Jay's RB25 240z

Jay.

Club Member
Sorry to hear this, its a very familiar feeling from last summer having had my release cable snap in France. It sounds like the RB isn't as accommodating space wise as the L series.

I don't know how much you've tried the release handle but if it isn't broken an still attached then give it a really good wiggle around and try pulling with different pressures it may still pop. An aftermarket replacement has gone in mine and it was never the same as the oem one it replaced, I have to move mine around quite a bit on occasion to get it to release. (I want to swap back to oem at some point).

If you can't activate the hood release from accessing underneath through the engine bay then I would assume your next best option is releasing the bolts on the hinges at the front of the car and with someone's help trying to lift and release it from the front with the new access from the front end. That was the other suggestion I was given at the time albeit I never tried it myself. Goodluck!

Thanks for that Woody, I'll give it a go. As Yellowz said above, it might be that it's not actually snapped and it's just stuck so I'll try go find a "friend" to help me open her up!
 

Jay.

Club Member
Thanks for that Woody, I'll give it a go. As Yellowz said above, it might be that it's not actually snapped and it's just stuck so I'll try go find a "friend" to help me open her up!

So I had no luck trying this unfortunately, I couldn't really pull the hood 'up' as it felt firmly closed and pushing it down didn't appear to do anything. The cable feels attached still but as if I had fully pulled it out...

Will have to try and get under the car again on Tuesday and see if I can get anywhere that way..

If that doesn't work ill aim to loosen the front bolts and then remove the catch bracket.
 

Woody928

Events Officer
Staff member
Club Member
Sorry to hear that dude, sounds a right pain in the arse. I hate old cars sometimes! :smash:
 

Jay.

Club Member
Sorry to hear that dude, sounds a right pain in the arse. I hate old cars sometimes! :smash:

Haha its certainly a love hate thing! I was so happy with it and suddenly it pushes you back into reality.

Managed to get the hood off the car today, went the long route of taking it off from the front and slowly working the bolts out via touch. I'll get a detailed write up of how to do it as I couldn't find one and might be useful for anyone who has a similar experience.

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Luckily the release cable hasn't snapped, it simply fell out of the release. I'm not convinced it's the original design, but regardless I'll need to think of a way to stop this happening again.. I'll probably see if I can find a small nut and bolt to stop it slipping off. Times like this I miss the old garage which had everything you could ever need!

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If I'm honest I'm slightly concerned the hood won't align properly when I fit it again... But we'll just have to see! Trying to get it all finished before the Donington Historic on Saturday. :unsure:
 

Woody928

Events Officer
Staff member
Club Member
lol glad it's not just me then! I've not been able to enjoy mine for a while now unfortunately. Glad to see your back in, I'd hope realigning shouldn't be too much of a drama with a spare pair of hands.

Was the car originally orange from the factory looking at the rubber seal area at the bulkhead?
 

Jay.

Club Member
lol glad it's not just me then! I've not been able to enjoy mine for a while now unfortunately. Glad to see your back in, I'd hope realigning shouldn't be too much of a drama with a spare pair of hands.

Was the car originally orange from the factory looking at the rubber seal area at the bulkhead?

It was a lot easier with a spare pair of hands... Really gutted I wasn't more patient as I dropped the hood trying to do it solo and it's cracked the paint a bit at the front and two small flakes of paint have come off (which is extremely obvious as it's white surrounded by bright blue!)

I think it was originally orange, or at least it's been sprayed that colour at least once before as there's overspray everywhere. I really look forward to having some time to start cleaning the car up and making it looks nicer, but I keep getting sidelined having to do work to the car that's required! The engine bay is a bit of a mess but with a little effort it'd look so much nicer, can't wait to do that.
 

Woody928

Events Officer
Staff member
Club Member
It was a lot easier with a spare pair of hands... Really gutted I wasn't more patient as I dropped the hood trying to do it solo and it's cracked the paint a bit at the front and two small flakes of paint have come off (which is extremely obvious as it's white surrounded by bright blue!)

I think it was originally orange, or at least it's been sprayed that colour at least once before as there's overspray everywhere. I really look forward to having some time to start cleaning the car up and making it looks nicer, but I keep getting sidelined having to do work to the car that's required! The engine bay is a bit of a mess but with a little effort it'd look so much nicer, can't wait to do that.

Was great to finally put the face to the name on Saturday, sorry to see the hood damage. All repairable as annoying as it is though, have you got any touch up paint in the meantime?

Always interesting to see, I guess under the floors would give a good idea. Haha that's a feeling I know well, it looks pretty good in the flesh and the photos though. As always as you own the car you know all the minor blemishes and issues that the rest of us don't see.
 

Jay.

Club Member
Was great to finally put the face to the name on Saturday, sorry to see the hood damage. All repairable as annoying as it is though, have you got any touch up paint in the meantime?

