c6d70297433Project 240Z Update?https://www.chrishammond.com/Cars/240z/itemId/681/Project-240Z-UpdateWhat's the latest on the Project 240Z? Not much! With the wedding and Holidays I haven't touched the car much since the last work I did on the parts car in October, I did get the 240Z out of the driveway, moved it to a secluded shop over in Illinois for some winter storage. I'm glad I did, otherwise it would have had a nice coating of ice and snow with the recent weather here in St. Louis. It's currently in a warm dry building under cover as well. Once I get the parts car disassembled I'll bring the 240Z home again to work on. I hope to spend some time over the weekend and holiday next week parting out the parts car so I can bring the 240 home in January. Before I can do too much more on hte parts car I need to make some room in the garage. So if anyone knows anyone who's looking for a 73 240Z motor let me know! posted from...Wed, 13 Dec 2006 10:22:00 GMTdb3fa6d1-bb9f-427c-ba9e-e5fffabd2649Launch Dayhttps://www.chrishammond.com/Cars/240z/itemId/707/Launch-DayThis past week has been pretty darn busy, actually, so far 2007 has been pretty darn busy. At work we've been cranking away on a pretty large project built upon DotNetNuke. It's like nothing I've seen done successfully with DNN before, so it'll be interesting to see when this latest version goes public how well it does. It's rewarding, but a damn lot of work lately. I can't wait for February. I keep telling myself in February I'm going to start working on my car again, www.project240z.com Posted from...Sat, 20 Jan 2007 00:46:00 GMTa8622829-a034-44f2-bcc9-4c0598a2fe91Almost done movinghttps://www.chrishammond.com/Cars/240z/itemId/714/Almost-done-movingWe thought we got everything out of the house tonight, but realized we left a BBQ Grill and large dog cage on the back porch of the old house. So, we'll head back there tomorrow and get those last few items. I'm really ready to be done moving, and I know my back is ready for that as well! The garage is now full, with the 78 280z, car parts, appliances, bookshelves, etc. I hope to get it all organized this coming weekend so I can start tearing into the 78 and get rid of that car as soon as I can so I can bring home the 73 240Z that's in storage right now. Check out www.project240z.com for information on my project...Wed, 31 Jan 2007 04:16:00 GMTf726bee1-1ac5-4379-8b0e-435f456d8a0dProject 240Z site beginshttps://www.chrishammond.com/Cars/240z/itemId/733/Project-240Z-site-beginsWelcome to the new Project240Z.com. We've thrown the software up, and quickly added a blog. In the coming days we'll reskin the site and get more content...Sun, 28 Jan 2007 01:00:00 GMTd1bdd165-9861-4694-b4af-f611142a27f5You're invited this weekend. Good luck at the 100 Acre Woodhttps://www.chrishammond.com/Cars/240z/itemId/735/Youre-invited-this-weekend-Good-luck-at-the-100Alright, this coming weekend is the time. I'm going to pull the motor out of the parts car this weekend, as well as the transmission, and any other parts I can salvage. If anyone is interested in helping out, I'll provide all the food and beer you desire while over here. What all do we have to do? The parts car is a 1978 280Z 2+2. I need the transmission for the 240Z, and probably will end up needing the motor for when the Turbo motor has problems! Other than that, I want to remove whatever I can save/sell before I scrap the rest of it so I can bring the 240Z back home. Best of luck to the guys/girls that will be at the 100 Acre Wood. Muggy, bring home a win! Jim, keep the Rally truck together for her last...Wed, 21 Feb 2007 01:45:51 GMTbe2a2209-239a-4d1e-8260-65217a5d16eaDraining the fluids in the parts car, 2-23-07https://www.chrishammond.com/Cars/240z/itemId/736/Draining-the-fluids-in-the-parts-car-22307I spent a bit of time this evening working on the 280Z.  Here's the video! http://www.project240z.com/tabid/54/itemid/11/Parts-Car-draining-the-fluids-223.aspx Here's what I got done. Drained the oil Drained the transmission fluid Removed the hood wings Removed the driver's side mirror Removed teh driver's side Z vent cover. Tomorrow: The motor and transmission come...Sat, 24 Feb 2007 00:25:56 GMT3e3d5461-b51b-456d-b3ca-ee376bb6284dParts Car Engine Removal Day 1https://www.chrishammond.com/Cars/240z/itemId/737/Parts-Car-Engine-Removal-Day-1Spent today disconnecting things from the motor so I can get the motor and transmission pulled out tomorrow. Also removed some of the front end body work I need to try to make work on the 240Z as well. http://www.project240z.com/DesktopModules/EngagePublish/itemlink.aspx?itemId=12 Accomplished today Disconnected all wires and hoses from the motor that need to be disconnected to pull the motor. Removed the Radiator Removed the headlight buckets Removed the rest of the front valance Removed Passenger Side Mirror Removed Passenger/Driver side chrome trim...Sat, 24 Feb 2007 19:13:38 GMTea363552-d9d6-4005-9b0d-8dc67deddfa0Parts car motor pull Day 2https://www.chrishammond.com/Cars/240z/itemId/738/Parts-car-motor-pull-Day-2Thanks to Terec for coming over today and helping me get the motor pulled out of the 78 280Z 2+2 parts car today! http://www.project240z.com/tabid/54/itemid/13/Project-240Z-Day-2-of-Parts-Car-Motor-Pull.aspx Here's what we got done. Pulled the motor and transmission Disconnected the driveshaft Ruined a clutch line (that was all...Sun, 25 Feb 2007 21:32:57 GMTa50e253f-d292-4f0f-b2f8-e8f12e651484Anyone dealt with the Z Store before?https://www.chrishammond.com/Cars/240z/itemId/743/Anyone-dealt-with-the-Z-Store-beforeI emailed the Z Store on Tuesday, and haven't heard back from them. I'm looking at their MSA Type III body kit for the Project 240z. Anyone ever dealt with them, or seen the body kit before? The question I had for them was does the kit require a front bumper, or does it replace the bumper? Other questions I have for anyone who has seen the kit in person, what'd you think? Was the kit something...Sun, 04 Mar 2007 21:34:03 GMT5a35f226-8e1d-4811-81e7-98acc8b04c15The 240Z is home againhttps://www.chrishammond.com/Cars/240z/itemId/750/The-240Z-is-home-againThe 240Z is finally home. The parts car is gone, news at...Sun, 11 Mar 2007 19:21:59 GMT9180a12b-26dc-4501-a7cb-cff81c13b857240Z, the Journey homehttps://www.chrishammond.com/Cars/240z/itemId/751/240Z-the-Journey-homeSo this morning I got up and finished up what I could get done on the project car, a 1978 280Z 2+2, courtesy of our very own Lynn Wilson, Thanks Lynn!!! I had planned to remove the diff from the car this morning, along with the door lock from the passenger door, ignition switches and such as well. I got the switches and locks, but had a hell of a time trying to get the diff out. I got everything disconnected except the axles, without any luck getting the axles removed I gave up, hastily slapped some bolts/nuts back on the diff to hold it in place and I took some wire to tie up the driveshaft to keep it from hanging down to the floor. After clearing off the parts I knew I wanted I had to run down to SoloPerformance to drop off the Engine Hoist that I've had for, oh almost the past year. Dave needed it for a week or so, and all I've been doing with it is using it as a nice engine hanger lately. After that quick trip I grabbed Natalie, hopped in the Tahoe and headed up North. Went to the Elterman's to pickup his trailer so I could haul cars to Egypt and back. From there we headed back home, loaded up the parts car and took off to Speedway (junk yard) in Illinois. They were pretty lax about things, which was nice, I rolled the car off the trailer and headed over to the super secret storage facility. From there we filled up the flat spare tire and rolled it out of the shop and onto the trailer for the trip back home. Both towing trips were uneventful, which was nice, though each car did shift around on the trailer a bit. The Tahoe towed fine, which is great! Though, I still want to see about getting a gooseneck trailer at somepoint to tow with the F350. On the way home from the super secret storage facility I decided to stop and double check the straps, just to make sure I wasn't going to lose my baby. I stopped out in front of this great sign ;)     After getting home, Natalie and I unloaded the 240 from the trailer, though, not before I took the time to sweap the 5lbs of rust that the parts car had deposited on the floor of the garage. After rolling her into the garage and test fitting a few of the interior pieces we headed back up north to drop James' trailer off. They weren't home, lucky for them. Had he been home he might have had a heart attack watching me back the trailer in, I ended up parking it about 6 inches from the front of the STi, that darn slopped trailer, makes it hard to judge distances. Lucky for me I stopped when I did, otherwise I would have felt like a complete ass for borrowing a trailer and then hitting the owners car when returning it. More on the Project240z car later this...Sun, 11 Mar 2007 22:11:00 GMT2062580b-3cbb-41ae-a803-479d1a90b874Project240Z.com Photoshttps://www.chrishammond.com/Cars/240z/itemId/752/Project240Zcom-PhotosI created a photos page last week, and didn't put any up there! Now they're pulling from the Project240z.com Flickr Group and posting on the Project240z.com Photos page for all to see. Nothing too interesting yet...Mon, 12 Mar 2007 14:20:14 GMT70a6df6a-3f9e-4768-8029-d0b98912e64bMegasquirt has been orderedhttps://www.chrishammond.com/Cars/240z/itemId/774/Megasquirt-has-been-orderedEven though I'm out in Mormanville I've been hard at work at least thinking about the Project 240z!  With the guidance of Mr. Whittle I've ordered over $700 in equipment to get the motor wired up with Megasquirt. I hope to hit the junk yard on Friday and find a few more random Ford Ignition parts that I need for the megasquirt setup, and hopefully the megasquirt parts from DiyAutotune will be here early next week. My dad will be in town this coming weekend, so I plan to put him to work the next few weeks to help me get this car ready for April...Thu, 22 Mar 2007 08:37:47 GMTaa5692f2-4921-49f8-903c-33a10198b2c1Dressed in blackhttps://www.chrishammond.com/Cars/240z/itemId/775/Dressed-in-blackWell the engine bay of the Project 240Z has a nice coat of black paint. I'll be touching up a few areas tomorrow, as well as doing the following. Hitting the Junkyard to locate parts I still need for the megasquirt setup, including mostly these ford parts: throttlebody from a V8, VR Sensor from a V6, fuel injectors, wires, coils. I'll also be hitting the parts store for some new break and clutch lines, installing the clutch line, and hopefully starting to put the transmission onto the turbo motor. Photos...Sat, 24 Mar 2007 00:23:21 GMT399a29ff-a906-43e8-acdd-1348a25302ceJunk Yard Saturdayhttps://www.chrishammond.com/Cars/240z/itemId/776/Junk-Yard-SaturdayToday, well yesterday now, it's 1am, Dad and I went to Speedway salvage over in Madison Illinois. 3-4 hours later we walked out of there with $120 worth of parts for the Project 240Z. I didn't realize you could spend that much on junk? I got most of the ignition system I needed to complete the Megasquirt setup, some interior plastics I needed, as well as the steering wheel off my parts car that I dropped off at Speedway two weeks ago. I think they even charged me for the wheel. Dad took apart the brake master cylinder and start cleaning it, we'll do the same with the clutch cylinder tomorrow, and reassemble that with the rebuild kit I picked up this evening. I couldn't find a brake mc kit in town tonight, so that will have to be a future product. I also picked up 7 feet of hydrolic line to run a new clutch line and repair a brake line I had to cut last week. Tomorrow (Today) we'll see how far we can get towards putting the 83 motor into the car. I'm going to be working on getting the parts we need off of the motor from the parts car so we can get the motor setup to drop in the car. More...Sun, 25 Mar 2007 02:05:27 GMT35a913fe-40d8-4478-b4bb-9082fcc95374The motor is in the Project 240z!https://www.chrishammond.com/Cars/240z/itemId/777/The-motor-is-in-the-Project-240zLook out Jeffs, the motor is in the Project 240z! Dad and I spent all day today working on the car, and I even swung by one of Jeef's old employer's to pickup some parts today as well. Dad spent most of the morning working on the clutch master cylinder and brake master cylinder, cleaning them up quite a bit, and using a rebuild kit on the clutch MC. The brake MC has some corrosion inside, so I'll be ordering a rebuilt MC tomorrow that I should be able to pickup tomorrow night. I spent the morning taking parts off of the 78 motor, cleaning them and putting them onto the 83 motor. Over the afternoon and early evening Dad and I managed to seperate the 5spd transmission from the 78 motor and put it onto the 83 motor. From the looks of things the 83 motor was either once powering an automatic tranny, or was prepped to perform that work as we had to replace the driveplate with the flywheel/pressure plate from the 78 motor as well. After getting the transmission together and putting some of the parts I scavanged from the 78 motor Dad and I managed to get the motor into the Project 240z. I must say, removing motors is far easier than actually putting them back in the car. We put bolts into the motor mounts, and also into the crossmember underneath the transmission to hold it all in place, but have yet to tighten anything down just yet. The megasquirt equipment should be here soon, hopefully. I've still gotta find a few parts for the ignition/fuel system. My goal is still to fire up the car next weekend, though I'm going to need a lot of help to do that. I'm still hoping Mr. Whittle will be able to assist this week with getting the Megasquirt setup on the car. Does anyone have a Ford Cobra MAF lying around anywhere? I'm in need of one. Photos have been uploaded and can be found on the photos...Mon, 26 Mar 2007 03:26:00 GMTa1cfb788-0aa3-4e2f-b123-4786c7c92ab3Another night of wrenching on the carhttps://www.chrishammond.com/Cars/240z/itemId/778/Another-night-of-wrenching-on-the-carDad and I spent a few hours working on the 240z this evening. We got the clutch pedal in, and even got as far as putting the Clutch Master Cylinder in the car. We went to put the 78 280Z brake booster in the 73 240Z, but ended up figuring out that the firewalls on the two cars are different, and the booster out of the 78 won't fit in the 73 with a clutch installed. Sooooo, now we're trying to verify that we can use the recently purchased rebuilt brake master cylinder for the 78 booster, on the 73 booster, without any issue. We'll see how that goes! After work today I ran to Illinois again to hit the Speedway salvage yard up for more parts as well. I picked up 3 wiring harnesses for the fuel injectors for the L28 motors. 1 set was off my old parts car, another off a 78 coupe that was there and another set off an 82 I believe. I'm hoping with all those connectors I can come up with at least 6 that are good enough to use to start the car up. After the junkyard I hit up Carquest to pickup the rebuilt master cylinder, it was actually just about the same price as a rebuild kit, so buying the already built one made too much sense. Hopefully tomorrow we can get that rest of the brake and clutch items squared away. I'm also making an electronics run tomorrow to get bits and pieces of items necessary for the megasquirt install that I hope to tackle this weekend. ...Wed, 28 Mar 2007 02:18:26 GMT3b91c90e-8c82-426a-88eb-7c114c9e741cP240Z Pulleys a pullinhttps://www.chrishammond.com/Cars/240z/itemId/779/P240Z-Pulleys-a-pullinWell we overcame the the brake booster issues from last night. Dad got the Brakeline hooked up to the MC, and we got the booster installed in the firewall and hooked up to the pedal. After that I got the proper tool and pulled the pulleys off the 78 motor and the 83 motor as well. Not likely to get any work done tomorrow as I have a meeting tomorrow night, but Dad took the radiator from the 78 to get it cleaned up and pressure checked at a shop tomorrow sometime. At lunch I'll also hopefully be getting the 37pin plug for the Megasquirt put...Thu, 29 Mar 2007 00:48:54 GMT64a142fd-d124-4253-aa83-0f849be6209fFuel Cell timehttps://www.chrishammond.com/Cars/240z/itemId/786/Fuel-Cell-timeI took the gas tank out of the 240Z down to Manchester Radiator on Wednesday. They called me on Thursday to tell me that the tank was in a sad state. They dipped it and cleaned it up to find a lot of pinholes and larger holes in the bottom of the tank from rust. Rather than repair it they asked me if I could get another one from somewhere. Lucky for me SM2 allows for Fuel Cells, now I just need to read up on the rules and figure out where I can mount one legally in my car, and figure out how much that is going to end up costing me. The car hasn't been touched since last Sunday, and won't see any action before at least Thursday as Natalie and I are headed to Boston tomorrow for Opening Day on...Sat, 07 Apr 2007 00:43:17 GMTa05906a1-d242-48b7-aa93-2a9312696501Project 240Z status?https://www.chrishammond.com/Cars/240z/itemId/792/Project-240Z-statusCurrent status: On hold Why? Mainly school. It's nearing the end of the semester and I'm trying to get some class work finished up. I have a large presentation on Monday evening, after that, Tuesday, I hope to start back up on the car. I'm picking up a replacement 240Z Gas tank on Sunday, instead of going with a fuel cell for now I'm hoping to get by with a stock 240Z tank. I ordered a Flux/Gas welder from Harbor Freight on Thursday. It's cheap, but will hopefully at least get me started. I can see how well I can learn, and hopefully repair/build a few things along the way. If I start to use it much (I don't foresee this) I'll look at getting a nicer model sometime. I started putting my new workbench together last night. I'll take some pics of it once it's finished (must install the tabletop still) and moved around in the garage. Right now it's in front of the car as I haven't made room for it on the wall yet. More next...Sat, 21 Apr 2007 00:34:44 GMT3eef3e24-2ec1-4f38-b24b-37b7c5593c4dP240z Time to start againhttps://www.chrishammond.com/Cars/240z/itemId/794/P240z-Time-to-start-againTonight I begin working on the 240Z again. It's been quite a while since I've worked on it, 3 weeks or so, due to work and school and of course, Opening Day at Fenway. Tonight I'll be bench bleeding the rebuilt brake master cylinder that I picked up back towards the end of the month, then i plan to install the MC and bleed the brake system with the help of my father. After that I'm going to work on the interior of the car a bit more, cleaning up the rust and painting over the clean metal with hopes to prevent more rust. Thursday I'll be doing more, hopefully getting to the point where I can install the pulley that Tuxedo Park Racing is currently working on. The pully has a 36-1 trigger wheel on it for the Megasquirt Ford EDIS setup. Once I have the pulley on I'm going to start fabricating the bracket to mount the VR sensor, and hopefully get some wires run this weekend. I was hoping to do some welding, but it looks like Harbor Freight has the welder I ordered on backorder. It sure as nice of them to tell me that when I ordered. I had to call and listen to the automated system just to find that out. If they don't come up with one tomorrow I'm cancelling my order and I'll look elsewhere for a welder, or get someone to do some welding for me. Russ has a welder he thinks might work, so I'll try to drag him over if I can. More tonight after some work is...Tue, 24 Apr 2007 14:22:44 GMTbf12664c-4423-4649-91f5-e1ec37c1362dGas Tank update, seat fitting this weekend, harbor freight suckshttps://www.chrishammond.com/Cars/240z/itemId/796/Gas-Tank-update-seat-fitting-this-weekend-harborI ended up not getting another gas tank this past weekend. I had planned on picking one up in Hillsboro but the guy ended up sounding way too sketchy for me. First the tank was perfect, then it had two holes he was going to repair, then there was a gash that needed repair, then, and then, and then. So I ended up deciding not to go get the tank. Back to looking for a Fuel Cell again, unless anyone has a source on a complete, leak free, 240Z Gas tank? I'm picking up a seat from www.soloperformance.com tomorrow to do some test fitting this weekend. I'll probably go with a Corbeau A4, but need to make sure it will fit in the car, and of course with me in it, before I order anything. I'm thinkin the black microsuede sure would look nice! This section of the post should be one for The Mad Blogger, but I'll post it here anyways. Harbor Freight sucks. I ordered a welder from them last week, called today and found out it was on backorder with no expected date of arrival. I'll call them tomorrow, and if it's still not expected soon I'll cancel the order and figure something else out.... Anyone want to come over and weld some things this weekend, bring a welder!!!! ...Wed, 25 Apr 2007 01:01:28 GMTf1413786-97bb-4790-94d2-7a09a1f45fabMy Motivationhttps://www.chrishammond.com/Cars/240z/itemId/798/My-MotivationI was digging through some old photos tonight looking for photos of Jeff Krekeler, when I ran across this photo I took back in June of 2004.   When I get bored, lazy, or tired of working on the Project240z, I only have to look at that photo and realize what I'm striving for. That car is beautiful, and I hope my car can one day look that...Sat, 28 Apr 2007 01:36:00 GMTc88db3d5-02ed-4a01-b640-225d310acf5a240Z Corbeau Seats came inhttps://www.chrishammond.com/Cars/240z/itemId/805/240Z-Corbeau-Seats-came-inThe seats I ordered earlier this week came in today! They look awesome, though they are now in the basement still in the shipping box. I'm not about to put them near the car right now, not until I get the grinding/welding done so I don't cover them in dust/rust and...Sat, 05 May 2007 03:36:00 GMTcd1006d1-0316-49c2-ba60-d594607a9b3aFirst weekend in May, 240Z work!https://www.chrishammond.com/Cars/240z/itemId/806/First-weekend-in-May-240Z-workDad and I got a bit done on the car this weekend. I've created two videos, one from Saturday, one from Sunday. Saturday: We ended up running around looking for more plugs for the intake manifold, ended up not having any luck at all with that. We also took some time and found more metal to use on the floorpan. After returning we fabricated a throttle linkage and then i decided it was time to actually see some resemblance of a car, so I partially assembled the front end with the new (new to me) air dam I picked up that afternoon. <span class="Publish_Video"><iframe width="640" height="480" src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/gUx4mhIfb38?HD=1&wmode=opaque" style="border: none"></iframe></span> http://www.project240z.com/DesktopModules/EngagePublish/itemlink.aspx?itemId=21 Photos: Sunday: Welding day. I spent most of the day welding, grinding, cussing, welding, grinding. And now I have a passenger floor pan without any holes in it! Alright, there are a few holes that are supposed to be there, and then there are a few holes that can be filled, but they are tiny compared to what I started with. <span class="Publish_Video"><iframe width="640" height="480" src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/OdNaHEqvKno?HD=1&wmode=opaque" style="border: none"></iframe></span> http://www.project240z.com/DesktopModules/EngagePublish/itemlink.aspx?itemId=22 Photos:  ...Sun, 06 May 2007 21:44:00 GMT857a4da8-45cb-4f22-82ad-15b6bf81a582240Z Downpipe arrived!https://www.chrishammond.com/Cars/240z/itemId/809/240Z-Downpipe-arrivedWell today a key component of my project arrived, the downpipe for the Turbo showed up. At first I flipped out thinking it was the wrong downpipe. ! = Then someone on Hybrid Z kindly pointed out that I need to remove the stock wastegate housing in order  to install this downpipe, which I believe is off a Z31 motor, instead of an L28ET motor like I have. I'll be testing this out tomorrow, then I hope to try to get it over to Hackman to get it powder...Wed, 09 May 2007 01:41:34 GMTe83e9f4a-06ba-4af7-9dd4-13c67bdcd903Done with class!https://www.chrishammond.com/Cars/240z/itemId/810/Done-with-classWell the semester is finally over for me! Perhaps now I can get some done on the 240Z during the week...Wed, 09 May 2007 22:59:00 GMT48f645ad-5285-45db-a069-acc39335696aDoes the 240Z need a cage?https://www.chrishammond.com/Cars/240z/itemId/815/Does-the-240Z-need-a-cageSince I've decided to change classes, and not bother with most of the interior items, should I go ahead and put a cage in the car? I'll be going to XP, which I don't believe requires a cage, but I'd also like to do some time trials/hpde in the car. Any of the St. Louis cage builders want to work out a deal on a cage in exchange for advertising/promotion on...Wed, 16 May 2007 14:54:01 GMT99d5a57e-df53-4821-9e78-f323dbf937d6May 29th P240z updatehttps://www.chrishammond.com/Cars/240z/itemId/824/May-29th-P240z-updateSo what's going on with the 240Z? Not much. I haven't done any work since last week, though I plan to get some done tonight. I did manage to start putting together a parts list of items I need to purchase, it really starts to add...Tue, 29 May 2007 18:07:20 GMT1dfc03d5-20fc-48ba-a4a5-d55feb1404bcProject240z.com Upgraded https://www.chrishammond.com/Cars/240z/itemId/826/Project240zcom-UpgradedI upgraded Project240z.com to DotNetNuke 4.5.2 tonight, no issues what so ever. Posted from...Wed, 30 May 2007 00:10:00 GMT325c810a-48a1-4b0b-9b4e-865da6be848eFuel Cell Ordered....https://www.chrishammond.com/Cars/240z/itemId/831/Fuel-Cell-OrderedWell I ordered the fuel cell for the 240Z today, as well as 20ft of fuel line and AN fittings, as well as a wiring kit for a fuel pump. Tomorrow I'll probably be ordering a fuel pump. I also entered the DoubleX in Atlanta at the end of June. So now I have a deadline. Though my deadline is actually a few weeks earlier. I'm going to do my best, and recruit my friends, to hopefully help me get this thing running very soon. I'd love to have it together by the Impala event here in St. Louis on the 17th of June so I can try to get some time running the car. Anyone up for some assistance? Here's what I need help with. Installing the fuel cell/lines/pump. I need to come up with some sort of exhaust for the car, as Atlanta has noise requirements that need to be met. Wiring up the MegaSquirt (this will be the biggest step and my biggest fear, as I have no electronics experience) Who's down for some help? Anyone? PLEASE?...Mon, 04 Jun 2007 23:34:16 GMT83a76775-90bb-4417-ab28-1f1c4f3b1062P240Z update, broken Craftsmen power toolshttps://www.chrishammond.com/Cars/240z/itemId/836/P240Z-update-broken-Craftsmen-power-toolsSo this weekend was anything but productive. I ended up not getting a thing done on the car this weekend. I did manage to get the drill press together Saturday morning, and I acquired a trailer Saturday morning.   Sunday was a different story. I had planned on getting a lot done, but ended up sleeping all day. While it was nice, it was far from what I needed to get the car going. Tonight I went out with Russ and Matt Melton and Jeff "The Jeweler" Krekler, down to dinner in Soulard. From there I took Russ back to his house, saw his family, and came home with new motivation to get some work done on the car. I changed and went outside, setup the laptop to record video and go to work. I was cutting some aluminum scrap I picked up from the Metal Supermarket last Friday. I started making a new blockoff plate for the AAC valve on the L28ET intake manifold. I cut a rough pattern out with the jigsaw, made from tracing the bottom of the AAC valve with a sharpee and an awl to cut into the aluminum. I then went to assemble my new vertical belt sander that I purchased on Friday. The while taking it out of the box I noticed the darn thing was broken. Not likely broken to the point I couldn't use it, but I decided nonetheless to box it back up and take it back to Sears tomorrow to get a replacement. So that was the end of work tonight, I couldn't go any further on the plate and had some work to do on a few websites. I came inside to try to work on my video I recorded, but apparently managed to hose the video recording on the laptop by unplugging the camera before shutting off the software, so there's a tip, if you're using the lifecam software don't unplug the camera before you shut down the software, you're libel to lose your...Tue, 12 Jun 2007 00:54:32 GMT107a21d9-e721-4e39-97e0-5760de0ba656Fun power tools and more 240Z progresshttps://www.chrishammond.com/Cars/240z/itemId/837/Fun-power-tools-and-more-240Z-progressLast night I returned the Vertical sander that I had purchased from Sears that was broken when I removed it from the box. I got a replacement sander and brought it home to install. I setup the webcam on the wall, right above the work bench, and got to work assembling the sander. 5-10 minutes later I was ready to start sanding on the aluminum I had cut with a jig saw the day before to make a blockoff plate for my AAC valve on the intake manifold. I tell you what, a vertical sander is a fun thing to have! Here's the result of what I was making, though I'm still going to drill a hole in it and tap that hole for the temperature sensor I'll be mounting in the intake manifold.   I also got to use my new drill press to drill the holes in the plate, it all worked really darn well. After getting the plate made I decided it was time to remove the intake manifold from the car so I could tap and fill some of the holes on the manifold that I don't need to use. I brough the webcam with me and mounted it directly above the motor on the chery picker. I started removing bolts, then decided to read the haynes, it told me I need to remove the Turbo and a few other things to get the manifold removed, I guess I should of planned things a bit better and done most of this work BEFORE I put the engine back in the car, it sure would be a lot easier to get to. Once I realized how much I had to remove to get the manifold off I decided I didn't want to do all that last night, it was nearly 10pm by then. So I moved to the other side of the motor, bringing the camera with me to the other side. Andy and I decided last week to remove the attachments for the oil cooler for now, I'm going to attempt to get the car running without the cooler for now, and reinstall it down the road as I don't have all the hardware for it. So I started removing it last night, got it removed, and then saw that without the attachment there isn't a way to mount the oil filter to the block. So tonight I'll be attempting to remove the oil filter attachment from the parts motor (78 l28e) to see if I can use it on the 83 L28ET. After all this I decided it was time to head inside and play with the cool video I had shot last night, only to realize that I had click on the record audio button, instead of record video. So yet again, there isn't any video to be had :( Tonight though I promise I'll do my best to get it right and have a video to post of the evenings...Wed, 13 Jun 2007 11:51:12 GMT5c913607-e601-443d-aa9b-3f4d987c7f31Importing Video from the Canon HV20 to Windows MovieMakerhttps://www.chrishammond.com/Cars/240z/itemId/844/Importing-Video-from-the-Canon-HV20-to-Windows-MovIf you recently purchased a Canon HV20 you might be a bit surprised when you go to try and use any of the High Definition video you recorded with it. Canon didn't bother to include software on the CD to actually use the video you record. You might try hooking up your camera to your Windows XP machine via Firewire but that won't get you very far either. All I was able to do was to get it to the point where it would transfer DV, which wasn't acceptable to me so I didn't even bother to see if it would work. Instead I installed Windows Vista Ultimate on my desktop tonight. I installed my old Firewire card, hooked up the HV20 to the machine and I had Moviemaker importing video in no time, in HD even! I will let it import tonight and see what all I can do with the video in the morning. I have a tape with about an hour's worth of content on it, some of it for www.project240z.com so I hope to get that posted online tomorrow. Posted from...Tue, 19 Jun 2007 00:58:36 GMT183711cc-46ce-4d79-bdc3-b02536943377High Definition 240Z Engine Removalhttps://www.chrishammond.com/Cars/240z/itemId/845/High-Definition-240Z-Engine-RemovalI finally got the video working from my new camera. I installed Windows Vista again last night on my home Machine (after 4 months of running on XP again) and with Vista the camera works great! You can see/download the video with the URL below. But please right click and save the file, it is large. 