Cardana24's first gen
 

Hey guys, I picked up a 84 max over the weekend. I have had a 2nd gen, 3rd gen, two 4th gens and a 5th gen but never a 1st gen. I have always wanted one but I never seemed to run across one that was in decent shape. It has 114k miles and is an automatic, the body and interior are really good for it's age. The car runs and drives but is not road worthy. The brakes really don't work very well:laugh: The car has been sitting for a least a year and the previous owner said they need to be bled. The radiator was empty on coolant so I need to figure out where that is going. Once those things are fixed I should be ready to drive on the road. After its somewhat reliable I plan on putting springs/struts/swaybars on the car. Then I will be putting wheels on the car. Anyone with experience with wheels other than stock on a first gen? I want to know how wide I can go with the proper offset and still be under the fenders. Once it looks and handles the way I like I will swap the car to five speed and put either an l28et in the car or an rb series engine, I still want to stick to an inline 6 engine. Questions, comments, and advice are welcome:)

*I need two wheel center caps if anyone has a few*

Here it is the day I picked it up
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At home trying to show how dirty it is but it does not show well. It took me a couple of hours to wash it for the first time, lots of grime but nothing crazy.
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After: wash/clay bar/wash/wax
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Nice '84.

They are becoming collectors items.

Good luck finding the center hub caps (aluminized plastic)

At about 114k I replaced the water pump and had the radiator re-cored.

Check rear emergency brake cables, as they have a tendency to corrode internally causing them to seize. Worst case is that the internal cable corrodes beneath the plastic sheathing. End boots are the weak link of these cables.

Enjoy it, rear wheel drive ....

-bob

Nice find reminds me of when I got my 3rd gen

Thanks guys, please let me know if you see any pop up in local junk yards or local part outs. I am looking for a few parts. 5 speed swap stuff but a few other little things too.

Awesome find screaming for a L31T.....

I will have to google that engine, I am familiar with the l28et, and I know you can use the diesel crank to make a stroker engine... so I assume that is what you are talking about, but people want more money for just a diesel crank than what I paid for the car so I doubt I will go that route. I will most likely stick with an l28et for simplicity sake and it's a proven set up. I am also considering an rb series engine, the rb20 and l28et are about the same price give or take and the L28et would be easier as far as bolting in and existing wiring, but if I wanted to spend a little bit more I could consider an rb25, they are about double the price of the other two engines though. We will see, I just got the car and its not driveable yet so I am getting a little ahead of myself at this point.:laugh:

Yes, I was referring to the stroker kit which will still use the existing wiring....but I get your drift....getting ahead of what's really important at this moment in time! There's nothing wrong with day dreaming and envisioning what direction in mods you're interested in taking...

Love this. Keep us updated!

Saw a nice 4 liter Jag six, circa 1990, that would more than likely fit.

Sweet man! :)

S

Does anyone have experience with wheel fitments on 1st gens? The stock wheels are 14x5.5" but I don't know the offset/s. I am wondering if 15x8 +25 will fit on the rear and 15x7 +38 will fit on the front. I have a fender roller but I don't know how close I will be to the suspension, and I defiantly don't want the wheels/tires out past the fender wells. Any info. would be helpful.

Take the wheels off and string the fenders to see what will fit....

I still have not driven the car on the road more than half a mile but I lowered it with eibach springs and I used KYB struts and I rebuilt most of the front end while I was in there. Wheels are supposed to be here this weekend.

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Looking at it was that the car car that was in middle Tennessee? If so I talked to the lady for a while and was going to head up and buy it but the '87 that my son wanted came back up for sale.

I bought it in va so I doubt it's the same car. I do want to find a first gen 5 speed for a parts car if anyone happens to have a lead on one that is somewhat close to va.

Well, I now own that car I thought was yours. It has had a older z car engine and 5 speed swap already done. I need a exhaust manifold for it but it is a pretty cool car. It's your twin but this one has a sunroof. Used to be owned and swap done by a engineer, looks correct. Neat rowing gears in one of these. I'll post up some pics in the next few days.

Which engine is in it? 2.4, 2.6, 2.8, or 2.8 turbo?

Just a 2.8 nothing to write home about. Big hole in exhaust manifold and could use a tune up. Other than that it looks like it came that way. Bought it, parked it at my friends place and have not had time to fool with it. Most likely going to clean it up, make repairs and eBay it. I've got to get something going on my sons 87 SE 5 speed.

do you have any first gen parts for sale or know anyone with parts? Or do you know of any junkyards in TN that have first gens? My brother lives a little bit west of Nashville and I'll be there in a few weeks.

