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I thought my adventure of importing an FD would be much more comical than it was, but since the car is perfect, I have no content to post. So I now submit my journey to resto-mod the bejeezus out of a 1967 Datsun Roadster 3000 miles from where I live. I wish I had discovered SA and AI when I started this project, but the upside is that I have an enormous backlog of content to share. The Journey Begins I first started making horrible life choices in the summer of 2010. I was in college, daily driving a 280ZX Turbo with a massive T4/T3 hybrid turbo, making more power than I would ever need. I've always loved the S130, since it has that quintessential "eighties charm", and makes for a badass GT car. But, as I've since discovered, the only proper number of Datsuns is 'more'. Having a GT car was nice, but one of the problems with pushing huge boost was that I could never, ever use 100% of that car's power without breaking some pesky law or another. I started to think good thoughts about driving a slow car fast, and that's when I came to discover the Datsun Roadster.  Spergin' Out About Model Differences I could talk all day about these cars, but in simple terms, there are a few things to understand about what makes the "good" ones "good". The 311 cars came with two body styles, referred to as "high" and "low" windshield models. The low/early cars had a chrome surrounded removeable windshield, and a flat dashboard.   In 1968, when the DOT made a bunch of stupid rules and every car ever made went to poo poo (not up for debate), the windshield height was raised two inches. As I've heard it told, this is because the new "minimum swept area" of the windshield wipers was given in square inches   , and was a bigger number than the total number of square inches on the early windshield. Triumph's solution was to use three wiper blades, so who can truly say what was best?  Nearly every 2000 ever made was a high windshield car, so if you want more power in an early car, you have to swap or get creative. The high windshield/late cars also have things like a padded safety dash and a whole bunch of other pointless safety bullshit like dual circuit brakes.  Datsun Insanity Begins Let me preface this story by saying that this car is loving awesome and has outlasted (in my heart and my life) my 82 280ZX Turbo, my 89 MR2 Supercharged, my 88 CRX Si, an 84 VF500 Interceptor, a 00 ZX6R, and two or three girlfriends. There is no amount of money I won't spend on this car, and I have fully lost my ability to cope and make rational decisions. Here's how it started. I called up Mike Young of Datsun Sports, and asked him all of the completely asinine questions everyone asks when they're new to a type of car. But since I was a big time mechanic that had rebuilt  one entire engine , I told Mike I wasn't looking for no kind of sissy, turn-key bullshit. I wanted a project car, and it had to be an early, low windshield model.Mike delivered. He told me that he had a car that was low on his priority list, and it was pretty beat up. But then he made me the irresistible offer: Drive my truck and trailer up to his place, and buy all the body panels it would need, and I could have the car for FREE. Then I saw the car.      How could I not love this piece of poo poo? Dents on EVERY panel? Last registered in 1996? Completely original? Interior made of Cold War era vinyl, held together with spit and promises?   I was completely on board, and nothing could convince me otherwise. I was going to throw some bichin' mags on there, rustoleum paint job over that canary yellow crap, build an engine, and drive the poo poo out of it.   96bhp, gently caress yes. "Was" As many of you have discovered, when you do things with an awesome car cheaply and quickly, you can end up with scope creep, and before you know it, you're shoehorning an LS1 into a Bosozoku Mazda minitruck. Things started innocently enough. 65-68 R16 (1600cc) engines have a 3 main bearing crank, but when production of the U20 (2000cc) began, all the blocks went to 5 main. The U20 and R16 use the same block, but the U20 has the OHC stuff monkeypatched onto the front timing gear. The takeaway is that if you start with a 5 main R16 block, you can keep the pushrods, but use the 2000cc crank, rods, and pistons - making a stroker pushrod engine. U20 timing sets are something like $1200 new from Nissan, so I decided to make a stand. The cop out solution for talentless fuckoffs with no appreciation for vintage Japanese iron is to stick an SR20DE in there, and cover the windshield with fatlace stickers Lucky for me, Mike was really interested in seeing what I did with the car, and he agreed to trade me a 5 main block, U20 rotating assembly, and U20 carbs for my running R16 engine. This was going to be possible, and I was going to be driving this awesome loving car by Christmas 2010. I set about removing the engine, with the help of a factory service manual (which is USELESS but looks really cool).         Little did I know, this was the last time my Roadster would have an engine in it for a long, long time. Two Liters, Too Late The U20 crankshaft is still a thing of beauty. This was, to the best of my knowledge, one of the first production Japanese engines to use forged internals. Note also the fully counterbalanced design, and how generally awesome it is.  The cylinder head was from another late R16, and would have been overcut for an R16 with the factory domed pistons. With the U20 flat tops, and my ambitions, it needed to be cut even more. Daddy needs his compression ratio.  The U20 flat tops fetch a mint, so Mike really did me a solid in this trade.  U20 SU carbs. I really did think I was going to use these, since the alternative seemed like the much more expensive Mikuni PHH 44s.  Up next, body work and engine builds.
