Chevy V8 Swapped Datsun 240Z - Jay Leno's Garage

you know sometimes when you cut the roof of a car it just looks goofy or weird but this is a very nice job you would think this was a factory conversion welcome to another episode of jaylon's garage this is another one i call street grabs sometimes when we're out filming i'll see a cool car go by and go chase that guy find that find out what that is and this is exactly what that is we were filming one day this car went by i thought it was fascinating i have no idea what's under the hood i know it's a 240z i think it's a 72. uh judging by the shifter it doesn't have the stock trend well we're going to find out i just thought it looked cool and we flagged him down i said hey we'd love to have you on jaylon's garage he seemed excited about that his name is james smith so let's bring him in to tell us about the guy james how are you my friend i'm fine jay thanks very much yeah i'm glad we saw you that day that was fun i hope you didn't think we're crazy flagging you down yes thanks very much in fact i think i was stalking you were you stalking me not in a crazy law enforcement way or requiring a restraining order or anything right right no i understand well i i just thought it looked beautiful now it is a it's a 72 started life is a 72-240 z correct that's right i like to call it a shavatsan 580z now shavatson's so it has the chevy motor 350. chevy 350 it's been bored over so it's a 580z now okay now i remember somebody's building something called a scarab back in the late 70s i think early 80s where they would take old 240z because they were 10 and 15 years old by that point sure and put 283s or 327 chevys in them or 350s and it was quite a popular swap and it fits pretty nicely didn't it it does you'll be amazed when we pop the hood just how much room there is in there for it actually makes it look like it was intended to be there was this a wrecked 240z or was it one you owned or what was the story no um most of the big work was done in terms of the topping cut off and the the drivetrain being put in when i bought it i bought it for a thousand bucks from a caltech student okay in 2001 and it was done but not done well so with the help of my brother and my dad we did a little work on it and cleaned it up didn't want to put too much money into it because it's it's not worth a whole lot but no you did a beautiful job so there is no top temporary that fits on this i actually have an aluminum hard top that i traded 87 fiero for really not yet fitted okay which i'm excited to fit on it but so it's still a work in progress it is i mean i'd like to call it a prototype i'd like to redo it but um i don't want to be one of the um more money than brains sort of person that would be me oh yeah so i've i've only put in what i think is worth um and maybe i'll i'll go back through it again someday soon i don't know now you and your family you have a a classic car shop judging by your shirt i well i do um so it's kind of interesting story the shirt came before the shop i i saw this advertisement it was a fantastic advertisement that um was selling apparel that was purpose-built for people sort of a you know this shirt came in the advertisement right so i bought the shirt i had to have the shirt i was wearing it at work someone said is that your business and no it's just a shirt but it got me thinking maybe i could do something with my hobby um because i had four cars and my my daddy passed away in 2017 left me with three more right so i've got seven cars at home with you know insurance and and uh registration due on them i thought was there a way for me to make a little money off this hobby and um i've been in business for two years now and with kovid i haven't really gotten a gig yet but i'm trying well i mean this isn't an indication it's it's uh it's beautiful work did it have the chevy engine in it when you got it it had the chevy engine in it with a three-speed automatic okay um the engine needed to be to be redone um the four-speed i think was a good upgrade right it has all the original drive rather um running gear from the from the dodson so the brakes haven't been upgraded right but it did have the engine the top was was um was cut off but not done well it was pretty ragged so we had to redo the body work uh with the help of my brother we added a spoiler in the back made some modifications to the like the rear bumper for example right if you're familiar with the dodson's it had sort of like a fish hook coming out and jutting forward so we cut that off and left it nice and neat and tight and back well i'm concerned about the rigidity of the chassis how structurally did it make it much weaker did you beef up that's a good question so i i did not do those modifications it does have a um some some bracing in the front to connect the subframe right to the to the chassis of the car and then essentially the roll bar provides the stiffening in the back okay one thing we did add was we added this bar here in the roll