180mb, but I think the quality is well worth the wait for the...Tue, 19 Jun 2007 12:52:53 GMT216b4646-bfbb-4eb3-9474-1823a9edff82Datsun Fuel Rail Ordered!https://www.chrishammond.com/Cars/240z/itemId/846/Datsun-Fuel-Rail-OrderedI just got off the phone with www.lonewolfperformance.com and ordered my fuel rail for the Project 240Z. Hopefully it will be here next week. Tomorrow I'll get on ordering the other parts I need, a guage, regulator and some fittings. As well as starting to locate some injectors! Thanks for James at Lonewolf for all the help on the phone today, he was great with answering my questions, and guess where they're from? Salina Kansas of all places, I guess I'll have to get the car ready and make it to an event in Salina sometime next...Thu, 21 Jun 2007 18:16:37 GMT0db3d7dc-731b-481f-bd00-5493ef4488f0More Fuel Parts Orderedhttps://www.chrishammond.com/Cars/240z/itemId/848/More-Fuel-Parts-OrderedI just placed another order with Summit Racing dot com today. I ordered the following, which I think will finish up what I need for the fuel system for the 240z.  AEI-13109  FUEL REGULATOR        AEI-15633  FUEL PRESSURE GAUGE         AER-FBM3416  REPLACEMENT HNBR O-RINGS EA         AER-FBM3417  REPLACEMENT HNBR O-RINGS 6EA        EAR-251008ERL  SIZE 8 FLAPPER CK - STYLE 1       SUM-220630  -06 PLUG AN ALUMINUM         SUM-220648  6AN TO 3/8 NPT ADAPTER       SUM-220841  -08 AN FEMALE COUPLE         SUM-220844  -08-06 AN MALE ADAPTER       SUM-220887  -08 90 SWIVEL HOSE END       SUM-220890  8AN HOSE END...Fri, 22 Jun 2007 14:18:43 GMTe0ddffb6-3884-469e-b237-1fba02765d2bP240Z passenger seat mount nearly donehttps://www.chrishammond.com/Cars/240z/itemId/851/P240Z-passenger-seat-mount-nearly-doneI spent another hour or so tonight working on the passenger seat mounts I hope to get some bolts tomorrow and attempt to mount the seat into the car tomorrow night or Friday. I'm still waiting on my fuel rail from Lone Wolf Performance. I hope to hear from them tomorrow and have the part by Friday. If not I'll have to find myself another source for a fuel rail. Goals for this weekend. Mount both seats in the car, though I'll pull them back out until I'm ready to leave them in there for a while, they are too nice to keep in such a dirty car till it gets cleaned up! I'm also shooting for getting the fuel cell all fabricated and mounted into the car, along with fuel lines run to the front of the...Thu, 28 Jun 2007 00:52:03 GMT31f5dba0-2fcc-48fb-8db6-ca4a39435d0aFuel Cell frame constructionhttps://www.chrishammond.com/Cars/240z/itemId/855/Fuel-Cell-frame-constructionThis morning I set out into the garage to tackle a fairly large task, at least in my mind. My goal was to build a frame that will secure my 15 gallon fuel cell to the Project 240Z. In case you don't want to read the rest of this post, I was successful! I began with a few shots of the car before I started cutting into it (further than I cut last weekend). There are various shots here, above and below.       After taking those shots I got to cutting. Dave (from www.soloperformance.com) and I had discussed how to mount the cell into the car on Tuesday when he came over, so I had an idea of what I wanted to do. I quickly marked some lines to cut with a sharpie, then proceeded to tear up two cutting wheels removing metal from the rear of the car. I don't know why that stock metal tears up wheels, but they sure to go away quickly when cutting on the car. Here are photos of what was left after cutting.   The intention for the fuel cell frame was to bolt a bar on the back of the rear differential mount, weld to 1x1" square tubes parallel to the ground running towards the back of the car, then come up at a 90 degree angle from those tubes with more square steel. Those two vertical posts would weld to a bar running inside the back of the car, this bar would also be bolted into the car, not welded, so that if necessary the whole frame can be pulled out with minimal effort. Here are a few pictures of the end result of the frame, as well as some of my crappy welds! I figured out with all but two welds done, that I had somehow adjusted the wirespeed on the welder in the wrong direction, and that was why I was having a horrible time. I think they''ll hold though, they just aren't very pretty!   This frame easily goes in and out of the car, which should come in handy if I ever need to remove the rear end (which I plan to when overhauling the suspension, after the car runs). Here are a few shots of the frame sitting in the car And here is the end result, the fuel cell sitting in the frame, sitting in the car.   I think the frame turned out great and I love this photo The tank sits just low enough, it is barely visible from the back of the car, I actually had to walk 10 feet back and down a couple feet of driveway incline to see either the tank or the frame itself.  I've yet to bolt the frame to the car, but that can wait. I'll get some nuts, bolts, and washers tomorrow for the various things I need to mount, fuel cell, seats, etc. All in all I'm really impressed with myself, I got a lot more done this weekend than most weekends, though I still have the build the driver's side seat mounts (I finished the passenger side yesterday). What's next? Well like I said, tomorrow night I'll be building the driver's side seat mount, as well as visiting Mr. Whittle's house to test fit some fuel injectors into my new fuel rail that should be arriving and the old intake manifold. If the injectors he has fit I'll be ordering injectors on Tuesday. After that I'll be running fuel lines, and be working on putting the motor back together so I can attempt to put it back in the car next weekend if all goes well. That might be a lofty goal, but this whole project has been lofty for me, so why quit shooting high...Mon, 02 Jul 2007 00:50:36 GMT7b0537e5-113f-431d-a19b-ce6175ebf0a5DotNetNuke Tip Modifying your Portal Aliaseshttps://www.chrishammond.com/Cars/240z/itemId/857/DotNetNuke-Tip-Modifying-your-Portal-AliasesWelcome back to the DotNetNuke tips! I started doing this over a year ago, though with getting married last fall and working on my Datsun 240Z lately I haven't blogged near as much lately about DNN topics. So here we go, starting up again with my DotNetNuke Tips. Today's tip follows: When you're doing testing locally with a backup for a Production Database and Website one of the things you need to be sure to do is change your Portal Alias for your local URL, instead of your production URL. If you don't do this you'll hit the local URL and it will most likely redirect you to the production URL. This can cause a bit of chaos if you don't notice that you're no longer on the local/testing URL and start modifying the production web site. To change your portal alias you can do the following. Open your SQL Server management tool; SQL Enterprise Manager, SQL Server Management Studio, or whatever you choose to use. Browse to your local/test database, open up the PortalAlias table. You can either Modify your existing Alias, or you can add a new Alias to this table. test.myurl.com for example, be sure to setup the proper portal ID if you're adding a new alias and you have a lot of different aliases in there. You might also need to setup the aliases for the child portals as well if you plan on using those. The next step is crucial. You'll want to reset your website before you try to hit the new alias. You can do that in a couple of ways, I always prefer to open up the web.config file, add a carriage return and hit save. This will cause IIS to reload the site, clearing out the cache and loading the new portal aliases. Look for more DotNetNuke tips coming soon!Posted from...Tue, 03 Jul 2007 14:04:00 GMT5dad6d60-4bf8-48c5-86f7-7c4316916759Fourth of July Fireworks and Baseballhttps://www.chrishammond.com/Cars/240z/itemId/858/Fourth-of-July-Fireworks-and-BaseballYesterday was a busy Fourth of July. Natalie and Fabien got up and rode in the morning, I slept in, though I had planned on getting work done on the 240z. Around noon we left the house and headed west. We looked at a few properties for sale, two in Wildwood and one down south of Pacific. The good one in Wildwood is amazing, and might just work out for us, so we're going to try to go get a tour of it very soon. It has almost 5 acres, a barn with two horse stalls, a hay shed and various other features. The property we looked at south of Pacific would be very cool, but at only 2.3 acres doesn't look to be a very good horse property. I loved it because it had a total of 7 garage spots! After that we picked up Lindsey and headed downtown to the VP Fair and then to the baseball game. The closer we got downtown the darker it got, and eventually started raining. We ended up camping out in the Tahoe for about 15 minutes while we waited for the rain to pass. From there we walked up to the stadium and then over to the Arch to see the fair. Honestly, the fair sucked. There wasn't hardly anyone there and the only activities we saw were food/beer booths and some band playing on stage. Nothing else going on to make it worth our trek over there. We headed back to Busch Stadium to hang out there until the game. The game was great, the first Cards game I've been to this year that they actually won! After the game we stayed up on the upper deck to watch the fireworks at the fair. I took quite a few photos with my phone, I'll post more later but here's one for...Thu, 05 Jul 2007 11:45:53 GMTf4429a94-6f80-429d-8c55-e87143cb0645Project 240z, What's next?https://www.chrishammond.com/Cars/240z/itemId/859/Project-240z-Whats-nextTasks for the next few days. Thursday: Finish trimming the driver's side seat mounts, weld everything together, install seat for fitting. Friday/Saturday: Receive the fuel injectors from Summit Run fuel lines from fuel cell to engine bay Clean up intake manifold Tap a few holes in the intake manifold to fit NPT threaded plugs Clean up intake/exhaust manifold Install intake/exhaust manifold Clean up exterior of the motor/transmission Repaint parts of the engine bay Put motor/transmission back in the car If anyone is looking for anything to do on Saturday let me know! I can use the help! Next week I'm hoping to recruit Nick Jackson to come over and help me running wires in the car for the...Thu, 05 Jul 2007 16:24:52 GMTf696cd3f-7416-4c4d-b52a-08010cddec45P240Z A bit done here, a bit done there.https://www.chrishammond.com/Cars/240z/itemId/861/P240Z-A-bit-done-here-a-bit-done-thereTake 2, stupid internet browsers, I typed this once, I guess that's what I get for not typing it up in Windows Live Writer instead of in the browser. As anyone who has read the blog consistantly will know, I never get as much done as I "plan" to do in a given time frame, this weekend so far is no exception. Thursday I got most of the driver's seat mounts welded into place, but I didn't finish them off, I left the tabs for the actualy mounts off. Friday night I tested some rust remover on the exhaust manifold, no luck on removing any rust with the products I tried. This morning I got up at 9:30am, lounged around for an hour and a half. I went out to the garage and welded in the tabs for the driver's side seat mount. From there I was all over the place, here's a list of things I worked on today, in no particular order Test fitted new injectors in fuel rail/intake manifold Cleaned the intake manifold Cleaned the exhaust manifold Test fitted IAT sensor in intake manifold Cleaned the transmission and bell housing Scraped undercoating off the car around the transmission tunnel and floorboards Removed all the stock fuel lines (3) Mounted the fuel pump and bracket Test ran some new braided fuel line (need to buy more as I don't think 20ft is enough Prepped the driver's side interior for paint (removed paint/primer, will do passenger side and paint later this week) I've gotta try to hit the junk yard tomorrow, also will be racing Jansoon's M3, so we'll see how my first BMW experience goes. Here are photos of the driver's side seat mounts, as well as the prep work for...Sun, 08 Jul 2007 00:46:28 GMTaab05a26-5393-4b89-bb82-5b01cadac830P240Z Fiberglass work https://www.chrishammond.com/Cars/240z/itemId/867/P240Z-Fiberglass-workTonight I spent some time working with fiberglass in the car. I was hoping to repair a few of the holes in the floorboards. I made quite a mess, but learned quite a bit. Here are some before photos.   The passenger side needed the most work as it was in the worst shape due to rust. I used quite a few pieces of fiberglass matt on the passenger floorboard covering some of the holes. I also covered up a few of the sharper metal pieces of the floorboard. On the driver's side I used minimal fiberglass matting and mainly used resin. The driver's side was in far better shape than the passenger side so I used resin to smooth out the surface on the driver's side. It turned out far better than I could have imagined! You can't really see it in the photos, but it's quite a clean look on the driver's side now. I can't wait to see how all this looks once painted. Though before I paint I'll be cleaning up the fiberglass with some sand paper. I'll spend some time Thursday and Friday night working on the floor. I hope to try to paint the interior this weekend. The interior may have to wait though as I hope to finish up a few other things this weekend, mainly the fuel lines and getting the motor back into the...Thu, 12 Jul 2007 01:00:59 GMTc7c5ba8c-da89-449a-95ed-6265138d7486P240Z Sunday Wiring Startshttps://www.chrishammond.com/Cars/240z/itemId/878/P240Z-Sunday-Wiring-StartsHere's a quick update on the 240. I got up this morning and finished up modifications to the bracket I built for the VR sensor, you can see what it ended up looking like in the photo below. It's not all that pretty, but not too bad considering I made it out of a drill press, vertical sander, and a jig saw. I then ran out and spent a few more hours shopping. I went to autozone and purchased lots of random bits that I needed, another fuel filter (that didn't fit), wires, splices, antifreeze, radiator hose, oil, gear lube, and a ton of other random stuff. I also took the battery I had purchased for the parts car back to get tested, it wouldn't charge so they gave me a credit (it was out of the year's free replacement), so I got a new battery for $9.95. Whittle came over and assisted with a few more wiring questions. From there I tried to get started on wiring. I began by looking where exactly I was going to run the wires, in order to find an existing hole to run them through I got up under the dash and started removing things on the passenger side. The first thing I removed ended up being part of the AC system, which I wasn't actually sure the car had! That opened up two holes, with grommets to boot, that allowed me to start running wires. Terec came over and started assisting with a few things, first thing we did when he got there was make a list of all the tasks left to do on the car. We used a sharpie on the windshield. After that he was visibly more productive today than I was. He actually mounted the sensor up to the motor and made sure that it was within specs to the 36-1 wheel. After that he was able to get the radiator mounted and the hoses attached to the proper locations. He then got the Oil Cooler mounted and the hoses finished up from what Eric started doing yesterday. You can see the oil cooler and radiator mounted in this photo. I was able to get some of the EDIS wiring started, as well as power wires ran for both injector banks, as well as the Megasquirt harness wired into the engine bay, though the MS harness doesn't actually connect to anything yet. I have a LOT more wiring to do this week, hopefully getting most of it done Monday and Tuesday night with a goal of trying to start the car on Wednesday. We'll see if that happens, if I don't at least attempt to start it before Sunday I've vowed to shave my head.... Here are more photos from today. ...Mon, 23 Jul 2007 02:34:20 GMT43f27f08-b41b-424d-be9b-6af3d7af4375DotNetNuke 4.5.4 Released!https://www.chrishammond.com/Cars/240z/itemId/879/DotNetNuke-454-ReleasedOver the weekend (I missed it because I was working on my car all weekend www.project240z.com) DotNetNuke 4.5.4 dropped, you can get it from www.dotnetnuke.com You can see a list of changes on the Gemini site at http://support.dotnetnuke.com I've cleaned up the list a bit and posted it here as well. Admin / Host Functions Bug DNN-5075 Adding/deleting security roles - notification/date format.  Admin / Host Functions Bug DNN-5239 Issue with "required" profile properties. Admin / Host Functions Bug DNN-5433 Redirect after login   Admin / Host Functions Bug DNN-5616 Core code should not reference external images... >Admin / Host Functions Bug DNN-5646 last lock-out date incorrect   Admin / Host Functions Bug DNN-5765 Sitemap.aspx Including Link to DotNetNuke.com   Admin / Host Functions Bug DNN-5614 Page Quota Not Working in Demo Portals   Admin / Host Functions Bug DNN-5771 Profile Definition Required Needs to be Tied to Visibility   Admin / Host Functions Bug DNN-5715 Install wizard runs when database is missing Admin / Host Functions Bug DNN-5727 Can't delete default home page after installation/yellow screen of death   Admin / Host Functions Bug DNN-5803 Save stylesheet in site settings clears selected logo   Admin / Host Functions Bug DNN-5855 Upgrade Status Indicator   Admin / Host Functions Bug DNN-5787 Account Login module is not visible to logged in users   Admin / Host Functions Bug DNN-5847 Add Existing Module no longer allows settings change to original   Admin / Host Functions Bug DNN-5862 Module Cache Expiration   Admin / Host Functions Enhancement DNN-5805 short circuit check for known account defaults   Admin / Host Functions Enhancement DNN-5854 Google Adsense Support   Control Panel Bug DNN-1579 Misleading Tooltips  General Bug DNN-5754 Profile Property Names that contain spaces raise js errors   Installation / Upgrade Bug DNN-5853 *.ZIP Packages should be installed automatically   Installation / Upgrade Bug DNN-5605 Password length error string   Installation / Upgrade Bug DNN-5606 Possible incorrect description text   Localization / ML Bug DNN-5835 typo in manage users localization file   Localization / ML Bug DNN-2612 XML Error in Resource Verifier   Localization / ML Enhancement DNN-5778 Inconsistent on page help text on the Account Login module Help buttons   Performance Bug DNN-5852 Add Tab Hangs on Site with large volume of Pages   Performance Task DNN-5714 unneccesary call in BuildDiv method of FieldEditorControl   Security Bug DNN-5802 ReturnUrl - Cross Site Request Forgery Vector   Security Bug DNN-5829 DNN Membership Preventing Active Directory Login   Security Bug DNN-5746 New user registration not working if specific page defined   Security Bug DNN-5734 Roles duplicated on "Global Roles" due to list values   Security Bug DNN-2593 Custom module permissions not deleted   Security New Feature DNN-678 SSL Support Skinning Bug DNN-4590 DNN not rendering link to skins CSS file   Skinning Bug DNN-5618 FixImagePath routine trashing APPIMAGEPATH   Skinning Bug DNN-5672 Pagingtable class made ineffective by hard-coded styles   Templates Bug DNN-5549 CS1010: Newline in constant error after creating new CS module using template   UI / Usability Bug DNN-5628 Assignment issue in HelpButtonControl   UI / Usability Bug DNN-5708 Wrong CSS class specified for "Manage User Credentials" tab   I'll be updating my sites today! Also, check out the "New Feature" of SSL support in the Core! Sweet! Posted from...Mon, 23 Jul 2007 10:02:00 GMTd372a607-8d1b-487a-b618-2731cb30a156Monday Monday Monday Progress!https://www.chrishammond.com/Cars/240z/itemId/880/Monday-Monday-Monday-ProgressToday was a good day! Progress was made! First things first, at lunch myself, Henry, and Eric headed down to High Ridge to SCPRacingparts.com again to get a cap for my Fuel cell, I realized yesterday that I was only 3 of the 4 fitting points for the fuel cell, and I had better get something to cover the fourth one up. After work my Henry (one of my bosses) and his mechanic buddy Ronnie came over to the house, after we made a quick pitstop at Gateway Electronics again to get more wiring items (I also spotted the Rally Bug builders on their way home from work). Ronny runs a shop down south near where he and Henry both live, so he was an EXCELLENT resource to have working on the car tonight. He and Henry got nearly every wire in the engine bay connected and placed in the appropriate areas, leaving just a few things for me to do in the bay. Eric also came over after making a trip to Autozone to get the battery for his 3rd gen RX-7 recharged. He finished up the fuel cell items that needed done. Adding the inline filter before the pump and then attached the vent line with the bulkhead fitting and check valve. I spent the evening doing minor things, mainly being in awe of all the work that Henry and Ronnie were getting done. I did track down some keys to the car, though I swear the keys I grabbed were the keys to the parts car I got rid of, one of them fit into the ignition for the 240z. I also figured out that the ignition has been turned on this whole time, which would explain why we never needed a key to turn the steering wheel when rolling the car around, though I'm not sure how it was turned on and the key removed. I do have the ignition out of the 78, as well as the turn signal and headlight switches from that car to try and use on the 73. Ronnie was able to get the power from the new battery hooked up to the starter, and alternator, which in turn got power to quite a bit of the car. One of the hazards work, the parking lights looked to work as when the headlights were turned on the rear lights lit up. I'll ahve to figure out how to wire up the headlights in the future, but I'm guessing the wiring for them should be somewhat intact based on testing tonight. So I've got more work to do tomorrow night. I'll try to finish up the wiring that is left in the engine bay, as well as wire up the fuse panel and try to mount the Megasquirt tomorrow night. Right now my goal is to try and start the car either Wednesday, or Thursday night! Though, I'm seriously thinking I won't be going to Topeka, though I'm still hoping to at take the car to the local autox this...Tue, 24 Jul 2007 01:36:36 GMT822ef00d-80ff-4add-bc64-2a413d65e0cbDotNetNuke 4.5.5 Releasedhttps://www.chrishammond.com/Cars/240z/itemId/890/DotNetNuke-455-ReleasedYet again I was headfirst into the Project240z and I missed another DotNetNuke Release! 4.5.5 dropped last week with a few major items fixed that caused probelms in the 4.5.4 release.  You can see those issues, as well as other issues from past releases in the Project Issue Tracker http://support.dotnetnuke.com/project/ChangeLog.aspx?PROJID=2 As for the 240Z, good news, I got the car running Saturday, and even drove it around a bit on Sunday! Posted from...Mon, 30 Jul 2007 17:38:00 GMTdf361a44-554a-459e-b616-0f2e18eb28f9Project240Z Audio! New Exhausthttps://www.chrishammond.com/Cars/240z/itemId/897/Project240Z-Audio-New-ExhaustTonight I told myself I wouldn't start the car, I would get ready for my trip to Chicago tomorrow (going up there to give two days of DotNetNuke training classes). But I couldn't help myself, I had to get the camera and record the new exhaust! It's not quiet, but oh it sounds so sweet! Here's a 2mb WAV file of the car running Here's a large WMV video of the same...Mon, 06 Aug 2007 22:51:57 GMT523936f0-23cb-4967-9320-b3588d8c7aa2Project240Z Post Traumatic Stress Analysishttps://www.chrishammond.com/Cars/240z/itemId/907/Project240Z-Post-Traumatic-Stress-AnalysisI went out to the garage tonight with the hopes of trying to figure out what went wrong on Sunday. I was going to take the valve cover off and see if I saw anything out of the ordinary, then pull the head if I could get to that. Before doing those two things though I figured I should drain the oil out of the motor. Much to my suprise when I drained the oil it wasn't oil that came out first, it was coolant, then oil followed.   Once I discovered that I began to lose hope that I would be able to salvage anything in this motor. Thoughts of a cracked block filled my head. Nevertheless I proceeded forward with removing the valve cover and whatever else I could get to. When I pulled the cover off I started looking around and immediately found something that looked out of place. Ends up I found two things out of place, two of the rocket arm guides were laying on the cylinder, with a little Matlock work I found that both the guides from the #2 cylinder were not in the correct place.     From there I didn't get too far, I did get the timing sprocket and chain removed, and ended up getting the camshaft remove as well, but I was unable to see anything out of the ordinary. I even tried sticking a magnet into the spark plug hole on the #2 cylinder with hopes of pulling some bits of metal out of there, hoping to find something awry. No dice, so I'll have to wait until this weekend to get further on the investigation. I'm going to have to pull the motor out of the car in order to take the manifolds off so that I can remove the cylinder head and see what happened on Sunday. Here's a link to the video of me working in the garage tonight. Notice the...Wed, 15 Aug 2007 00:54:26 GMTc280bd5f-e66a-40b0-85b4-7c5a8c34828aWho needs a steering wheel?https://www.chrishammond.com/Cars/240z/itemId/909/Who-needs-a-steering-wheelOver the time working on the 240Z we had various problems getting the steering wheel mounted in the car properly. The steering column threads wouldn't allow the Nut that I had to thread onto the column so mounting the wheel was an issue. Last night I found another nut for the column and believed that I got it threaded onto the column with a lot of brute force. Well it ends up that brute force basically destroyed the threads on the column. So... I guess I'll add a new steering column to the list of things I need for the...Fri, 17 Aug 2007 11:46:11 GMTca36964b-5b60-4eec-92a3-a7ebb5be0862Why I won't be buying a Cadillac CTS-Vhttps://www.chrishammond.com/Cars/240z/itemId/913/Why-I-wont-be-buying-a-Cadillac-CTSVSo a few days ago I was on this CTS-V kick. I decided I'd get a CTS-V to replace the Tahoe, something fun to drive every day, yet still refined. I looked around, found one I was interested in locally and went to drive it tonight. Driving: The thing is amazing, fun to drive, fast as hell, and stops well. Everything Else: I wasn't impressed. I had hoped with a Cadillac I'd get some "wow", but honestly, I didn't get any wow. The dash had some wear around the navigation screen, the rest of the interior had some wear and tear. Nothing major, but honestly nothing that jumped out at me with a "you have to buy this, wow". I sat in the back seat, holy crap that's not gonna work. I'm 6'3", I'm not sure a 6' person could sit back there. There is NO headroom whatsoever. So, that is that, the car is fun to drive, fast as hell, but didn't give me enough for how much it would end up costing. So the Tahoe stays around. Besides, I should keep the Tahoe and find an LS1 to put into the 240Z, a Caddy might be fun, but I'm not going to find one that fun with room like the Tahoe has for taking everyone to lunch at work. I'm the bus driver posted from...Tue, 21 Aug 2007 00:11:00 GMT07bd504a-8347-45e2-8619-772901d67756A day late, dollar short? LS1?https://www.chrishammond.com/Cars/240z/itemId/918/A-day-late-dollar-short-LS1Well, I was excited when I got up this morning. I thought i was going to go look at a LS1 motor for the 240z... But as of a few minutes ago I think the motor won't be there when I go to look at lunch today. We'll see, I may luck out and it may not be sold yet, but I was informed someone was coming to pick it up already. If not, if it looks good, I'll probably be purchasing the next powerplant for the Project240z today. Last night I spent some time in the garage, trying to clean up and get parts ready for an ebay explosion. More on the ebay parts later this...Wed, 29 Aug 2007 10:51:02 GMT6cdf3a09-42c1-4655-978b-4360df58a663The 240Z has life?https://www.chrishammond.com/Cars/240z/itemId/936/The-240Z-has-lifeSo I'm back from Topeka Kansas, I was there for a week attending the SCCA Solo Nationals. It was an interesting week. I didn't place as high as I would have hoped in the Collins' Solstice, but I had a blast nonetheless. While out there Nick Jackson and I did a lot of soul searching. We've been talking for the past few weeks about what to do with the Project240z, here are a few of the options we've discussed. Buy an LS1 and drop it in and continue to run in XP Buy a 5.3 Vortec out of a Tahoe and continue to run in XP Drop in the 78 280Z motor in the garage and run FP Sell the car and buy one of the following to run C5 Z06 to run in SS 06+ Mustang GT to run in FS Well, I think option 4.1 is leading the pack right now. Though my goal is to have the 240Z running by the end of October. My plan is to pull the bad motor out of the car tomorrow, and start replacing the leaky seal in the motor out of the 78 parts car. Get the 78 motor together, fuel injection setup off the Turbo motor, possibly the turbo, intake and exhaust over as well. Install the 78 in the car, get the car running, paint the car, sell the car. We'll see where I end up, but I'm definitely keeping my options...Sun, 30 Sep 2007 02:04:48 GMT7c4632aa-aba6-4252-a083-482ff8dded4aBut wait, there's more... maybehttps://www.chrishammond.com/Cars/240z/itemId/968/But-wait-theres-more-maybeThis just in, there may still be life in the Project240z.... It might get saved from the grasps of Ebay and become just a toy/project/wrench on me when you can car. Not a daily driver, not a race car, just something to play with, work on, add to, without worry of "will it make it faster or slower" More information coming sometime, who knows...Sat, 17 Nov 2007 01:17:42 GMT955ee702-a98e-4662-9b54-ab8b0925d17eHow many hobbies is too many hobbies?https://www.chrishammond.com/Cars/240z/itemId/1003/How-many-hobbies-is-too-many-hobbiesThat is the question for 2008? How many hobbies is too many? Here's a list of the ones I want to do so far.... (in no particular order) 1. Play more golf 2. Get the 240Z running 3. Race the Corvette (alot) 4. Play and Record Music 5. Home Automation 6. Developer more cool DNN modules How many of those have I done so far this year? So far #1, started on #5, and always do #6 Nick and I went to the driving range today for a while. We're hoping to play 18 holes...Sun, 06 Jan 2008 01:29:00 GMTcf81555e-8f88-44a3-b1db-9420ea087a6dWhat to do with the 240Z?https://www.chrishammond.com/Cars/240z/itemId/1006/What-to-do-with-the-240ZRight now I still want to keep the 240Z, though I have someone interested possibly buying the whole package..... What to do what to...Tue, 08 Jan 2008 02:15:00 GMT69691275-c444-4de3-a399-72e9c41993b42008, the year of the hobby!https://www.chrishammond.com/Cars/240z/itemId/1008/2008-the-year-of-the-hobbyWhat did I do tonight? More than most nights! I got home and decided it was time to tear into the motor that blew in the 240Z. So I did that! I found the piston. Well, I found some of the piston, in 100+ pieces. After working on the car tonight I had dinner with my wife, then came upstairs and was planning on getting some work done. Instead I opened up my Bass case and plugged into the amp. I played for quite a while, far longer than I expected, mostly learning some Green Day tunes. I must admit, I think I was born a base player, not a guitar player. I find it so much easier to just pick up and play a song, though, bass parts are generally...Wed, 09 Jan 2008 01:36:00 GMT91a1e811-18f1-4fa8-8be1-b3ea116c41b7Another 240Z for the site?https://www.chrishammond.com/Cars/240z/itemId/1019/Another-240Z-for-the-siteWhat? Another 240Z may become part of www.project240z.com? More information next...Thu, 17 Jan 2008 11:36:57 GMTcbf920ef-f9ad-41e9-b169-76d6b69d72b9Road Trip Sundayhttps://www.chrishammond.com/Cars/240z/itemId/1025/Road-Trip-SundaySunday: 13.5 hours~, 660 miles, 1 1970 240Z in Nick's garage. I can't believe I forgot to take my camera. I can't believe how cold it was. I can't believe he has more work to do on his car than I do on...Sun, 20 Jan 2008 23:02:00 GMTba7296f2-ec04-4574-acc3-55e9c65543dfSteve Ewing from The Urgehttps://www.chrishammond.com/Cars/240z/itemId/1078/Steve-Ewing-from-The-UrgeSo last night 7 of us went out to dinner at Llywelyn's in Webster Groves. I wanted to go see Steve Ewing from The Urge playing there, and I figured I'd drag along a few guys from work so Natalie and I would have some people to talk to. It was a great time, and I must say, Steve is an amazing singer, if you get a chance to see him playing somewhere do. In person he sounds just like the recordings except with a little more crowd enticement there. Check him out at www.steviee.com I'm also proud to say I'll be using some of his music in upcoming videos for www.corvettez06.org and www.project240z.com Sat, 16 Feb 2008 10:09:09 GMTb48ddcf7-59aa-4362-974e-4cc15d7e4a9aWeekend planshttps://www.chrishammond.com/Cars/240z/itemId/1136/Weekend-plans1. Wash/Wax the Corvette 2. Put the motor for the 240Z back together. 