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Nov 3, 2013 23:22
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Work is slow today because we're trying to get a new guy integrated on our git repo. I need a break from solving his merge conflicts, so here's part II. Work Dat Body Since I was still convinced that I was going to be driving the car by Christmas, I had no qualms about doing cheap, fast repairs. The car was obviously covered with body damage, so I started beating out some of the larger dents with a mallet. I'm not proud, but my goals were different then.   Feeling satisfied, I pulled off the doors and fenders to replace them with ones I had gotten from Mike. The car wasn't the same color anymore, but it looked a lot more like a car. gently caress yeah, gonna be driving this awesome Datsun in just a little bit.      This looked pretty good to me. The Rustoleum would cover up all the different colors, and since I had the engine out, I could do the bay, too! But as I started removing more and more of the poo poo, I realized that I would have to take the dash and interior out. I mean, who wants to ride around in a car with holes in the floor? Several of the vendors sell a dash, and an interior kit, so I figured it would be alright to just spend a little money. And  later I would have a nicer Datsun.Gutted So the interior came out, and it slowly dawned on me that there was very possibly a reason that this car was so... free.   Not in terrible shape for being 43 years old, honestly. Clearly, I was going to have to reupholster the seats though. And buy a new carpet. And fix the hole in the floor. All things that I was still confident could be done on a shoestring budget. In retrospect, this was the true beginning of "while I'm here" syndrome.   A quarter from 1967, found under the center console. #2spooky4me   The wiring harness was a mess! Better pull that out, and make sure I get it cleaned up and working.     Vroom Vroom, Son It was finally time to load my 5 main bearing R16 up on the stand. The engine had clearly been rebuilt by a MURRRICAN MUSCLE guy, since loving everything on the block was painted, and it was painted Mopar Orange.  I don't know what it is about Datsuns that attracts these people, but they're loving everywhere. I guarantee you that every L-engine in every Z car that has a painted valve cover is owned by someone whose previous ownership experience includes at least four El Caminos and most of a beard. Don't even get me started on the Holley 4bbl conversions. It's a loving Datsun, not your dad's truck!  Disclaimer: I know some really good Murican Muscle guys, but I'm talking specifically about the type whose "engine rebuilds" consist of eyeballing the rings, spraypainting the long motor, and ordering everything they can afford out of the Edelbrock catalog. Anyways, I have automotive ADD, and when I started this project, my engine stand contained a VG30DETT (sans turbos). I don't know why I owned this. I've never had a 300ZX. Long story short, I put that bitch on some tires to make way for 96bhp of Datsun fury.   Predictably, the block was nasty and grimy. It had been subject to a bastard rebuild using flat top pistons. My guess is that their head was overcut, and they were trying to get some more life out of it. Most of the accessories were in okay shape, except for the distributor, which I was planning on replacing. The R16/U20 block is remarkably stout, so my plan at the time was to use one of those cylinder hones and replace all the wear parts. Ah, hindsight...    I stripped the block down and painted it with GM Blue, because I'm a hypocrite. You can get the correct Datsun Turquoise from various people, but it's something like $22 a can and I was unwilling to spend "unnecessary money" for such a "trivial thing". (This is now darkly humorous to me.)   The paint barely stuck because I did a poo poo job getting the block clean, and the cylinder hone did only an okay job. I was nearly going to run it like this, but then fate intervened...   I called up "Datsun Don" of Rising Sun Racing, and started asking him about headers. I had heard that he makes the best one, being ceramic coated and all sorts of other goodness involving the correct thickness of a flange. The header was going to be the first nice, new part my Roadster would see.  We got to talking about my stroker build, and I mentioned that I was having some trouble. See, the U20 crank is a drop in, but the nose is an inch longer to accommodate the second timing set. You have to get it cut off, re-tapped, and re-keyed. People on the forums talked about it like it ain't no thang, but when I called my machinist he said something along the lines of  "That's crazy and we never do things like that".So then Don did something that changed everything. He said "You know, I've had it on my shelf for years, but I've got the last NOS Nismo stroker crank." The stroker crank was developed in the 70s for people racing the 1600s. It has the same stroke as the U20 crank, but only half the counterweighting and no nose. There's a forklift version of it that people sometimes use, but with the disclaimer that they wish it was the "real one". So I did what any rational person would do, and I bought it.  Now I had a new problem on my hands. I had been doing lovely, monkey-like work on the car because I wanted it done cheap and quick. But now I had this awesome crank... and I knew I needed to do it justice. The engine had to be a monster. I had to get more power out of the R16 than anyone else ever had. But if I had the most powerful "R20" in the world... I couldn't put it in such a dirty, grimy body... Stay tuned for tales of Engine Build II: Build Harder, and also the part where I hulk strength the body off the frame.
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Nov 6, 2013 15:57
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Leper Go-getter posted:Yeeess i want to know more SO much more and i want pictures of EVERYthing!! Your wish is my command. I'm deliberately not spoiling how this turns out for me, because I want everyone in AI to experience the same dawning horror/comprehension that I did... but in a compressed timescale. The pictures will improve in quality. I ended up using my lovely cameraphone to take all the early shots, but eventually started using a Canon Elph, which was marginally better.
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Nov 6, 2013 18:36
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extreme_accordion posted:Let me know if you need the BRE engine manual... I'm sure you are already beyond needing this by the sound of it. I've read the competition manual cover to cover a few times, if that's the one you mean. I ended up taking some liberties with the engine build, since there have been some major changes to certain technologies in the past 40 years. No spoilers, though! For anyone lurking, Datsun.org has some great resources. Also, just to expound a bit more on the difference between the cranks:  The first image is the "R20" stroker crank. The second image is a Toyota 4AGZE crank on top, and the U20 crank on the bottom. This makes it really easy to see the difference in counterweighting, and also the relative size of the crank. This is a terrifically stout little engine, and it's spinning a shitload of mass which I later reduce even further. My feeling is that the half-weighted crank is going to spin up faster, but not do well at high RPM. That's okay with me, because every dyno graph I've seen for these engines has the torque come on early, and high RPM trail off. The OHV valves are smaller than the OHC ones, and pretty much everything about the design is consistent with a "big-torque" engine. I figure I'm just going to take everything to its logical extreme. The U20's OHC head was developed by Prince, which is why it looks like such an afterthought. Coincidentally, Prince also developed the S20 engine that goes in the Skyline GT-R and the Fairlady Z 432. Look at this head and tell me it's a design you'd want in YOUR car. 