bar to make it a bit stiffer well that's true that would help too wouldn't it but it's not a flexi flyer i mean it seems really stable i mean if you park it on an off center you can still open and close the doors right yeah i mean it's not i mean try an old 60s lincoln yeah you can't going over railroad and i've been driving it for 20 years and i don't drive it really hard you know i've have had nightmares before coming on here that it would be this day that i'd have trouble with it right um it's been it's been great it's not it seems really stiff and and well put together when i drive it yeah it's nicely done here i like that steering wheel by the way it's very nice yeah thank you very much so the um you know one of the safety features in the older cars was they had a big uh cushion in the center and that wasn't there when i bought the car but i did i did add the but the cushion was ugly it was ugly and then people take those off immediately yeah but of course that's there to protect you right right yeah i remember the the 67 fords had the mustang had a big one and the ltd had a big round one so so i you know i would rather have my chest cave in than drive around with that that's kind of my approach yeah yeah i have a 70 dawson convertible also that had the same steering wheel that i had removed so wow there is a lot of room yeah i mean that's amazing you know just thinking you'd be oh yeah i think you'd have to take a wheel off to get the plugs out for some reason but this was a good car and the dalton 240z was made for the american market it was made to sell in north america so it was bigger than you know i've got some japanese cars from this period and they're very tiny sure you know but this was this this was a big car in japan and it was meant to sell in england and north america and germany and all over the place but nice installation and they did quite well i mean they sold really well um they did quite well stock racing from 70-74 i believe they run the s won the ssca championship um stock it had about 150 horsepower at the 2.4 liter um now it's probably got somewhere near 300 300 that's great so it's um all forged internals 350 board over um as i said so it's like 580z now right um it's got a pretty long duration cam which is which is nice it produces most of his power about three grand and above which is nice so it's not too too uh rear happy is this a factory brace no that's something that my brother fabbed up for me okay that looks nice yeah my brother joe's really talented he's been working for uh gene winfield for years oh gene we love gene yeah yeah yeah so uh 94 now when he's still building cars it's amazing yeah amazing guy was there a brace originally on the 240 no not a not a not a shock tower brace um but i put one in the front and we did one in the back okay and got a nice big radiator dual pass radiator in the front to keep it cool but that's the biggest fan i've ever seen it's a griffin radiator and it came with the with the fan as i said it's dual pass it's an inch and a quarter tubes two rows right so it keeps it pretty cool um all we went with all forged internals i mean this was back when you could build the motor for about the same that now you can get a crate engine right right so i think we probably got about three grand into the engine we couldn't um i know it's amazing and the crate engines are great i mean they're two schools to that you know thought on that you know i mean i love the fact you build your own engine but then what would happen in the old days is if the cam guy wasn't any good and your valve's been well then you blame the guy who assembled it who blamed the cam guy the guy who blamed the guy did the bottom end and he blamed the guy who did the crank and and you never wind up with anything at least with the crate engine you drop it in you just blame chevy or ford or whoever you get it from yeah in this particular case there was no one to blame but me and my brother yeah yeah there's a little infighting there but well i mean it's a very professional job it looks terrific since you've got the stock brakes which shouldn't be strong enough it slows down fine yeah it might be nice to upgrade that someday but again as i said i think i've got enough money into it now i just wanted to enjoy it are these the stock seats or these from something else i think those are from the 240z those are the ones that were in it when i bought it okay it had it had this you know the stock yellow paint it was it was just too much for me uh yeah in terms of you know hey look at me and my brother picked out the green which is just beautiful i just love the color very nice green yeah let's let's come around and show that uh bumper that you were talking about the stock 240z the bumper would continue right okay now in front yeah and it looked sort of like a fish hook in it right my brother thought no for the styling cue let's change that and so we filled in the metal here and then he added the spoiler as well now was this lip here