3. Make room in the garage so I can pull the Corvette back into the garage 4. Sleep 5. Finish getting prepped for the DotNetNuke Training that starts on Monday. 6. Get better Chris HammondSat, 29 Mar 2008 00:24:37 GMT857d114a-b369-4879-8222-c520f8a8bd59How not to sell something on Ebayhttps://www.chrishammond.com/Cars/240z/itemId/1137/How-not-to-sell-something-on-EbaySo last weekend some of the items I sold on Ebay for the 240Z ended. Well I shipped the last item off today, and I'm pretty sure, because of how badly I estimated shipping costs, I didn't make a dime on the deal. If anything I lost money. Tip: When selling something on ebay, always box it up, and weigh it before you start the auction. That way you can calculate proper shipping. Today I shipped off a box of interior parts that someone bought for .99 and paid $15 for shipping. I had to pay $65 to ship the damn thing because the box I had to use was so big. Lesson learned. Sat, 29 Mar 2008 22:45:32 GMT02b972ef-a6df-4194-97ae-4f8c10a03fdcWeekend Updatehttps://www.chrishammond.com/Cars/240z/itemId/1138/Weekend-Update<p>Weekend Update from <a href="http://www.chrishammond.com/tabid/54/itemid/1136/Weekend-plans.aspx">my post of tasks to do from Friday night</a> (accomplished items are crossed through)</p> <div class="Normal" id="divArticleContent"><span id="dnn_ctr372_ItemDisplay_ArticleDisplay_lblArticleText"> <p>1. <strike>Wash</strike>/Wax the Corvette</p> <p>2. <strike>Put the motor for the </strike>240Z back together. (some done, manifolds need to go back on)</p> <p>3. <strike>Make room in the garage so I can pull the Corvette back into the garage</strike></p> <p>4. <strike>Sleep</strike></p> <p>5. Finish getting prepped for the <a href="http://www.engagesoftware.com/dotnetnuke/training.aspx">DotNetNuke Training</a> that starts on Monday.</p> <p>6. Get <strike>better (still in progress)</strike></p> <p>Not a very productive weekend if I do say so myself. I'm working on #5 this evening.</p> <p> </p> </span></div>Chris HammondSun, 30 Mar 2008 17:47:07 GMT5af09363-505b-479b-9fd7-aa31ff5af9bfHouston we have a problemhttps://www.chrishammond.com/Cars/240z/itemId/1141/Houston-we-have-a-problemWhen is too much? What am I referring to? Tires in my garage. Long ago everyone on Solo2.org did a count of tires and wheels in their arsenal. I think I might win if we did that again, here's a current count of tires/wheels that are in my garage, and does not include tires mounted to any of our 4 vehicles or two trailers. 4 street tires off the 240Z 4 Hoosier tires for the Corvette (good race tires) 4 new street tires for the Corvette 2 new Hoosier tires for the Corvette 8 combination of used race Wheels (3) and tires (8) for the Corvette 1 spare trailer tire 1 inflatable spare for the datsun That's 24 sitting in my garage right now, pictures for proof. Tue, 01 Apr 2008 23:33:30 GMT86550680-7eef-4b97-b169-e8114febf399Sunday Sunday Sundayhttps://www.chrishammond.com/Cars/240z/itemId/1233/Sunday-Sunday-SundaySo Natalie and I cut the St. Pat's trip short by about 14 hours. After the fun I had last night, I wasn't feeling up for another night of drinking so we left Rolla around 6pm this evening. Lesson learned, don't over drink yourself the night before your birthday, otherwise you spend your birthday in bed feeling your new age. Sunday I'm looking forward to a few things. I'm going to raise the front end on the Corvette up probably 1/4-1/2 inch, to hopefully stop dragging everytime I come to an inclined driving surface. I'm then going to head to Illinois and stop by the Novice School, try to get the car Annually teched, and then possibly go swing by Tuxedo Park and see how dirty the 240Z is. If Steven is over at TPR I'll do my best to try and talk him into letting me dyno the Z06, I'd like to get a baseline run in before I put the Borla exhaust on this week. Sun, 16 Mar 2008 02:15:57 GMT6986cb8c-d9ff-4ec4-8a47-f60a8877f178Another 240Z for the site?https://www.chrishammond.com/Cars/240z/itemId/1269/Another-240Z-for-the-site<p>What? Another 240Z may become part of <a href="http://www.project240z.com">www.project240z.com</a>? More information next week.....</p>Thu, 17 Jan 2008 11:36:57 GMT39e46340-d63b-453f-98a3-a9bc265f2b85A space heater and gasoline...https://www.chrishammond.com/Cars/240z/itemId/1270/A-space-heater-and-gasoline<p>Today Nick and I ran around town, getting some metal for his 240Z, then around to find a few other supplies that he needed.</p> <p>When I got home I was half motivated to work on the car! So I went out to the garage, after sitting on the couch for 30 minutes, and got to working. It's still cold here in St. Louis so I had the garage door closed and decided to plug the space heater in to warm it up a little bit.</p>Sat, 08 Mar 2008 18:52:43 GMT55d4a0c5-a9fc-4ae4-82b0-5d91965f0a11Taking apart the new motorhttps://www.chrishammond.com/Cars/240z/itemId/1271/Taking-apart-the-new-motor<p>So Nick came over this morning and helped me get the motor off the ground and onto the engine stand so I could begin tearing it apart. After breaking a bolt off in the head trying to get one of the mounts setup for the cherry picker we managed to get the motor up and off the ground, though it took a couple of tries because we tried to get by with "the wrong" parts, meaning bolts in the chain that were too small for what we were doing.</p> <p>Lesson learned, again, use the right damn tools, instead of trying to make the wrong tools work. You'll save time rather than trying to take short cuts.</p> <p>Once we had the motor up on the stand he headed home to work on this car and I started trying to get the motor cleaned up a bit. Here are two before shots, of the front of the motor just caked in dirt and crap.</p> <p><span class="photo_container pc_m"><a title="L28E" href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/chammond/2321885405/"><img class="pc_img" height="160" alt="L28E" src="http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3170/2321885405_288c8607c0_m.jpg" width="240" /></a></span> <span class="photo_container pc_m"><a title="L28E" href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/chammond/2321882971/"><img class="pc_img" height="160" alt="L28E" src="http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2168/2321882971_558c29e1c9_m.jpg" width="240" /></a></span></p> <p>After spraying it down with degreaser and scrubbing with a wire brush I decided to finish what I started yesterday and remove the manfolds from the side of the motor. That actually went fairly easily, I'm not sure why, perhaps loading up the bolts with WD-40 yesterday before I finished helped, some of them almost seemed loose before I even cranked on them, perhaps Eric or I started to remove them last year when working on the other motor?</p> <p>After getting the manifolds off I took off the last remaining attached item to the side of the motor, but honestly, I'm not sure what it was? At first I assumed it was a power steering pump, but the more I think about it the more I think it might have been the AC compressor?</p> <p>After that I tried to spend some time organizing the garage a bit. I managed to get a few things hung up on the wall and made more room in there for the Corvette. I've still yet to make enough room to bring the 240Z home from storage. I don't think I'll be able to park both cars in the garage until I have the motor in the 240, otherwise I'll never have room in there for both cars and the motor, plus transmissions.</p> <p>Speaking of transmissions, I need to sell the 2 extra ones I have, if anyone is looking for an automatic transmission out of a 73 240Z, or a 5 speed out of a 280Z let me know. I was told the 5 speed needs rebuilding, I have no clue about it other than that.</p> <p>My goal/plan right now is to tear down the L28E and check things over, replace the rear main seal, make sure to clean it out, then try and put it all back together. I don't imagine I'll get that done before May, but I would like to spend time on it over the next few weeks if I can.</p>Mon, 10 Mar 2008 00:53:36 GMT0a87f6d4-42bc-40e5-919a-6341cf810e56Datsun 240z 280Z L28E parts on Ebay!https://www.chrishammond.com/Cars/240z/itemId/1273/Datsun-240z-280Z-L28E-parts-on-Ebay<p>So I took some time this evening to put parts up on Ebay. <a href="http://motors.search.ebay.com/_W0QQsassZchristoc">You can see them all by looking at my items for sale page</a>!</p> <p>The current parts include</p> <ul> <li>1978 Datsun 280Z L28E Distributor and Wires</li> <li>1978 Datsun 280Z L28E Exhaust Manifold</li> <li>1978 Datsun 280Z L28E Intake Manifold</li> <li>1978 Datsun 280Z 2+2 Interior Parts</li> </ul>Sun, 16 Mar 2008 23:11:09 GMTca609a8b-5944-46d7-8a02-9cab77d796e5Into the motor we gohttps://www.chrishammond.com/Cars/240z/itemId/1274/Into-the-motor-we-go<p>So my parents are in town for a few days. Dad and I spent some time working on the motor for the 240Z today. I'll try to take some pictures tomorrow.</p> <p>We pulled the valve cover off, as well as the oil pan, to look things over on the motor. So far things look good, though we could see quite a bit of crap sitting above the valves, mostly dead bugs and such. I tried to get them out with a combination of the air compressor and a shop vac, tomorrow I'll know if it worked. We also removed the oil pan and made sure things down there were alright. We'll check the torque on bolts tomorrow and then put the oil pan from the Turbo motor back on.</p> <p>One thing I noticed, the 78 L28E has round exhaust ports while the 83 L28ET that died had square, so I'll have to do some research and see if the intake/exhaust manifolds should work on that 78 head or not. My plan was to take the turbo/exhaust setup from the 83 and put it onto the 78, hopefully tomorrow.</p> <p>Other than that, we tried replacing the rear main seal, though I think the one we put in will probably leak more than the one we took out so I've ordered another one. We did all this with the motor on the engine stand which limited our access to the seal, when I have the motor back up on the cherry picker we'll replace the seal before attaching the flywheel and transmission.</p>Sat, 22 Mar 2008 19:40:45 GMT43e6ee53-be20-48d4-83b5-94b804dc2bc5240Z Statushttps://www.chrishammond.com/Cars/240z/itemId/1276/240Z-Status<p>Alright, here's my goal, and I'm stating it here so I can hopefully hold myself accountable.</p> <p>I want to bring the Datsun home from storage in May. In order to do that I need to make room in the garage, which means finding a place for the following</p> <p>16 tires/wheels (headed to the basement)</p> <p>Complete Datsun Suspension (disassemble and then take to basement)</p> <p>Dispose of an automatic transmission for the Datsun</p> <p>Dispose of a 5 Speed for the Datsun (someone is supposed to be picking it up tonight)</p> <p>After making room I need to finish putting the motor together, which I should be able to do in a couple hours worth of work this week and coming weekend.</p> <p>I'll post later this week with how I'm progressing.</p>Tue, 29 Apr 2008 14:55:17 GMT92698f90-a223-4853-8143-0a24234254c0Made a few changeshttps://www.chrishammond.com/Cars/240z/itemId/1278/Made-a-few-changes<p>I made a few changes to the site this evening, a few things I've had planned for a while. Now, all my blog posts from <a href="http://www.project240z.com">www.project240z.com</a>, <a href="http://www.corvettez06.org">www.corvettez06.org</a> and <a href="http://weblogs.asp.net/christoc">http://weblogs.asp.net/christoc</a> will all aggregate here, so you can pull in my RSS feed from <a href="http://www.chrishammond.com">www.chrishammond.com</a> and get whatever blog posts I make on those sites as well. The links should take you directly to the blog posts on those sites.</p> <p>If you see any problems with this please let me know, I'm excited to get this flexibility built into the site and have another project to be announced later this week that will use this feature as well!</p>Thu, 29 May 2008 01:36:13 GMTc6a2eed3-5333-4be9-88ab-c80fef0f6b31Flywheel thankshttps://www.chrishammond.com/Cars/240z/itemId/1296/Flywheel-thanks<p>While in Atlanta for the National Tour Carter Thompson brought me a gift. He had a lightened flywheel from his 240Z that he had been telling me about for the past two years. At the National Tour he brought me the flywheel. I must admit, at the time I carried it from his truck to the SPS Van I kept thinking, this sure doesn't feel light.</p> <p>Tonight though I was moving things around in the garage and came across both the stock and lightened fly wheels, the new wheel is definitely lighter than the stock wheel!</p> <p>Now, I just need to make some time to get the motor together so I can bring the car home sometime soon!</p>Tue, 10 Jun 2008 23:11:48 GMTb965faf0-1a88-472b-a751-8d4032f6513fFourth of July Fireworks and Baseballhttps://www.chrishammond.com/Cars/240z/itemId/1299/Fourth-of-July-Fireworks-and-Baseball<p>Yesterday was a busy Fourth of July. Natalie and Fabien got up and rode in the morning, I slept in, though I had planned on getting work done on the <a href="http://www.project240z.com">240z</a>. Around noon we left the house and headed west. We looked at a few properties for sale, two in Wildwood and one down south of Pacific. The good one in Wildwood is amazing, and might just work out for us, so we're going to try to go get a tour of it very soon. It has almost 5 acres, a barn with two horse stalls, a hay shed and various other features.</p> <p>The property we looked at south of Pacific would be very cool, but at only 2.3 acres doesn't look to be a very good horse property. I loved it because it had a total of 7 garage spots!</p> <p>After that we picked up Lindsey and headed downtown to the VP Fair and then to the baseball game. The closer we got downtown the darker it got, and eventually started raining. We ended up camping out in the Tahoe for about 15 minutes while we waited for the rain to pass. From there we walked up to the stadium and then over to the Arch to see the fair. Honestly, the fair sucked. There wasn't hardly anyone there and the only activities we saw were food/beer booths and some band playing on stage. Nothing else going on to make it worth our trek over there.</p> <p>We headed back to Busch Stadium to hang out there until the game. The game was great, the first Cards game I've been to this year that they actually won! After the game we stayed up on the upper deck to watch the fireworks at the fair. I took quite a few photos with my phone, I'll post more later but here's one for now.</p> <p><a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/chammond/721048333/"><img height="180" alt="" src="http://farm2.static.flickr.com/1202/721048333_2ec375dcc7_m.jpg" width="240" /></a> </p>Thu, 05 Jul 2007 11:45:53 GMTd7805629-452f-4e33-9d07-ee3ff015dd8d240Z Status for July 2008https://www.chrishammond.com/Cars/240z/itemId/1362/240Z-Status-for-July-2008<p>Well the garage finally has a little more room, though not enough to bring the car home from storage yet. Perhaps later this summer, though with my racing schedule (<a href="http://www.corvettez06.org/">www.corvettez06.org</a>)  I don't have any free weekends until September, and even then I think I have only one weekend that month, maybe 1 in October and then 2 in November if I am lucky!</p>Wed, 16 Jul 2008 00:43:58 GMT5f1a01b0-f394-4792-83dc-fd8e94626dcbThe 240Z, August 2008https://www.chrishammond.com/Cars/240z/itemId/1381/The-240Z-August-2008<p>August 2008, that is the month that the 240Z will come home. Oh yes, it will come home, and hopefully it will run!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!</p>Fri, 25 Jul 2008 01:57:30 GMT1b6ed14c-2019-4e99-9639-5152c83b81f0Project240Z Post Traumatic Stress Analysishttps://www.chrishammond.com/Cars/240z/itemId/1411/Project240Z-Post-Traumatic-Stress-AnalysisI went out to the garage tonight with the hopes of trying to figure out what went wrong on Sunday. I was going to take the valve cover off and see if I saw anything out of the ordinary, then pull the head if I could get to that. Before doing those two things though I figured I should drain the oil out of the motor. Much to my suprise when I drained the oil it wasn't oil that came out first, it was coolant, then oil followed.   Once I discovered that I began to lose hope that I would be able to salvage anything in this motor. Thoughts of a cracked block filled my head. Nevertheless I proceeded forward with removing the valve cover and whatever else I could get to. When I pulled the cover off I started looking around and immediately found something that looked out of place. Ends up I found two things out of place, two of the rocket arm guides were laying on the cylinder, with a little Matlock work I found that both the guides from the #2 cylinder were not in the correct place.     From there I didn't get too far, I did get the timing sprocket and chain removed, and ended up getting the camshaft remove as well, but I was unable to see anything out of the ordinary. I even tried sticking a magnet into the spark plug hole on the #2 cylinder with hopes of pulling some bits of metal out of there, hoping to find something awry. No dice, so I'll have to wait until this weekend to get further on the investigation. I'm going to have to pull the motor out of the car in order to take the manifolds off so that I can remove the cylinder head and see what happened on Sunday. Here's a link to the video of me working in the garage tonight. Notice the...Wed, 15 Aug 2007 08:54:26 GMT3befb976-2a50-49a2-8267-0240b4bfcf35Who needs a steering wheel?https://www.chrishammond.com/Cars/240z/itemId/1412/Who-needs-a-steering-wheelOver the time working on the 240Z we had various problems getting the steering wheel mounted in the car properly. The steering column threads wouldn't allow the Nut that I had to thread onto the column so mounting the wheel was an issue. Last night I found another nut for the column and believed that I got it threaded onto the column with a lot of brute force. Well it ends up that brute force basically destroyed the threads on the column. So... I guess I'll add a new steering column to the list of things I need for the...Fri, 17 Aug 2007 19:46:11 GMTbb43ea15-300a-48f1-9b16-72aabaff14d7A day late, dollar short? LS1?https://www.chrishammond.com/Cars/240z/itemId/1414/A-day-late-dollar-short-LS1Well, I was excited when I got up this morning. I thought i was going to go look at a LS1 motor for the 240z... But as of a few minutes ago I think the motor won't be there when I go to look at lunch today. We'll see, I may luck out and it may not be sold yet, but I was informed someone was coming to pick it up already. If not, if it looks good, I'll probably be purchasing the next powerplant for the Project240z today. Last night I spent some time in the garage, trying to clean up and get parts ready for an ebay explosion. More on the ebay parts later this...Wed, 29 Aug 2007 18:51:02 GMT619892f5-8c93-4cfe-a948-50683b49fc6cThe 240Z has life?https://www.chrishammond.com/Cars/240z/itemId/1415/The-240Z-has-lifeSo I'm back from Topeka Kansas, I was there for a week attending the SCCA Solo Nationals. It was an interesting week. I didn't place as high as I would have hoped in the Collins' Solstice, but I had a blast nonetheless. While out there Nick Jackson and I did a lot of soul searching. We've been talking for the past few weeks about what to do with the Project240z, here are a few of the options we've discussed. Buy an LS1 and drop it in and continue to run in XP Buy a 5.3 Vortec out of a Tahoe and continue to run in XP Drop in the 78 280Z motor in the garage and run FP Sell the car and buy one of the following to run C5 Z06 to run in SS 06+ Mustang GT to run in FS Well, I think option 4.1 is leading the pack right now. Though my goal is to have the 240Z running by the end of October. My plan is to pull the bad motor out of the car tomorrow, and start replacing the leaky seal in the motor out of the 78 parts car. Get the 78 motor together, fuel injection setup off the Turbo motor, possibly the turbo, intake and exhaust over as well. Install the 78 in the car, get the car running, paint the car, sell the car. We'll see where I end up, but I'm definitely keeping my options...Sun, 30 Sep 2007 10:04:48 GMTe3474abc-4de4-46a9-afe5-8f0f2d35b40fProject240z.com ToDo Listhttps://www.chrishammond.com/Cars/240z/itemId/1418/Project240zcom-ToDo-ListHere's the Project240z.com ToDo List Sat, 17 Nov 2007 01:46:07 GMT240955dd-309a-4c52-af29-c65909a5dc0fBut wait, there's more... maybehttps://www.chrishammond.com/Cars/240z/itemId/1419/But-wait-theres-more-maybeThis just in, there may still be life in the Project240z.... It might get saved from the grasps of Ebay and become just a toy/project/wrench on me when you can car. Not a daily driver, not a race car, just something to play with, work on, add to, without worry of "will it make it faster or slower" More information coming sometime, who knows when! Edit: I've created a ToDo...Sat, 17 Nov 2007 11:52:07 GMT3e663590-4768-4ed0-8e73-f2a8804a1bd1Fall 2008 It begins againhttps://www.chrishammond.com/Cars/240z/itemId/1491/Fall-2008-It-begins-again<p>So it's been a while since I've made any real progress on the 240Z, but come the end of October I hope my weekends will finally slow down enough that I can start working on the car again with the intention of getting it running before Christmas!</p> <p>The Corvette goes away in just over a week, which will leave me without a fun car to drive, so hopefully that will motivate me a little bit to work on the 240 after I get done travelling for the month of October.</p>Tue, 30 Sep 2008 23:47:03 GMTa76b410e-1ba8-457f-a8d3-33de602a587eProgress on the 240Z? Yeah, right....https://www.chrishammond.com/Cars/240z/itemId/1630/Progress-on-the-240Z-Yeah-right<p>Not much progress has been made on the car lately. Since I lasted work on the car I've been pretty much working on work and school stuff non stop, no car work. I was in Vegas at a conference for a week, I started working on my book (work related) and then I've been finishing up a econ paper that I was supposed to do this past summer, and am just now getting finished up.</p>Tue, 09 Dec 2008 03:12:31 GMTbf92d3c7-2786-40f9-9393-33a2404921ffIt's for sale againhttps://www.chrishammond.com/Cars/240z/itemId/1681/Its-for-sale-again<p>So this time, I think, I am serious about selling the Datsun. With moving sometime in the next 5-6 months I need to start preparing for the move, and with my work/school/book schedule there is no way I will have time to work on the Datsun in the coming months.</p> <p>I'll post up more info later this week on the sale of the car, but if you're interested let me know. As of right now I will likely have everything I own for the car (minus the Corbeau A4 seats) for sale as a package.</p> <p>1973 Datsun 240Z</p> <p>L28E motor<br /> Megasquirt<br /> 2 transmissions<br /> LOTS of other stuff including a spare suspension, hatch, and lots of boxes with parts.</p> <p> </p> <p>I will try to do a full inventory, or at least a more detailed inventory later in the week.</p> <p>Asking price $2500, negotiable</p>Wed, 21 Jan 2009 03:54:20 GMT3d751f3a-3f86-4210-99bc-2e15436b157cSite Redesignhttps://www.chrishammond.com/Cars/240z/itemId/1706/Site-Redesign<p>So I should have been working on the book tonight, and I did get some done, but I took the evening to finally reskin <a href="http://www.project240z.com">www.project240z.com</a>. I took the skin that <a href="http://www.cuongdang.net">Dang</a> designed for <a href="http://www.dotnetnukeblogs.com">www.dotnetnukeblogs.com</a> and reworked it for the Datsun.</p> <p>What do you think?</p>Sat, 28 Feb 2009 01:12:22 GMTf7470e04-fc1d-4171-af2e-f9ab16ab41cbColorado Clean Air testing for Automobileshttps://www.chrishammond.com/Cars/240z/itemId/1727/Colorado-Clean-Air-testing-for-Automobiles<p>Crap, it looks like the 240Z <a href="http://www.project240z.com"><font color="#800080">www.project240z.com</font></a> will have to go through emissions testing if it ever gets running and moves to Colorado with us...</p> <p> </p> <p><a href="http://www.cdphe.state.co.us/ap/mobile.html#auto I/M"><font color="#0066cc">http://www.cdphe.state.co.us/ap/mobile.html#auto I/M</font></a></p>Wed, 01 Apr 2009 23:59:56 GMT61577e02-284e-426f-812b-f84b1a966f5cTravelling Againhttps://www.chrishammond.com/Cars/240z/itemId/1732/Travelling-Again<p>So I'm here in Minneapolis teaching another week of DotNetNuke Training. It's an interesting town, but I'm looking forward to being home again this weekend and working on the Datsun <a href="http://www.project240z.com">www.project240z.com</a></p> <p>Monday it looks like I am driving to Indianapolis for the day to meet with a new client, then driving home Monday night. That'll make for a long day, but I would rather do that then stay over night.</p> <p>Check out my flickr feed for some photos <a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/chammond/">www.flickr.com/photos/chammond/</a></p> <p>While i've been here I've been trying to finish up a few chapter reviews from the production layouts for the book. I have one chapter left to review, and Pat has a chapter or two to finish up. After that I "think" we're done with the book, but we'll see what the publisher says!</p>Chris HammondThu, 16 Apr 2009 01:22:44 GMT821a46c4-6fad-49c9-9c29-20d0dfbd6930A weekend of working on the 240Z coming uphttps://www.chrishammond.com/Cars/240z/itemId/1734/A-weekend-of-working-on-the-240Z-coming-up<p>If you’re bored this weekend give me a ring! I’m going to spend this weekend getting the motor into the 240Z, and depending on how fast that progresses maybe even get the fuel and electronics hooked up to it and attempt to start it! Interested? :D I could use all the help I can get.</p>Fri, 17 Apr 2009 00:21:12 GMT73eb4a82-e0f1-4953-879b-294ea7919c35Working on the 240Z on a weeknight?https://www.chrishammond.com/Cars/240z/itemId/1739/Working-on-the-240Z-on-a-weeknight<p>I can’t say I’ve really put any effort into the Datsun on a weeknight in probably the past 20-22 months, tonight I spent a couple of hours in the garage working on a few things to get the motor ready to attempt to start it this weekend. I didn’t get a lot done, but the things I did will save the time I would have had to spend on Saturday doing them. I’ve mostly got the fan in place now, with 4 more bolts to put it onto the clutch. I put the single belt in place, and also hooked up the EDIS trigger on the 36-1 wheel for the megasquirt setup.</p> <p>I also put the throttlebody and the intake to the turbo back on the car. I put the battery onto the charger so that it’ll be ready to go Saturday. The more I mess with that thing the more I realize I need to get that moved to the back of the car soon after the car runs again, rather than having it sitting up in the engine bay taking up valuable room.</p> <p>I’ll probably do a few more of these minor buttoning up items tomorrow and Thursday night, leaving for tasks like the radiator and coolant, along with other minor things, for Saturday when Dave and possibly Terec are over to assist.</p> <p><span class="Publish_Video"><object type="application/x-shockwave-flash" width="425" height="355" data="http://www.youtube.com/v/2Ke7FK0CLHg"><param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/2Ke7FK0CLHg" />Flash Not Installed</object></span></p>Wed, 22 Apr 2009 00:07:16 GMT02c5c7b8-1e0f-40ab-99db-a23e43050e14It runs again!https://www.chrishammond.com/Cars/240z/itemId/1748/It-runs-again<p>So today we had a garage sale, nothing that resides in the garage was actually sold, but we did sell a lot of stuff that we wanted to get rid of before the move. Post sale the 240Z got some love. Here's the timeline, without times.</p> <p>Attempt to start the car as is, no dice, turns over but won't fire.</p> <p>Remove the VR sensor, rewire it the opposite way. Nothing, no signal, looks like the EDIS doesn't see it at all anymore.</p> <p>Remove VR sensor plug, replace with a different plug, from the box of EDIS supplies.</p> <p>Crank, what, what you want me to start? Okay, vroom vroom</p> <p>Run around like a chicken with my head cut off, call Whittle and tell him the news.</p> <p>Put a fan on top of the car to blow out all the smoke from the garage</p> <p>Crank crank, damnit, won't start, flooded.</p> <p>Remove the plugs, dry them off, crank it without plugs to try to get rid of fuel, whoops forgot to turn off the injectors</p> <p>Turnoff injectors, crank it again, blow out the cylinders with air from the compressor</p> <p>Insert plugs, wires</p> <p>Crank crank vroom vroom vroom, turbo whistle</p> <p>It was a successful day!</p> <p>So tomorrow I'll get the radiator back on the car, and put the exhaust system on the car, and we'll see what she does then. The car is nowhere near done, but it feels great to have a car that starts again!!!</p>Sat, 09 May 2009 17:42:24 GMTf883031c-a21f-4c90-b224-ac0a368bf61dPower washing the second suspensionhttps://www.chrishammond.com/Cars/240z/itemId/1780/Power-washing-the-second-suspension<p>We got back from Colorado on Saturday night. Sunday afternoon I was out in the driveway power washing the extra suspension for the 240z. I got quite a bit done, it looks a lot better than before, and I also managed to get most of the disassembled so that I could get it sand blasted. I did manage to get grease all over the driveway though, which then go on the dogs when Natalie decided to try to wash the dogs in the driveway while I was out there. Whoops! Lesson learned, grease gets everywhere.</p> <p>I’ll hopefully have some time this weekend to get down to Egypt (my boss, with the sandblaster, lives way down in the sticks of MO) to work on sandblasting some of the parts so they can be painted and then reassembled. I’ll take pictures if any of that happens!</p>Tue, 23 Jun 2009 01:36:38 GMT844e03df-996d-4399-a01f-d8f67821fe0cPhotoslide show of the househttps://www.chrishammond.com/Cars/240z/itemId/1795/Photoslide-show-of-the-house<p>This blog post is going to be shorter than it could be, but for once in my life I’m going to hold back some information. I wouldn’t want anything I might say to jeopardize the closing of our house! </p> <p>So I was playing around online tonight, go figure, and came across this photo slideshow of the house. These are not photos I took. (<a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/chammond/tags/domingo/" target="_blank">here are photos I took</a>)</p> <p><span class="Publish_Video"><object type="application/x-shockwave-flash" width="425" height="355" data="http://www.youtube.com/v/XjWPBOeSjjQ"><param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/XjWPBOeSjjQ" />Flash Not Installed</object></span></p> <p>So we are closing on the 31st of this month. I went out to Colorado last Friday and went on the home inspection. I had a good day, this was my rental car!