Everyone knows how good it feels to fix something. Be it your favorite pair of jeans in dire need of a few patches, a cool vintage guitar long forgotten in the back of a pawn shop that needs a rebuild or an old car on the verge of disaster that you scooped up as a project, there's a certain raw appeal behind finding a diamond in the rough. All you can see is potential waiting to be tapped, where others simply see a lost cause. As a collector or enthusiast, there are few better feelings than stumbling across the exact thing you've been waiting for. Ares Mathevossian knows this feeling - patience and persistence paid off when he happened upon his ideal Z project.
Back in 2008, a friend had told him about a '71 Datsun 240Z he saw for sale, and after taking a look for himself, Ares knew he had to have it. After making a good offer, considering the condition of the car, the owner refused.
"The car was pretty beat up as far as the interior and exterior were concerned," Ares says, "but the chassis was rust-free and that's really important with a 40-year-old car." Several weeks later, the call came back after the Z's owner had reconsidered Ares' offer and the car found its new home in the RS Speed (Ares' shop) garage. "I owned an S14 at the time, a car I had been working on for the better part of five years. When I got the Z car, I decided to sell the S14 to fund the rebuild." The car you see in front of you came into Ares' possession in a much different state than how it sits now.
Ares wanted a fully rebuilt car, because as you might imagine, years of use and abuse can take its toll. Although mechanically sound, the Z had seen better days, aesthetically speaking. "The interior was probably the ugliest part of the car," Ares says. "I don't think it had ever been washed. The interior carpet was trashed, the seats were awful and the center console was worse yet - did I mention the funny smell?" Fresh carpet and a new set of seats were the first order of business, and a new dash with custom-fit 300ZX gauges were up next, the factory '71 gauges wouldn't work very well with the more modern motor swap that was on its way.
"We started the teardown at the end of December 2008 and the process took until March of the following year to complete," Ares says. "We stripped the car down to the chassis and started from the ground up. The subframe and arms were all powdercoated along with the engine parts, 33 powdercoated pieces in total. Every bushing from the steering rack to the differential mounts was replaced and we had to make our own custom coilovers, since nobody makes a bolt-on coilover for the classic Z car, and the factory struts are part of the spindle. Welcome to cars from the early '70s."
Once Ares was satisfied with the suspension setup, the attention turned to getting the new motor in and running. Right from the start, he knew he wanted to drop a RB25DET Skyline GT-S swap into the Z. "I had owned both a turbo KA and a SR20 and wanted to stay within the Nissan family, so the RB seemed like a logical choice," he says. Ares and his crew got to work yanking out the factory L-series motor and wiring to get the ball rolling with the new heart transplant. RS Speed fabricated motor mounts and a custom one-piece driveshaft in-house, with Ares personally tackling the complex wiring job.
The Z's engine bay is a startling contrast from the sleek and monotone exterior. Bright-blue parts meet your eyes right away and make you do a double take; this isn't what we expected to see under the hood of an otherwise subtle car. Our favorite part of the engine bay (aside from the rugged turbocharged inline-6 Skyline motor, obviously) is an exceptional work of art, courtesy of Daniel Militonian from Dunkees.com. He has created a jaw-dropping "mad scientist" themed spark plug cover, all hand-drawn and printed on metal to withstand high temperatures. This truly is a one-of-a-kind creation by an incredibly skilled artist.
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