no no no so um on the stock 240z you recall it so it was a hatchback right that's what i did right it came down to a to a final nicely done yeah my brother did all that so very good there is a small little trunk just well if you own a 12 c or one of those that's a huge trunk if you've got a 918 porsche or something like that that's like a giant trunk that's a pretty good sized truck you know what's so funny it's like i always say cars have a certain posture they just sit right and when i saw this when you saw it go by it just looked like it sat right and it rode right i guess this gives the impression of high speed yes right so this is a cartoon you'd be i could say that it started out straight and then the high speed just falls from the constant you're driving it right right yeah yeah that sort of reminded me a little bit of the the 50s with the um the tails that they put on there have you gone to any japanese meets with this to the 240z club do they want to hang you or do they say nice job or what happened i've had some really positive reactions to it but i've been so busy with my full-time job and raising kids and seven cars that i don't get out as much as i'd like um it's nice to be here with you today yeah no it's it's it's just a beautiful job i think it's just great i mean this almost looks like a conversion people would bring that 240z to you to have it done you know you had some blown out 240z with a bad motor drop the chevy in there sure you you change the shocks or spring rate or anything change the spring rate so it's progressive spring rate right and it so it rides really smooth um it's a little lower than than it looks so i'm going to be careful on the on the bumps and stuff right right it rides really nice and much larger tires and yeah so yeah so i tried to fit as much tire as i could and there's maybe a little bump steer in the front now because the tires are a bit wider in the front as well but it's as much back tire as i could put underneath it really well just beautiful what else have we got how about an exhaust system what have we got you got the stock those are regular factory earth headers and then um glass packs okay okay so it's it's it's nice and tame and on the on the freeway and in town and then when you step on the go pedal it makes a good noise now is that the factory exhaust system are those headers those are headers okay and i had those ceramic coated recently so that was nice to have done it looks great whose carburetor is that it's an edelbrock edelbrock okay yeah they do a nice job don't they it's and it's what i'm familiar with so it made it easy for me i've got one of my 57 chevys performance i don't recognize that intake what is that from edelbrock performance oh that's not a lot though the manifolds of course of course yeah yeah that's right and i think with that cam i might have been better off with a different manifold but it it it's matched pretty well now and runs well yeah very nice well it's just a beautiful job can we take it for a ride yeah i'd love to let you give it a shot [Music] sounds like a big fuel pump very cool [Music] oh it's got some power you know it's funny most of the interesting cars we find are within 25 miles of the shop this area has a history burbank speed shops back in the 40s and early 50s and a lot of legendary hot rodders lived around here and because you had lockheed and all the aircraft manufacturing had a lot of engineers and engine builders and machine shops all in this area and a lot of the cars are the second and third generation of those guys that that uh that built them and that's the fun part about this job we were filming one day and this car went by with 240 convertible what is that that's got to be a home built and we we ran up to him and uh drove up to him and hey you want to be on the show blah blah very nice guy uh so it's cool it's fun to just find stuff that's interesting and then put it on the program i like when we find cars like this cars that were built by the owner over a long period of time maybe they got other responsibilities in other jobs and instead of sitting watching netflix they're in there building something in the garage and making something work how you doing see this is the car uh nissan should have built you know so funny when i was standing over it i i saw i thought it was a four-speed car didn't even realize it was an automatic i saw that shift and i had one of those hurt shifters on one of my cars i went oh there you go it's and then oh no it's not you know 240 convertible would have been a good looking car it's such an american thing to do put a big v8 in something like this because you just instantly just double the horsepower lots of torque you know i'll be fond of pebble beans and some of the young other concours had a home built prize you know i mean anybody can spend a lot of money and have other people build their cars hello uh but i greatly admire the guys who can do it all themselves do the paint do the bodywork do the upholstery i