</p> <p><a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/chammond/3706568895/"><img alt="Oh no I didn't rent this, yes I did" src="http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3420/3706568895_705ec14a75_m.jpg" width="240" height="180" /></a></p> <p>I won’t get into too many details on the inspection for a number of potential reasons, but it went very well. Nothing too major was found, and the one item we wanted inspected is getting replaced! </p> <p>Now we’re in the bind of figuring out how we are going to get to Colorado for closing, hopefully with all of our furniture at the same time. We’re currently planning on loading up the horse trailer and a budget rental truck with all of our stuff, putting the 240Z (<a href="http://www.project240z.com">www.project240z.com</a>) on the car trailer, and drive all three rigs out the day before closing. We might leave even a day earlier, but in order for that to happen I have to rearrange a work trip that is scheduled Mon-Wed the week we close (we close on Friday). I hope to know if I can rearrange that trip tomorrow.</p> <p>So we’ve started packing, throwing lots of things out, reorganizing what we have, and want to take with us. We’ve got a long way to go, but I think we’re making good process so far. I’m hoping to get the Datsun back together this weekend and to spend the weekend packing up the garage. If I can get that done it will leave my office, and then clothing. Hopefully Natalie will tackle the kitchen this coming week!</p> <p>Natalie’s last day at the barn working is tomorrow, it’s a big change for her, not working every day. I look forward to seeing more of her!</p>Chris HammondFri, 17 Jul 2009 02:09:56 GMTdc62bf09-aec5-4109-a8c4-31f461900d7bSteering Column for a 73 240Zhttps://www.chrishammond.com/Cars/240z/itemId/1796/Steering-Column-for-a-73-240Z<p>So just an FYI so others don’t waste money like I did. The steering column off a 1978 280Z will NOT fit on a 1973 240Z. I contacted the ebay seller to check before hand and was assured it would, unfortunately upon reciept and attempt at putting it in the car it does not fit :(</p> <p>I guess I’ll just have to rig the bad 73 column for the haul to Colorado and look for another solution in the coming months. </p> <p>Lesson learned, don’t trust ebay sellers to know what they are talking about.</p>Chris HammondSat, 18 Jul 2009 19:51:31 GMT131049e5-9d51-4dcc-b436-75e1c62dfea57 days till we leave Missouri!https://www.chrishammond.com/Cars/240z/itemId/1799/7-days-till-we-leave-Missouri<p>Seven Days from now we’ll hit the road and head to Colorado, all of our life’s belongings with us, except the horse which should be there at the barn by the time we leave St. Louis. e’ve got a lot to do between now and then, but I do have all the utilities squared away at the new place. I got internet/TV/phone setup this morning, then called the other less important utilities such as power and gas :D</p> <p>We’ve been packing up around the house, there’s still a lot left to do, but hopefully we’ll get it finished tonight and Friday. Tomorrow we’re having a little get together at Dave & Buster’s here in town as sort of a going away bash.  <a href="http://www.facebook.com/event.php?eid=103101229567">http://www.facebook.com/event.php?eid=103101229567</a></p> <p>Friday Natalie is going to a concert and I’ll begin loading up the trailer. I hope to have an idea if we’ll be able to get everything in the trailer or not, if I can cancel the Budget truck by 10am we won’t get charged. But heck, even if we cancel after 10am, it only costs us $50. In my mind that’ll be $50 well spent, as we have the truck reserved for a Monday pickup if we do need more room for loading things. It’ll also likely tow the 240Z better than the Envoy will.</p> <p>We’re planning on leaving St. Louis some time on Tuesday, driving roughly half way (Salina Kansas or further) and then finish up the rest of the drive on Thursday. I’ll likely need to go down to Cplorado Springs on Thursday to get a bank account down there for our second mortgage, they’ll give us a discount on the rate if we have an account there for them to ECH from. </p>Chris HammondWed, 22 Jul 2009 16:53:04 GMT93e6c024-6293-44a0-9e8c-d8cf1af21370Car is loaded for Coloradohttps://www.chrishammond.com/Cars/240z/itemId/1802/Car-is-loaded-for-Colorado<p>So I loaded the car up on the trailer tonight after work (well, between work actually). I’m going to take it to a buddy’s shop for a few days as we get the house packed up and everything loaded onto the moving (horse) trailer. Tuesday I’ll go pickup the car and we’ll hit the road for Colorado on Wednesday. </p> <p>I even drove it up on the trailer under its own power!</p> <p><a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/chammond/3749868081/"><img alt="@project240z is loaded for trip to colorado. #going2colorado" src="http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2454/3749868081_c4bd798642_m.jpg" width="240" height="180" /></a></p>Chris HammondFri, 24 Jul 2009 02:10:37 GMT3f7ca1fc-e25c-469d-838a-f15773cdf597240Z update for Augusthttps://www.chrishammond.com/Cars/240z/itemId/1811/240Z-update-for-August<p>So I didn’t actually get anything physically done on the 240Z this weekend, but I did manage to get $40 worth of light bulbs and fuses for the car.</p> <p>I hope to start getting them installed tomorrow night so that I can start testing out the wiring, see what all I am going to have to rewire/fix in order to make the car street legal. Fingers crossed that the stock wiring still works fine!</p> <p> </p> <p>(My first blog post from my fresh install of Windows 7)</p>Chris HammondMon, 17 Aug 2009 02:56:15 GMT21d3b6bb-0c4e-435a-bb46-7ff23106d8c8Out goes the dashhttps://www.chrishammond.com/Cars/240z/itemId/1812/Out-goes-the-dash<p>So tonight after work I got the 240Z off the trailer, both of which had been parked in the Garage since we moved to Colorado a few weeks ago. I had lined up a storage lot for the trailer and wanted to get it out of the garage. Well the 240Z wasn’t easy to start, took a good 5+ minutes of attempts before it finally started up. Later in the day I realized the MAP hose wasn’t hooked up to the Megasquirt, that would explain the difficulty in starting! whoops.</p> <p>So I dropped the trailer off and came home to organize the garage a bit, moved the newly assembled shelves in place and started going through some of my boxes. After I got bored with the unpacking I decided it was a good time to put all the bulbs and fuses that I had purchased yesterday into the car. That was pretty quick and painless, but didn’t produce any fruit! I didn’t see any lights in the rear of the car at all. So what next?</p> <p>I simply decided to pull the dashboard out! The whole thing, gone, removed, not going back in (likely not) along with the blower and heater core. Why might you ask? Why not. The car will hopefully be somewhat streetable, but I won’t be using most of the gauges on the car anyways. For a speedo I’ll have the G2X (GPS data logging), for RPM I’ll likely have the G2X, or even a Netbook running the Megasquirt software to show me all the appropriate date from the ECU. So why do I need the stock dash? I don’t! Though I did realize after I pulled the dash that I left the fiberlass dashboard in St. Louis, and didn’t bring it to CO. Luckily I’m going back to STL next week for work and will hopefully get it packed up and shipped back.</p> <p>I’ll need to do some creative wiring, hooking up a switch for the headlights, a horn, turn signals, and even the ignition, but I think it will be cool to have all those as switchable items on a nice clean looking dashboard, not the big old clunky stock one. </p> <p>Here’s a photo sans dash.</p> <p><a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/chammond/3832794826/"><img alt="Sans Dashboard" src="http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3448/3832794826_2bf00d6e2c_m.jpg" width="240" height="180" /></a></p>Chris HammondTue, 18 Aug 2009 00:56:52 GMT8f414a97-081c-4931-afee-0b9c788d3a7eOrganizing the garage, and guess what I found?https://www.chrishammond.com/Cars/240z/itemId/1814/Organizing-the-garage-and-guess-what-I-found<p>So we’ve barely been in the house three weeks and I already lost and found something! <a href="http://www.project240z.com/Blog/itemId/434/Out-goes-the-dash.aspx">So in my last blog post I complained</a> that I thought I left the fiberglass dashboard for the 240Z in St. Louis. Well I was wrong! Tonight while trying to get things moved around in the garage to make room for our two primary vehicles I was up on the loft moving things and came across the dashboard!</p> <p>So all is well again in Project240z.com land, well, as well as it can be! I was going to drive the car around the block tonight, and park it in the third car garage, but I quickly realized that wasn’t going to happen unless I wanted to take the wiring harness out of the old dash and hook up the wires. Right now the ignition wires aren’t going to anything, so that would make it kind of hard to start the car and drive it. Oh well, I moved it around a bit by hand and made room for one of our cars in the garage at least, the F350 will have to stay outside for a while longer.</p> <p>Hopefully by the end of September I’ll either have a new quieter exhaust on the car, or all the paint completely stripped off, or maybe even both!</p>Chris HammondMon, 24 Aug 2009 00:59:55 GMTdf3da4bc-5432-434d-bd7d-cde27b116fc5Labor Day weekend and working on the 240zhttps://www.chrishammond.com/Cars/240z/itemId/1820/Labor-Day-weekend-and-working-on-the-240z<p>So the Labor Day holiday weekend is coming up, and my brother is coming to town. I’m planning on putting him to work on the car. I’m not sure what the goal for the weekend is, but I do want to at least get something done on the car! </p> <p>I was looking to try another body, one popped up last week on Craigslist but the dude sold it. I emailed, called, etc but the guy wouldn’t call me back, when I finally got in touch with him someone else had already purchased it, just my luck. </p> <p>So as of right now I’m going to keep the current body, unless something better pops up in the mean time.</p>https://chrishammond.com/Portals/0/Thumbs/240z.jpgChris HammondThu, 03 Sep 2009 22:26:45 GMTe45b2d48-28d2-4d98-970b-e2c204215604Yet another domain name, look out 240z.net is coming!https://www.chrishammond.com/Cars/240z/itemId/1825/Yet-another-domain-name-look-out-240znet-is-comi<p>So for a month or so I've been waiting for <a href="http://www.240z.net/"><u><font color="#800080">www.240z.net</font></u></a> to go through the expiration process as the previous owner decided to let it expire. Well today it finally came through and guess who got it! </p> <p>Woot!</p> <p>Stay tuned as <a href="http://www.240z.net/"><u><font color="#800080">http://www.240z.net</font></u></a> gets built over the coming months. No sneak peeks right now as to what I plan to do with it. It will not just become a replacement for Project240z.com, I don't plan on this site going away.</p>Chris HammondTue, 22 Sep 2009 23:14:50 GMTbc122f7c-a319-49b4-80c0-10b96640b660Should I make the 240Z Electric?https://www.chrishammond.com/Cars/240z/itemId/1833/Should-I-make-the-240Z-Electric<p>Today, while I was hard at work, a buddy of mine sent me a link to a car on Ebay, it was a <a style="text-decoration: none; color: rgb(0, 0, 0); font-weight: normal; " href="http://cgi.ebay.com/ebaymotors/1984-GTI-RABBIT-517-ORIGINAL-MILES-ORIGINAL-OWNER_W0QQitemZ130335847774QQcmdZViewItemQQptZUS_Cars_Trucks?hash=item1e589f355e#ht_500wt_1182">1984 Rabbit GTI with 517 original mile</a>s. I was looking at the car in amazement, seeing it was in St. Louis, and more so in Creve Couer, near where we used to live.</p> <p>From there I clicked on another link, I'm not even sure which one, and I came across a list of cars, one that peaked my interest, a <a style="text-decoration: none; color: rgb(0, 0, 0); font-weight: normal; " href="http://cgi.ebay.com/ebaymotors/Electric-Car-1957-Porsche-356-Speedster-Replica_W0QQitemZ260484651636QQcmdZViewItemQQptZUS_Cars_Trucks?hash=item3ca6185a74">356 speedster replica</a>. I decided to check it out, and then I started reading more realizing it was also local to St. Louis, but get this. It is electric! I thought, oh that's cool, but then I scrolled down and started watching the video embedded into the ebay page. I'm 68 minutes into it, it's a 91 minute video.</p>Chris HammondThu, 08 Oct 2009 18:22:16 GMT58471f05-3b80-4d32-b9e4-5d326667759bWelcome to yet another project! A 1995 Audi A6https://www.chrishammond.com/Cars/240z/itemId/1838/Welcome-to-yet-another-project-A-1995-Audi-A6<p>So here we are, a new domain, a new project and a new car! This car, while a "project" isn't a project <a href="http://www.project240z.com/">like that other car is</a>.</p> <p>Since we moved to Colorado we figured it would be a good idea if we had AWD/4wd vehicles, so we sold our 2004 F350 and traded in our 2004 GMC Envoy for a 2008 F250 FX4 last week. That put us down to a one (running) vehicle family, I couldn't take it! I'd been looking around for a while for another ride and came across this Audi not even 5 minutes from our house. It's got just under 130k miles.</p>https://chrishammond.com/Portals/0/-1Chris HammondThu, 15 Oct 2009 23:57:37 GMT5ca98b8b-287d-44a3-91cd-b4f0eb608c8cFor sale again?https://www.chrishammond.com/Cars/240z/itemId/1872/For-sale-again<p> For any of you who follow the website regularly you'll notice that I haven't "put" the car and website up for a sale in a while. Well, it's your lucky day.</p> <div style="background-color: white; margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; font-family: 'Lucida Grande', Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 100%; line-height: 1.4; "> <p>I'm considering putting the car up for sale, as well as the domain names (www.project240z.com and www.240z.net).</p> <p>In the next week or two I'll get everything together, car and website info, and likely get it listed on Ebay. I'll set it up with a reserve auction, if it meets that reserve then I'll sell it all outright, if not I will likely start parting things out. </p> </div>Chris HammondSun, 27 Dec 2009 01:10:09 GMT7d5f24d5-e45e-4bab-8cf0-8e97e96e3e231973 Datsun 240z For Salehttps://www.chrishammond.com/Cars/240z/itemId/1876/1973-Datsun-240z-For-Sale<p>So I really am looking to sell the 240z this time around. Though, the more time I spend on it, the less I want to sell it, so perhaps I’ll continue working on it while I wait to see if it sells, and then who knows what will happen after that. At this point in time I’m not looking to part the car out, that might change in the future, but for now I’ll keep from parting it out. Basics: Price: $1750 with all the spare parts (storage bins full), $1250 with the car as it currently sits. (add $250 to clean up title) Year:1973 Make: Datsun Model: 240z Title: None (can be acquired at additional cost) Mileage: Unknown Location: Parker, Colorado (delivery available at $1.25.mile up to 500 miles from Parker, CO)</p>Chris HammondSun, 03 Jan 2010 15:56:15 GMT1133fb7e-06a0-4d19-a673-064a63825108This 240z gets aroundhttps://www.chrishammond.com/Cars/240z/itemId/2222/This-240z-gets-around<p>Apparently that’s the word on the 240z. I sold it in January 2010 (or somewhere close to there) and since then it has apparently changed owners twice (possibly more).</p> <p>I emailed <a href="http://www.project240z.com/Blog/itemId/479/The-240z-Lives-and-it-looks-great.aspx" target="_blank">the guy who sent me photos in October after he painted it</a>, to see how it was, and he tells me it was sold in December <img style="border-bottom-style: none; border-right-style: none; border-top-style: none; border-left-style: none" class="wlEmoticon wlEmoticon-sadsmile" alt="Sad smile" src="http://www.project240z.com/Portals/0/PublishThumbnails/Windows-Live-Writer/This-240z-gets-around_C988/wlEmoticon-sadsmile_2.png" /></p> <p>If you are the new owner, drop me a line, I’m curious how things are going.</p>Chris HammondMon, 13 Jun 2011 17:20:26 GMTd54febe0-8d79-41a3-9d76-647a5f79c4f0Project 240Z site beginshttps://www.chrishammond.com/Cars/240z/itemId/2353/Project-240Z-site-beginsWelcome to the new Project240Z.com. We've thrown the software up, and quickly added a blog. In the coming days we'll reskin the site and get more content...Chris HammondSun, 28 Jan 2007 11:00:00 GMT4364dfa6-a0ae-492c-b829-d9793a1de7bbYou're invited this weekend. Good luck at the 100 Acre Woodhttps://www.chrishammond.com/Cars/240z/itemId/2362/Youre-invited-this-weekend-Good-luck-at-the-100Alright, this coming weekend is the time. I'm going to pull the motor out of the parts car this weekend, as well as the transmission, and any other parts I can salvage. If anyone is interested in helping out, I'll provide all the food and beer you desire while over here. What all do we have to do? The parts car is a 1978 280Z 2+2. I need the transmission for the 240Z, and probably will end up needing the motor for when the Turbo motor has problems! Other than that, I want to remove whatever I can save/sell before I scrap the rest of it so I can bring the 240Z back home. Best of luck to the guys/girls that will be at the 100 Acre Wood. Muggy, bring home a win! Jim, keep the Rally truck together for her last...Chris HammondWed, 21 Feb 2007 11:45:51 GMTbbd201d9-47df-4d7f-8620-29ea7b5c8abbDraining the fluids in the parts car, 2-23-07https://www.chrishammond.com/Cars/240z/itemId/2363/Draining-the-fluids-in-the-parts-car-22307I spent a bit of time this evening working on the 280Z.  Here's the video! http://www.project240z.com/tabid/54/itemid/11/Parts-Car-draining-the-fluids-223.aspx Here's what I got done. Drained the oil Drained the transmission fluid Removed the hood wings Removed the driver's side mirror Removed teh driver's side Z vent cover. Tomorrow: The motor and transmission come...Chris HammondSat, 24 Feb 2007 10:25:56 GMTdf7953dd-0a91-400b-a1e4-c89b12582724Parts Car Engine Removal Day 1https://www.chrishammond.com/Cars/240z/itemId/2364/Parts-Car-Engine-Removal-Day-1Spent today disconnecting things from the motor so I can get the motor and transmission pulled out tomorrow. Also removed some of the front end body work I need to try to make work on the 240Z as well. http://www.project240z.com/DesktopModules/EngagePublish/itemlink.aspx?itemId=12 Accomplished today Disconnected all wires and hoses from the motor that need to be disconnected to pull the motor. Removed the Radiator Removed the headlight buckets Removed the rest of the front valance Removed Passenger Side Mirror Removed Passenger/Driver side chrome trim...Chris HammondSun, 25 Feb 2007 05:13:38 GMT3e4b5384-0a28-4637-840a-cdf3a58171deParts car motor pull Day 2https://www.chrishammond.com/Cars/240z/itemId/2365/Parts-car-motor-pull-Day-2Thanks to Terec for coming over today and helping me get the motor pulled out of the 78 280Z 2+2 parts car today! http://www.project240z.com/tabid/54/itemid/13/Project-240Z-Day-2-of-Parts-Car-Motor-Pull.aspx Here's what we got done. Pulled the motor and transmission Disconnected the driveshaft Ruined a clutch line (that was all...Chris HammondMon, 26 Feb 2007 07:32:57 GMT72624f94-fc77-43cc-992c-4f91a99c3ffbAnyone dealt with the Z Store before?https://www.chrishammond.com/Cars/240z/itemId/2368/Anyone-dealt-with-the-Z-Store-beforeI emailed the Z Store on Tuesday, and haven't heard back from them. I'm looking at their MSA Type III body kit for the Project 240z. Anyone ever dealt with them, or seen the body kit before? The question I had for them was does the kit require a front bumper, or does it replace the bumper? Other questions I have for anyone who has seen the kit in person, what'd you think? Was the kit something...Chris HammondMon, 05 Mar 2007 07:34:03 GMTb916e64a-466b-4f7b-99f2-64c67e600a76The 240Z is home againhttps://www.chrishammond.com/Cars/240z/itemId/2370/The-240Z-is-home-againThe 240Z is finally home. The parts car is gone, news at...Chris HammondMon, 12 Mar 2007 03:21:59 GMTa0e6fe3c-e09b-45b2-98b7-bf9158a3adb0240Z, the Journey homehttps://www.chrishammond.com/Cars/240z/itemId/2371/240Z-the-Journey-homeSo this morning I got up and finished up what I could get done on the project car, a 1978 280Z 2+2, courtesy of our very own Lynn Wilson, Thanks Lynn!!! I had planned to remove the diff from the car this morning, along with the door lock from the passenger door, ignition switches and such as well. I got the switches and locks, but had a hell of a time trying to get the diff out. I got everything disconnected except the axles, without any luck getting the axles removed I gave up, hastily slapped some bolts/nuts back on the diff to hold it in place and I took some wire to tie up the driveshaft to keep it from hanging down to the floor. After clearing off the parts I knew I wanted I had to run down to SoloPerformance to drop off the Engine Hoist that I've had for, oh almost the past year. Dave needed it for a week or so, and all I've been doing with it is using it as a nice engine hanger lately. After that quick trip I grabbed Natalie, hopped in the Tahoe and headed up North. Went to the Elterman's to pickup his trailer so I could haul cars to Egypt and back. From there we headed back home, loaded up the parts car and took off to Speedway (junk yard) in Illinois. They were pretty lax about things, which was nice, I rolled the car off the trailer and headed over to the super secret storage facility. From there we filled up the flat spare tire and rolled it out of the shop and onto the trailer for the trip back home. Both towing trips were uneventful, which was nice, though each car did shift around on the trailer a bit. The Tahoe towed fine, which is great! Though, I still want to see about getting a gooseneck trailer at somepoint to tow with the F350. On the way home from the super secret storage facility I decided to stop and double check the straps, just to make sure I wasn't going to lose my baby. I stopped out in front of this great sign ;)     After getting home, Natalie and I unloaded the 240 from the trailer, though, not before I took the time to sweap the 5lbs of rust that the parts car had deposited on the floor of the garage. After rolling her into the garage and test fitting a few of the interior pieces we headed back up north to drop James' trailer off. They weren't home, lucky for them. Had he been home he might have had a heart attack watching me back the trailer in, I ended up parking it about 6 inches from the front of the STi, that darn slopped trailer, makes it hard to judge distances. Lucky for me I stopped when I did, otherwise I would have felt like a complete ass for borrowing a trailer and then hitting the owners car when returning it. More on the Project240z car later this...Chris HammondMon, 12 Mar 2007 05:11:11 GMT488b2906-9e57-428c-bfcc-f508b9bdda89Project240Z.com Photoshttps://www.chrishammond.com/Cars/240z/itemId/2372/Project240Zcom-PhotosI created a photos page last week, and didn't put any up there! Now they're pulling from the Project240z.com Flickr Group and posting on the Project240z.com Photos page for all to see. Nothing too interesting yet...Chris HammondMon, 12 Mar 2007 22:20:14 GMT60a37486-1fb6-4665-985d-1740f2cc3c7aMegasquirt has been orderedhttps://www.chrishammond.com/Cars/240z/itemId/2374/Megasquirt-has-been-orderedEven though I'm out in Mormanville I've been hard at work at least thinking about the Project 240z!  With the guidance of Mr. Whittle I've ordered over $700 in equipment to get the motor wired up with Megasquirt. I hope to hit the junk yard on Friday and find a few more random Ford Ignition parts that I need for the megasquirt setup, and hopefully the megasquirt parts from DiyAutotune will be here early next week. My dad will be in town this coming weekend, so I plan to put him to work the next few weeks to help me get this car ready for April...Chris HammondThu, 22 Mar 2007 16:37:47 GMT52ee642d-5092-4c87-97b1-e84afb25fb40Dressed in blackhttps://www.chrishammond.com/Cars/240z/itemId/2375/Dressed-in-blackWell the engine bay of the Project 240Z has a nice coat of black paint. I'll be touching up a few areas tomorrow, as well as doing the following. Hitting the Junkyard to locate parts I still need for the megasquirt setup, including mostly these ford parts: throttlebody from a V8, VR Sensor from a V6, fuel injectors, wires, coils. I'll also be hitting the parts store for some new break and clutch lines, installing the clutch line, and hopefully starting to put the transmission onto the turbo motor. Photos...Chris HammondSat, 24 Mar 2007 08:23:21 GMT3355f332-0f12-49e3-8f1a-b93a438ccca8Junk Yard Saturdayhttps://www.chrishammond.com/Cars/240z/itemId/2376/Junk-Yard-SaturdayToday, well yesterday now, it's 1am, Dad and I went to Speedway salvage over in Madison Illinois. 3-4 hours later we walked out of there with $120 worth of parts for the Project 240Z. I didn't realize you could spend that much on junk? I got most of the ignition system I needed to complete the Megasquirt setup, some interior plastics I needed, as well as the steering wheel off my parts car that I dropped off at Speedway two weeks ago. I think they even charged me for the wheel. Dad took apart the brake master cylinder and start cleaning it, we'll do the same with the clutch cylinder tomorrow, and reassemble that with the rebuild kit I picked up this evening. I couldn't find a brake mc kit in town tonight, so that will have to be a future product. I also picked up 7 feet of hydrolic line to run a new clutch line and repair a brake line I had to cut last week. Tomorrow (Today) we'll see how far we can get towards putting the 83 motor into the car. I'm going to be working on getting the parts we need off of the motor from the parts car so we can get the motor setup to drop in the car. More...Chris HammondSun, 25 Mar 2007 10:05:27 GMTc2c60339-aa0b-4e9d-8717-b5bc87bef2d2The motor is in the Project 240z!https://www.chrishammond.com/Cars/240z/itemId/2377/The-motor-is-in-the-Project-240zLook out Jeffs, the motor is in the Project 240z! Dad and I spent all day today working on the car, and I even swung by one of Jeef's old employer's to pickup some parts today as well. Dad spent most of the morning working on the clutch master cylinder and brake master cylinder, cleaning them up quite a bit, and using a rebuild kit on the clutch MC. The brake MC has some corrosion inside, so I'll be ordering a rebuilt MC tomorrow that I should be able to pickup tomorrow night. I spent the morning taking parts off of the 78 motor, cleaning them and putting them onto the 83 motor. Over the afternoon and early evening Dad and I managed to seperate the 5spd transmission from the 78 motor and put it onto the 83 motor. From the looks of things the 83 motor was either once powering an automatic tranny, or was prepped to perform that work as we had to replace the driveplate with the flywheel/pressure plate from the 78 motor as well. After getting the transmission together and putting some of the parts I scavanged from the 78 motor Dad and I managed to get the motor into the Project 240z. I must say, removing motors is far easier than actually putting them back in the car. We put bolts into the motor mounts, and also into the crossmember underneath the transmission to hold it all in place, but have yet to tighten anything down just yet. The megasquirt equipment should be here soon, hopefully. I've still gotta find a few parts for the ignition/fuel system. My goal is still to fire up the car next weekend, though I'm going to need a lot of help to do that. I'm still hoping Mr. Whittle will be able to assist this week with getting the Megasquirt setup on the car. Does anyone have a Ford Cobra MAF lying around anywhere? I'm in need of one. Photos have been uploaded and can be found on the photos...Chris HammondMon, 26 Mar 2007 10:26:27 GMTb2b8af27-6c9b-4ca3-8372-eadedde98a72Another night of wrenching on the carhttps://www.chrishammond.com/Cars/240z/itemId/2378/Another-night-of-wrenching-on-the-carDad and I spent a few hours working on the 240z this evening. We got the clutch pedal in, and even got as far as putting the Clutch Master Cylinder in the car. We went to put the 78 280Z brake booster in the 73 240Z, but ended up figuring out that the firewalls on the two cars are different, and the booster out of the 78 won't fit in the 73 with a clutch installed. Sooooo, now we're trying to verify that we can use the recently purchased rebuilt brake master cylinder for the 78 booster, on the 73 booster, without any issue. We'll see how that goes! After work today I ran to Illinois again to hit the Speedway salvage yard up for more parts as well. I picked up 3 wiring harnesses for the fuel injectors for the L28 motors. 1 set was off my old parts car, another off a 78 coupe that was there and another set off an 82 I believe. I'm hoping with all those connectors I can come up with at least 6 that are good enough to use to start the car up. After the junkyard I hit up Carquest to pickup the rebuilt master cylinder, it was actually just about the same price as a rebuild kit, so buying the already built one made too much sense. Hopefully tomorrow we can get that rest of the brake and clutch items squared away. I'm also making an electronics run tomorrow to get bits and pieces of items necessary for the megasquirt install that I hope to tackle this weekend. ...Chris HammondWed, 28 Mar 2007 10:18:26 GMT96b7294e-bc28-4448-b863-e2bf40630f3aP240Z Pulleys a pullinhttps://www.chrishammond.com/Cars/240z/itemId/2379/P240Z-Pulleys-a-pullinWell we overcame the the brake booster issues from last night. Dad got the Brakeline hooked up to the MC, and we got the booster installed in the firewall and hooked up to the pedal. After that I got the proper tool and pulled the pulleys off the 78 motor and the 83 motor as well. Not likely to get any work done tomorrow as I have a meeting tomorrow night, but Dad took the radiator from the 78 to get it cleaned up and pressure checked at a shop tomorrow sometime. At lunch I'll also hopefully be getting the 37pin plug for the Megasquirt put...Chris HammondThu, 29 Mar 2007 08:48:54 GMT11b4a6ab-1b43-4f46-a230-8d0601ad364dFuel Cell timehttps://www.chrishammond.com/Cars/240z/itemId/2383/Fuel-Cell-timeI took the gas tank out of the 240Z down to Manchester Radiator on Wednesday. They called me on Thursday to tell me that the tank was in a sad state. They dipped it and cleaned it up to find a lot of pinholes and larger holes in the bottom of the tank from rust. Rather than repair it they asked me if I could get another one from somewhere. Lucky for me SM2 allows for Fuel Cells, now I just need to read up on the rules and figure out where I can mount one legally in my car, and figure out how much that is going to end up costing me. The car hasn't been touched since last Sunday, and won't see any action before at least Thursday as Natalie and I are headed to Boston tomorrow for Opening Day on...Chris HammondSat, 07 Apr 2007 08:43:17 GMT8fef191e-b054-418c-8672-6284a51f723bProject 240Z status?https://www.chrishammond.com/Cars/240z/itemId/2384/Project-240Z-statusCurrent status: On hold Why? Mainly school. It's nearing the end of the semester and I'm trying to get some class work finished up. I have a large presentation on Monday evening, after that, Tuesday, I hope to start back up on the car. I'm picking up a replacement 240Z Gas tank on Sunday, instead of going with a fuel cell for now I'm hoping to get by with a stock 240Z tank. I ordered a Flux/Gas welder from Harbor Freight on Thursday. It's cheap, but will hopefully at least get me started. I can see how well I can learn, and hopefully repair/build a few things along the way. If I start to use it much (I don't foresee this) I'll look at getting a nicer model sometime. I started putting my new workbench together last night. I'll take some pics of it once it's finished (must install the tabletop still) and moved around in the garage. Right now it's in front of the car as I haven't made room for it on the wall yet. More next...Chris HammondSat, 21 Apr 2007 08:34:44 GMT571578e3-53fd-4d5d-b335-1ce50fd4652eP240z Time to start againhttps://www.chrishammond.com/Cars/240z/itemId/2385/P240z-Time-to-start-againTonight I begin working on the 240Z again. It's been quite a while since I've worked on it, 3 weeks or so, due to work and school and of course, Opening Day at Fenway. Tonight I'll be bench bleeding the rebuilt brake master cylinder that I picked up back towards the end of the month, then i plan to install the MC and bleed the brake system with the help of my father. After that I'm going to work on the interior of the car a bit more, cleaning up the rust and painting over the clean metal with hopes to prevent more rust. Thursday I'll be doing more, hopefully getting to the point where I can install the pulley that Tuxedo Park Racing is currently working on. The pully has a 36-1 trigger wheel on it for the Megasquirt Ford EDIS setup. Once I have the pulley on I'm going to start fabricating the bracket to mount the VR sensor, and hopefully get some wires run this weekend. I was hoping to do some welding, but it looks like Harbor Freight has the welder I ordered on backorder. It sure as nice of them to tell me that when I ordered. I had to call and listen to the automated system just to find that out. If they don't come up with one tomorrow I'm cancelling my order and I'll look elsewhere for a welder, or get someone to do some welding for me. Russ has a welder he thinks might work, so I'll try to drag him over if I can. More tonight after some work is...Chris HammondTue, 24 Apr 2007 22:22:44 GMT4cb5111f-b91a-486b-9b58-4513bd253247Gas Tank update, seat fitting this weekend, harbor freight suckshttps://www.chrishammond.com/Cars/240z/itemId/2387/Gas-Tank-update-seat-fitting-this-weekend-harborI ended up not getting another gas tank this past weekend. I had planned on picking one up in Hillsboro but the guy ended up sounding way too sketchy for me. First the tank was perfect, then it had two holes he was going to repair, then there was a gash that needed repair, then, and then, and then. So I ended up deciding not to go get the tank. Back to looking for a Fuel Cell again, unless anyone has a source on a complete, leak free, 240Z Gas tank? I'm picking up a seat from www.soloperformance.com tomorrow to do some test fitting this weekend. I'll probably go with a Corbeau A4, but need to make sure it will fit in the car, and of course with me in it, before I order anything. I'm thinkin the black microsuede sure would look nice! This section of the post should be one for The Mad Blogger, but I'll post it here anyways. Harbor Freight sucks. I ordered a welder from them last week, called today and found out it was on backorder with no expected date of arrival. I'll call them tomorrow, and if it's still not expected soon I'll cancel the order and figure something else out.... Anyone want to come over and weld some things this weekend, bring a welder!!!! ...Chris HammondWed, 25 Apr 2007 09:01:28 GMT9540cb8f-c6cf-46f7-aa95-2d4e4e5fcc66My Motivationhttps://www.chrishammond.com/Cars/240z/itemId/2388/My-MotivationI was digging through some old photos tonight looking for photos of Jeff Krekeler, when I ran across this photo I took back in June of 2004.   