Always interesting to see, I guess under the floors would give a good idea. Haha that's a feeling I know well, it looks pretty good in the flesh and the photos though. As always as you own the car you know all the minor blemishes and issues that the rest of us don't see.

No touch-up paint yet ~ I don't fully know what colour it is. The PO told me it was a certain colour that I can't quite believe.


I really enjoyed making it to Donington Park for the Historic event. I loved watching the old Jags/Lotus/Astons etc racing around and being pushed to the limit, and it was super cool being able to see them up close and personal behind the paddock.

A really good turn out of Z's, around 32 I believe, which was great to see. Plenty of variety with different styles attending - I've attached an album at the bottom - some really tidy examples which inspire me to make a neater job of mine! .. My first event with the Zclub guys, and look forward to more in the future.

A few pics from Donington Historic:

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The full album which includes other members' cars can be found here:

https://imgur.com/gallery/lzSApBU
 

Ian

Club Member
Would be nice to see some other S30's, I've never seen another since owning mine, very few in Northern Ireland
 

Jay.

Club Member
Would be nice to see some other S30's, I've never seen another since owning mine, very few in Northern Ireland

I agree! I've only ever seen 1 outside of a car related event so they're still pretty rare over here. It's quite nice to have something different though I suppose


Going to look at doing a week long European road trip in the car at the end of June.. That gives me ~5-6 weeks to get it capable of smashing out around 1,000 miles. To be honest, my main concern is the lack of A/C and the fact that having the windows down really draws in the fumes.

So far this is my thought process:

  • Block any holes that may be letting in some fumes, I haven't checked the firewall particularly hard so it's possible that's allowing some in.
  • Make a gasket to go around the rear lights - so far there's nothing around there and I've heard that's a bit of a hot spot
  • Get a tune.. It's tuned for American fuel still and I wonder if that'll help
Any other suggestions? The next thing to consider would be a new exhaust.. It's on my shopping list as I hate how stupidly large the backbox is, but that's a pretty big expense. I assume I could get one made up WITH a cat, which might help? (crazy thought!)
 

Ian

Club Member
Yeah, to be fair, one of the things I love about my Z is how rare it is.


I've never really noticed any fumes inside the cabin, so it has to be possible. Make sure there are no leaks from your exhaust sytem from gaskets and such. Make sure your fresh air vents are closed and fit gaskets to the rear lights if they currently have none.

A re-tune won't help fumes (unless its running rich) but it could gain you some power and drive ability tuning for our much better fuel.
 

Woody928

Events Officer
Staff member
Club Member
Going to look at doing a week long European road trip in the car at the end of June.. That gives me ~5-6 weeks to get it capable of smashing out around 1,000 miles. To be honest, my main concern is the lack of A/C and the fact that having the windows down really draws in the fumes.

I find this really interesting hearing this as I have an earlier car which are allegedly notoriously worse for this issue however I've never noticed. I've driven round France with both windows down all of the time, and last Sunday all the way home without getting any fumes. Guess it depends on the car....

I would love to have AC fitted though, but that's way down the priority list! lol
 

Jay.

Club Member
Yeah, to be fair, one of the things I love about my Z is how rare it is.


I've never really noticed any fumes inside the cabin, so it has to be possible. Make sure there are no leaks from your exhaust sytem from gaskets and such. Make sure your fresh air vents are closed and fit gaskets to the rear lights if they currently have none.

A re-tune won't help fumes (unless its running rich) but it could gain you some power and drive ability tuning for our much better fuel.

I think I'll have to start with what you've suggested. There's currently no gaskets on the rear lights so I'll look to do those. Is there somewhere I can buy these from the UK? I see the usual suspects in the USA have them available but nothing within the UK.

I had the car on ramps today and it seems like the exhaust system is fine, no obvious leaks that I can tell of... I've heard that by extending the exhaust it can sometimes help... Not super keen to get a new exhaust fitted just yet though.


I find this really interesting hearing this as I have an earlier car which are allegedly notoriously worse for this issue however I've never noticed. I've driven round France with both windows down all of the time, and last Sunday all the way home without getting any fumes. Guess it depends on the car....

I would love to have AC fitted though, but that's way down the priority list! lol

Very jealous. The car would be fine for a road trip if I could stand long journeys in it, but it's just too much currently! .. I wouldn't even know where to start fitting A/C - I assume I could buy something from an existing RB25 powered car, such as a Skyline or a Stagea, and then plumb it in, but I've no experience with this. A problem for the future... First step is to get it smelling better!
 

Woody928

Events Officer
Staff member
Club Member
Very jealous. The car would be fine for a road trip if I could stand long journeys in it, but it's just too much currently! .. I wouldn't even know where to start fitting A/C - I assume I could buy something from an existing RB25 powered car, such as a Skyline or a Stagea, and then plumb it in, but I've no experience with this. A problem for the future... First step is to get it smelling better!

