Paperwork

Been busy finalising the paperwork. Spent a lot of time on the web trying to find out what it took for a foreigner to buy a car in the US. Fortunately, the people at Rinkens.com (the shipping co.) were very helpful. What's required is the following:

1. Bill of sale
2. Vehicle export authorization form
3. Rinkens power of attorney
4. Copy of the shippers (your) passport
5. Copy of title / to clear U.S. customs we will need the original title and bill of sale when picked up/delivered (if vehicle is newly purchased and title is in previous owner name)

I still dunno what a "title" exactly is but I have an idea :) It's something that the seller has to provide anyway.
Today I also paid the remainder of the price and am awaiting instructions for paying the shipping fee. So as far as I'm concerned, I'm all set. The car will be shipped on 25/8/2008 from NY and is expected at Rotterdam harbour on 15/9.

But here are some other pix:
this baby needs some thorough cleaning and polishing. Note the flat top carbs :/


and eventually will look something like this


not the original steering wheel


need to weld in a new sill here (on both sides I figure)


and new floor panels

Z cars have this mysterious ability to end up with water on the floor under the mats after a hard rain. According to Bryan Little from datsunzgarage.com (very useful site) this is due to water leaking from the body seam between the firewall and cowl. Late 1960s Ford Mustangs apparently had this problem too. Will see if I can fix that once I get that far.

Quoting from Bryan's article:
THE CAUSE: Under the windshield-wiper cowl there are two very tiny drain holes under the crossbraces on each side which I never noticed before. Not the down spouts under the fenders, these drains are in front of the windshield. Well, rain water flows under these from the center out to the large drain tubes on the side of the fenders. These small holes were blocked with old dirt, there was actually standing water pooled around the center wiper motor area(!)

This standing water had rusted the seam between the firewall and the front of the cowl. So when there was heavy rain the cowl would fill up and the seam would leak down the firewall into the car. The solution is to take out the wiper motor and use rustproofer on all the seams in the cowl area. NOTE: There is a non-removable metal box in the passenger side of the cowl which is the fan inlet. You can't remove it, but you have to seal this all the way around. In the photo below the fan inlet rust is just cosmetic. The seam below it is the actual culprit.

end quote

Normally, these corners are rusted all the way through, but fortunately not here (on either side)


Hopefully a few patches welded in will suffice here


Oh yes, and the sunroof (that you can see on the first two pix I posted earlier) has gotta go!