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Nov 6, 2013 18:57
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Alright, you bugaboos. Time for part three. I'll try and make these shorter so that I can break them up better. The Great Divide Something magical happened next. Look close, and tell me what you see...  Have you figured it out? After looking at other people's projects on the Datsun forums, I realized there might be rust in places I couldn't see - namely, on the frame. I also had plans to do... well, something about the suspension, so I decided it was time. I gathered some family members who were milling about, and we muscled the body onto a furniture dolly.  I didn't have a good idea, visually, of how the underside of the car was. There are some nooks and crannies in the frame that I couldn't lay eyes on. But, none of the dirt I ate tasted good, so I wasn't surprised by what I found. Namely, the metric poo poo-ton of rust, dirt, oil, road grime, rocks, dehydrated biomass, and things that didn't fit clearly in any category of disgust but were disgusting nonetheless. Pulling the front suspension apart unleashed an unbelievably concentrated version of the poo poo-stink miasma I'd been dealing with already. I don't know when the wheel bearings last got greased, but it weren't grease no mo'. I began to actually realize what I had gotten myself into around the same time as I pulled off the driver side coil spring.   Where... where's the rest of you?    Who knows how long that fucker was like that? How many other things were still like that? At this point, I was slowly beginning to realize that it was completely impossible to use any part of this car the way it was. The frame, at the very least, would need to be stripped bare, checked for holes or deformation, and then... something. So out everything came. After I finished stripping down the front A-arms, I moved to the back, and discovered that the axle wasn't as stout as it looked, it was just...  covered in about an inch of death-grease.     I was, at the time, seriously not prepared for the perils of '60s car ownership. Somehow, while being one of the earliest manufacturers to offer things like a cheap sports car with 5 forward gears and an OHC engine, Datsun was still stuck in the past. The frame pads had mostly rotted away, because they were made from horsehair and tar, I poo poo you not. The time when this was going to be a 'quick project' was over. Now, it was just a grudge match between me and the neglect. And I was gonna punch neglect square in its sissy, pinko Commie face.  Finally, the body was completely bare (except for the steering box), and I could begin the next phase of my plans. But while all this frame tomfoolery was happening, something very interesting had happened to the engine... EDIT: Forgot an image ironblock fucked around with this message at 02:04 on Nov 8, 2013 |
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Nov 8, 2013 01:55
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I should be doing web development for my stupid job but I'd rather tell you guys about my engine.  Oh, are we going somewhere? I think this was the only time my Supercharged MR2 was actually good for anything, and I think it overheated in the machinist's parking lot. Anyways, I dumped the short block and all of my goodies into the MR2, and we went on a magical journey.  At the time, I lived in the California Bay Area, and let me just tell you, gently caress trying to get any decent work done around there. I had to drive out to Hayward to get any decent machining done, but even with the bridge toll and the agony of driving an MR2 full of engine parts, I want to give the biggest shoutout ever to Rob's Auto Machine. This guy is so good, so meticulous, and so thorough that I wouldn't trust anyone else to do my engine parts now. First, we attacked the head. Since the R16 was a 1600cc motor, and I was going to be cramming a ton of air through it... We had to up the ante a little. It got clean.  It got cut the hell down and CC'd, so that I ended up with a 10.25:1 compression ratio (stock is 9:1). This is important, because it is both loving AWESOME and the thing that informed later bad decisions about cam profile.  It got ported to the size of the gasket. This isn't a particularly good shot of the porting, but I was too excited to get it right.  It got a 5 angle valve job, hardened steel seats (can't use brass with unleaded!), and oversized H20 (forklift motor) valves. Things are starting to shape up by now.  Iron Block, indeed The block got the same treatment. It was 0.75mm overbore when I got it, but that's not gonna fly. I had it punched out to a full millimeter over, and honed professionally. The difference was night and day. Don't hone in your garage. The surface was decked (or "kissed", as Rob liked to say) very gently, since I didn't want to get my pistons popping out into the cut down head.   The entire block was heat tanked, destroying my lovely paint job. Now back in my lair, I re-masked the block and painted it again - this time, with results. Also I changed the freeze plugs, because... why not? It's not a cheap project anymore.   With the paint drying, I prepared the rotating assembly for battle. My 1mm overbore U20 pistons, my U20 rods, and my R20 crank were about to make for a motor that most people will never see. As an aside, getting piston pins in SUCKS HARDCORE, and I wish I'd had the machine shop do it for me. The trick was to heat up the pistons a bit in some hot water, and press really carefully   I had to stop working on it for a bit, because I had been using the H20 (forklift) parts set, which is cheap and readily available. Unfortunately for me, the R16 and H20 pistons use a 2.5mm second ring, and the U20 pistons use a 2.0mm. Thanks, Nissan.   Assembly Finally, I got some rings, and started to do the deed. I started by laying in some nice, fresh, standard size main bearings (because my crank is NOS and I wanted to remind you guys ) Then I got the 1mm overbore pistons ringed up, and spent the most autistic hour of my life arranging each ring to be perfectly positioned for first start.  Finally, I took a moment to admire how lovely this all almost was, and how Don convincing me to by a Nismo crank set off an avalanche of wallet-pounding madness. Those pistons do look nice in that fresh, clean deck, though.  I ran a mixture of ATF and SAE30 through the bores overnight, and microfibered them out. There was just the tiniest bit of gray on the cloth, so I saved the Earth and everyone on it. Disclaimer: putting ATF down your cylinder bores is a crazy snakeoil idea and I don't personally endorse it.  