There's probably alo of small town and country junkyard that have these cars....

oh I know, I just need help finding them

Sorry, can't help you with parts. Z Car Atlanta is only about 10 minutes from my friends place. We are going to take the manifold to them and hopefully match it up. I still have not been over to mess with that car. I really want to clean it up and put some miles on it. It was a fun test drive. I'm going to our Caffeine and Octane this weekend. I'll have to talk to the Datsun group that is there. Maybe they'll have some idea where to get parts. It is still scary though, everytime I look at this thread, our cars are so alike minus the sunroof.

Not much of an update other than I am looking into doing a l28et swap in the car. I am wondering if anyone has information on what wiring needs to be done. I know that the dipstick location needs to be changed and the oil sump needs to be moved, but what about the wiring? How much wiring is involved in swapping the l28et into a first gen?

Order a 280zx Turbo FSM and a Maxima 2nd Gen FSM from ebay and compare the two...

Yeah I know man, I have a wiring diagram from an 82 auto zxt and I have a first gen max fsm. I was just hoping to find someone who had done it to comment on the wiring that needs to be done.

picked up a doner over the weekend
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Specs on that prius, you know you should throw a small turbo on the 1.4 in that thing have hands down the most powerful prius ever. And that CRX, K20/4 swap ASAP with some vtec killers. :drool1:


oh n the 1st gen is nice too.....

I have a lot of cars:laugh:

The Prius is not on the road yet, I bought it with a blown transmission.

The CRX will be for sale once I get the Prius on the road. Its a stock HF and gets 50 mpg. I have a D15z1 (vtec lean burn) that I was going to swap into the car but I am going to dump all of that now too. If I went through with that swap and kept the HF trans in the car it should get ~60 mpg.

Thanks on the first gen...and for anyone that cannot read between the lines, that is a 280 zxt, I will be swapping the engine into my first gen

woooooo cool stuff man, is that z a 5spd too and does it swap over?

It is an auto. I do want to do a five speed swap, but finding the right stuff for a decent price is not always easy, but I have my eyes open for 5 speed swap stuff. If anyone reading this knows of a first gen maxima parts car with a 5 speed I am interested.

I wonder how complicated it would be to adapt Z31 stuff to this. The s30 guys are always using our stuff. There's always Z31 5spd stuff available.

I doubt the transmission would bolt up with out serious work, since they changed engines L->VG I know a lot of people swap over to the z31 afm/ecu because it has a 16 bit processor as opposed to the 8 bit in the 280. I may do some of that down the road we will see. Right now, I have a running maxima and a parts zxt and not much time to do anything:laugh:

Just imagine how much more power can be produced with a 280ZX Turbo setup featuring an intercooler and more boost...maybe 10-12 psi...maybe a Nistune would be a better solution....

Sweet ride

Well if you ever want to go 5 lug conversion let me know.

good luck man, if that does happen this car is definitely worthy of being a keeper for life. i've never even seen a second gen on the road in my life let alone a 1g :)

So when I bought the 280z I wanted to get the car running before I swapped the engine, but too much stuff had been hacked up for me to put very much time into that especially if I just wanted to take the engine out of the car...so I decided I would at least do a compression test to make sure nothing was too crazy broken...and the results are.
Firewall
6-125
5-130
4-125
3-130
2-120
1-118
Radiator

So overall I am very happy. The engine had not been run in at least a year. I plan to tear the engine down and go though everything and freshen up/strengthen things as I see fit. Nothing will be happening soon but hopefully over the next year I can move forward.

Way to go on the engine swap. I have yet to touch the '84 but we are going to start working on the '87 real soon. Was looking at doing a 5 lug swap but not really sure if we want to put all that into it. Looking forward to your progress.

Nothing much to update other than I put my wheels on over the weekend. The fronts are really close to the struts so I have ordered extended wheel studs and I am going to put a 10mm spacer on to help with clearance. In the rear there is plenty of space inward but I needed to roll the fenders to make sure the tires did not get cut when the suspension compresses.

Before
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Rolling the fenders
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After
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Nice. I was looking under the '84 and was thinking of stuffing these XXR 531's under it but that rear was just too tight. Ended up finding a buyer in Baltimore, MD for the car so now the wheels are here stacked in the garage.