When I get bored, lazy, or tired of working on the Project240z, I only have to look at that photo and realize what I'm striving for. That car is beautiful, and I hope my car can one day look that...Chris HammondSat, 28 Apr 2007 08:36:49 GMT41d808a3-10e0-4471-b8d4-0cf7833816cf240Z Corbeau Seats came inhttps://www.chrishammond.com/Cars/240z/itemId/2393/240Z-Corbeau-Seats-came-inThe seats I ordered earlier this week came in today! They look awesome, though they are now in the basement still in the shipping box. I'm not about to put them near the car right now, not until I get the grinding/welding done so I don't cover them in dust/rust and...Chris HammondSat, 05 May 2007 10:36:47 GMTe6e37ac0-eee6-4495-a4ed-47fea36ad2eeFirst weekend in May, 240Z work!https://www.chrishammond.com/Cars/240z/itemId/2394/First-weekend-in-May-240Z-work<p>Dad and I got a bit done on the car this weekend. I've created two videos, one from Saturday, one from Sunday.</p> <p>Saturday: We ended up running around looking for more plugs for the intake manifold, ended up not having any luck at all with that. We also took some time and found more metal to use on the floorpan. After returning we fabricated a throttle linkage and then i decided it was time to actually see some resemblance of a car, so I partially assembled the front end with the new (new to me) air dam I picked up that afternoon.</p>Chris HammondMon, 07 May 2007 00:44:12 GMT0d603775-b8e9-495a-a064-5cbaafa7f21a240Z Downpipe arrived!https://www.chrishammond.com/Cars/240z/itemId/2395/240Z-Downpipe-arrivedWell today a key component of my project arrived, the downpipe for the Turbo showed up. At first I flipped out thinking it was the wrong downpipe. ! = Then someone on Hybrid Z kindly pointed out that I need to remove the stock wastegate housing in order  to install this downpipe, which I believe is off a Z31 motor, instead of an L28ET motor like I have. I'll be testing this out tomorrow, then I hope to try to get it over to Hackman to get it powder...Chris HammondWed, 09 May 2007 09:41:34 GMT9a596bd1-ae29-41a1-af36-95c2a2049f76Does the 240Z need a cage?https://www.chrishammond.com/Cars/240z/itemId/2397/Does-the-240Z-need-a-cageSince I've decided to change classes, and not bother with most of the interior items, should I go ahead and put a cage in the car? I'll be going to XP, which I don't believe requires a cage, but I'd also like to do some time trials/hpde in the car. Any of the St. Louis cage builders want to work out a deal on a cage in exchange for advertising/promotion on...Chris HammondWed, 16 May 2007 22:54:01 GMTc8e1d013-f944-486c-aa48-eb65cb6b0a78May 29th P240z updatehttps://www.chrishammond.com/Cars/240z/itemId/2399/May-29th-P240z-updateSo what's going on with the 240Z? Not much. I haven't done any work since last week, though I plan to get some done tonight. I did manage to start putting together a parts list of items I need to purchase, it really starts to add...Chris HammondWed, 30 May 2007 02:07:20 GMT8b509e54-0571-43b8-8d11-ba784269de0cFuel Cell Ordered....https://www.chrishammond.com/Cars/240z/itemId/2401/Fuel-Cell-OrderedWell I ordered the fuel cell for the 240Z today, as well as 20ft of fuel line and AN fittings, as well as a wiring kit for a fuel pump. Tomorrow I'll probably be ordering a fuel pump. I also entered the DoubleX in Atlanta at the end of June. So now I have a deadline. Though my deadline is actually a few weeks earlier. I'm going to do my best, and recruit my friends, to hopefully help me get this thing running very soon. I'd love to have it together by the Impala event here in St. Louis on the 17th of June so I can try to get some time running the car. Anyone up for some assistance? Here's what I need help with. Installing the fuel cell/lines/pump. I need to come up with some sort of exhaust for the car, as Atlanta has noise requirements that need to be met. Wiring up the MegaSquirt (this will be the biggest step and my biggest fear, as I have no electronics experience) Who's down for some help? Anyone? PLEASE?...Chris HammondTue, 05 Jun 2007 07:34:16 GMT76981d30-9601-4a69-9bf0-98473a93aca4P240Z update, broken Craftsmen power toolshttps://www.chrishammond.com/Cars/240z/itemId/2405/P240Z-update-broken-Craftsmen-power-toolsSo this weekend was anything but productive. I ended up not getting a thing done on the car this weekend. I did manage to get the drill press together Saturday morning, and I acquired a trailer Saturday morning.   Sunday was a different story. I had planned on getting a lot done, but ended up sleeping all day. While it was nice, it was far from what I needed to get the car going. Tonight I went out with Russ and Matt Melton and Jeff "The Jeweler" Krekler, down to dinner in Soulard. From there I took Russ back to his house, saw his family, and came home with new motivation to get some work done on the car. I changed and went outside, setup the laptop to record video and go to work. I was cutting some aluminum scrap I picked up from the Metal Supermarket last Friday. I started making a new blockoff plate for the AAC valve on the L28ET intake manifold. I cut a rough pattern out with the jigsaw, made from tracing the bottom of the AAC valve with a sharpee and an awl to cut into the aluminum. I then went to assemble my new vertical belt sander that I purchased on Friday. The while taking it out of the box I noticed the darn thing was broken. Not likely broken to the point I couldn't use it, but I decided nonetheless to box it back up and take it back to Sears tomorrow to get a replacement. So that was the end of work tonight, I couldn't go any further on the plate and had some work to do on a few websites. I came inside to try to work on my video I recorded, but apparently managed to hose the video recording on the laptop by unplugging the camera before shutting off the software, so there's a tip, if you're using the lifecam software don't unplug the camera before you shut down the software, you're libel to lose your...Chris HammondTue, 12 Jun 2007 08:54:32 GMTc6e1aa2b-1539-4eaa-8554-1d654ffe6702Fun power tools and more 240Z progresshttps://www.chrishammond.com/Cars/240z/itemId/2406/Fun-power-tools-and-more-240Z-progressLast night I returned the Vertical sander that I had purchased from Sears that was broken when I removed it from the box. I got a replacement sander and brought it home to install. I setup the webcam on the wall, right above the work bench, and got to work assembling the sander. 5-10 minutes later I was ready to start sanding on the aluminum I had cut with a jig saw the day before to make a blockoff plate for my AAC valve on the intake manifold. I tell you what, a vertical sander is a fun thing to have! Here's the result of what I was making, though I'm still going to drill a hole in it and tap that hole for the temperature sensor I'll be mounting in the intake manifold.   I also got to use my new drill press to drill the holes in the plate, it all worked really darn well. After getting the plate made I decided it was time to remove the intake manifold from the car so I could tap and fill some of the holes on the manifold that I don't need to use. I brough the webcam with me and mounted it directly above the motor on the chery picker. I started removing bolts, then decided to read the haynes, it told me I need to remove the Turbo and a few other things to get the manifold removed, I guess I should of planned things a bit better and done most of this work BEFORE I put the engine back in the car, it sure would be a lot easier to get to. Once I realized how much I had to remove to get the manifold off I decided I didn't want to do all that last night, it was nearly 10pm by then. So I moved to the other side of the motor, bringing the camera with me to the other side. Andy and I decided last week to remove the attachments for the oil cooler for now, I'm going to attempt to get the car running without the cooler for now, and reinstall it down the road as I don't have all the hardware for it. So I started removing it last night, got it removed, and then saw that without the attachment there isn't a way to mount the oil filter to the block. So tonight I'll be attempting to remove the oil filter attachment from the parts motor (78 l28e) to see if I can use it on the 83 L28ET. After all this I decided it was time to head inside and play with the cool video I had shot last night, only to realize that I had click on the record audio button, instead of record video. So yet again, there isn't any video to be had :( Tonight though I promise I'll do my best to get it right and have a video to post of the evenings...Chris HammondWed, 13 Jun 2007 19:51:12 GMTb8d3ff16-177d-453b-ad15-3e89aea55bd7High Definition 240Z Engine Removalhttps://www.chrishammond.com/Cars/240z/itemId/2410/High-Definition-240Z-Engine-RemovalI finally got the video working from my new camera. I installed Windows Vista again last night on my home Machine (after 4 months of running on XP again) and with Vista the camera works great! You can see/download the video with the URL below. But please right click and save the file, it is large. 180mb, but I think the quality is well worth the wait for the...Chris HammondTue, 19 Jun 2007 20:52:53 GMT14dcb022-3adb-442d-a79e-ab59643d4e70Datsun Fuel Rail Ordered!https://www.chrishammond.com/Cars/240z/itemId/2411/Datsun-Fuel-Rail-OrderedI just got off the phone with www.lonewolfperformance.com and ordered my fuel rail for the Project 240Z. Hopefully it will be here next week. Tomorrow I'll get on ordering the other parts I need, a guage, regulator and some fittings. As well as starting to locate some injectors! Thanks for James at Lonewolf for all the help on the phone today, he was great with answering my questions, and guess where they're from? Salina Kansas of all places, I guess I'll have to get the car ready and make it to an event in Salina sometime next...Chris HammondFri, 22 Jun 2007 02:16:37 GMT8da8a5a1-d657-4724-95c6-6a8c2c348a3fMore Fuel Parts Orderedhttps://www.chrishammond.com/Cars/240z/itemId/2412/More-Fuel-Parts-OrderedI just placed another order with Summit Racing dot com today. I ordered the following, which I think will finish up what I need for the fuel system for the 240z.  AEI-13109  FUEL REGULATOR        AEI-15633  FUEL PRESSURE GAUGE         AER-FBM3416  REPLACEMENT HNBR O-RINGS EA         AER-FBM3417  REPLACEMENT HNBR O-RINGS 6EA        EAR-251008ERL  SIZE 8 FLAPPER CK - STYLE 1       SUM-220630  -06 PLUG AN ALUMINUM         SUM-220648  6AN TO 3/8 NPT ADAPTER       SUM-220841  -08 AN FEMALE COUPLE         SUM-220844  -08-06 AN MALE ADAPTER       SUM-220887  -08 90 SWIVEL HOSE END       SUM-220890  8AN HOSE END...Chris HammondFri, 22 Jun 2007 22:18:43 GMT8f48ca1f-5405-4099-bfe4-076bc1b05a48P240Z passenger seat mount nearly donehttps://www.chrishammond.com/Cars/240z/itemId/2415/P240Z-passenger-seat-mount-nearly-doneI spent another hour or so tonight working on the passenger seat mounts I hope to get some bolts tomorrow and attempt to mount the seat into the car tomorrow night or Friday. I'm still waiting on my fuel rail from Lone Wolf Performance. I hope to hear from them tomorrow and have the part by Friday. If not I'll have to find myself another source for a fuel rail. Goals for this weekend. Mount both seats in the car, though I'll pull them back out until I'm ready to leave them in there for a while, they are too nice to keep in such a dirty car till it gets cleaned up! I'm also shooting for getting the fuel cell all fabricated and mounted into the car, along with fuel lines run to the front of the...Chris HammondThu, 28 Jun 2007 08:52:03 GMT9dc2cf51-389b-4b30-aaeb-d0df12640f75Fuel Cell frame constructionhttps://www.chrishammond.com/Cars/240z/itemId/2418/Fuel-Cell-frame-constructionThis morning I set out into the garage to tackle a fairly large task, at least in my mind. My goal was to build a frame that will secure my 15 gallon fuel cell to the Project 240Z. In case you don't want to read the rest of this post, I was successful! I began with a few shots of the car before I started cutting into it (further than I cut last weekend). There are various shots here, above and below.       After taking those shots I got to cutting. Dave (from www.soloperformance.com) and I had discussed how to mount the cell into the car on Tuesday when he came over, so I had an idea of what I wanted to do. I quickly marked some lines to cut with a sharpie, then proceeded to tear up two cutting wheels removing metal from the rear of the car. I don't know why that stock metal tears up wheels, but they sure to go away quickly when cutting on the car. Here are photos of what was left after cutting.   The intention for the fuel cell frame was to bolt a bar on the back of the rear differential mount, weld to 1x1" square tubes parallel to the ground running towards the back of the car, then come up at a 90 degree angle from those tubes with more square steel. Those two vertical posts would weld to a bar running inside the back of the car, this bar would also be bolted into the car, not welded, so that if necessary the whole frame can be pulled out with minimal effort. Here are a few pictures of the end result of the frame, as well as some of my crappy welds! I figured out with all but two welds done, that I had somehow adjusted the wirespeed on the welder in the wrong direction, and that was why I was having a horrible time. I think they''ll hold though, they just aren't very pretty!   This frame easily goes in and out of the car, which should come in handy if I ever need to remove the rear end (which I plan to when overhauling the suspension, after the car runs). Here are a few shots of the frame sitting in the car And here is the end result, the fuel cell sitting in the frame, sitting in the car.   I think the frame turned out great and I love this photo The tank sits just low enough, it is barely visible from the back of the car, I actually had to walk 10 feet back and down a couple feet of driveway incline to see either the tank or the frame itself.  I've yet to bolt the frame to the car, but that can wait. I'll get some nuts, bolts, and washers tomorrow for the various things I need to mount, fuel cell, seats, etc. All in all I'm really impressed with myself, I got a lot more done this weekend than most weekends, though I still have the build the driver's side seat mounts (I finished the passenger side yesterday). What's next? Well like I said, tomorrow night I'll be building the driver's side seat mount, as well as visiting Mr. Whittle's house to test fit some fuel injectors into my new fuel rail that should be arriving and the old intake manifold. If the injectors he has fit I'll be ordering injectors on Tuesday. After that I'll be running fuel lines, and be working on putting the motor back together so I can attempt to put it back in the car next weekend if all goes well. That might be a lofty goal, but this whole project has been lofty for me, so why quit shooting high...Chris HammondMon, 02 Jul 2007 08:50:36 GMTb0cf9a29-c96a-4690-9ebb-643e4977431aProject 240z, What's next?https://www.chrishammond.com/Cars/240z/itemId/2419/Project-240z-Whats-nextTasks for the next few days. Thursday: Finish trimming the driver's side seat mounts, weld everything together, install seat for fitting. Friday/Saturday: Receive the fuel injectors from Summit Run fuel lines from fuel cell to engine bay Clean up intake manifold Tap a few holes in the intake manifold to fit NPT threaded plugs Clean up intake/exhaust manifold Install intake/exhaust manifold Clean up exterior of the motor/transmission Repaint parts of the engine bay Put motor/transmission back in the car If anyone is looking for anything to do on Saturday let me know! I can use the help! Next week I'm hoping to recruit Nick Jackson to come over and help me running wires in the car for the...Chris HammondFri, 06 Jul 2007 00:24:52 GMT807c646c-3677-47b4-a45e-03784ced55feP240Z A bit done here, a bit done there.https://www.chrishammond.com/Cars/240z/itemId/2420/P240Z-A-bit-done-here-a-bit-done-thereTake 2, stupid internet browsers, I typed this once, I guess that's what I get for not typing it up in Windows Live Writer instead of in the browser. As anyone who has read the blog consistantly will know, I never get as much done as I "plan" to do in a given time frame, this weekend so far is no exception. Thursday I got most of the driver's seat mounts welded into place, but I didn't finish them off, I left the tabs for the actualy mounts off. Friday night I tested some rust remover on the exhaust manifold, no luck on removing any rust with the products I tried. This morning I got up at 9:30am, lounged around for an hour and a half. I went out to the garage and welded in the tabs for the driver's side seat mount. From there I was all over the place, here's a list of things I worked on today, in no particular order Test fitted new injectors in fuel rail/intake manifold Cleaned the intake manifold Cleaned the exhaust manifold Test fitted IAT sensor in intake manifold Cleaned the transmission and bell housing Scraped undercoating off the car around the transmission tunnel and floorboards Removed all the stock fuel lines (3) Mounted the fuel pump and bracket Test ran some new braided fuel line (need to buy more as I don't think 20ft is enough Prepped the driver's side interior for paint (removed paint/primer, will do passenger side and paint later this week) I've gotta try to hit the junk yard tomorrow, also will be racing Jansoon's M3, so we'll see how my first BMW experience goes. Here are photos of the driver's side seat mounts, as well as the prep work for...Chris HammondSun, 08 Jul 2007 08:46:28 GMTc5a9f63d-34a5-4096-afc7-f972c7a42b5eP240Z Fiberglass workhttps://www.chrishammond.com/Cars/240z/itemId/2422/P240Z-Fiberglass-workTonight I spent some time working with fiberglass in the car. I was hoping to repair a few of the holes in the floorboards. I made quite a mess, but learned quite a bit. Here are some before photos.   The passenger side needed the most work as it was in the worst shape due to rust. I used quite a few pieces of fiberglass matt on the passenger floorboard covering some of the holes. I also covered up a few of the sharper metal pieces of the floorboard. On the driver's side I used minimal fiberglass matting and mainly used resin. The driver's side was in far better shape than the passenger side so I used resin to smooth out the surface on the driver's side. It turned out far better than I could have imagined! You can't really see it in the photos, but it's quite a clean look on the driver's side now. I can't wait to see how all this looks once painted. Though before I paint I'll be cleaning up the fiberglass with some sand paper. I'll spend some time Thursday and Friday night working on the floor. I hope to try to paint the interior this weekend. The interior may have to wait though as I hope to finish up a few other things this weekend, mainly the fuel lines and getting the motor back into the...Chris HammondThu, 12 Jul 2007 09:00:59 GMT4b127c74-f9ec-41cb-8d40-3f0892d39018P240Z Sunday Wiring Startshttps://www.chrishammond.com/Cars/240z/itemId/2430/P240Z-Sunday-Wiring-StartsHere's a quick update on the 240. I got up this morning and finished up modifications to the bracket I built for the VR sensor, you can see what it ended up looking like in the photo below. It's not all that pretty, but not too bad considering I made it out of a drill press, vertical sander, and a jig saw. I then ran out and spent a few more hours shopping. I went to autozone and purchased lots of random bits that I needed, another fuel filter (that didn't fit), wires, splices, antifreeze, radiator hose, oil, gear lube, and a ton of other random stuff. I also took the battery I had purchased for the parts car back to get tested, it wouldn't charge so they gave me a credit (it was out of the year's free replacement), so I got a new battery for $9.95. Whittle came over and assisted with a few more wiring questions. From there I tried to get started on wiring. I began by looking where exactly I was going to run the wires, in order to find an existing hole to run them through I got up under the dash and started removing things on the passenger side. The first thing I removed ended up being part of the AC system, which I wasn't actually sure the car had! That opened up two holes, with grommets to boot, that allowed me to start running wires. Terec came over and started assisting with a few things, first thing we did when he got there was make a list of all the tasks left to do on the car. We used a sharpie on the windshield. After that he was visibly more productive today than I was. He actually mounted the sensor up to the motor and made sure that it was within specs to the 36-1 wheel. After that he was able to get the radiator mounted and the hoses attached to the proper locations. He then got the Oil Cooler mounted and the hoses finished up from what Eric started doing yesterday. You can see the oil cooler and radiator mounted in this photo. I was able to get some of the EDIS wiring started, as well as power wires ran for both injector banks, as well as the Megasquirt harness wired into the engine bay, though the MS harness doesn't actually connect to anything yet. I have a LOT more wiring to do this week, hopefully getting most of it done Monday and Tuesday night with a goal of trying to start the car on Wednesday. We'll see if that happens, if I don't at least attempt to start it before Sunday I've vowed to shave my head.... Here are more photos from today. ...Chris HammondMon, 23 Jul 2007 10:34:20 GMT872df19a-6593-4f8a-9501-aa837b9fe154Monday Monday Monday Progress!https://www.chrishammond.com/Cars/240z/itemId/2431/Monday-Monday-Monday-ProgressToday was a good day! Progress was made! First things first, at lunch myself, Henry, and Eric headed down to High Ridge to SCPRacingparts.com again to get a cap for my Fuel cell, I realized yesterday that I was only 3 of the 4 fitting points for the fuel cell, and I had better get something to cover the fourth one up. After work my Henry (one of my bosses) and his mechanic buddy Ronnie came over to the house, after we made a quick pitstop at Gateway Electronics again to get more wiring items (I also spotted the Rally Bug builders on their way home from work). Ronny runs a shop down south near where he and Henry both live, so he was an EXCELLENT resource to have working on the car tonight. He and Henry got nearly every wire in the engine bay connected and placed in the appropriate areas, leaving just a few things for me to do in the bay. Eric also came over after making a trip to Autozone to get the battery for his 3rd gen RX-7 recharged. He finished up the fuel cell items that needed done. Adding the inline filter before the pump and then attached the vent line with the bulkhead fitting and check valve. I spent the evening doing minor things, mainly being in awe of all the work that Henry and Ronnie were getting done. I did track down some keys to the car, though I swear the keys I grabbed were the keys to the parts car I got rid of, one of them fit into the ignition for the 240z. I also figured out that the ignition has been turned on this whole time, which would explain why we never needed a key to turn the steering wheel when rolling the car around, though I'm not sure how it was turned on and the key removed. I do have the ignition out of the 78, as well as the turn signal and headlight switches from that car to try and use on the 73. Ronnie was able to get the power from the new battery hooked up to the starter, and alternator, which in turn got power to quite a bit of the car. One of the hazards work, the parking lights looked to work as when the headlights were turned on the rear lights lit up. I'll ahve to figure out how to wire up the headlights in the future, but I'm guessing the wiring for them should be somewhat intact based on testing tonight. So I've got more work to do tomorrow night. I'll try to finish up the wiring that is left in the engine bay, as well as wire up the fuse panel and try to mount the Megasquirt tomorrow night. Right now my goal is to try and start the car either Wednesday, or Thursday night! Though, I'm seriously thinking I won't be going to Topeka, though I'm still hoping to at take the car to the local autox this...Chris HammondTue, 24 Jul 2007 09:36:36 GMTb0a00173-dfcc-4fb3-8dc6-2a2dbe2312c5Project240Z Audio! New Exhausthttps://www.chrishammond.com/Cars/240z/itemId/2440/Project240Z-Audio-New-ExhaustTonight I told myself I wouldn't start the car, I would get ready for my trip to Chicago tomorrow (going up there to give two days of DotNetNuke training classes). But I couldn't help myself, I had to get the camera and record the new exhaust! It's not quiet, but oh it sounds so sweet! Here's a 2mb WAV file of the car running Here's a large WMV video of the same...Chris HammondTue, 07 Aug 2007 06:51:57 GMTd982e997-9c4b-4853-9c13-5f8615934b63Prepping for pulling the motor out of the Datsun 240zhttps://www.chrishammond.com/Cars/240z/itemId/2445/Prepping-for-pulling-the-motor-out-of-the-Datsun-2In this video you'll find me prepping the 240Z for the motor pull.Chris HammondMon, 29 Jan 2007 00:00:00 GMT78cba8c2-afc8-4a09-9798-cc63d1ad588dPulling the motor out of the Project 240zhttps://www.chrishammond.com/Cars/240z/itemId/2446/Pulling-the-motor-out-of-the-Project-240z<P>Here's the video of the motor removal. Watch carefully as the motor comes out, you'll see the car falls off the jackstands, actually making it easier to get the motor out. Thankfully I had the wheels still on the car.</P>Chris HammondTue, 30 Jan 2007 00:00:00 GMT71eb7368-cc69-4823-bc10-31ff70a8f94cProject 240Z Day 1 of Parts Car Motor Pull 2-24https://www.chrishammond.com/Cars/240z/itemId/2449/Project-240Z-Day-1-of-Parts-Car-Motor-Pull-224Spent today disconnecting things from the motor so I can get the motor and transmission pulled out tomorrow. Also removed some of the front end body work I need to try to make work on the 240Z as well.Chris HammondSat, 24 Feb 2007 00:00:00 GMT7c340716-5ad7-4ebe-ac99-74ad64abbb75Project 240Z Day 2 of Parts Car Motor Pullhttps://www.chrishammond.com/Cars/240z/itemId/2450/Project-240Z-Day-2-of-Parts-Car-Motor-PullThanks to Terec for coming over today and helping me get the motor pulled out of the 78 280Z 2+2 parts car today!Chris HammondSun, 25 Feb 2007 00:00:00 GMT21fc784f-c1a0-48f8-8c2e-f7412971f96b240Z Engine Bay Cleanuphttps://www.chrishammond.com/Cars/240z/itemId/2452/240Z-Engine-Bay-CleanupI spent a few hours on Sunday the 18th of March cleaning up the engine bay of my 1973 240Z.Chris HammondSun, 18 Mar 2007 00:00:00 GMTd190005b-776f-4fad-8aef-82aaf8c45a5aBondo and Gas Tank Removalhttps://www.chrishammond.com/Cars/240z/itemId/2453/Bondo-and-Gas-Tank-RemovalI sanded the area that I bondo'd yesterday on the 240Z. I also then cleaned and sprayed it with primer. Now the Project 240Z officially consists of 6, count them 6, colors. Blue, orange, white, black, brown, and grey. After that I removed the gas tank so I can have that cleaned up like we had done with the radiator last week.Chris HammondSun, 01 Apr 2007 00:00:00 GMT91f6eece-72f1-4633-99b6-315af681dc4bProject 240Z Brakes and Unecessary itemshttps://www.chrishammond.com/Cars/240z/itemId/2455/Project-240Z-Brakes-and-Unecessary-itemsRuss helped me yesterday afternoon and last night with quite a few things on the car. We removed all of the brakes so I can get those turned. Then we started fabricating blockoff plates for the various vacuum and emission lines that will be removed from the car.Chris HammondSun, 29 Apr 2007 00:00:00 GMTb449b79b-2bb7-4f1a-8d5c-12900e1c9cf0Project 240Z Rally Bug Welder Arriveshttps://www.chrishammond.com/Cars/240z/itemId/2456/Project-240Z-Rally-Bug-Welder-Arrives<P>Mark from The Rally Bug (<A href="http://www.321govideo.com/rallybug">http://www.321govideo.com/rallybug</A>) stopped by tonight and dropped off his welder for me to borrow for a week. He was also kind enough to give me some brief lessons as it's been a while (proly 10 years) since I've welded anything!</P> <P> </P>Chris HammondTue, 01 May 2007 00:00:00 GMTafb45f91-63f8-4056-b9d3-fe58e35b4254240Z Throttle Linkage and Bodyworkhttps://www.chrishammond.com/Cars/240z/itemId/2457/240Z-Throttle-Linkage-and-Bodywork<p>Dad and I spent some time creating a new throttle linkage as the old one off the parts car wouldn't fit on this firewall. After that I had to put the front end together just to see it start to look like a car.</p>Chris HammondSun, 06 May 2007 00:00:00 GMTcaa1772e-2657-427c-b3ba-c69c5b77fb77240Z Floorpan workhttps://www.chrishammond.com/Cars/240z/itemId/2458/240Z-Floorpan-work<p>Dad and I spent today working on repairing the floorpan in the Project 240Z. It was a learning experience as I haven't really welded before, just a little practice here and there. After that we put the thermostat a backtogether.</p>Chris HammondSun, 06 May 2007 00:00:00 GMT97fd6f39-e084-44b8-8dde-bd9f6c85b9d3240Z Intake Manifold Bolts...https://www.chrishammond.com/Cars/240z/itemId/2459/240Z-Intake-Manifold-Bolts<p>I spent tonight removing 3 bolts off the turbo (of 4) and one intake manifold bold, as well as two heat shield bolts and the destruction of another heat shield bolt. This weekend the motor comes out again...