Upping the ante on a 280Z

Larry Ayres figures he’s spent the better part of 20 years transforming a 1975 Datsun 280Z into a full-bore, blinding green Chevy-powered street machine with a massive supercharger sticking out of the hood.

“I always wanted a car with fat tires,” Ayres said. He said he collected a big stack of wild hot rod cards when he was a kid, and most of those cars had big tires and big engines.

His other inspiration came from his grandfather, Virgil Howe.

“We were always tight. He was really into cars. It seemed like Grandpa always had a car in the garage,” he said. “Grandpa had an account down at Lubbers Speed Shop and I remember going down there as a kid.”

Ayres picked up his grandpa’s mechanical abilities quickly and soon was building custom bicycles with his friends. From there, it was a short step to building cars.

“I was actually looking for an Opal GT when I found this. I bought it from a guy who had it sitting outside an apartment house. It already had a small block Chevy in it. I think I paid that old boy $300 for it,” Ayres recalled. That was sometime in the mid 1990s.

He wasted no time starting to work on the project, with the basic plan in mind from the start.

“I tried to keep as much of the Datsun shape as possible. The front end is raked down about an inch and a half. I had to cut it down to make it fit the cowl. I had to add about an inch to the 90-inch wheelbase,” he said.

He also re-radiused the rear fender wells to accommodate the fat rear tires he knew he would be using.

“You have to decide, do you `back-half’ the car or do you just cut it all out and do it all at once?” he said. He decided to go with the full chassis build, noting, “At that point, you’re kind of committed.”

Ayres built his own custom tubular frame for the car, using a Chris Alston’s Chassisworks kit.

“I built this thing with string lines and levels and string bobs on my garage floor,” he said. “I couldn’t tell you how many feet of pipe are in it, but it was a small truckload.”

The finished chassis incorporates a full, NHRA-certified roll cage. It is set up with Mustang II tubular A-arm coilover front suspension and 4-link rear suspension, which mounts a hefty 9-inch Ford rear end with a 3:70 gear set.

For power, Ayres enlisted Shafiroff Racing Motors of Bohemia, N.Y., to build a Stage III 434 cubic inch Chevy small block V-8 to liven up the Datsun. Starting with a Dart block, the engine builder added AirFlow Research 9:1 compression heads, an 8:71 billet supercharger from The Blower Shop and a pair of custom-built Quick Fuel 4-barrel carburetors, along with beefed up connecting rods and crankshaft.

“This thing runs on E-85 gas,” Ayres said. “I have a dyno sheet here showing that it produced 942 horsepower at 6,400 rpm,” he added.

He built his own custom 2-inch exhaust headers using a Hooker Headers kit, routing them out through the lower body, where they join a set of baffled 4-inch side pipes.

All of that horsepower is linked to the rear axles via an ATI racing Powerglide automatic transmissionk. Its two forward gears are controlled by a Hurst Quarter Stick shifter mounted on the tall hump of a transmission tunnel built with the help of Holzman Race Cars. Holzman also handled fabrication of the 20-gallon aluminum fuel cell designed by Ayres and neatly tucked between the huge wheel tubs.

Those tubs hold a set of Weld Racing wheels mounting 31-inch tall Mickey Thompson street tires. Smaller Weld wheels and M/T tires are used at the front of the car. Owner-built wheelie bars are intended to keep the front wheels somewhere near the pavement on hard launches.

Inside, Ayres created his own custom dashboard using a wooden form carved out to accept an impressive array of Auto Meter gauges. The MSD ignition control box is also mounted under the dash. A pair of Kirkey racing seats bolt to the floor pan and are outfitted with full racing harnesses.

The car owner did all the prep work on the body, extending the removable fiberglass front end several inches to keep the body lines flowing smoothly.

“I wanted it to look kind of funny car-ish,” he grinned. Once it was ready for primer, Derek Blagg took on the finish work, shooting the sleek 280Z body with multiple coats of Eric Clapton PPG Green.

“That’s a guitar color, which I guess is appropriate because I also build guitars,” Ayres said, showing off a beautiful hand-crafted oak-bodied instrument with mother-of-pearl inlay.

The car now labeled as a “434Z” hasn’t been down the drag strip since it was finished. But it does include a trailer hitch mount that can double as a parachute mounting point, which could come in handy if the car ever takes part in Hot Rod Magazine’s Drag Week, the long-distance endurance/drag racing competition.

“That’s kind of a dream of mine,” Ayres confessed. It appears he’s ready to go after that dream.

This story was originally published October 25, 2014 at 8:11 AM with the headline "Upping the ante on a 280Z."