Sooner than I thought possible, it was headgasket time. There were some more H20 vs R16 fitment issues, but I figure one coolant channel won't kill me. I also Copper-coated that bitch, which in retrospect, I wish I hadn't done. Oh well. (I do like the way Copper-coat smells, though)   The Cam Unfortunately, I lost my pictures of the cam and its glory. The skinny is: .460" lift, 290° duration. It's reground from the stock cam, so the base circle is reduced a bit to make the magic happen. The goal was to get a bit grumpy on the idle, and play nice with my crazy static compression. The Joining is Complete Even though six months had flown by from the day I first got the car, I still felt good about getting the engine together so soon. There were still some things to sort out, though - like the distributor, alternator, and other accessories. Cooling was also set to be a bear, and I didn't have a potential remedy outlined just yet.   This is a better example of the widened ports. They're reshaped from stock, and should have some very interesting flow characteristics. Nobody does head work on the R16s anymore, though, so I have no basis of comparison. It's going to throw down harder than a U20, though, and that's what counts.  I put the manifold and header on, just to dream of the future for a moment. The future looked badass. Looking backward from the future, I can say for sure that it is badass.   It was early December, 2011. I still figured I was being pretty reasonable by this point, since everything was pretty standard. It was going to work with the U20 carbs I had, and the modified manifold. I had missed my goal, but maybe I could take it for a road trip next summer, after the paint and suspension work was finished. But thoughts of the engine would have to wait, because it was time to turn my attention back to the frame... ironblock fucked around with this message at 03:27 on Nov 8, 2013 |
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Nov 8, 2013 03:17
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Thanks for the encouragement, guys. It helps, but it makes me miss the car. I thought I was going back to CA for Thanksgiving, but it looks like I might not be able to until Christmas. The FD soothes the burn a little, but I really want to get that car down to Grand Cayman. No AC, 100% humidity bandman posted:I'm gonna guess that those old carbs were trashed and you ended up with Mikuni 44s or something else equally badass. I too am on the edge of my seat, waiting for the next installment. The story of the carbs is completely absurd, and is going to take an entire post to play out. That won't be for a little bit, but if you have't guessed already, every time I think I might be doing something rational or expected, I take a hard right and do something else. I will say only that there are carbs, and that it's not what you think 
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Nov 8, 2013 04:39
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Alright, AI, calm down. There's more on the way. Datsun derailing I was still finishing college at this phase of the Datsun crusade, and I constantly found myself without any money. Datsun parts are loving expensive, by and large, so this was going to be a problem. While starting some long lead tasks involving the body and frame, I did some freelancing and rebuilt a KA24DE for a friend of a friend. That entire car was a horrible mechanical failure, but I digress. I dethroned the R20, and put the KA24 on my engine stand.     The client's weird color choices nonwithstanding, the KA rebuild gave me some ideas about my own engine, but more importantly... it gave me a shortstack of dolla billz I could use to put my plans regarding the frame and suspension into motion... Ironblock and the grimy frame I went ahead and removed the steering box, which is a horrible nightmare of bad engineering. It BARELY fits in there, and was clearly converted from a design intended for the right hand side of the car.  It's in the past now. At last, I finally had the frame laid bare, and I could get a true sense of the size and weight of it. I also got a sense of how thoroughly disgusting it was and how little I wanted to clean it or paint it.  More critically, my track record for painting dirty things wasn't good. But then I realized something else: It would fit in the bed of a truck. And I could take it somewhere. A magical facility where the shattered dreams of a madman become beautiful reality.   And that somewhere could help me with what came next: Powdercoating loving everything under the body. I didn't understand much about powdercoating at the time, other than how durable it was compared to paint, and how little effort was involved on my part. Once I arrived at Maas Bros. Powdercoating, in Livermore, CA (a long loving drive from the Peninsula), I was inundated by a bewildering kaleidoscope of Coors Light beer cans  , all powdercoated in a different color or finish or texture.I knew I wanted black, but I had a wide, wide array of black to choose from.   I ended choosing a semi-gloss finish - something that would look nice and be relatively smooth, but wouldn't be shiny to anyone looking under the car for the drugs I'm obviously on. Back at the Datsun Ranch, several mysterious packages had arrived, and been dumped on my garage floor. What could they contain?  The Christmas BBQ Donald Rumsfeld posted:There are known knowns. These are things we know that we know. There are known unknowns. That is to say, there are things that we know we don't know. But there are also unknown unknowns. There are things we don't know we don't know. One of the terms I now use to describe something that has been completely hosed up beyond all control, in a way I could never possibly have forseen, is a "Christmas BBQ". I had been waiting a few weeks for the truckload of parts to be ready. Maas Bros. finally called me on Thursday, December 15th, and told me "Yeah, your stuff will be done tomorrow for sure". The drive to Livermore took over an hour, so I wouldn't be able to make it before they closed. I wanted to get started that weekend, since it was precious Datsun time, and so I decided to wait, and go the following afternoon. I called ahead to verify that they would be ready for me, and the phone rang and rang and rang. This wasn't too strange, since they're a small shop and most of the guys were usually media blastin', powdercoatin', or drinking Coors Light. I decided to leave, and call again from the road, thinking that I could at least give them a heads up. What I found, when I finally arrived, defied all logic and expectation:  Who the gently caress has a BBQ for Christmas? On the 16th? In the middle of the day? I went home and nursed my unholy rage. I have to cut this short, because I'm being shanghaied into going on a boat. hashtag caymanproblems
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Nov 8, 2013 22:22
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Huge_Midget posted:I'm nursing a monster set of blueballs thanks to this thread. You're the best/worst sort of cocktease. Nothing compared to the ones I have about the car. Astonishing Wang posted:I have a picture of the finished car in my head and I'm positive that it's wrong. I have a picture of spoiler left blank for maximum cocktease effect in real life and it's amazing. Some poo poo goes down and it's pretty awesome. Anyways, I just spent a few hours drinking on a boat and now the girlfriend wants to go have a romantic dinner. Stay tuned for some seriouspostin' about spring rates and damping rates and stuff.
