Joyce's Home-Built Candy Two-Tone 75' 280z Passion Project
Mrs. Watts-Fields has owned her 280z for quite some time, and has personally laid hands on almost every aspect of the vehicle herself. This has been a decades long passion project for her, with the goal in mind to be an enjoyable cruiser for retirement. She personally oversaw the paint and body work, by stripping it down to bare metal herself, and bringing everything back to perfection. Once all of the body work was finished, she needed a professional paint shop to get her across the finish line. She choose a really nice two-tone candy accented finish, and complimented it with paint protection film across any surface that could potentially be damaged by the road or other wear and tear. She also outfitted the exterior with almost every accessory available at the time, such as LED fender mirrors, full LED headlamps and tail lamps, as well as window visors, tint, and a set of Konig Rewind wheels. The final touch for the bodywork was a set of decals that paid a homage to the Minions universe.
From there, it was time to focus on the mechanical and electrical side of things. Unfortunately this is where the build temporarily went downhill. She had a mobile mechanic come out and deal with some of the electrical modifications such as Speedhut gauges, electric power steering, and some other odds and ends. At some point, she found us and ordered one of our Plug and Play Megasquirt 2 kits, as the vehicle was not starting up and running reliably on the antiquated EFI system. We would later find out, that more than likely, the culprit was actually the mobile mechanic hired to do the electrical work. Unfortunately at some point, the mobile mechanic quit showing up to work on the vehicle, and stopped responding to any inquiries from Mrs. Watts-Fields, leaving her in a real predicament. All of that time, expense, and effort had come to a screeching halt. She decided to reach out to us to see if we could bring this vehicle back from the dead, and after a few conversations over the phone and over e-mail, she decided to ship the vehicle down to us for a full evaluation. Once the vehicle was here, it was running and driving, but barely. The mobile mechanic she hired managed to do a partial install, and get it running. Rather than follow our technical instructions, he instead decided to tamper with all of the settings, causing a ripple effect across the entire EFI system that required a few hours of corrective action. The other problem is half of the electrical system was dead in the vehicle.
After initial tear down and investigation, the situation was even more dire than we initially imagined. Exposed wire crimps that were mere factions of an inch away from grounding the metal dash frame. These crimps were also on circuits that did not have any type of fuse or circuit breaker for overload protection, which means this vehicle was one electrical short away from a catastrophic fire, which would have erased all of Mrs. Watts-Fields’ hard work in a very short time. We slowly pulled out as much erroneous wiring as we could from under the dash, and as much as we wanted to save the original harness, it was hacked beyond the point of no return. We secured a used harness from another 1975 280z and began rebuilding her electrical system. Caleb, one of our technicians, poured days upon days of brain racking labor into hunting down all of the shoddy work, making subsequent repairs, and field testing all of his repairs to ensure the electrical system was working exactly as designed. At a certain point, we formed a pile of all of the erroneous wiring installed in the vehicle, and we estimated it accounted for at least 40 feet of wiring and/or materials that did not need to be installed in the vehicle.
If anything, this should be the text-book definition of why you should not hire a mobile mechanic in place of a true professional shop. While there are many exceptions to the rule, as many master technicians will perform side work and do great work, when it comes to specialized customization, including electrical work on classic cars, the best choice is always made picking a professional shop with proper training, tooling, and most of all, an insurance policy and a warranty to back their work.
We trucked along diligently, ensuring all of the repairs we performed were up to professional and safety standards, and eventually had a 280z with 100% working electrical again. Once we ironed out all of the details for the electrical system, we shifted focus to correct some of the other pain points that were brought up by Mrs. Watts-Fields.
Some of the other concerns that were highlighted were working heat and AC, an overdrive transmission, as well as an overall safety picture of the mechanical side of things. We happened to have a used 5-speed left over from Mr. Moore’s 280zx build that he was willing to let go to a new home. We took that 5-speed apart and gave it the GRW treatment. A complete rebuild with all new bearings and synchros was in order, and subsequently installed into the vehicle to replace the doggy 4-speed.
Once we got the 5-speed in, we had a few maintenance areas of concern to address. The vehicle needed an oil change, a rear drum brake adjustment, and the same mobile mechanic that screwed up the wiring also installed a plastic reducer in the fuel pump hoses. We swapped this out for a brass fitting, as plastic will eventually degrade with gasoline, leading to a severe fuel leak, and possibly fire. She also wanted the factory A/C and heating system to work, but after finding a dead heater valve, as well as a dead mode selection valve, she opted to modernize with one of our GRW Vintage Air HVAC systems, for a trouble free experience with heating and A/C. From there, it was field testing all of our repairs, as well as finalizing the tune on the Megasquirt system. After putting approximately 500 miles on the vehicle between tuning and quality control testing, we were happy to finally schedule a pickup for Mrs. Watts-Fields right after the Thanksgiving Holiday. The overall repairs took an estimated 13 months to complete, as the overall condition was far worse than anyone had anticipated, but Mrs. Watts-Fields through much frustration, maintained her patience with us, and let us do our work and delivery a quality product back to her, right before the Christmas holiday.
ENGINE AND DRIVETRAIN SPECS
Nissan 2.8L, L28E [N42 Head / N42 Block]
GRW Rebuilt 5-Speed Manual FS5W71B Gearbox
GRW Megasquirt 2 Plug and Play ECU and Harness Kit
GRW 24-1 Drop In Crank Angle Sensor Kit
GRW LS2 Multi-Coil Spark Ignition System
2.5” Cold Air Intake
MSA 3-2 Header w/ Ceramic Coating
2.5” Magnaflow Exhaust System
2-Row Aluminum Radiator
EXTERIOR / INTERIOR SPECS
Konig Rewind 15x7 Wheels
JDM Z33 Fairlady Z Rear Decklid Emblem
Dapper Lighting Rear LED Tail Lamp Kit
RS Carbon Carbon Fiber Rear Tail Lamp Panels
LED Turn Signal Fender Mirror Kit
LED Headlamps
LED Fog Lamps
LED Running Lamps
MSA Rear Decklid Spoiler
MSA Type-2 Front Lower Valance
MSA Type-2 Rear Bumper
MSA Type-2 Side Skirts
MSA “Powered by Datsun” Carbon Fiber Rocker Cover Trim
Carbon Fiber Front Strut Tower Brace
Custom Speedhut Cobra Style Red Face Gauge Set
GRW Vintage Air HVAC Kit
