So its finally happening after been off the road for well over a year the zed is on Target for its refurbishment.

 

Last year I started with doing all the underbody suspension stuff to make the ride more stable and after that

I decided I wanted to do a full strip down to the bare shell and start from scratch to create a show quality z32.

 

After much bad luck and many thousands of pounds wasted on rotted zeds i'm cracking on with the original plan.

 

So as a quick update i'll post some older picks followed over the next few weeks by an overall progress report.

 

Starting off with how she was when I first purchased her 3 years ago until the state she is now then showing the

strip down and all the bad luck I've had.

 

So here she is as I bought her :

 

 

 

My old silver na had a leather and alacantra interior and some 99 spec parts so I quickly swapped them over :

 

 

 

At this point the next thing I wanted is a manual conversion so after sourcing one I managed to

get help from a friend and his garage and done the conversion myself in just over 2 days tops.

 

Then I took it apon myself to do the first series 4 manual to digital aircon conversion which required

a full strip down to the bulkhead and it worked without issues.

 

 

Next on the agenda was to get a nice set of skirts and vented wings and this is where all my problems began :

 

 

Although the pic above looks great the paint job was very bad and had many streaks, drips and orange peel to go.

Within a month of the pics above with the vented wings the zed was in for its breaks to be changed

and while the zed was jacked up at one side and unattended for 10 minutes the jack decided to go

down and it slowly crushed the skirts and damaged the front wings.

 

Worst part was that the wings and skirts were so well stuck to the rest of the car that I managed to

destroy the other side in the process of trying to take them off leaving me with a severally damaged

looking zed with no funds or heart to press on at this time.

 

below is the damage and partial clean-up work I did before getting properly fixed and sprayed again.

 

 

not wanting to cost me a fortune I did a diy job with a drill and a wire brush to scrape the shit of the

sills and doors back to metal before my garage done a quick fix for me which improved it greatly

 

 

As I said before I didn't want to spend too much money so I couldn't help it when I saw these 19"

for sale on here so I snapped them up, spent £300 on powder coating and a further £700 on new

falken tyres.

 

Am I mad or what !

 

 

 

Yeh, but they do look great

 

So after all the dumb luck above it only got worse although not zed related as I shortly

discovered that the company I worked for went into liquidation so I promptly got paid off.

 

Luckily we got bought out and I managed to keep my job but due to top level management

setting up a new company and rehiring everyone there was a point I would have been paid

redundancy and the payout would have been for 8 years of service or so I thought.

 

Turns out after being told we all would be due redundancy the new company decided to keep

our contracts going as they were so we didn't get a penny.

 

At that time I thought; great time to strip her down and do a respray with the redundancy cash.

 

Which never came and I ended up with a completely stripped zed with winter approaching fast.

Over the winter period I managed to damage the engine as the bonnet was off and the cover didn't protect

it enough from water so with the plenum off too all the intakes filled up quickly with water.

 

Now my engine was fooked too so I decided to crack on with now a complete engine out stripdown.

 

Starting with the lights I worked my way round the full front end slowly dismantling everything and carefully

boxing parts up to be stored in my loft.

 

 

So just over two weeks ago I managed to get the engine out and dropped it off to Lee Dent for a rebuild

and I continued with more of the strip down as I could before getting picked up by the body shop again.

 

 

 

Last thing needing done at this point two days ago was to swap over to a better condition tailgate

and bonnet which with help from my other half we managed to do at the late hours of sunday night.

 

 

 

So today I had a half day so when I came home I had the surprise of and empty driveway as the

body shop came earlier than expected and trailered the zed away.

 

Still needing to drop a few things off I nipped over to see how things were.

 

And there she was sitting outside waiting patiently

 

Dropped off my 99 spec front bumper and new rear bumper that I managed to acquire and took

the time to have a wee nosey at the current jobs they are completing

 

 

Now I never like the thought of copying somebody's ideas but it just so happened that another car

was in getting the exact same paint job as I picked so it gave me an idea of what was coming for mine.

 

Hard to tell from these pics as its still getting worked on but some of the panels were getting the polished

look and when the light caught the panel it just lit up in a way I cannot even describe but to say it was stunning.

 

 

The work on my zed starts officially next Monday so i'll update this thread with detailed images

as we go.

 

House of Kolors Kandi Purple is the colour picked and I can't wait to see the progress.

thats a very nice colour. will make you car stand out a treat when finished :thumbup1:

The project should be complete by September so it will be at JAE this year for all to see.

 

thats a very nice colour. will make you car stand out a treat when finished :thumbup1:

not long... but will probably drag like hell

Few more colour samples of what I'm getting!

 

 

are you having the whole car that colour or you doing bits of black anywhere? wing mirrors , wheels etc , little parts

Only the engine bay will be fully black.

cool. you gonna get some engine dress to go with the purple theme? and anything special planned with the engine when being built?

Looks a great colour Lee, i look forward to seeing her in the flesh, the body shop look like they know what they are doing, which is comforting, especially after all the shit youve been through with it lol

Nice up date Lee keep them comming. :thumbup1:

That colour is beautiful, absolutely perfect choice mate.

Love the Colour :thumbup1:

That is absolutely gorgeous, can't wait to see the result buddy :hyper:

i like the colour tonnes as i wasnt brave enougth to do it ,so cant wait to see the result. great work mate.

nice work mate that colour is pretty nice, cant wait to see more :)