</p>Chris HammondFri, 15 Jun 2007 01:37:36 GMT04e05a42-d2a9-424f-871a-d66d4fcc97e8240Z Seat Mount Fabricationhttps://www.chrishammond.com/Cars/240z/itemId/2462/240Z-Seat-Mount-Fabrication<p>Dave from <a href="http://www.soloperformance.com/">http://www.soloperformance.com/</a> helped me out today. We started cutting and fabricating new seat mounts for the Project240z, 1973 240Z</p>Chris HammondWed, 27 Jun 2007 02:59:20 GMT0987deb1-8af6-4057-be40-45e3e4e8c310A slow Sunday, more cleaning on the motor.https://www.chrishammond.com/Cars/240z/itemId/1524/A-slow-Sunday-more-cleaning-on-the-motor<p>So I woke up this morning, <a href="http://www.project240z.com/Home/itemId/399/Little-progress-little-time.aspx" target="_blank">earlier than yesterday</a>, but still not as early as one would have liked. First things first I ran to Radio Shack to get an AC power source for my <a href="http://www.chasecam.com/" target="_blank">Chase Cam</a> so that I could use it to record video today. </p> Sun, 26 Oct 2008 20:44:15 GMTdde03e93-c29a-43ce-9072-60e22b98a8e4Another boring Project240z Video!https://www.chrishammond.com/Cars/240z/itemId/1014/Another-boring-Project240z-VideoSo I setup the toolbox last night in the garage, though I haven't put anything in it yet, I did take video of the process. Check it out over on...Tue, 15 Jan 2008 17:29:00 GMT6b60d9b4-3df6-42d0-adab-ee5ce621ca65Back in the Saddle Againhttps://www.chrishammond.com/Cars/240z/itemId/843/Back-in-the-Saddle-AgainWell... I'm back onto Vista yet again. I started running Vista on my main desktop back in the fall, sometime right around the RTM date. February came and I was getting sick of it. I was having a horrible time with Vista, I reinstalled XP and came to find out that most of my problems weren't actually Vista, but my network in my house, my domain controller was down, but up, and killing the network. Once I got that cleaned up XP was flying again. So this past weekend I got a Canon HV20 camcorder, and XP just won't handle it with Windows Movie Maker, which I use for all the videos I put together for my Datsun 240Z over at www.project240z.com. So tonight I reinstalled Windows Vista Ultimate. I just finished reinstalling Office 2007, and now have some more things to install, configure, and play with. Hope to try to transfer some video later tonight.... More on that if it happens! Technorati Tags: Vista, Videos, Windows Movie Maker, Canon, HD, Camcorder, HV20 Posted from...Mon, 18 Jun 2007 23:20:50 GMT4842b9e6-209e-4dbb-be99-b4613e0834c3Bondo cleanup and Gas tank removalhttps://www.chrishammond.com/Cars/240z/itemId/782/Bondo-cleanup-and-Gas-tank-removalI sanded the area that I bondo'd yesterday on the 240Z. I also then cleaned and sprayed it with primer. Now the Project 240Z officially consists of 6, count them 6, colors. Blue, orange, white, black, brown, and grey. After that I removed the gas tank so I can have that cleaned up like we had done with the radiator last week. Check out the video http://www.project240z.comhttp://www.project240z.com/tabid/54/itemid/16/Bondo-and-Gas-Tank-Removal.aspx For now, I think Krekeler is safe, the car most likely won't be ready for the first St. Louis region event on 4/15. So..... anyone looking for a codriver in SM2 for the first event??? :) I'm still hoping to have the car running, and street legal before my deadline of May 6th, or 9th, whatever the date of the bet with Seelig was. Though, we'll see if I make that one or not. There's still a lot left to do on the car. The more I dig into it, the more I wish I had done all this crap back in the fall! I really should of stripped the car to begin with and sent it off for paint and body...Mon, 02 Apr 2007 01:33:22 GMT170cbfcb-695a-4a33-aecd-988f87096d56Bondo cleanup and Gas tank removalhttps://www.chrishammond.com/Cars/240z/itemId/2381/Bondo-cleanup-and-Gas-tank-removalI sanded the area that I bondo'd yesterday on the 240Z. I also then cleaned and sprayed it with primer. Now the Project 240Z officially consists of 6, count them 6, colors. Blue, orange, white, black, brown, and grey. After that I removed the gas tank so I can have that cleaned up like we had done with the radiator last week. Check out the video http://www.project240z.com/tabid/54/itemid/16/Bondo-and-Gas-Tank-Removal.aspx For now, I think Krekeler is safe, the car most likely won't be ready for the first St. Louis region event on 4/15. So..... anyone looking for a codriver in SM2 for the first event??? :) I'm still hoping to have the car running, and street legal before my deadline of May 6th, or 9th, whatever the date of the bet with Seelig was. Though, we'll see if I make that one or not. There's still a lot left to do on the car. The more I dig into it, the more I wish I had done all this crap back in the fall! I really should of stripped the car to begin with and sent it off for paint and body...Chris HammondMon, 02 Apr 2007 09:33:22 GMT109388ff-c2b4-47d5-85f5-2c7906e2b06aBrakes bledhttps://www.chrishammond.com/Cars/240z/itemId/2386/Brakes-bledDad and I spent a few hours this evening working on the brakes on the 240Z. You have to be able to stop before you even start on the motor right? That's what I keep telling myself, though they brakes still need a lot of work! We did get the new (rebuilt) master cylinder installed, and bled, and apply braking force on the discs/drums! We ended up with a hodgepodge of brake/clutch systems. The vacuum boost is from the 73 240z, the master cylinder is a rebuilt cylinder for a 78 280Z, the clutch is from a 78 280z as the 73 240z was originaly an auto. Catch all that? Both systems are bled and semi ready. The brakes need to be pulled off the car, probably get the discs turned next week, and see what I need to do with the rear drums/shoes. Eventually I'd like to go to a 4 wheel disc setup, but that will have to wait until I have the cash to do a full suspension setup, most likely a setup from www.arizonazcar.com. Not much else accomplished on the car tonight, hoping to get the garage a bit organized on Thursday and start shooting video again, it's been too long since I did a time...Chris HammondWed, 25 Apr 2007 08:56:23 GMTd7471362-5824-4e9c-8597-1bd532ba34d3Brakes bledhttps://www.chrishammond.com/Cars/240z/itemId/795/Brakes-bledDad and I spent a few hours this evening working on the brakes on the 240Z. You have to be able to stop before you even start on the motor right? That's what I keep telling myself, though they brakes still need a lot of work! We did get the new (rebuilt) master cylinder installed, and bled, and apply braking force on the discs/drums! We ended up with a hodgepodge of brake/clutch systems. The vacuum boost is from the 73 240z, the master cylinder is a rebuilt cylinder for a 78 280Z, the clutch is from a 78 280z as the 73 240z was originaly an auto. Catch all that? Both systems are bled and semi ready. The brakes need to be pulled off the car, probably get the discs turned next week, and see what I need to do with the rear drums/shoes. Eventually I'd like to go to a 4 wheel disc setup, but that will have to wait until I have the cash to do a full suspension setup, most likely a setup from www.arizonazcar.com. Not much else accomplished on the car tonight, hoping to get the garage a bit organized on Thursday and start shooting video again, it's been too long since I did a time...Wed, 25 Apr 2007 00:56:23 GMT95b5ee15-d137-4fce-b812-116e61db2f35Garage Workhttps://www.chrishammond.com/Cars/240z/itemId/1108/Garage-Work<p>So I spent most of the day today in the garage. I'll blog about it more on <a href="http://www.project240z.com">www.project240z.com</a> later this evening. Photos and video coming!</p>Sun, 09 Mar 2008 18:56:47 GMT0c0cf056-9e87-445c-ac8e-1bd95f4cae9dHeat gun on a hot nighthttps://www.chrishammond.com/Cars/240z/itemId/827/Heat-gun-on-a-hot-nightTonight after work Eric and I headed to Creve Couer park to do some skating. Kendra met us there to bring Eric socks and skated with us as well. As a group we went around the park once, they called it a night after that lap but I decided I'd go around one more lap before heading home. I had a big lunch so I figured I could definitely use the exercise. After that I came home and recovered for a few minutes. I had said I'd do some work on the 240z though so I felt i must get something done. I went out into the garage and grabbed 4 things. A pair of latex gloves, a shop light, a paint scraper and my heat gun. I went to work on the interior of the car and got most of the remaining tar board out of the floorboard of the driver and passenger sides. That should allow me to do a little prep work later this week and then get to painting the interior to clean it up. I'll take some pics and video as I start doing more work inside the car. That's all for...Tue, 29 May 2007 22:14:08 GMT9b34eacc-b850-4537-be05-8a7738b3d2e1Heat gun on a hot nighthttps://www.chrishammond.com/Cars/240z/itemId/2400/Heat-gun-on-a-hot-nightTonight after work Eric and I headed to Creve Couer park to do some skating. Kendra met us there to bring Eric socks and skated with us as well. As a group we went around the park once, they called it a night after that lap but I decided I'd go around one more lap before heading home. I had a big lunch so I figured I could definitely use the exercise. After that I came home and recovered for a few minutes. I had said I'd do some work on the 240z though so I felt i must get something done. I went out into the garage and grabbed 4 things. A pair of latex gloves, a shop light, a paint scraper and my heat gun. I went to work on the interior of the car and got most of the remaining tar board out of the floorboard of the driver and passenger sides. That should allow me to do a little prep work later this week and then get to painting the interior to clean it up. I'll take some pics and video as I start doing more work inside the car. That's all for...Chris HammondWed, 30 May 2007 06:14:08 GMT179ad732-b8b4-4c5b-97be-c147cbffc110I've got nothing on this time lapsehttps://www.chrishammond.com/Cars/240z/itemId/1364/Ive-got-nothing-on-this-time-lapseThis time lapse makes my time lapse videos for www.project240z.com look amatuer (hey wait a minute, they are). This is apparently GM Engineers assembling an LS9 for a ZR1 (View the full blog post for the video. Thu, 17 Jul 2008 00:12:38 GMT2b6ac8ec-aa3d-49b0-a6bf-466fb33bc63dMark stops by with a welderhttps://www.chrishammond.com/Cars/240z/itemId/802/Mark-stops-by-with-a-welderSome of you have kept up with my blog posts, first Scott got on me about using Bondo on the Project 240z, so he said to have someone come over and weld on the car instead of using bondo. So I started looking for a welder, might as well do it myself right? Well I didn't have much luck in the price range I was looking for. I had originally ordered something from Harbor Freight, but they suck and I cancelled the order because it ended up being on backorder. Mark Huebbe from 321GoVideo.com offered to let me borrow his welder for a week as he isn't going to need it this coming weekend due to the Rallycross event. I jumped on the offer and he brought the welder over this evening. He took the time to give me some quick lessons, of which I was in dire need. Thanks for all your help Mark, and most of all thanks for the use of the welder! Everyone should be sure to stop by Mark's build site as he puts together his Rally Bug! Now for Tonight's Video! It can be found...Tue, 01 May 2007 01:54:16 GMT0380ffcb-9c80-40f6-926a-b054ac90b985Mark stops by with a welderhttps://www.chrishammond.com/Cars/240z/itemId/2391/Mark-stops-by-with-a-welderSome of you have kept up with my blog posts, first Scott got on me about using Bondo on the Project 240z, so he said to have someone come over and weld on the car instead of using bondo. So I started looking for a welder, might as well do it myself right? Well I didn't have much luck in the price range I was looking for. I had originally ordered something from Harbor Freight, but they suck and I cancelled the order because it ended up being on backorder. Mark Huebbe from 321GoVideo.com offered to let me borrow his welder for a week as he isn't going to need it this coming weekend due to the Rallycross event. I jumped on the offer and he brought the welder over this evening. He took the time to give me some quick lessons, of which I was in dire need. Thanks for all your help Mark, and most of all thanks for the use of the welder! Everyone should be sure to stop by Mark's build site as he puts together his Rally Bug! Now for Tonight's Video! It can be found...Chris HammondTue, 01 May 2007 09:54:16 GMTb4865db4-73d6-4b8a-a52c-fd62feabd36bNew Project240Z Videohttps://www.chrishammond.com/Cars/240z/itemId/1422/New-Project240Z-VideoYesterday I spent an hour or so working on the motor in the garage. I only got one thing finished, and hopefully it is finished and doesn't need to come off again, I got the cover and gasket installed on the head. After that I got the oil cooler connections on the side of the block and then spent some time cleaning up other items on the blog. It's amazing how much crap is on that block, I wish I had a pressure washer to clean it off. Video on the full postFri, 15 Aug 2008 23:06:11 GMT629358d6-08bf-4452-aade-74e4e15c86e9New URL for the Project 240Zhttps://www.chrishammond.com/Cars/240z/itemId/688/New-URL-for-the-Project-240ZI may not have worked on either of the cars lately, but I didn take a few minutes and purchase yet ANOTHER domain name! http://www.project240z.com I hope to actually track the project's status over there with a place to feature all the videos and other information about the car. posted from...Wed, 27 Dec 2006 15:49:00 GMT64bdd5a2-0d4a-423e-9caf-58f9041e73dcP240Z fabricating a seat brackethttps://www.chrishammond.com/Cars/240z/itemId/850/P240Z-fabricating-a-seat-bracketTonight was a semi productive night on the 240Z, which is always a good thing when some productivity happens during the week, it's hard enough being productive on the weekends. More on tonight in a bit. Summit Racing kindly sent me all of the fuel part oddities I had ordered last week. I had a 12x12 box sitting at the office when I returned from lunch today. I was dissapointed to find such a small box, after spending so much money! But I guess I did order "small" parts. After work I headed home and met up with Dave from http://www.soloperformance.com/ who came over tolend a hand. First we hypothesized on how to mount the 15 Gallon fuel cell I have for the car. I think we've come up with a good plan, and I hope to start fabricating that later this week. After going over that plan we started cutting and fabricating new seat mounts for the Project240z. We got quite a bit done on the Passenger side of the car. I started on that side just incase I were to screw something up, I can always drive without a passenger seat if needed, but I'll always need a driver's seat! Here's a link to the Video I took tonight. Towards the end you'll notice a small camera issue, the tape came loose and the camera basically inverted, which made for some kinda cool video as well. I also took some pictures of what we accomplished on the seat mounts. Tomorrow night, or Thursday I plan to finish up the passenger side brackets and get started on the driver's side brackets, as well as to start cutting for the fuel cell. I'll have to pick up some more 4.5" cutting wheels though, I've gone through 3.5 of them in the past two days of working on the car and have plenty more cutting left to do. I say tomorrow or Thursday, because I'm not sure I'll get any work done tomorrow (Wednesday) because I may head off and play roller hockey with some guys I used to work with at The Sporting News (www.sportingnews.com), they are in the process of relocating the "online" side of TSN to North Carolina and I think Wednesday night is the last night for Ray Slover at the pickup hockey games that have been going on for the past 5-6 years now. More later this...Wed, 27 Jun 2007 03:15:00 GMT1a781f90-b453-4f9f-8c90-00c7847c96bdP240Z fabricating a seat brackethttps://www.chrishammond.com/Cars/240z/itemId/2414/P240Z-fabricating-a-seat-bracketTonight was a semi productive night on the 240Z, which is always a good thing when some productivity happens during the week, it's hard enough being productive on the weekends. More on tonight in a bit. Summit Racing kindly sent me all of the fuel part oddities I had ordered last week. I had a 12x12 box sitting at the office when I returned from lunch today. I was dissapointed to find such a small box, after spending so much money! But I guess I did order "small" parts. After work I headed home and met up with Dave from http://www.soloperformance.com/ who came over tolend a hand. First we hypothesized on how to mount the 15 Gallon fuel cell I have for the car. I think we've come up with a good plan, and I hope to start fabricating that later this week. After going over that plan we started cutting and fabricating new seat mounts for the Project240z. We got quite a bit done on the Passenger side of the car. I started on that side just incase I were to screw something up, I can always drive without a passenger seat if needed, but I'll always need a driver's seat! Here's a link to the Video I took tonight. Towards the end you'll notice a small camera issue, the tape came loose and the camera basically inverted, which made for some kinda cool video as well. I also took some pictures of what we accomplished on the seat mounts. Tomorrow night, or Thursday I plan to finish up the passenger side brackets and get started on the driver's side brackets, as well as to start cutting for the fuel cell. I'll have to pick up some more 4.5" cutting wheels though, I've gone through 3.5 of them in the past two days of working on the car and have plenty more cutting left to do. I say tomorrow or Thursday, because I'm not sure I'll get any work done tomorrow (Wednesday) because I may head off and play roller hockey with some guys I used to work with at The Sporting News (www.sportingnews.com), they are in the process of relocating the "online" side of TSN to North Carolina and I think Wednesday night is the last night for Ray Slover at the pickup hockey games that have been going on for the past 5-6 years now. More later this...Chris HammondWed, 27 Jun 2007 11:15:00 GMT316f0e72-82bd-44b7-8587-6e5128b45208P240z Motor outhttps://www.chrishammond.com/Cars/240z/itemId/2408/P240z-Motor-outI came out to the garage an hour ago. The motor is once again removed from the 240Z. HD video with my new video camera will be posted tonight. More work to do out...Chris HammondSat, 16 Jun 2007 23:31:21 GMTa4e08c88-2fdb-4fd3-bc49-b194127645c9P240z Motor outhttps://www.chrishammond.com/Cars/240z/itemId/841/P240z-Motor-outI came out to the garage an hour ago. The motor is once again removed from the 240Z. HD video with my new video camera will be posted tonight. More work to do out...Sat, 16 Jun 2007 15:31:21 GMT55045640-36f2-46c0-b3f7-55c68d5fde16P240Z Rollin until the wheels fall offhttps://www.chrishammond.com/Cars/240z/itemId/849/P240Z-Rollin-until-the-wheels-fall-offThe 240Z once again stands on its own! Eric and I put the brakes back together on the car, put the wheels on and roll her out into the driveway. Spun her around, and rolled her back in. Then we procede to begin on the fuel cell installation (read cut shit out). Tonight I'll be working with Dave and Eric to cut more, and start fabricating the mounts for the Fuel Cell which I hope to have mounted by the end of the week! Here's the video from Saturday's...Tue, 26 Jun 2007 10:50:07 GMTbbe863f4-7a13-4cf4-b279-08de4f27e3fcP240Z Rollin until the wheels fall offhttps://www.chrishammond.com/Cars/240z/itemId/2413/P240Z-Rollin-until-the-wheels-fall-offThe 240Z once again stands on its own! Eric and I put the brakes back together on the car, put the wheels on and roll her out into the driveway. Spun her around, and rolled her back in. Then we procede to begin on the fuel cell installation (read cut shit out). Tonight I'll be working with Dave and Eric to cut more, and start fabricating the mounts for the Fuel Cell which I hope to have mounted by the end of the week! Here's the video from Saturday's...Chris HammondTue, 26 Jun 2007 18:50:07 GMTc76c2050-d889-49a8-8490-3696e999723eP240Z two new videoshttps://www.chrishammond.com/Cars/240z/itemId/799/P240Z-two-new-videosI've posted two new videos for the 240Z. Yesterday I spent some time finishing up the work bench and organizing the garage a bit. http://www.project240z.comhttp://www.project240z.com/tabid/54/itemid/17/New-Toolbench-Setup.aspx And then Russ came over and we spent a few hours doing a few necessary things. We removed parts for the brakes and cleaned up items so that I can get everything turned this weekend. I installed the new Rocker arm cover gasket. Russ started fabricating block off plates for the various items that will be coming off the motor, you know, all those inhibiting emissions items! http://www.project240z.comhttp://www.project240z.com/tabid/54/itemid/18/Project-240Z-Brakes-and-Unecessary-items.aspx...Sun, 29 Apr 2007 13:17:31 GMT5c719940-f72a-4181-b28c-e4c9d15fdf9cP240Z two new videoshttps://www.chrishammond.com/Cars/240z/itemId/2389/P240Z-two-new-videosI've posted two new videos for the 240Z. Yesterday I spent some time finishing up the work bench and organizing the garage a bit. http://www.project240z.com/tabid/54/itemid/17/New-Toolbench-Setup.aspx And then Russ came over and we spent a few hours doing a few necessary things. We removed parts for the brakes and cleaned up items so that I can get everything turned this weekend. I installed the new Rocker arm cover gasket. Russ started fabricating block off plates for the various items that will be coming off the motor, you know, all those inhibiting emissions items! http://www.project240z.com/tabid/54/itemid/18/Project-240Z-Brakes-and-Unecessary-items.aspx...Chris HammondSun, 29 Apr 2007 21:17:31 GMT21c540be-a4ca-4b74-a3df-5dd7e05ccdcePacking up the Garagehttps://www.chrishammond.com/Cars/240z/itemId/1797/Packing-up-the-Garage<p>So this weekend’s goal was to get the Garage packed up and ready for the move. I didn’t get much done in there yesterday, mainly just a few things assembled on the 240Z (<a href="http://www.project240z.com">http://www.project240z.com</a>) today however was a whole different story. I spent 9 hours in the garage, packing, cleaning, assembling, and throwing things out. I managed to get the car running, and even drove it around the circle (check out the 240Z site later for the video).</p> <p>I packed up the things in the garage that I could get into a box or container. There are a few more things to pack up, but mainly it comes down to getting the boxes out of the garage and onto the trailer next weekend. I have quite a bit of stuff to throw away or scrap. A load of metal I don’t think I want to move, so I’ll try to find a scrap yard this week where I can go and maybe even get some $$$ out of the deal?</p>Chris HammondMon, 20 Jul 2009 00:32:31 GMT9e4a72ca-a007-491b-b68e-1ba29c53ce6fParts car is almost gonehttps://www.chrishammond.com/Cars/240z/itemId/2369/Parts-car-is-almost-goneToday I spent some time trying to get the parts car all finished up. I removed a lot of the rear interior with hopes that some of it will work out in the 240z, we'll see if it will or not tomorrow. I also completely removed the dash, pedal assembly, the master cylinders for the clutch and brakes. I also removed the hatch lock, and driver's door lock with hopes that I can reuse those in the 240 since I have a set of keys for the 280. Tomorrow I have to pull the diff out of the rear, and remove the passenger door lock, then it'll be time to load it up on the trailer and haul it off to the scrap yard. No video today, I wanted to just get some work done without going through the hassle of setting up the camera. Perhaps I'll use it tomorrow when I finish...Chris HammondSun, 11 Mar 2007 05:36:48 GMT3832eed5-3b2d-4849-b6e0-ce4b328b23baParts car is almost gonehttps://www.chrishammond.com/Cars/240z/itemId/749/Parts-car-is-almost-goneToday I spent some time trying to get the parts car all finished up. I removed a lot of the rear interior with hopes that some of it will work out in the 240z, we'll see if it will or not tomorrow. I also completely removed the dash, pedal assembly, the master cylinders for the clutch and brakes. I also removed the hatch lock, and driver's door lock with hopes that I can reuse those in the 240 since I have a set of keys for the 280. Tomorrow I have to pull the diff out of the rear, and remove the passenger door lock, then it'll be time to load it up on the trailer and haul it off to the scrap yard. No video today, I wanted to just get some work done without going through the hassle of setting up the camera. Perhaps I'll use it tomorrow when I finish...Sat, 10 Mar 2007 19:36:48 GMT9cde4f00-9d06-4fa3-abcc-36720001b061Project 240Z - Starting on the Parts Carhttps://www.chrishammond.com/Cars/240z/itemId/624/Project-240Z--Starting-on-the-Parts-CarI got started on the parts car this week, a 78 280Z 2+2.Yesterday I put in about an hour's work in on the car, it may not seem like much, but between that hour and the hour I spent on Sunday, that's 2 hours this week, prior to this week I hadn't put more than 2 minutes in over two months.So yesterday I started disassembling the 280Z. In an hour I got the bumper and parts of the front body work off the car. Hopefully some of those parts will be reusable on the 240Z unless I find something else to do for front end body work on the Project 240Z.Check out the video from the work yesterday!http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qk2g8DB8lDo  posted from...Wed, 11 Oct 2006 09:09:00 GMTf2c81df7-0435-415a-84b2-5801670ab972Project 240Z The Motor Is Pulledhttps://www.chrishammond.com/Cars/240z/itemId/533/Project-240Z-The-Motor-Is-PulledWell, it's been just over two months since I picked up the Project 240Z from Krekeler. Today I successfully pulled the motor and transmission from the car. It took me a few hours today, in some of the hottest weather of the year. If you watch in the video below you'll see I aim the fan at me whenever I move around the car :) Also in the video, you may not notice, but before the motor comes all the way out of the car the front end of the car gets lowered. I had intended to lower this manually when I was ready, but the car decided it was ready to be lowered while I was pulling on the motor. Luckily I wasn't near the car, and I left the wheels/tires on it so the car just slipped off the front jack stands and onto the ground. It worked out perfectly, dropped the car down just enough to everything free and clear. Enough banter, here's the video!http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KKmMYhwZrMU   posted from...Sun, 16 Jul 2006 22:29:00 GMT6ccd28ca-7a4b-4d93-9b67-70d937a6bcb8Project 240Z Video from 7-8-06https://www.chrishammond.com/Cars/240z/itemId/528/Project-240Z-Video-from-7806Here's a quick video of me out in the garage today. Funny to watch, though not much progress to be seen.   posted from...Sat, 08 Jul 2006 14:07:00 GMTf3e0e206-6822-4b2e-b303-b80d0a94e752Project240Z Videos, she's back!!!!https://www.chrishammond.com/Cars/240z/itemId/2471/Project240Z-Videos-shes-backSo it has been a while since I've posted any P240Z videos, too long in fact. Well here are two, one that i failed to post back in March, and one that I just made today!Chris HammondSat, 09 Aug 2008 23:31:43 GMTa6732062-7b0d-47f9-b72f-09ef57d114c9Project240z.com and the car are for sale!https://www.chrishammond.com/Cars/240z/itemId/1417/Project240zcom-and-the-car-are-for-saleWith my recent acquisition I'm going to have to clear out the garage of all of my Datsun parts and cars to make room for a few other vehicles. I'm going to start putting together information on what all I have for sale, but here's a rough idea. 1973 Datsun 240Z (sans motor) Megasquirt Ford EDIS ignition Brand New Corbeau A4 seats 1978 280Z 2+2 Motor L28E Ran when removed from parts car, currently needs some parts from the L28ET installed to use the Megasquirt, needs rear main seal replaced. (2) 1979 Datsun 5 Speeds, one needs rebuilt 1973 Datsun 240Z Automatic Transmission 1983 280ZX L28ET (#2 piston blew up, head can be repaired and turbo system should be usable) Downpipe and custom exhaust  Complete second sport suspension for the car, ready to be cleaned up to be powder coated and installed. New Fuel System 15 Gallon fuel cell High Pressure Fuel Pump AN hose and fittings front to back Custom fuel rail Ford Lightning Injectors Website Project240Z.com domain name, and 1 year of website hosting, training of use of website. The site gets a lot of traffic from search engine results. DVD of the original video files of all the video recordings I have that I used in Project240z.com videos I'm not sure what all I want to ask for this, it could be a very fun project, with the most expensive parts already purchased and installed. If you're interested start making me an offer, if I consider it reasonable I'll respond. Currently not looking to part things out,...Tue, 23 Oct 2007 03:09:58 GMTe416d9d5-e4d9-4353-9a18-08ecfaff2b9cProject240z.com and the car are for sale!https://www.chrishammond.com/Cars/240z/itemId/952/Project240zcom-and-the-car-are-for-saleWith my recent acquisition I'm going to have to clear out the garage of all of my Datsun parts and cars to make room for a few other vehicles. I'm going to start putting together information on what all I have for sale, but here's a rough idea. 1973 Datsun 240Z (sans motor) Megasquirt Ford EDIS ignition Brand New Corbeau A4 seats 1978 280Z 2+2 Motor L28E Ran when removed from parts car, currently needs some parts from the L28ET installed to use the Megasquirt, needs rear main seal replaced. (2) 1979 Datsun 5 Speeds, one needs rebuilt 1973 Datsun 240Z Automatic Transmission 1983 280ZX L28ET (#2 piston blew up, head can be repaired and turbo system should be usable) Downpipe and custom exhaust  Complete second sport suspension for the car, ready to be cleaned up to be powder coated and installed. New Fuel System 15 Gallon fuel cell High Pressure Fuel Pump AN hose and fittings front to back Custom fuel rail Ford Lightning Injectors Website Project240Z.com domain name, and 1 year of website hosting, training of use of website. The site gets a lot of traffic from search engine results. DVD of the original video files of all the video recordings I have that I used in Project240z.com videos I'm not sure what all I want to ask for this, it could be a very fun project, with the most expensive parts already purchased and installed. If you're interested start making me an offer, if I consider it reasonable I'll respond. Currently not looking to part things out,...Mon, 22 Oct 2007 19:09:58 GMT6e617324-9d90-42ed-996d-a0c8cdc08279Say it isn't so! We've found the piston!https://www.chrishammond.com/Cars/240z/itemId/1007/Say-it-isnt-so-Weve-found-the-pistonWhat? Chris actually worked on the 240Z? Impossible! It tis true, it really is. Tonight I got home and decided it was time to tear into the motor, so I did just that. I even recorded the whole process, so hopefully I'll have video up soon. For now you can check out the photos of what I found, be warned, it's not...Wed, 09 Jan 2008 01:35:34 GMT9d0eee54-3c65-4e89-a594-db67a5519157Say it isn't so! We've found the piston!https://www.chrishammond.com/Cars/240z/itemId/1268/Say-it-isnt-so-Weve-found-the-piston<p>What? Chris actually worked on the 240Z? Impossible! It tis true, it really is. Tonight I got home and decided it was time to tear into the motor, so I did just that. I even recorded the whole process, so hopefully I'll have video up soon. For now you can check out the photos of what I found, be warned, it's not pretty!</p>Wed, 09 Jan 2008 01:35:34 GMT57d52d7b-7768-4a24-86e0-a993d2fbeb8bSay it isn't so! We've found the piston!https://www.chrishammond.com/Cars/240z/itemId/1555/Say-it-isnt-so-Weve-found-the-piston<p>What? Chris actually worked on the 240Z? Impossible! It tis true, it really is. Tonight I got home and decided it was time to tear into the motor, so I did just that. I even recorded the whole process, so hopefully I'll have video up soon. For now you can check out the photos of what I found, be warned, it's not pretty!