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Nov 9, 2013 00:57
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You guys are awesome. The other designer my company has quit, and we're launching a new business in a month, so I've been totally swamped with work. Lucky for y'all, I'm sick to my rear end of loving around with Twitter Bootstrap, and it's time for more Datsun tales. Harder than paint As with so many other parts of this project, this one felt like the turning point. Like once I got this straightened out, there were going to be no more headaches or mysteries or previous owner kludges I'd have to fix. Full disclosure: Never think that about any car project. Z3n posted:Excepting the, ahem, inopportune Christmas BBQ, did Maas do a good job on the powdercoating? Oh yes, they did. To the point that something I barely recognized ended up in my truck bed.  What manner of object be this? Every time I have a part reconditioned by professionals, I always think they must have thrown mine away and bought another one from somewhere. The frame was astonishing. Maas covered all the threads, plugged all the holes, and generally made sure there were no areas where the powdercoat could get that it shouldn't. They were cheap, too. I'd use them again in a heartbeat.    The only problem was what I expected. The horsehair/tar frame pads had, surprisingly, turned into horrible poo poo magnets and put some dimples in the plate. None of them were too deep, and the plate on this frame is real thick, so I wasn't too worried about it. Now that they're covered in powdercoat, we're out of the woods. And now, I think it's high time we find out what was in those boxes. These cars saw a lot of racing back in the day, and were very successful and competitive, even against larger marques and established cars, like the Porsche 911.   This was part of the Datsun brand strategy, meant to get them a better foothold in America. It's the same reason you could buy a 2000 with a "B" cam, dual 44mm Mikuni Solex carbs, and a 7 quart oil pan (which people hate because it gets punctured by rocks). The end result of that is that there's a huge number of race parts that are still available, or being remanufactured. There are ways to make the little Datsun a lot more car - especially in the handling and suspension department. I got them all.  The swaybar is 7/8", up from the pinky-thin one that came stock. Also pictured is the rear axle, grime free. Overall, the car is lowered about an inch. The coil springs are reproduction competition style, 860 lb/in. They are STIFF motherfuckers. The leaf springs are also a competition design, and they weigh in at 180lb/in - but will be more progressive than the fronts. They're enormously stiff also. The leaf design is interesting, because they sit with a negative arc at normal load, and get more negative as you load them further. Even at full droop, they're very flat in comparison to the factory springs. The net result, at this point, is that the car is hugely stiff and set up like a vintage race car - more a byproduct with my 'turn it up to 11' mentality than a planned event. But it was instructive in things to come...  All of the shocks looked original, and completely blown. Options for this car are limited, so I grudgingly accepted a set of KYB Gas-a-justs, which, despite their name, are not at all adjustable. The body is larger, and the design is newer, so these would be "okay". For now.  Continuing my crusade against anything that could rot, rust, or deteriorate in any way, I replaced every single piece of under-car rubber with hard-as-gently caress polyurethane. They didn't have access to this poo poo back in the '60s, so this is all new. This is quickly becoming a 'no holds barred' undertaking.  I have to get back to work, but up next, I install the suspension, and we solve some other problems. For example, what if my brakes were the largest possible thing? What if they weren't even from a Nissan? Also... where's my transmission?
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Nov 11, 2013 19:30
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Fucknag posted:Actually, now I'm intrigued as to the "Ballistic" part. Does this car ramp off a hillside at any point? It becomes... sleeker. You'll see. I'm a big fan of driving things that might explode at any moment, also. Ownership history includes: Supercharged MR2, VF500 Interceptor, RX-7 FD. Why drive something with margin of error? Krakkles posted:How do you feel about minorities? I... uh... what?