mean it's impressive and when we did that in florida i i did the uh boca raton concourse and i asked that we could introduce the rattle can award for the man or woman that restored their vehicle in their garage by themselves sanded it painted it and you know the cars that one looked very very good i mean obviously didn't look quite like pebble beach restorations but boy pretty darn close i i was impressed at the level of detail that these folks were able to achieve and it was fun to give an award to somebody who has built the whole car themselves they take such pride in their work and it's it's really neat to see in fact i told the judges at bubble beach one time kind of tongue-in-cheek they should have a written test for the winners of like these million dollar restorations how many cylinders does your car have how many volt is it just basic questions see if they even know that because you know a lot of guys will have somebody find a car they never see it they send it off to a restoration shop and the first time they see it is pebble beach and there's nothing wrong with that but it's not like someone who really lives and breathes a vehicle for the whole life of the restoration yeah this thing goes good i mean it's the car he bought for a thousand dollars it looks good going down the road doesn't it i mean you see what i saw it when it went past me hey what is that i mean it doesn't look like a 50 year old vehicle yeah a lot of grunt breaks me more than i could especially for street use when i bought my mclaren 12c i was all set to buy the carbon fiber brakes and i give mclaren credit for this they said are you going to track it and i said no they said you know the cast iron brakes are fine you don't need you don't need carbon i don't know save yourself 20 grand then i did the best decision i ever made those brakes work fine i i can't get them to fade i jump on them hard because i'm not tracking the car i'm just driving it and these are fine for this application as well i should call james and go hey where's the fire extinguisher you know sometimes when you cut the roof of a car it just looks goofy or weird but this is a very nice job i mean you would think this was a factory conversion no rattles feels tight a vacuum pump makes a bit of a noise but that's okay i don't get any car i can elbow you know put my elbow on the window this is my favorite looking generation of the z the 240 the 260 280 and then later they just got too big and too wide and t-tops and all that nonsense you know to me the first incarnation of the vehicle is usually the best the first mustang was always the prettiest uh first camaro certainly that 6768 camaro is the prettiest first generation firebirds too yeah it's nice actually brakes work very well stash pad is in very nice shape remember when the 240z came out people went crazy i was in college and oh it was the dream car people had to have one i mean that first generation z car was a revelation you know and all the creature comforts sounds silly but you could lock the doors which you really could do on an mgu or triumph so funny it's 60 miles an hour i'm turning barely 1500 rpm well pretty warm day today and this thing runs very cool so that's that's nice plenty of oil pressure looks about at least 80 pounds battery's charging horn works it's amazing how many guys will will do a car and they press oh i didn't hook up with and they get so excited to get the hook up the horn [Music] very nice oh i'm glad you like the j yeah really drives wonderfully thanks very much yeah chassis seems tight i see what you mean about that vacuum pump though yeah so it needed the vacuum pump to run the brakes because the cam is just so uh just got a little bit of vibration but not but it's not it's not bad no god how do you notice it did it burn rubber for you no i didn't burn i don't do that with people's cars it's got plenty of power it's got plenty of torque and it's great it just cruising it's it's 70 you're turning what 1500 rpms is it the stock rear-end ratio it is 336. oh okay what's the 336 huh and originally it was a four-speed not a five-speed originally had the four-speed right manual right oh cool hey well thanks for being a part of it i'm glad i uh flagged you down that day that was great thank you james my pleasure hey maybe we'll grab your car out in the street so we'll give it a shot see you guys next week [Music] ah

Channel: Jay Leno's Garage

Views: 762,659

Keywords: Jay, Lenos, Garage, Datsun, 240Z, Chevy, 350, engine swap, V8, Japanese cars, restomods, modified, convertible, Smith Classic Cars, James Smith, car guy, car nerd, car enthusiast, car porn, gearhead, motonerd, Jay Leno, Jay Leno's Garage, car reviews, classic cars, vintage cars, sports cars, super cars, cars, jay leno garage, jay lenos garage, car collection, cnbc, Chevy V8 Swap Datsun 240Z, Chevy V8, Datsun 240Z, modified Datsun 240Z, modified Datsun, compares cars, JL garage, JLG

Id: ytaDI3I0fmE

Length: 21min 17sec (1277 seconds)

Published: Mon Jun 28 2021