</p>Wed, 09 Jan 2008 11:35:34 GMTa26d4b15-91fd-4045-8d31-dd5aeda31248Starting on the suspensionhttps://www.chrishammond.com/Cars/240z/itemId/1774/Starting-on-the-suspension<p>With the <a href="http://www.project240z.com/Blog/itemId/424/It-runs-twice-and-therersquos-audiovideo-proof.aspx" target="_blank">success last night</a> I decided I had to work on the car this evening a bit. The first thing I did was get it up on all four jack stands so that they were under the frame and not under control arms of the car. This would allow me to begin working on the suspension pieces. </p> <p>When I got the car from Jeff, uhhh over three years ago now, it came with a second suspension that had been pulled off another car. This other suspension has springs (yellow), new(er) struts, a larger front sway bar, and also the addition of a rear sway bar. It also is a lot cleaner then the current suspension. So tonight I started pulling off the front suspension, starting with the sway bar, and moving on to removing the rest, at least what I could, of the right front.</p> <p>I got stuck at the tie rod, but I did manage to get most of the other bolts removed. I came to a conclusion though, I’m going to likely just drop the whole front suspension out, including the cross member as the second suspension has one as well. In order to do that though I am going to have to dismount the motor. I will attempt to do that by lifting the motor up off the mounts with the cherry picker, hopefully without having to disconnect the transmission and not removing the whole thing from the car.</p> <p>Before I do that though I will likely fully disassemble the other suspension and take it to a friend’s house to sandblast everything. I’m heading to Tampa for a conference tomorrow, so that will have to wait until the evenings next week. I’ll try to get everything disassembled during the week, both front and rear suspensions, and then probably go down to his place Saturday if he’ll be around.</p>Wed, 10 Jun 2009 22:17:08 GMTce0d2911-e4e0-4250-9613-97c41cd74fffThe Returnhttps://www.chrishammond.com/Cars/240z/itemId/1402/The-Return<p>The car is finally back home, within reach of me actually working on it and hopefully getting it running in the next few weeks.</p> <p><a href="http://www.project240z.com/DesktopModules/EngagePublish/itemlink.aspx?itemId=128">I've posted two videos, you can find them on this page</a></p> <p><a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/chammond/sets/72157594465585463/">I've also posted some photos to flickr</a></p> <p> </p>Sat, 09 Aug 2008 23:42:32 GMTcd6d8148-9777-44e8-8e28-f4e4ff4541d0Updated the videos againhttps://www.chrishammond.com/Cars/240z/itemId/730/Updated-the-videos-againAlright, I have all the videos updated now. So every video that I've created thus far on the Project240z is now online with youtube and listed here on the videos...Tue, 30 Jan 2007 01:00:00 GMTa80388b7-4ee5-40a3-836b-88dff03c8654Updated the videos againhttps://www.chrishammond.com/Cars/240z/itemId/2356/Updated-the-videos-againAlright, I have all the videos updated now. So every video that I've created thus far on the Project240z is now online with youtube and listed here on the videos...Chris HammondTue, 30 Jan 2007 11:00:00 GMT8ec192f5-5a98-425f-99d8-14ba540c8096Wiring up the engine and attempting to starthttps://www.chrishammond.com/Cars/240z/itemId/1741/Wiring-up-the-engine-and-attempting-to-start<div class="watch-video-desc description"> <p><span>I spent the morning with Dave and Terec helping to finish buttoning up items on the 240Z so we could attempt to start it today. We were successful in getting to the point of attempting to start it, though we weren't successful in actually getting it started, there's an issue or two that I need to track down. Likely issues with timing and firing for the Megasquirt. Because the last time I had the car running was back in August 2007 I've now got a new laptop and don't have it configured for the Megasquirt. I'm hoping to get it setup tonight and try to hook it up tomorrow to see what I find.</span></p> <p><span>Here's the video from today's work.</span></p> </div> <p><span class="Publish_Video"><object type="application/x-shockwave-flash" width="425" height="355" data="http://www.youtube.com/v/Plj8ZyVgPuQ"><param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/Plj8ZyVgPuQ" />Flash Not Installed</object></span></p>Sat, 25 Apr 2009 21:59:13 GMT5a32a707-dddf-412e-9d65-15ac135a72c9Working on the motor againhttps://www.chrishammond.com/Cars/240z/itemId/2472/Working-on-the-motor-againTonight I spent some good time working on the motor for the 240Z again. Here's the YouTube video!Chris HammondFri, 15 Aug 2008 00:41:05 GMT589a32a5-7409-4017-a743-d5a6c1aa6ba4Little progress, little time!https://www.chrishammond.com/Cars/240z/itemId/1517/Little-progress-little-time<p>So my weekend of working on the 240Z started off quite slowly today. I ended up sleeping until almost noon this morning, it was nice to catch up on some much lost rest from the travelling the past few months.</p> <p>So after my restful morning I had a few errands to run to get my costume ready for a party tonight. Once those were completed I was able to spend some time in the garage. First things first getting the months of piled on crap off the top of the car. That led me to assembling the 2nd craftsman stool that I had purchased probably 10 months ago now, it was in a box on the hood of the car.</p> <p>Once I could see the top of the car I made room at the back and rolled her back a bit in the garage, this allowed me to get to the motor which has been on the stand for quite some time sitting in front of the car. Without the Corvette in the garage (*sheds a small tear*) I had plenty of room to move the motor over to the free side of the garage to work on. The next step for the car is to get all of the motor bits back together, the manifolds, turbo and all other accessories need to be put on the car so that I can put it back in the engine bay. I spent some time this afternoon cleaning off some more of the grease/dirt that covers the motor. I think Lynn, the previous owner, took it to a rally cross based on all the dirt and grime I’ve pulled off this motor over time.</p> <p>I didn’t get too far today, but I hope that tomorrow I can get all of the parts back on the motor, if I can successfully do that I should be able to get the motor back in the car next weekend. The biggest problem I have working on the car is staying focused, if I’m by myself I tend to stray from the task at hand, and I never seem to get anything done. Case in point today, at some point while working on clearing off the car I got out the angle grinder and wire wheeled the hole where the FM antenna was at one point, I thought it looked like it might be rusting so I took the paint off then sprayed some primer on the car. Now it looks worse than before, but I had fun! :) </p> <p>More updates tomorrow, hopefully with some video. I tried using the Chase Cam today to shoot some video but apparently the PDR doesn’t really care for normal AA batteries as it only stayed powered on for about 5 minutes before shutting off, without me knowing.</p>Sat, 25 Oct 2008 19:24:26 GMT1dc2f34d-45ca-46e7-a5de-2c03a7367dbbP240Z Rollin till the wheels fall offhttps://www.chrishammond.com/Cars/240z/itemId/2461/P240Z-Rollin-till-the-wheels-fall-off<p>Eric and I put the brakes back together, got the wheels on the car, roll it out of the garage, turn it around, roll it back in, then start cutting out the rear to mount the fuel cell.</p>Chris HammondTue, 26 Jun 2007 10:39:06 GMT3baf1096-b7c9-4722-be44-3bfd55e346d7Reaching out to your Nissan Dealer in Regards to a Leafhttps://www.chrishammond.com/Cars/Leaf/itemId/1937/Reaching-out-to-your-Nissan-Dealer-in-Regards-to-a<p>So there has been some discussion here on LeafOwner.com about the potential that dealers will try to price gouge when the Leaf comes out. I recently went to visit a local Nissan Dealer, Boardwalk Nissan in Redwood City and will admit I didn't have the best of experiences, they didn't have ANY info on the Leaf at the time, I am hoping that has changed, so I just reached out to a sales guy who contacted me due to the previous sales guy I was dealing with having left.</p> <p> So here's what I emailed the guy, I'll post back to this thread later when I hear back, assuming I hear back. </p> <blockquote> <p>NAME REMOVED,</p> <p>Thanks for the phone call last night. I do have a few questions that I could use your assistance.</p> <p>I have money down on a Leaf (I paid $99 back on 4/20), I realize they aren't going to be available until December, but was wondering if you had any more info about them?</p> <p>Here's what I currently know. By the end of this month Nissan will be contacting me to give me more info. Sometime this summer they will send out an electrician to the house to see if installing a charger is possible or not, and to give an estimate of what that cost will be. This fall they are going to be doing some driving promotions where you can test drive a Leaf. This fall those who are interested will work with a dealer to purchase the car. Then sometime starting in December a lucky few who preordered the Leaf will get them delivered, I am hoping because we are in the bay area that I have a good shot at getting one of the first, also because I preregistered very early on.</p> <p>I am looking for a dealer who is going to sell me a Leaf at or below MSRP, I am not willing to pay a markup cost for this car, and I will find a dealer that will sell me one at a good price, even if I have to tow the car home to do it. I would hope that Boardwalk Nissan can do this, but I have never purchased a car from you guys so I don't know what to expect yet.</p> <p>I'm a Nissan kind of guy, I have a 350z currently (my second one) and I've owned a 240z and 280z as well. My wife and I were in at Boardwalk looking at Jettas, that was for her as a replacement for the F-250 she drives right now (for that horse trailer we talked about). The Leaf would be my commuter car if I get one.</p> <p>Thanks for your help,</p> <p>Chris</p> </blockquote> <p>Have you reached out to a dealer? Had any luck? </p>https://chrishammond.com/Portals/0/-1Chris HammondThu, 10 Jun 2010 11:14:47 GMTedefa827-648f-4859-ab58-dd71dcec5f39The 240z Lives! and it looks great!https://www.chrishammond.com/Blog/itemId/2029/The-240z-Lives-and-it-looks-great<p>So it’s been a while since I’ve blogged here on Project240z.com, reason being that I sold the car quite a while ago. Back this summer I got an email from a guy telling me he was the new owner, having purchased it from the guy that I sold it to. Then, a couple weeks ago I got these in my inbox (see full post for photos):</p> Chris HammondSun, 14 Nov 2010 01:50:22 GMT559c1585-9728-4771-b925-53cfc5cf2c6bProject240z Lives Againhttps://www.chrishammond.com/Blog/itemId/1973/Project240z-Lives-Again<p>Yes, it's true folks, the Project240z lives again! Check out the latest incarnation!</p> <p>PHOTO REMOVED</p> <p>So what if it is in a web based video game.</p> Chris HammondSun, 15 Aug 2010 18:24:10 GMTa08f5092-41b6-45db-84d2-1a5f08620c72Cherry 240Z in Manchester Tennesseehttps://www.chrishammond.com/Cars/240z/itemId/1277/Cherry-240Z-in-Manchester-Tennessee<p>So I'm stopped in Manchester Tennessee tonight on my way home and to Lynchburg tomorrow. I went out to check on the car out in the parking lot and saw a 240Z parked out there in tow behind a frontier. The car looks cherry, orange, straight and without a single spot of rust from what I can tell. I took a photo, once all my Atlanta National Tour photos finish uploading I will post the photo I took with my cell phone.</p>Sun, 25 May 2008 23:01:30 GMT4db76f09-05e1-4ba0-b6a1-112a161ae514240Z First Autocross Run, Last Autocross run of 2007https://www.chrishammond.com/Cars/240z/itemId/903/240Z-First-Autocross-Run-Last-Autocross-run-of-20So I got up bright and early this morning, well it wasn't bright, the sun wasn't up yet. Headed out to Gateway Raceway in Madison Illinois for Event 7 of the St. Louis Region SCCA Solo Series. My parents came out in their large RV so I wanted to get out there early and be sure to get them a spot to park it. After getting worker assignments squared away I took the car over and got it teched. All went well in tech and then Whittle came over and started messing around with the megasquirt. By the time the second heat came around, the heat in which I was running, it was getting rather warm out. More on this post coming tomorrow as I updated it, short notes until then: Car starts, car ran, car dies, and it's all vanity Two quick photos, a lot more still uploading And part of the reason the motor no longer runs, it doesn't appear to even turn...Mon, 13 Aug 2007 11:27:56 GMT640fb39a-3a9f-43ee-82fd-c854f199e929240Z First Autocross Run, Last Autocross run of 2007https://www.chrishammond.com/Cars/240z/itemId/2443/240Z-First-Autocross-Run-Last-Autocross-run-of-20So I got up bright and early this morning, well it wasn't bright, the sun wasn't up yet. Headed out to Gateway Raceway in Madison Illinois for Event 7 of the St. Louis Region SCCA Solo Series. My parents came out in their large RV so I wanted to get out there early and be sure to get them a spot to park it. After getting worker assignments squared away I took the car over and got it teched. All went well in tech and then Whittle came over and started messing around with the megasquirt. By the time the second heat came around, the heat in which I was running, it was getting rather warm out. More on this post coming tomorrow as I updated it, short notes until then: Car starts, car ran, car dies, and it's all vanity Two quick photos, a lot more still uploading And part of the reason the motor no longer runs, it doesn't appear to even turn...Chris HammondMon, 13 Aug 2007 19:27:56 GMT056b2f85-b163-47a4-8978-3ff5fb656316240Z First Drive!https://www.chrishammond.com/Cars/240z/itemId/2438/240Z-First-DriveThanks to everyone who helped on the car I was able to tow it out to Gateway yesterday for the SCCA Autocross. I didn't plan to compete the car, but I brought everything with me that I needed to get it put together enough to try driving it for the first time. After I installed the driver's seat with the help of Phil Cline, Whittle and I bled the brakes on the car. From there it was a matter of hooking everything up and getting her off the trailer. Below is the link to the video page, thanks to Dave for filming the first drive. First Drive Video I can't thank everyone who has helped me get this far enough. I'm far from done with the project, but the biggest hurdle in my mind has been cleared. My biggest fear was that once together the car just wouldn't run, and now it runs! Thanks to the following, in no particular order: Russ Melton Dave Whitworth Eric MacKenzie Terec Willson Andy Whittle Andy Hohl Bill Hammond (my dad) Ronnie Baker Henry Kenuam Everyone of those guys' wives! And of course my wife Natalie for letting me spend the past few months dirty and greasy! This will most definitely not be the end of the project, just the beginning of a running car! Edit: I knew i'd forget someone! Thanks to Mark and John Huebbe for the use of the welder, and inspiration of the...Chris HammondWed, 01 Aug 2007 01:10:41 GMTd954516a-83a5-4959-a463-319926eca1a5240Z First Drive!https://www.chrishammond.com/Cars/240z/itemId/888/240Z-First-DriveThanks to everyone who helped on the car I was able to tow it out to Gateway yesterday for the SCCA Autocross. I didn't plan to compete the car, but I brought everything with me that I needed to get it put together enough to try driving it for the first time. After I installed the driver's seat with the help of Phil Cline, Whittle and I bled the brakes on the car. From there it was a matter of hooking everything up and getting her off the trailer. Below is the link to the video page, thanks to Dave for filming the first drive. First Drive Video I can't thank everyone who has helped me get this far enough. I'm far from done with the project, but the biggest hurdle in my mind has been cleared. My biggest fear was that once together the car just wouldn't run, and now it runs! Thanks to the following, in no particular order: Russ Melton Dave Whitworth Eric MacKenzie Terec Wilson Andy Whittle Andy Hohl Bill Hammond (my dad) Ronnie Baker Henry Kenuam Everyone of those guys' wives! And of course my wife Natalie for letting me spend the past few months dirty and greasy! This will most definitely not be the end of the project, just the beginning of a running...Mon, 30 Jul 2007 14:40:09 GMT3e322544-f41f-4abc-ad82-16a32f920a71A Project Epiphanyhttps://www.chrishammond.com/Cars/240z/itemId/812/A-Project-EpiphanyLast night I spent a few hours sitting in the car. I had decided over the weekend I needed to take out all of the interior, or at least most of it, and clean up the inside of the car. I can always get the outside painted later, but the inside, if I'm going to be in it, needs to be cleaned up, and painted. It's orange, or red, I can't tell which, and though most of the interior items cover the orange there are gaps that show through. So I took out all the diamond plate looking black vinyl, and then started removing the tar board and furry coating over the transmission tunnel. I've removed all that I think I can remove right now, and eventually will also pull the dash out and replace the dash with a fiberglass dash I acquired when I purchased the car. While sitting in the car I had a lot of time to think, and based on the state of the car (old, rusty, partially assembled) I have decided that I won't be building the car up to SM2 rules anymore. I'll be aiming for the new XP class in SCCA Solo. By going to XP, I no longer have to worry about a few major things that I was concerned with. I don't have to deal with the interior anymore, I can do whatever I want (I think), so I can do something custom inside, without having to worry about SM2 rules about interiors. Moving to XP also frees up my options with mounting my seat. With SM2 mounting my seat like I plan to mount it may not have been legal, it'd have been a grey area, but within the rules of XP I believe I'll have all sorts of options for mounting the seat and remaining in the rules. So, XP here I come. I still plan to compete in SM2 for St. Louis region autocrosses this year, at least 4 more in SM2, then I'll try to run the 240Z in XP, unless of course I just talk myself into running XP for enough events to qualify for a year end class championship. Photos of the interior after last night's...Tue, 15 May 2007 08:23:46 GMT6fbb1c5e-00ec-4ef0-8975-cf3b08a6de3cA Project Epiphanyhttps://www.chrishammond.com/Cars/240z/itemId/2396/A-Project-EpiphanyLast night I spent a few hours sitting in the car. I had decided over the weekend I needed to take out all of the interior, or at least most of it, and clean up the inside of the car. I can always get the outside painted later, but the inside, if I'm going to be in it, needs to be cleaned up, and painted. It's orange, or red, I can't tell which, and though most of the interior items cover the orange there are gaps that show through. So I took out all the diamond plate looking black vinyl, and then started removing the tar board and furry coating over the transmission tunnel. I've removed all that I think I can remove right now, and eventually will also pull the dash out and replace the dash with a fiberglass dash I acquired when I purchased the car. While sitting in the car I had a lot of time to think, and based on the state of the car (old, rusty, partially assembled) I have decided that I won't be building the car up to SM2 rules anymore. I'll be aiming for the new XP class in SCCA Solo. By going to XP, I no longer have to worry about a few major things that I was concerned with. I don't have to deal with the interior anymore, I can do whatever I want (I think), so I can do something custom inside, without having to worry about SM2 rules about interiors. Moving to XP also frees up my options with mounting my seat. With SM2 mounting my seat like I plan to mount it may not have been legal, it'd have been a grey area, but within the rules of XP I believe I'll have all sorts of options for mounting the seat and remaining in the rules. So, XP here I come. I still plan to compete in SM2 for St. Louis region autocrosses this year, at least 4 more in SM2, then I'll try to run the 240Z in XP, unless of course I just talk myself into running XP for enough events to qualify for a year end class championship. Photos of the interior after last night's...Chris HammondTue, 15 May 2007 16:23:46 GMT43c23420-2018-4111-9edb-0b759fd836efBye bye motor, thanks for the memorieshttps://www.chrishammond.com/Cars/240z/itemId/2442/Bye-bye-motor-thanks-for-the-memoriesOn the Project240z's maiden autocross voyage today the motor decide to depart the living world. More to come, but it looks like another winter project may involve and...Chris HammondMon, 13 Aug 2007 05:57:17 GMTbe9673bd-869d-40bc-ba9d-da6a61bd3167Bye bye motor, thanks for the memorieshttps://www.chrishammond.com/Cars/240z/itemId/902/Bye-bye-motor-thanks-for-the-memoriesOn the Project240z's maiden autocross voyage today the motor decide to depart the living world. More to come, but it looks like another winter project may involve and...Sun, 12 Aug 2007 21:57:17 GMTd57c3e1c-fac9-42d0-9d5f-18681cc7f823Good news on the Project front!https://www.chrishammond.com/Cars/240z/itemId/742/Good-news-on-the-Project-frontToday I spent a short time working on the parts car, working on removing the interior. You can check out the video here. Notice the flannel pants, and sweatshirt. I really didn't want to do any work today, but I forced myself to at least do a little. After doing that little work I started trying to figure out how I can get rid of the parts car. I drove over to Hall Street, and found no one over there to take it. So I headed to Illinois and Speedway said they would take it. So next weekend it's making a trip to Illinois for it's final resting place. After that I headed to Sauget to do some inventory on the 240Z, and I must say, I was pleasantly surprised! I had forgotten how much of the stock interior actually remained in the car. I was very happy to find that the headliner, center console, dash, and some of the tunnel interior still there, which makes my life a WHOLE lot easier to get it legal for SM2 in SCCA Autocross. So I only have to order a few things, rather than a complete interior which I was having trouble finding! More work tomorrow, I need to finish up the 280Z tomorrow as I'm going to be on the East Coast all of next...Sat, 03 Mar 2007 22:16:23 GMT1e9cc087-f28f-4ac1-8943-c5707dc846e8Good news on the Project front!https://www.chrishammond.com/Cars/240z/itemId/2367/Good-news-on-the-Project-frontToday I spent a short time working on the parts car, working on removing the interior. You can check out the video here. Notice the flannel pants, and sweatshirt. I really didn't want to do any work today, but I forced myself to at least do a little. After doing that little work I started trying to figure out how I can get rid of the parts car. I drove over to Hall Street, and found no one over there to take it. So I headed to Illinois and Speedway said they would take it. So next weekend it's making a trip to Illinois for it's final resting place. After that I headed to Sauget to do some inventory on the 240Z, and I must say, I was pleasantly surprised! I had forgotten how much of the stock interior actually remained in the car. I was very happy to find that the headliner, center console, dash, and some of the tunnel interior still there, which makes my life a WHOLE lot easier to get it legal for SM2 in SCCA Autocross. So I only have to order a few things, rather than a complete interior which I was having trouble finding! More work tomorrow, I need to finish up the 280Z tomorrow as I'm going to be on the East Coast all of next...Chris HammondSun, 04 Mar 2007 08:16:23 GMT484ce38a-19e6-4d7e-97a9-792efd0924d0I will miss herhttps://www.chrishammond.com/Cars/240z/itemId/1490/I-will-miss-her<p>So the final days are now ticking down. I have two, maybe three days of driving the Corvette left before we leave for Amsterdam. Natalie will be flying back from Amsterdam and meeting John (the new owner) at the airport next Friday so he can take posession of the car.</p> <p>I was getting the mail tonight and saw the car sitting half in the garage and half out, where I had parked it, in the light, it looked beautiful. It really is an amazing car, I will miss it, I already do.</p> <p>You might ask, why are you selling the Z06? One main reason. Natalie and I plan to move to Colorado (even though we are rumored in the horse world to be moving to Germany) next summer, and while I love the car, the car payment and insurance could be used for more grown up things than racing, like buying our first house, and planning for the move. I don't imagine I will go long without a fun race car though.</p> <p>So what will come next? That is undecided at this point. I will most likely buy a $2-3k ride/beater for the winter so I don't have to drive the long ass F350 all winter, and hopefully spend some time working on the 240Z to get it up and running soon. I need something fun to drive, that is for sure, but even if the 240 runs, it would take a lot of work and money to make it anywhere near as fun as the Corvette.</p> <p>I don't know what I will race next year, perhaps I'll try to find a nicely prep'd codrive, perhaps I'll take it easy for the year. This year in the Corvette has been fun. I think I've put something in the range of 150 autocross runs on the car not including test and tune runs, on a whole the car has seen well over 300, maybe near 400 runs this year.</p> <p>Hopefully John and Clyde can put that many runs on her next year.</p>Tue, 30 Sep 2008 23:25:10 GMT393e2f8d-ab87-420f-a839-957947889f4fOne week after ignitionhttps://www.chrishammond.com/Cars/240z/itemId/896/One-week-after-ignitionSo it's been over a week now since I drove the 240Z for the first time. What have I gotten done in that timeframe? Not much! I basically didn't touch the car until Thursday, and all I did then was take a few minutes to inaccurately measure the requirements for the flange on the downpipe. Friday I picked up a header collector flange from my buddy Russ' place. Sunday morning I went to work on that flange, it needed some help to make it fit. Sunday afternoon I spent some time in the sauna, I mean garage. I managed to get the coil pack and EDIS module mounted to the fender. I then started trying to clean up some of the wiring in the engine bay. I got some plastic loom a while back so I started running that to cover up the mess of wiring in the engine bay. I also ran the loom in the passenger compartment around some of the wiring in there. It's not finished, but it's definitely starting to look better. Dad helped me to put a switch inline for the main relay. Luckily with the car not idling yet I haven't had problems turning the car off, but with the way things were wired if the car was idling properly you'd have to pull a fuse or disconnect the battery to shut off the car. Now that I have a switch it's easy to do! After that Dad and I put the hood and hinges on the car, the first time since I've owned the 240 that it has had a hood attached! From there we loaded the car up onto the trailer later in the evening. This morning I got up early (a rarity for me) and took the car/trailer over to the Carx on St. Charles Rock Road in Bridgeton. Rick was extremely helpful over there and by 12pm today I was back up there loading the car up on the trailer with Eric's help. Carx put a 3" pipe from the downpipe back to the rear axle, with a turndown on the end. It's still quite loud, but if I do say so myself, it sounds pretty damn sweet! Eric and I brought the car home, and before trying to push it off the trailer I finally got it started. I'm having starter issues and will probably try to replace the starter Thursday or Friday of this week. I drove the car off the trailer and into the garage, it's a beautiful sound! I'm still aiming to compete drive the car at the Autocross on Sunday. Before I can do that I have quite a bit left to do. 1. Fix the idle (longer idle screw) 2. See if there's any fluid in the transmission (can't get the fill plug out so I've not pulled the drain plug yet) 3. Build a bulkhead/firewall for the fuel cell 4. Finish up wiring for the O2 sensor 5. Get a harness squared away 6. More stuff I'm sure I've...Mon, 06 Aug 2007 17:20:24 GMT7a7cbfa7-2116-4604-9efe-d7ab74f81f28One week after ignitionhttps://www.chrishammond.com/Cars/240z/itemId/2439/One-week-after-ignitionSo it's been over a week now since I drove the 240Z for the first time. What have I gotten done in that timeframe? Not much! I basically didn't touch the car until Thursday, and all I did then was take a few minutes to inaccurately measure the requirements for the flange on the downpipe. Friday I picked up a header collector flange from my buddy Russ' place. Sunday morning I went to work on that flange, it needed some help to make it fit. Sunday afternoon I spent some time in the sauna, I mean garage. I managed to get the coil pack and EDIS module mounted to the fender. I then started trying to clean up some of the wiring in the engine bay. I got some plastic loom a while back so I started running that to cover up the mess of wiring in the engine bay. I also ran the loom in the passenger compartment around some of the wiring in there. It's not finished, but it's definitely starting to look better. Dad helped me to put a switch inline for the main relay. Luckily with the car not idling yet I haven't had problems turning the car off, but with the way things were wired if the car was idling properly you'd have to pull a fuse or disconnect the battery to shut off the car. Now that I have a switch it's easy to do! After that Dad and I put the hood and hinges on the car, the first time since I've owned the 240 that it has had a hood attached! From there we loaded the car up onto the trailer later in the evening. This morning I got up early (a rarity for me) and took the car/trailer over to the Carx on St. Charles Rock Road in Bridgeton. Rick was extremely helpful over there and by 12pm today I was back up there loading the car up on the trailer with Eric's help. Carx put a 3" pipe from the downpipe back to the rear axle, with a turndown on the end. It's still quite loud, but if I do say so myself, it sounds pretty damn sweet! Eric and I brought the car home, and before trying to push it off the trailer I finally got it started. I'm having starter issues and will probably try to replace the starter Thursday or Friday of this week. I drove the car off the trailer and into the garage, it's a beautiful sound! I'm still aiming to compete drive the car at the Autocross on Sunday. Before I can do that I have quite a bit left to do. 1. Fix the idle (longer idle screw) 2. See if there's any fluid in the transmission (can't get the fill plug out so I've not pulled the drain plug yet) 3. Build a bulkhead/firewall for the fuel cell 4. Finish up wiring for the O2 sensor 5. Get a harness squared away 6. More stuff I'm sure I've...Chris HammondTue, 07 Aug 2007 01:20:24 GMTff79a4e2-1f21-49b8-9e31-7b82fc681a49P240Z Passenger Seat!https://www.chrishammond.com/Cars/240z/itemId/2417/P240Z-Passenger-SeatWell, after figuring out that the seat mounts I had made earlier in the week wouldn't fit I went back out to work on the 240Z this morning with a bitter taste in my mouth. I started off with a few quick pictures of what I had put together the other day. From there I removed the Corbeau brackets and started grinding the welds down on the tabs that I had added to the cross braces. I removed all four tabs with little trouble. Being that I haven't welded much before, this was the first time I'd had to remove a weld, so I wasn't sure what to expect. Here is the end result after removing the tabs. From there I got smart, I decided to do a bit more test fitting of the seat before I did any more welding. I attached the Corbeau bracket back to the seat and put it in the car, using towels to keep the seat clean. For the new positioning I decided the seat brackets basically needed to come forward in the car 4 to 5 inches from the original tabs I had made. With the two cross braces in place I wasn't comfortable making tabs that long and with little support, so I installed two more cross braces into the car, in front of the two existing braces. These two new braces were each welded at the body, and then to the original (from earlier this week) brace in the middle, actually reusing the tabs I had recently removed to add some support in the middle. I then welded on new tabs, this time spanning both braces on each half of the seat, adding support to the tab, as well as making the tab 2" wide instead of 1.5" as I had originally made. This should create for better support of the seat brackets. Here are the photos of the newly created tabs and cross braces. I position and drilled holes for the Corbeau bracket in the new tabs, visible in the latter photos above. After getting all of this setup I was anxious to get the seat in the car and see how she fit. To get the seat in the car I had to mount the Corbeau bracket directly to the seat with 4 bolts that will go through the new tabs in place. I wrapped the seat in towels and put on some clean latex gloves so that I wouldn't get the fabric dirty from all my gunk. In order to actually thread the nuts on the rear bolts I have to tilt the seat backward, for now this is alright, but when I actually go to use the seat this won't work well. What I think I'll do is get a combination of some rubber and metal washers, which I think will allow me to tighten the rear nuts down and still be able to tilt the base of the seat back a bit, once tight, lower the front of the seat into it's tabs and tighten up the bolts there. The front tabs are easy to access, the rear tabs, not so much. Anyways, here are the photos of the seat in the car.   