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Nov 12, 2013 05:52
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Rugoberta Munchu posted:Krakkles is referencing a very dumb thing that happened over 4 years ago that has nothing to do with Datsuns or Grand Cayman. As a fun fact, Americans are a tiny minority here, and I feel awesome, so... minorities are awesome? I'm surrounded by Canadians and they're ruder than they say they are
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Nov 12, 2013 06:38
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I want to tell you guys everything all in one go, but since the car is in California and I live on Grand Cayman, I'll eventually catch you up with my own sadness. Unless my situation changes, and it might I only drag this out because I love you. In any case, I finally transferred my photo library to my workstation, so now I can seriouspost  in style. I've also found a few more special gems I thought I'd lost, like this image of the glorious feast I had for New Years Eve, 2012: Anyways, let's get started. Comparative analytics Now that I have more pictures of everything, I can do some proper comparisons for the before and after on the suspension. This, to me, is proof positive that even the rustiest shitbucket can be saved. Now I just need to find a Graham-Paige Spirit of Motion coupe. This is just a casual example of some of the wretched flak that came off of my hubs, ball joints, and A frames.   I won't lie, I almost gave up here. I had to buy a 3/4" adapter for my 1/2" air gun, beacuse the spindle bushings are interference fit to 175ft/lbs. I thought I was going to destroy my vise. It's important, though, because this is the 'restoration' part of 'restomod' that so many people seem to overlook. There's a huge tendency to just slather some Rustoleum black on the frame and call it good - but if I didn't replace these spindle bushings, the A arms would have had a huge amount of play, top and bottom. Pound for pound, there's nothing that will do more for the way the car feels and drives than replacing wear parts in the suspension. I don't think new cars are all that much better, handling-wise. They're just starting with all their wear parts at 100%, whereas a 'nice classic' will still have had some lifetime wear. 45 years is a lot of metal-on-metal time.    This is the quality of the stuff I gave to Maas.  This is what I got back.     I replaced the spindle bushings with new Nissan, and that fixed nearly all of the slop. At the time, spindle links were NLA, so I had given up on them. At the time of this writing, they're back on the menu, so I get to spend another huge chunk of cash on threaded rods.   New seals, lockplates, and Zerks finished the job, and I had the components ready to go back on.   GWS is leaking Another misadventure I want to share with you fine folks is making "differential soup". My diff was caked with the same oil-dirt hellspawn as the axle, but it hadn't gone for media blasting. I had to clean it at home, so I tried a variety of different things. Eventually, frustrated that NONE of them were working, I mixed them all together in a tub, ladled it over the diff, and went for a wire wheel. That seems to have solved the problem but I think I have cancer now     A new mystery for you I thought I was going to get further in the process, but I forgot how much was involved with all of the suspension hard parts. I did promise brake and transmission content, so I'll leave you with something to consider, and a mystery for Goondetectives to solve. Mystery one: What's in the  Mystery two: That's a stock brake caliper on the left. 
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Nov 12, 2013 19:36
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KKKLIP ART posted:My dream car was always an early Datsun of some sort. I always liked the idea of a 240/260Z with an F20C or F22C1 in there. It just seemed right to me. Putting a 4 cylinder engine in a Z is a war crime. You wouldn't put an EcoBoost in a 67 Mustang. Don't do this. General thread update: I'm in Vegas to see NIN, and may not have the next chapter before Sunday, when I get back. Depending on what remote work my buddy and I each have to do, it might still happen. Vegas is awesome.
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Nov 14, 2013 11:47
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As long as we're talking about diesel engines in a Datsun thread, I'll continue the derail a little longer so that I can submit this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wLbN45c44Q8 This swap is awesome.
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Nov 18, 2013 16:09
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Viking Blood posted:As I have personally done a Girling swap a couple of years ago, I will refrain from answering Mystery #2. Oh poo poo, do I know you from 311s.org? I post under my real name there, but you'd recognize my avatar.
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Nov 19, 2013 16:33
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Okay, finally have some free time. Now we can get to the good stuff. Transmissible diseases One of these mysteries is easy to solve, and time independent, so I'll lead with that. One of the biggest disadvantages to the 1600 Roadster is that it came with a 4-speed transmission, whereas the 2000 came with a 5 speed. As with almost everything else, the 2000's analogue to the 1600 part was poorly engineered, and kind of an afterthought. The 4 speed transmissions are remarkably stout, and have nice low gearing with a wide spread - good for smoking tires on a torquey motor. I didn't want any of that. I wanted to match my high-strung torque monster to something with tall gearing and a high top speed - so I got an early 2000 5 speed.  Let me explain why this is bad. The 5 speed developed for the 2000 Roadster was used almost unchanged for 40 years. The casting on the cases changed, the bearing sizes changed, and the gear ratios changed... but the 5 speed in the 300ZX Twin Turbo is the same design as this transmission, in most respects. The early years were rough for this design. 5th gear was not splined, and it was held on by a single nut, with no lockwasher, second nut, or anything to keep that gear from flying off - so it did. By the middle of '69, Nissan had figured out that this was going to be a problem, and switched to a splined 5th gear with two nuts. But they took away something I liked. The early transmissions used servo-syncros made of steel - similar to what you would have gotten on a Porsche. The later ones (and everything up through that line) used Borg-Warner style brass cones. So I got the early one with unobtainable synchros, shipped it all the way from Florida on a Greyhound bus, and questioned all of my decisions thereafter. Someday, I would have to figure out just how hosed it was inside - but it wasn't time to pull this apart yet, because I still had so much to do to the frame... Suspension of disbelief I knew a few things going in. One of them was that I had just spent stacks of cash powdercoating the bejeezus out of everything under the car. The other was that the original bolts were rusted to poo poo. Enter McMaster Carr (The best store in the universe).  