Sorry to hear that, just throwing this out there however could it be to do with how the spoiler disturbs the airflow at the rear end? Thinking of the cars I know where they've had this issue they've had spoilers fitted.... either way I guess check the hatch seal and tail lights as the obvious points. You've probably got much more choice with the hybrid swap for AC, I'd be considering a modern type of AC/heater combo that slots in where the oem matrix is and making custom pipework. controls would be the issue though. Also quite expensive and quite a bit of fabrication work potentially.

At least your not dealing with the oem unit from the 70's, we removed the compressor unit on mine and it weighs something silly like 30kg's! lol. I'm in the same boat, it would be nice to have at the bottom of a very long list!
 

Jay.

Club Member
I read this the other day and it made me think about you're exhaust fumes issues, in the event it's of any use location or testing wise...

http://www.zcarblog.com/tag/rebello

Thanks for the link, they appear to have gone down a similar route I want to go too. I've got a few seals on their way now, and going to order a smoke machine to see if I can find some leaks. You can pick up a Halloween Smoke Machine for about £20 and then use that to see if any smoke leaks into the cabin, brilliant!
 

Jay.

Club Member
So I've not really got round to updating a whole lot as I've enjoyed using the car, put about 1,000 miles on the clock this month!

Still fumey as hell, but with the windows up it's fine so I've just taken to wearing shorts & a tshirt. Air Con is definitely on the list now.

I'll update the progress of the car a little later as I've done a few little jobs that I've wanted to do, but for now here's a gloomy picture in the Cotswolds

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Jay.

Club Member
Okay so time to actually update what's being going on - not a lot required to do fortunately!

I haven't got around to doing the smoke test yet, although it's one of my priorities

When I first got the car I was worried the floor pans were rusted and would need replacing. I used the weekend to properly check out what was going on.

The PO had laid down some sound deadening which had began to rust, and caused the area on the floorboard to appear really rusty. Fortunately there was a layer of paint/rust proofing protecting the floorpan so the "rust" quick scraped off revealing the painted metal beneath it. What a relief! I removed the sound deadening and threw it in the bin, and began working on scraping/sanding the old paint back.

Here's a pic of a before/after sort of thing, where I had scraped most of the stuff off the left hand side but haven't gotten started on the right hand side. I went a bit further with a metal wire brush and some tough sand paper to get rid of anything that I could find that was orange/previous rust remover.

HwVKJyB.jpg


You can see how quickly the little bits add up! A bit of weight reduction...

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I ordered a product called "Rust Bullet" (from here: https://rustbulletuk.com/en/) which claims to dehydrate & treat the rust then form an impenetrable layer. I only got a small 1/4 pint tin as apparently that was enough for 6ft Sq... It turns out it wasn't quite, but I did manage to coat all the areas that had been in contact with the rusty sound proofing. On hindsight I should have ordered 1/2 Pint or maybe even a full pint and gone to town with the stuff.

The product was really satisfying to use. It painted on really easily and then within about ~30 mins had become hard. I put 2x thin layers (as per instructions) over the area and left it to cure which took about 2 hours between coats (sunny day, around 20/25 degrees, low humidity). As you can see, if I had more of the product I'd of painted it up the transmission tunnel and firewall. I'll order another tin and do that in the future.

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Both the drivers and the passengers side now looks great, the pics above are from the passengers side which was significantly worse. I initially took the rubber inserts out to paint the holes, but I preferred seeing them silver too so I painted over them. You can see a bit of the metal sound deadening surrounding the transmission tunnel.

I could have probably done a better job removing some of the older paint but speaking to the technical advisor team at Rust Bullet, they suggested it would be fine as long as the Rust Bullet created a complete "surface".

I'm hoping this gives me a couple of years before I need to do something more permanent.
 

Albrecht

Well-Known Forum User

I'm a bit worried about your seat mount crossmembers. In the photo above, the front crossmember appears to have been altered/cut and the rear mounts have gone. Do your seat rails now mount direct to the floor pan at the back?

If so, that's not good. You need to spread the load and - ideally - tie it in to the vertical panels (the inner part of the sill and the trans tunnel) otherwise it will gradually flex the rear part of the floor pan and start stress cracks. It could also be dangerous.

It's difficult to get seats mounted low in these cars and that's why people sometimes cut out the seat mount crossmembers, but they need to be replicated structurally somehow.
 

Woody928

Events Officer
Staff member
Club Member
Wow, looks like a job well worth doing with what you dragged out. I keep wondering whether to remove the factory fitted sound deadening on mine to check it out.

That paint sounds like really good stuff, hopefully it does the job!
 
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