Z Car Garage is excited to participate in the Rolex Monterey Motorsports Reunion August 23-26 at Laguna Seca. We will be driving and supporting several vintage race cars, including this special 1979 Datsun 280zx raced by Jim Fitzgerald. “Fitzy” is the winningest driver in SCCA history with an astounding 350+ wins in his career.

  

He was never afraid to trade paint to get the win: in 1980 at the C Production Runoffs at Road Atlanta he was seen slamming doors with Freddie Baker in his E-Type on the front straight, on the pace lap! Video of the action can be seen in this HERE. Following this race, the ZX became known as the “Designated Hitter” car.  Fitzgerald died in 1987 after crashing his 300zx Turbo in the Trans Am series race.

 

  

Comedian/Paul Newman fan Adam Carolla purchased the ZX in 2009, and put it up for sale with our friends at Bring A Trailer last July. Our customer Alex McDowell won the auction and Rob and I visited Adam’s shop in Los Angeles to pick up the car. The Fitzy car was awesome to see in person, from the livery to wide Panasports it got my heart racing. We loaded it up onto a trailer courtesy of expert Datsun-restorer/historian Les Cannaday:

 

  

Before leaving, Adam’s crew was kind enough to let us peruse his car collection.

 

This place just might be Xanadu for Datsun nuts:

  

Adam is a big Paul Newman fan and it shows! Bonus points for a poster showing our #49 IMSA GTU 240z RMMR!

 

The ZX arrived safely at Z Car Garage (thanks Les) :

 

 

Fast forward to 2018, the Jim Fitzgerald 280ZX gained acceptance to race at the RMMR with Alex McDowell behind the wheel! ZCG began race preparation.

  

Rob dyno-tuned the L-series beast and it sounds fantastic. See the dyno and unloading in this video below:

 

We will have another feature for each of the race cars running at the Historics! Don’t forget to purchase your tickets for Rolex Monterey Motorsports Reunion 8/23! Enjoy more pictures in the gallery below:
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Nick P came to Z Car Garage to fix a blown head gasket on his 280zx.  We decided on a full cylinder head rebuild with a revised cam profile from Rebello, otherwise it was built close to factory spec. Teardown pictures below indicate obvious failure:

 

 

The rebuilt cylinder head:

 

We added a new 6-2-1 exhaust header from MSA and finished it off with the ZCG exhaust system:

 

The intake manifold and associated smog/efi plumbing were cleaned up:

 

With the engine freshened we put the Z on the rollers…141hp/142tq to the wheels is healthy!

 

Next we turned to the suspension. Nick wanted us to install his TechnoToyTuning (T3) coilovers, RCA’s and T/C rods:

 

Old struts out and coil-overs in!

 

T3 camber plates up front:

After an alignment and fender roll the Z sits perfectly without rubbing or scraping. We dig the RB-Rs on this!

 

 

Daniel R owns this 280zx with a turbo swap and it developed a leak from the exhaust manifold. We repaired broken studs in the manifold, injector connections, oil feed to the turbo, replaced the oil dipstick and breather hose.

The valve cover was treated to wrinkle coat red finish:

The engine bay in Daniel’s 280ZX looks better and is fully functional!

We have chronicled the build of this 280zx for as long as ZCarBlog has been around and the time finally came to deliver the car to it’s owners last Wednesday in the LA area.  The only reason this car made the delivery deadline is the bullet-proof work ethic that Rob and Fred have.  They had spent countless late nights and weekends to make sure the car was up to ZCG standards in every way.  All Z enthusiasts owe these two men a pat on the back for their commitment to the Z.

Enough sucking up, here are the pictures that our good friend Chad over at PhotoShootMyCar.com took last week.  Chad also owns the R33 GT-R that we covered a little while ago.  Great guy, great car, great photos.  Thanks Chad!

Just when you thought the ZX was starting to fade into the distance…. something like this eBay auction happens!!  Apparently this is number 1 of 3000 “Black Gold” tenth anniversary 280ZXs and it is trying to fetch a pretty penny through the online auction.

The car has just over 1,000 miles on it since new so it isn’t hard to see why the starting bid is $35,000, but I’m sure that will seem like a bargain in the coming years when there are no more of these cars left.  It looks like the owner is quite the Z enthusiast because you can see a quite a few fellow S30 chassis Zs in the garage as well.  Make sure you check out the listing and all the other photos by clicking the eBay link below, and thanks to Autoblog.com for the heads up on the awesome Z news.

Link: eBay auction: “Black Gold” 10th Anniversary 280ZX

Source:  Autoblog.com