McMaster hooked a brother up with about 50lbs of coated bolts designed to be both insanely strong and immersed in salt water or something, I dunno. What I do know is that as of this time, they haven't shown a hint of rust. Which means that I have one of the only truly rustproof Datsuns in the universe Things started coming together.     Of course, I hosed up and put the spring shackles on upside-down, which later caused some hilarity when I tried to figure out why the rear of the car was so high in the air. The front suspension was the first to get truly reassembled.   Not bad, considering. And yet... there's something missing. Something to stop the car with. Put the brakes on So Viking Blood was right about one thing, but wrong about the most important part. He didn't consider the AI factor.   Yes, these are 4 piston Girling brakes. Yes, they're for a 1975 Volvo 240-something. Yes, they're great big lumpy iron boat anchors. But here's where you have to start considering important things. Things like "What if I didn't just have superior Swedish stopping power? What if I never wanted to have brake fade ever? What if I went just one step further?" Enter the A32 Nissan Maxima. A wholly unremarkable car with very remarkable girth. A veritable tugboat compared to my nimble little Datsun. And its vented brake rotors were just the right dimensions for creative machining. But first, I had to get the old hubs apart. Ingenuity, or something like it Getting the brake rotors off of these cars loving sucks, and there's no two ways about that. I made some bad decisions (and no progress) trying to use a small wedge between the hub and the rotor.  Eventually I was able to beat them apart with a chisel and several hammers and about a gallon of PB Blaster.  Only to discover that I still had to pull the wheel bearings. This was some bullshit. I didn't have access to a press or even a good puller. There were some little grooves on the inside that I could use to... to...   You'd think that wouldn't have worked, but by putting the superbar across the top of the hub, I was able to invert the puller's jaws, hook them just barely onto the bearing race, and slowly tug it out. Once it was flush with the superbar, I just went back to using a hammer.   It leads me to believe that the wheel bearings on these cars don't get done very often. Anyways, that's taking me away from the point, and the point is brakes. But first, a word from our sponsors I just need to talk for a moment about how much I loving hate RockAuto and their shity service and their lovely website and basically how much they loving suck and how every employee they have needs a good crack to the jaw. I ordered two brake calipers, one right, one left, both vented. I got one right, one left, one vented, one solid. I called RockAuto to complain, and they said "Yeah well we don't really do returns on that brand but maybe you can sell it on a forum or something   gently caress YOU ROCKAUTO BURN IN HELL YOU MONEY-GRUBBING SHITLORDS Braking even Anyways, with that out of the way, I went to Autozone and bought the caliper I needed. I also contacted a few machinists who had been known to do crazy things. Between them, I received a set of modified Altima/Maxima rotors, a set of spacers, modified hub spacers, and brake fluid manifolds to hook up to my factory lines. Also in this picture is RockAuto loving me for all I'm worth.    It was time to boogie. And just look at the difference I was going to make. There's some girth to it, if you know what I mean.   Installing the hub spacers might have been the hardest thing I'd ever done, but after hours of screaming and inappropriate hammer use, I had brake rotors.   I was worried that after all this, I was gonna get black flagged on the last lap and the brake calipers wouldn't fit for some reason. The casting quality was piss poor, and there was a lot of hoping and praying going on. And they didn't. Every thread on the body of the Roadster is SAE, and the calipers used metric. Lucky for me, I have some big honkin' drill bits and the willpower to see this thing through. Nrrrrrreeewwww   So after all that dicking around, was I going to have brakes? Yes. Yes I was. Just. Barely.      What do you figure? Do I have enough braking force for a 2000 lb car? There's another problem, though. Now the chassis is nice, the suspension is nice, and the brakes are nuts... Guys, the factory brake lines are GROSS. How... how can I make that be the other way? In the next update, expensive decisions are made, I travel south and learn about destiny, and the Datsun travels north to make a new friend.
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Nov 21, 2013 00:14
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drukqs posted:Peninsula? I'm in menlo park!! TWINSIES!! Hah. The car is in La Honda, but I don't get back much Next year I'll have residency tax status and I can go back whenever I want. This year I have to earn my tax exemption by staying out of America for 330 days.
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Nov 21, 2013 01:16
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drukqs posted:I've got a buddy who lives up there, drives a silver 2zz MR2 Spyder... If it's a tall guy with fuzzy hair who lives on Old La Honda Road, I know him too. And think he's an rear end in a top hat, but that's another story. drukqs posted:Maybe we'll see one another on the touge when this project is completed in 2020 (delayed a second time because "Terrific" Ted Thompson will give you a NOS cupholder and you'll have to sperg out on the interior too) Since you're local, you understand that roads like 84, 9, 35, and Pescadero Creek are the genesis of this decision. But in all seriousness, my current hope is to bring the car to Cayman, since having a car that lives on a continent you don't live on is no fun. Also, we haven't even GOTTEN to the interior. Holy poo poo, I will not ruin it but I will tell you now that I start making bad choices and don't stop. ironblock fucked around with this message at 02:45 on Nov 21, 2013 |
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Nov 21, 2013 02:42
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Z3n posted:Is there a concern about heat expansion causing the rotors to rub on the calipers? That clearance is insanely close! I'm a bit concerned, yeah. still, there's enough space that I could chuck 'em on a lathe and get more clearance. And if they get too hot, the calipers will become a lathe!  Hopefully the venting will keep me safe. It's realtively common to do this with the factory rotors and the solid version of the calipers, and as far as I know, both rotors have the same OD.
