A 600HP V8 280Z: The Before

I’m really beatin’ up that 600hp line; it’s going to be pretty embarrassing if I don’t make it. I guess I can always just fudge the dyno…

Anyhow, we got the section of shop that I’ll be using totally cleaned out and ready to rock.

Which meant I could roll the Datsun into place to begin work!

And by begin work, I mean take a bunch of before pictures that make me question whether I want to cut such a nice car apart.

I love taking photos. Without further ado:

The Before:

I’m very lucky to start with such a nice car. I’ve heavily weighed whether I should continue as planned, or restore it to a more vintage/original state, but I don’t really want an original-ish car. I want something crazy, and more importantly, I want the experience of trying my own ideas. Maybe they’re great. Maybe they’re terrible. They’re probably terrible.

But there’s only one way to find out!

To sort of cap off this “before” post, Nik and I weighed the car on some scales. We got the car in place and on the pads, but the scales didn’t want to cooperate.

So we did a little disassembly and inspection on one of the scales.

Aaaaaand we killed it for good. Whoops.

So we shuffled the 3 good pads around to get something that should be with a few pounds. Here are the weights:

Left Front: 740 lbs Right Front: 706 lbs

Left Rear: 694 lbs Right Rear: 699 lbs

Total: 2839 lbs Front: 50.9% Rear: 49.1%

These cars are famous for being pretty heavy near the end of their run, so I’m not too surprised. I’ll make some efforts to get the weight down, but it isn’t the primary focus. At least not yet.

Can’t wait to get started!