Tomorrow I'll be installing the driver's seat, most likely in the same manner as the passenger side, I'll also be starting on mounting the fuel cell, cutting out sections of the rear floorpan, and then fabricating a frame for the cell to sit in. The ultimate goal for this 15 Gallon cell is to build a frame that will allow me to easily remove the fuel cell and install a smaller cell. Using the larger cell for Time Trial and HPDE events, and having a 5 gallon cell to use for autocross events, saving weight in the rear of the car. More...Chris HammondSat, 30 Jun 2007 22:42:00 GMTa2439f0a-0b8a-40d3-9418-ad6ff1a5c10dP240Z Passenger Seat!https://www.chrishammond.com/Cars/240z/itemId/854/P240Z-Passenger-SeatWell, after figuring out that the seat mounts I had made earlier in the week wouldn't fit I went back out to work on the 240Z this morning with a bitter taste in my mouth. I started off with a few quick pictures of what I had put together the other day. From there I removed the Corbeau brackets and started grinding the welds down on the tabs that I had added to the cross braces. I removed all four tabs with little trouble. Being that I haven't welded much before, this was the first time I'd had to remove a weld, so I wasn't sure what to expect. Here is the end result after removing the tabs. From there I got smart, I decided to do a bit more test fitting of the seat before I did any more welding. I attached the Corbeau bracket back to the seat and put it in the car, using towels to keep the seat clean. For the new positioning I decided the seat brackets basically needed to come forward in the car 4 to 5 inches from the original tabs I had made. With the two cross braces in place I wasn't comfortable making tabs that long and with little support, so I installed two more cross braces into the car, in front of the two existing braces. These two new braces were each welded at the body, and then to the original (from earlier this week) brace in the middle, actually reusing the tabs I had recently removed to add some support in the middle. I then welded on new tabs, this time spanning both braces on each half of the seat, adding support to the tab, as well as making the tab 2" wide instead of 1.5" as I had originally made. This should create for better support of the seat brackets. Here are the photos of the newly created tabs and cross braces. I position and drilled holes for the Corbeau bracket in the new tabs, visible in the latter photos above. After getting all of this setup I was anxious to get the seat in the car and see how she fit. To get the seat in the car I had to mount the Corbeau bracket directly to the seat with 4 bolts that will go through the new tabs in place. I wrapped the seat in towels and put on some clean latex gloves so that I wouldn't get the fabric dirty from all my gunk. In order to actually thread the nuts on the rear bolts I have to tilt the seat backward, for now this is alright, but when I actually go to use the seat this won't work well. What I think I'll do is get a combination of some rubber and metal washers, which I think will allow me to tighten the rear nuts down and still be able to tilt the base of the seat back a bit, once tight, lower the front of the seat into it's tabs and tighten up the bolts there. The front tabs are easy to access, the rear tabs, not so much. Anyways, here are the photos of the seat in the car.   Tomorrow I'll be installing the driver's seat, most likely in the same manner as the passenger side, I'll also be starting on mounting the fuel cell, cutting out sections of the rear floorpan, and then fabricating a frame for the cell to sit in. The ultimate goal for this 15 Gallon cell is to build a frame that will allow me to easily remove the fuel cell and install a smaller cell. Using the larger cell for Time Trial and HPDE events, and having a 5 gallon cell to use for autocross events, saving weight in the rear of the car. More...Sat, 30 Jun 2007 14:42:00 GMT81f9def9-4998-46d4-96d5-9c4442ffb1f8Removing the busted motorhttps://www.chrishammond.com/Cars/240z/itemId/2468/Removing-the-busted-motorOn August 12th 2007 the P240z took it's maiden autocross voyage, and promptly killed the motor. On 9/30 I removed the motor.Chris HammondWed, 03 Oct 2007 10:55:31 GMTa01c523b-89d9-4026-aeb2-14a95566d8eeTime to starthttps://www.chrishammond.com/Cars/240z/itemId/1420/Time-to-startSo I think the time has come. I hope to begin work on the 240Z again this week. First step, finish taking apart the blown motor and find the missing piston! Next step after that, start to take apart the L28E motor sitting on the floor. It's been sitting for almost a year now, and I've learned my lesson about not taking a look at what you have (see previous "First step" above). So I hope to get the L28E motor somewhat apart so that I can replace the seals on it, and hopefully see what shape it is in. I'd hate to put a bunch of time into it only to find it's toast already. I know it ran, I drove the car it came out of, and I'm sure Lynn took good care of it, but I should really take some time with the motor this time so I don't get 40 seconds of time out of it! Now, to be fair, the old motor ran for probably a good 25 to 30 minutes total. It just got to drive for about 5 minutes, and 40 seconds of an autocross run. (Why oh why didn't I have the wife shooting Video instead of pictures?) Nick, if you're reading this and you aren't working all weekend I hope to see you and the new friend over here this weekend! At least on Saturday, Sunday I should really spend time with the wife for our first Wedding...Wed, 28 Nov 2007 10:27:12 GMT2f0f36a9-9059-40e4-91c7-3b45b014ae14Time to starthttps://www.chrishammond.com/Cars/240z/itemId/972/Time-to-startSo I think the time has come. I hope to begin work on the 240Z again this week. First step, finish taking apart the blown motor and find the missing piston! Next step after that, start to take apart the L28E motor sitting on the floor. It's been sitting for almost a year now, and I've learned my lesson about not taking a look at what you have (see previous "First step" above). So I hope to get the L28E motor somewhat apart so that I can replace the seals on it, and hopefully see what shape it is in. I'd hate to put a bunch of time into it only to find it's toast already. I know it ran, I drove the car it came out of, and I'm sure Lynn took good care of it, but I should really take some time with the motor this time so I don't get 40 seconds of time out of it! Now, to be fair, the old motor ran for probably a good 25 to 30 minutes total. It just got to drive for about 5 minutes, and 40 seconds of an autocross run. (Why oh why didn't I have the wife shooting Video instead of pictures?) Nick, if you're reading this and you aren't working all weekend I hope to see you and the new friend over here this weekend! At least on Saturday, Sunday I should really spend time with the wife for our first Wedding...Wed, 28 Nov 2007 00:27:12 GMTbc8287d4-2261-4ceb-8d21-7c42a2e3d7bbTwo years agohttps://www.chrishammond.com/Cars/240z/itemId/1810/Two-years-ago<p>Two years ago today was the day that the Datsun toasted Motor #1 on it's first autocross run! Here’s a shot of that first competition run.</p> <p><img title="" alt="IMG_3199 by you." src="http://farm2.static.flickr.com/1046/1099890831_dece40264a.jpg" width="500" height="333" /></p> <p>And then a short time later (same run) here’s my getting out to push it</p> <p><img title="" alt="IMG_3242 by you." src="http://farm2.static.flickr.com/1095/1100954876_fabcf871a6.jpg" width="500" height="333" /></p> <p>Here’s what we found when we just happened to pull plug #2</p> <p><img title="" alt="This isn't good by you." src="http://farm2.static.flickr.com/1408/1099448933_14d8ebae20.jpg" width="500" height="333" /></p> <p>And then this is what it looked like when I went to drain the oil from the motor</p> <p><img title="" alt="Drained by you." src="http://farm2.static.flickr.com/1107/1121489208_b95723354c.jpg" width="500" height="333" /></p> <p> </p> <p>A few things have happened in the two years since that fateful day. A few months later I purchased a <a href="http://www.corvettez06.org" target="_blank">2004 Corvette Z06</a> and autocrossed that for a year.</p> <p>I sold the Corvette.</p> <p><a href="http://www.project240z.com/Blog/itemId/430/Packing-the-garage-driving-the-car.aspx" target="_blank">I got the Datsun running again with another motor</a>, same turbo setup. </p> <p>We moved to Colorado. <a href="http://www.going2colorado.com">www.going2colorado.com</a></p> <p>In the next few weeks I hope to get more of the 240 back together, starting to work on the electrical system and such. Then during the first week of September the car goes to <a href="http://www.hanksvillehotrods.com">www.hanksvillehotrods.com</a> for a new exhaust, maybe I can talk them into a cage too ;)</p>Chris HammondWed, 12 Aug 2009 23:00:10 GMTcf632f14-38ba-4b85-ad5e-30086455b590Week number 2 in our first homehttps://www.chrishammond.com/Cars/240z/itemId/1809/Week-number-2-in-our-first-home<p>So here we are, it is now week #2 in our new home here in Colorado, and we are still loving it!</p> <p>Even though the past few afternoons we’ve had some brief storms, the weather here is amazing. Here’s a result of yesterday’s storm</p> <p><a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/chammond/3809994973/"><img alt="Hail from Today" src="http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2605/3809994973_c029995be0_m.jpg" width="240" height="180" /></a></p> <p>The hail didn’t appear to cause any damage to the cars thankfully, it was definitely interesting to <a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/chammond/3810807564/" target="_blank">see it all coming down</a>, and then <a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/chammond/3809992353/" target="_blank">a result of the gutters</a>. We were our furniture shopping yesterday, and while we almost bought something I quickly learned that getting a second mortgage instead of doing PMI hits your credit pretty hard. To be frank, my credit score dropped 50+ points in the past week! Oh well, I’ll just have to work harder to pay that portion of the mortgage off quickly. We were going to do no interest financing on the furniture, but I think we’ll just pay cash for it now, so hopefully by Friday we’ll have living room furniture! </p> <p>We also stopped by the local mall, Park Meadows, holy cow that place is fancy! We hit the Borders to check out the computer book section, thankfully I <a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/chammond/3809995977/" target="_blank">found a copy</a> of <a href="http://bit.ly/dnnbook/" target="_blank">my book</a>!</p> <p>Tonight we figured out that a garbage disposal will not handle everything. So I had to clean out the pipes under the sink, lesson learned :) <a href="http://connect.garmin.com/activity/10981363" target="_blank">We also went skating for the first time in Colorado tonight</a>. Natalie is not as comfortable on skates as I am, of course I’ve been skating for 18 or so years, so it' is understandable why. We went just over 7 miles tonight, if you look at the <a href="http://connect.garmin.com/activity/10981363" target="_blank">heart rate on the graphs</a> you can see some data about the skate. We figured out it was mostly downhill the first 3.5 miles, then we turned around and boom, uphill into the wind. You can see my heart rate jumped and pretty much stayed up the whole way back.</p> <p>On Sunday we got to meet the neighbors behind us, they also closed on their house on the 31st, but they’ve not fully moved in yet as they have a lease until the 24th of this month. They are a couple, around our age, no kids. I think we’re going to get a long great, we must of spend an hour or two talking to them on Sunday, it was nice. The house they purchased was one of the short sales we were bidding on, I think it worked out best for everyone right now, they got a great house, and so did we.</p> <p>The rest of the weekend consisted of me driving around looking at furniture stores, electronics stores, and a VW car show! That was fun, nothing like the bug shows in California, but way better than any VW show I went to in Missouri. <a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/chammond/tags/vw/" target="_blank">Here are a few photos from the show</a>. I also got the <a href="http://www.project240z.com" target="_blank">Datsun 240z</a> started up for a bit on Sunday. I’m hoping to get it to a muffler shop this week so I can get it quieted down and then maybe be able to run it a bit more frequently as I try to get it tuned up and drivable. Natalie spent most of the weekend at the barn watching a dressage clinic, though we did go out to dinner with a number of the people from the barn on Saturday night, that was great fun and a good time for Natalie to get to know some people.</p> <p>This weekend coming up we have a lot planned. Saturday we’re going to go up to Leadville to watch the mountain bike race. A few of my fraternity brother’s are racing in it, as well as Lance Armstrong! That should be fun, we are looking forward to being up high in the mountains for a while. On Sunday I am going to head down to Colorado Springs to the SCCA Autocross down there. I’m thinking I might tow the 240z down there and see if I can’t drive it around on an empty space in the lot for a while to use the area to tune the car while driving, we’ll see if I can get everything together for that!</p> <p>So that’s our update for now, hopefully everyone is doing well. We are really loving it here in Colorado, and look forward to lots of visitors this winter!</p>Chris HammondTue, 11 Aug 2009 23:51:36 GMT4f0c5002-3c7a-4695-83ed-d42350a7d79eTime for a change?https://www.chrishammond.com/Blog/itemId/563/Time-for-a-changeSo I've seriously been considering changing vehicles. Now that I have a 73 240Z I don't quite know if I need the 350Z to drive everyday. I've been looking at Tahoe's for a few weeks now, and somehow got it in my head yesterday that a Hummer H2 would be fun... I think I'm going to go out doing some test drives this weekend, see how things work...Fri, 18 Aug 2006 11:13:00 GMT5aa5835c-7543-474a-a609-760cab2fd4b9Lots of Parts for sale, 17&amp;quot; RPF1s Bstock Legal, 240Z Carbshttps://www.chrishammond.com/Blog/itemId/594/Lots-of-Parts-for-sale-17ampquot-RPF1s-BstockI've been putting things on ebay this evening, Here are my 350Z Enkei RPF1s, 17" wheels, BStock legal for 17" 350Zs. http://cgi.ebay.com/ebaymotors/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&rd=1,1&item=150032437137 Also listed a dual weber setup off the 1973 240Z. http://cgi.ebay.com/ebaymotors/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&ih=005&item=150032411962   posted from...Sun, 10 Sep 2006 23:19:00 GMT8483ec26-04e7-4aaa-a11b-58c0d2013ad8The Project 350Z Has Soldhttps://www.chrishammond.com/Blog/itemId/603/The-Project-350Z-Has-SoldIt went up on Ebay Today for $14500. I owe 14537 or something, so I'll take a $40 loss on the car to get rid of it.I'll miss it. It's been a GREAT car. Here's to hoping I get the 240Z finished! If I can get it done before May of next year I'll get $50 from Seelig, that'll cover my $40 loss. posted from...Fri, 22 Sep 2006 00:27:00 GMT1db6a9f2-248c-46b6-94e1-f422c2e22e14Sold, and gone....https://www.chrishammond.com/Blog/itemId/607/Sold-and-goneWell, my 2003 350Z Enthusiast model is officially paid off. It is also no longer my car!My buddy Jasyn "Dozzle" Randazzo took a train from Kansas City to St. Louis last night and drove the car home today. I talked to Dozzle this afternoon, he made it back to KC and was out and about showing the car off to friends.Have fun with her Dozzle! She's a good ride! Now that the 350Z is gone I hope to spend more time on the 240Z to get that going soon. posted from...Sat, 30 Sep 2006 20:54:00 GMT30630ae1-2cc4-441c-a204-774b14c81079I&rsquo;m selling it, I&rsquo;m not selling it, I&rsquo;m selling it, I&rsquo;m not selling it?https://www.chrishammond.com/Blog/itemId/1703/Irsquom-selling-it-Irsquom-not-selling-it-I<p>I don’t know what I’m doing with the Datsun just yet. I should sell it, but I couldn’t sleep the other night because I was thinking about what fun it would be to spend a few weekends in March working on the 240Z.</p> <p>Well, I don’t know if it’s a sign or what, but month or two ago when I was trying to put the new motor back together I couldn’t find the bag of bolts for the intake and exhaust manifolds. Well guess what I just found today!</p> <p>Now, I just need to get my book done, and hire my good buddy Terec for a weekend to help me get the motor back together and in the car. I find that if someone is here helping me on the car I get 10x the amount of work done as if I am by myself. So, Terec, what do you think, first or second weekend in March good? If we got it running on 3/15 that would be awesome, as that’s my bday :D</p> <p>Happy Belated Bday to Terec as well, 2/18.</p> <p>So, am I selling the car? I don’t know. I want to buy another 350Z, but it would make a lot more sense to not do that and try to get this datsun running.</p>Sat, 21 Feb 2009 15:29:17 GMT99ba3fc7-aacc-49af-967e-1ac55130c99bNo seats! and check out our sister sitehttps://www.chrishammond.com/Blog/itemId/1856/No-seats-and-check-out-our-sister-site<p>So I don’t know why I didn’t think of this a month ago, would have saved me some money on shipping, but the Corbeau A4s for the 240z are sold. John V, the guy who bought the <a href="http://www.corvettez06.org">Corvette</a> has purchased them for use in his RX-7 that I bought and shipped to him a few weeks ago. Would have made sense to pack the seats in the car then, but I didn’t realize he was going to be interested in them, oh well.</p> <p>On an unrelated note, have you checked out our sister-site, <a href="http://www.project350z.com/">Project350z.com</a>? You might ask, but you don’t even have a 350Z? True, but I will, at least that’s the plan, to get another one in early 2010 so I can have a car to race next year. I’ve spent a few hours over the past few sick evenings sorting through photos of the old car, which just makes me miss not having a 350Z that much more. I posted photos and got a site design together, though I don’t have much other content up there yet, it will take a few months to get it all together, hopefully just in time to get myself a new (used) ride.</p> <p>Dozzle, if you read this, I still want to buy my old car back!!!!</p>Chris HammondThu, 19 Nov 2009 17:10:59 GMT185432ce-8c37-4950-ae66-81f39cafb279All in a day's painthttps://www.chrishammond.com/Blog/itemId/870/All-in-a-days-paint<p>After yesterday's fun Eric and I spent some time in the garage today. I was awoken this morning around 8:00am by the doorbell, the Dish Network guy showed up right on time, more on that topic tomorrow on http://TheMadBlogger.org. After I got the Dish guy going I sent Eric an SMS to let him know I was out in the garage working. The first thing I need was to lay some fiberglass in the passenger floorboard. I had missed a few spots on that side earlier in the week, and layed some extra resin in the floor to smooth out the pockmarks from the cleaned up rust.  While I let that dry I pulled the extra rear end that I had in the garage so I could start cleaning it up. As soon as I saw the rear end/suspension sitting in the driveway I immediately noticed a difference from the rear suspension that is on the car currently. The current suspension doesn't have a rear sway bar, the spare does. That's fine and dandy, I'd prefer the rear sway bar, the problem though is that the fuel cell frame that I fabricated fits right where the sway bar goes on this spare suspension. I'm not sure what I'll do with that aspect, but Eric and I spent the rest of the morning taking apart the spare rear suspension. We cleaned a lot of parts, figured out that the shocks (at least on the rear) are KYB's, they do look to be fairly new (or unused as that may be more correct). We got just about everything apart, and came up with plenty of parts to clean and paint (Powdercoat for Rande?) later in the project. Before I can use the rear swaybar I'm going to have to figure out what I'll need to change on the fuel cell bracket to make it work. I might be able to move the mounts for the bar a little higher to allow me to use the cell as currently fabricated. From there Eric and I started to prep for paint the interior. We cleaned up some of the dust that had gathered, drilled some pilot holes for the seat bolts in the floor (to get to the rear brackets for the seat mounts we had to cut a whole for a socket to fit through). We brushed, vacuumed, wiped and scrubbed the interior to try to get it ready for paint. We lowered the car down off the jackstands and spent the rest of the afternoon painting the interior with a nice satin black "Chassis Saver" paint that I had picked up on Saturday morning. I had purchased a gravity fed spray gun back in 2003 when I had the 350Z, previously using it once to spray some waste of money wax on the car, the gun hadn't been used since then. I think the paint this time around turned out great, an easy low cost solution that is WAY cleaner than it was prior to all this work. It was a bit laborious, but I think well worth the effort, Eric agrees. Here are some before pictures   And here are some after shots.     There are more photos in my Flickr set for Project240z.com We ended up painting a few coats over most areas of the interior and then let the car sit for a while to dry. Once dry we rolled the car back into the garage and started running fuel lines. We ran both the feed and return lines for the fuel cell, mounted the pump again after removing it for paint, and fixed the fuel lines to the transmission tunnel. Tomorrow I'll be working on the motor again. I hope to get the intake and exhaust manifolds back on the motor so that we can put it in the car Tuesday or Wednesday night. From there it'll be time to start wiring up the...</p> Chris HammondMon, 16 Jul 2007 01:02:45 GMTb3334ee5-f6be-462c-a294-bc93901a87f5All in a day's painthttps://www.chrishammond.com/Blog/itemId/2424/All-in-a-days-paint<p>After yesterday's fun Eric and I spent some time in the garage today. I was awoken this morning around 8:00am by the doorbell, the Dish Network guy showed up right on time, more on that topic tomorrow on http://TheMadBlogger.org. After I got the Dish guy going I sent Eric an SMS to let him know I was out in the garage working. The first thing I need was to lay some fiberglass in the passenger floorboard. I had missed a few spots on that side earlier in the week, and layed some extra resin in the floor to smooth out the pockmarks from the cleaned up rust.  While I let that dry I pulled the extra rear end that I had in the garage so I could start cleaning it up. As soon as I saw the rear end/suspension sitting in the driveway I immediately noticed a difference from the rear suspension that is on the car currently. The current suspension doesn't have a rear sway bar, the spare does. That's fine and dandy, I'd prefer the rear sway bar, the problem though is that the fuel cell frame that I fabricated fits right where the sway bar goes on this spare suspension. I'm not sure what I'll do with that aspect, but Eric and I spent the rest of the morning taking apart the spare rear suspension. We cleaned a lot of parts, figured out that the shocks (at least on the rear) are KYB's, they do look to be fairly new (or unused as that may be more correct). We got just about everything apart, and came up with plenty of parts to clean and paint (Powdercoat for Rande?) later in the project. Before I can use the rear swaybar I'm going to have to figure out what I'll need to change on the fuel cell bracket to make it work. I might be able to move the mounts for the bar a little higher to allow me to use the cell as currently fabricated. From there Eric and I started to prep for paint the interior. We cleaned up some of the dust that had gathered, drilled some pilot holes for the seat bolts in the floor (to get to the rear brackets for the seat mounts we had to cut a whole for a socket to fit through). We brushed, vacuumed, wiped and scrubbed the interior to try to get it ready for paint. We lowered the car down off the jackstands and spent the rest of the afternoon painting the interior with a nice satin black "Chassis Saver" paint that I had picked up on Saturday morning. I had purchased a gravity fed spray gun back in 2003 when I had the 350Z, previously using it once to spray some waste of money wax on the car, the gun hadn't been used since then. I think the paint this time around turned out great, an easy low cost solution that is WAY cleaner than it was prior to all this work. It was a bit laborious, but I think well worth the effort, Eric agrees. Here are some before pictures   And here are some after shots.      There are more photos in my Flickr set for Project240z.com We ended up painting a few coats over most areas of the interior and then let the car sit for a while to dry. Once dry we rolled the car back into the garage and started running fuel lines. We ran both the feed and return lines for the fuel cell, mounted the pump again after removing it for paint, and fixed the fuel lines to the transmission tunnel. Tomorrow I'll be working on the motor again. I hope to get the intake and exhaust manifolds back on the motor so that we can put it in the car Tuesday or Wednesday night. From there it'll be time to start wiring up the...</p> Chris HammondMon, 16 Jul 2007 09:14:37 GMT5426e4b7-dad5-45a2-ad14-8d4d128ff885Tis soldhttps://www.chrishammond.com/Blog/itemId/1887/Tis-sold<p>So this won’t be the final post here on Project240z.com, but we are likely coming close to the end. This weekend the car sold, an airman from the local Air Force base in Denver came by and gave me a deposit for the car. I’m going to try to get the title cleaned up this week and hopefully get it to him this weekend if he comes up with the rest of the money.</p> <p>I’ll post again when the car is gone. Thanks for all the interest in the car lately, unfortunately 99% of the interest came after I sold the car, not before, but oh well. For now check out my new toy, <a href="http://www.project350z.com/">http://www.project350z.com/</a></p> Chris HammondWed, 27 Jan 2010 08:55:48 GMTaf4e40a0-8629-47be-9951-7e955c388010The Mazda gets no lovehttps://www.chrishammond.com/Blog/itemId/2287/The-Mazda-gets-no-love<p>I can’t believe it, but tonight after work I came home and washed, rain-x’d and waxed the Mazda CX-7. We’ve owned it since December, and this is the first time I’ve put wax on it.</p> <p>I’m so ashamed, I don’t know if I have ever owned a car (<a href="http://www.project240z.com/">besides the 240z</a>) that ever went that long without getting waxed. Even the <a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/chammond/5389647720/">Turbobird</a> got waxed and it was a huge mess.</p> <p>The CX-7 was a mess, as is the <a href="http://www.project350z.com/">350z</a> right now. One of the downfalls of living in Half Moon Bay, if you don’t park your cars in the garage (we don’t currently have room) they WILL be wet almost every morning.</p> <p>Perhaps this weekend I can get the garage cleaned and come up with room for at least one of the cars.</p> Chris HammondThu, 08 Sep 2011 00:30:50 GMTf44ec332-d6ed-4e9a-84b4-0d6f49210cc3A year has come and gonehttps://www.chrishammond.com/Blog/itemId/1834/A-year-has-come-and-gone<p><a href="http://www.corvettez06.org/Blog/itemId/397/The-Corvette-is-Gone.aspx" target="_blank">So today marks a year since the 2004 Corvette Z06 left our stable</a>. In the past year I’ve autocrossed exactly once, back in March or April of this year in St. Louis. We’ve since moved to Colorado, bought a house, and traded/sold most of our vehicles. We are in the process of trying to build up our stable again, lots of changes going on!</p> <p>Yesterday I went up to Boulder Colorado and looked at and RX-7 for John, the buy who bought the Corvette. It looks like I will be heading up there next weekend and picking it up. It may require a tad bit of work to get it ready for shipping, but John is going to arrange to have a truck pick it up for the haul to DC.</p> <p>I hope to start autocrossing again next year with a new ride, probably another 350z. In the mean time be sure to keep track of the progress on the <a href="http://www.project240z.com/" target="_blank">240Z</a> at <a href="http://www.project240z.com">http://www.project240z.com</a></p> Chris HammondSat, 10 Oct 2009 12:18:30 GMT630c655a-fad9-44fb-9a53-5c374d5ee96dAutomotive ADHD, I sufferhttps://www.chrishammond.com/Blog/itemId/2040/Automotive-ADHD-I-suffer<p>For those of you who have known me for a while this won’t come as a surprise. I suffer from Automotive ADHD (attention deficit hyperactive disorder),  and it is just getting worse!</p> <p>oyNatalie and I are in car shopping mode, we’re looking to downsize from our 2008 F250 FX4, while we love the truck, it is just far too big for our lives in California. We recently sold our horse trailer that we had been trying to sell for a while now. Now that the trailer is gone, we are ready to part with the truck.</p> <p>So we’re looking at what to get. Natalie would like a 4 door wagon, with room for a stroller (or the dogs) in the back, the baby in the back seat, and us up front. We’re thinking that we would like to find a used BMW 5 series to fill that role, though figuring out what year/mileage is something we haven’t decided yet.</p> <p>One thought we are having is that perhaps it might be a good idea to trade the Z in on a 4 door car for myself as well. I test drove a 2011 Mitsubishi Evolution today, oh boy, daddy like!</p> <p>I wouldn’t buy a new Evo, they are far too costly, but I would considering getting a used one and then perhaps an  older (2000-2003) 5-series for Natalie. I went to check out a couple of used 2008 Evo’s at a dealer down in San Jose today but immediately noticed that they were both modified, which totally turns me off. I don’t want to get into a modified car again, I’d rather buy something that is completely stock and if I want to modifiy it do it myself.</p> <p>So we’ll see where this bout with my latest batch of AADHD takes us.</p> <p>Don’t believe me that I have a problem? Here’s a list of the cars I and Natalie have owned over the past 5 years.</p> <p>2003 Nissan 350z<br /> 2004 Ford F350<br /> 1988 Thunderbird Turbo Coupe<br /> 1973 Datsun 240z<br /> 1978 Datsun 280z 2+2<br /> 2005 Chevy Tahoe<br /> 2004 Chevy Corvette Z06<br /> 2005 GMC Yukon<br /> 2008 Ford F250<br /> 1995 Audi A6<br /> 2004 Nissan 350z</p> Chris HammondSun, 12 Dec 2010 22:18:17 GMT489c2425-c45a-4506-9957-83b2372306f5