1978 Datsun 280 Z

Built Jan '78 | VIN # HLS30444530

More pictures below

History of this car
This car was purchased by me in May of 2002, from the original owners (father and son) who lived between California and Nevada during the time of ownership. Since the purchase, a lot has been done to the car to make it both street and track worthy. My main focus was on safety and reliability, not performance upgrades. My intent with this car was for track-day events and general street "fun". It was never a daily driver for me, mainly sitting in the garage and coming out on weekends for the occasional twisty back road drive.

To the best of my knowledge this car has still has all of it's original parts (drive-train), but I have replaced many parts in the past four years. The car has 30k on the odometer. I assume it is 130k of course, and doubt it is 230k. Why do I doubt the 230k? because of the condition the car was in when I purchased it. Other then the carpet and dashboard, the interior was nearly flawless, and the body had only one dent on the passenger-rear. All rubber seals and chrome were in either "excellent" or "great" shape with only a few minor exceptions. I have put about 3000 miles on the car since it's purchase in 2002, and the car has resided in a closed garage when not in use.

Mechanical fitness of this car
The engine starts and runs perfectly. No hesitation, not sputtering, no smoke. I have spent a lot of hours ensuring that the engine is in good working order. While I have adjusted valve lash, but have not opened the motor any further then that. Just about anything else EXTERNAL of the motor has been replaced or is in perfect working order (wires, plugs, smog equipment, vacuum lines, fuel lines, filters, etc). This car passes California smog checks with no modifications, it is a stock motor with no internal upgrades. All cylinder compression numbers are in range of a well-running motor.

The entire front and rear suspensions were completely rebuilt in 2004. Every component was removed, cleaned by hand, repainted, and re-assembled (by me). New Tokico struts and springs were added along with a full polyurethane bushing set, including mustache bar and steering coupler. Steering rack was inspected and cleaned to ensure it's good working order (tie-rods and ball joints replaced). All brake parts that could be replaced were (rotors, calipers, pads/shoes, cylinders, master-cylinder, hoses, etc).

The car has a working AC, though I haven't used it sine 2002 so I'm fairly confident it needs a recharge.

The car has been repainted by the previous owner. It looks to be a Miracle type paintjob (nothing special). The Maroon under the Silver is the original color.

Work that has been done to the car (I have receipts for everything);

• Transmission

  • Rebuilt 5-speed transmission (5th gear replaced)

  • Replaced drive shaft (used) and UV joints

• Engine

  • Replaced fan clutch

  • Replaced starter

  • Replaced all 6 fuel injectors

  • All engine vacuum lines replaced (I was bug hunting an engine sputter)

  • New coil

  • New PCV valve

  • New AFM boots (both)

• Exhaust

  • Replaced entire exhaust system from the Catalytic Convert (new Cat too) back with 2.5" pipe to a Flowmaster

• Brakes

  • New brake master cylinder and all four brake hoses (rubber)

  • New clutch master cylinder

  • New brake cylinders (rear)

  • New front calipers and rotors

  • New HAWK HP racing pads

• Suspension

  • New Tie rods and ball joints

  • New Spindle Pins (yep, I tired to remove them myself and ended up having to buy new ones)

  • New Tokico HP Springs (car lowered about 2 inches)

  • New Tokico HP Struts

  • Added Camber adjustable strut "tops" allowing 1.5 degrees of negative camber

  • Full Polyurethane bushings

• Wheels & Tires

  • Four new Yokohama ES-100 Tires 14/60/205 (they have about 1000 miles on them, hardly any wear)

  • Added "Turbine" style wheels (painted gunmetal black) 14" x 7.5"

• Cosmetic

  • Clear headlight covers

  • Removed the ugly front bumper (I sold it some time ago, sorry)

Performance fitness of this car
I have run this car four (4) times at Infineon Raceway in N.A.S.A High Performance Driving Events in the past 3 years, with this exact configuration. The car performs flawlessly and has never been off-course or spun. The car passes NASA's technical inspections with flying colors. The balance of this car is near "ideal" for track use. It has a slight over-steer on corner entry and slight under-steer on corner exit. The braking capability of this car is immense, going from 110mph to to a cool 35mph, for the Turn-11 hairpin at Infineon, in less than 150 feet. There are three major braking zones at Infineon raceway, going from high speeds to very low speeds, and the brakes handle them all perfectly with no fade. Since I am a cautious person, I have never rev'd the motor above 6000rpm, even at the track. The additional torque of the 2.8l allows this car to accelerate well enough. cornering ability is superb and very fun. The spring and strut package, along with the Yokohama tires, allows this car to out-perform most other cars on the track. As a reference, I have run lap times at the full road-course at Infineon in the 2:15 range which is very fast for a street vehicle. It easily out performs a modern Honda with comparable upgrades, and only slightly slower then the BMW's and Porsche's that I share the track with. They have better straight speeds, but I have no problems hanging with them in the corners and Esses.

Now the bad parts of the car.

• The Dashboard has the standard cracks in it, but is covered by a "carpet type" dash cover. Not ideal, but it keeps it from looking like trash.

• There are a few minor areas of rust where the molding use to be and on the cowl, but otherwise the car is fairly rust free. There is no major rust on this car.

• Passenger-rear quarter panel has a dent in it, just behind the rear tire. While it can be easily pulled out without any sheet metal cutting, I hadn't gotten around to doing any body work on it.

• Hood has a small dent in it at the passenger forward-most corner. I was going to replace the hood with a fiber-glass one anyway, once all other body work was completed and ready for paint.

• A couple misc little "door dings" that you might expect from a 25 year old car

• Power antenna no longer works and was stuck in the up position (I sawed it off since the car didn't have a radio anyway)

• The plastic-chrome emblems show their age with some chrome flaking off

• Standard rear-end "clunk"

• Blinkers do not work, but head lamps and brake lamps work fine (I never re-wired the blinkers, I had no reason to)

• Carpet is "ok" but the thieves (read below) did a good job messing them up.

• No rear "trunk" carpet, it was removed by the thieves (read below)

• This car was stolen from me in 2004. I was lucky that the people who stole it were not very intuitive when the car broke down on them in the middle of a freeway, (they spilt a soda in the passenger side, shorting out the fuel pump wires that run under the passenger seat). Highway patrol found it 13 days later. I had to fix a couple things as the thieves managed to ruin a couple parts; Starter was replaced again because they burnt it out trying to restart the car. Battery was also replaced as it was drained from the repeated restart attempts. Wiring had to be re-done from the fuel-pump to the fuel-injectors. They jimmy'd the ignition switch with a screw driver so it was removed from the car all together and replaced with a a simple on/off switch and push-button start (hence the reason the car is always garaged now). I guess the thieves were so frustrated that the car broke down that they punched the windshield too, as the passenger side of the wind-shield has a "spider web" crack in it (nothing critical, still very drivable, but the windshield will need replacement at some time). And lastly, the center console was torn up when they stole the radio, but it was in need of being replaced anyway.