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Nov 21, 2013 02:45
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Viking Blood posted:To use the solid version of these calipers and the factory rotors you need to machine 1/4" or so off the OD of the rotors. Not saying you'll have a problem but...just sayin'. After rereading the Altima rotor thread, I recall that we eventually all decided that there wasn't gonna be a problem, but that it was going to be really, really close. Preoptopus posted:Wait what year Maxima are you talking about? I was not aware my rotors come as a hub assembly. Sorry, I had it wrong, they're from a '96 Altima. Here's the trial and error thread on 311s. Brace yourself for maximum  drukqs posted:He was craptalking my MR2's viscous LSD last night "AWW THAT SUCKS" then grilled me about whether my car had actual multilink suspension Christ do I not miss that part. He once parked his EJ20 longmotor in my garage for 3 months "intending to fix it", because he blew a hole in a piston. Apparently the TD04 isn't meant to be pushed to 1.3 bar on stock internals and injectors. Who knew? It's really likely that you all met me a long time ago - I would have been driving either a red 1989 Supercharged MR2, or a blue and silver 1982 Datsun 280ZX. I variously hung out with just about every group that was driving up in those hills. The MR2 guys are the craziest. There was one guy with a Twincharged 89 making like 600whp, but he got mad at us for "driving faster than he wanted to go".
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Nov 21, 2013 15:45
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Alrighty, AI. I promised you tales of travel and now I'm here to deliver them. I'll start with myself. Diversions abound Since the Roadster was clearly not going anywhere fast, I had to find other ways to scratch the itch. I got a long term loaner 68 1600 Roadster, which is more fun than anything I've ever driven. I have automotive ADD something fierce, and I made a string of bad decisions. On a related note, if anyone wants a 1980 RX-7 LeatherSport or a 1978 Datsun 200SX, you can have them for free. The MR2 has long since been shot up in Oakland and sold for $1000. loving car was a nightmare anyways.    Velkommen Til Solvang Solvang, California is a tiny  It's also the site of the yearly Datsun Roadster Classic show, and the 2012 was the first year I attended. More than anything else, I think this trip solidified my hopes and dreams for the car, and caused me to finally nail down my guidelines (even if I do keep changing them today). There were a lot of Roadsters.    I met up with Mike Young (who gave me the car), and updated him on my progress. He was amused. I also got to take some pictures of his car (which routinely wins best in show). It's a 1967.5 car, and has the updates that Nissan intended to make before the US DOT forced them to take a hard left. The dash and gauge surrounds are black, the gauges are combined, and it has all of the later saftey updates. These are arguably the best version of the car to get, but I like the look of the early ones better. Mike's car is also one of only very few with the competition package. 7qt finned aluminum oil pan, "B" cam, and dual Mikui Solex PHH44 carbs. (Excuse my thumb, I was excited)       There were some early 1500s, which have a neat dash and a sideways rear seat   There were racecars, bad decisions, amazing engine swaps, and even a 1200!    There were amazing wheels, which helped me make a decision I'd been trying to make.     But a few things stuck out to me. I had been mulling over my options for paint and interior, when I had my attention drawn to a little fact. Most Roadsters had a black interior, which is all well and good. White and black cars, however... got red.   Color me captivated. Those low back seats with lapbelts, and no rollbar? What great lines! A perfect choice, then, for the enterprising young hooligan with too much power and not enough brain. Also, I noticed that the look of the Japanese cars is better. No bumper over-riders, and amber lenses for the turn signals.  After a full day of adventure and Datsuns, it was time for the long drive home, and time to make some other preparations.  Finishing touches... first Around this time I finally got a valve cover, a timing cover, and some of the other odds and ends I had been missing. Inspired by some of the things I had seen at Solvang, I decided to spruce up the VC a bit.   Also, since I knew what was about to happen, I started the most regrettable thread ever on 311s. There's a lively debate about whether the 2000 or 1600 is a better car, but I was splitting the middle with the stroker motor. So I did the dumbest thing I've ever done and asked an internet room full of crotchety old men whether my car should have 1600 or 2000 badging. Ho. Lee. poo poo. After learning a lot about life and a little about love, I decided to stop asking subjective questions to grumpy car people (except for you, AI). And since I was splitting the difference anyways, I opted for the Japanese Fairlady badge, and nothing else. This was the first "appearance only" part I had bought, and it started a new avalanche of wallet destroying horror.  There's also a high likelihood of me putting these badges underneath, just to piss off the purists:  But I needed those badges right there and then, because it was time for the next phase of Datto-san's life. Journey North, Young Datsun Despite having been shot at, menaced, offered drugs, coerced into assisting drug dealing, and generally having a bad time there, the East Bay is kinda where it's at if you want good things done cheap. I located a shop in the Concord called Black Dog Customs, and called him about my car. I'll skip ahead a bit to say that Matt is an absolute beast, a pleasure to work with, and he does a goddamn excellent job. First, I decided to really enrage the purists by using a late model apron, which has larger cooling ducts. Mine was all hosed up anyhow.  The body is a little bigger than the frame, so it had to go on the flatbed.   Once we arrived, we did some inventive dollying to get 'er in.   Next to Matt's Ford Galaxie and some of his other American land yachts, the Datsun looked hilariously small. Matt laughed, and told me that it would be easy and cheap to paint. I was a little , but the shop was 20 minutes from my college, and I could always go check on her if I got anxious.I turned my attentions to getting the frame rolling, which was going to involve some unknowns regarding... brake lines, rear brakes, and other fun tasks. Also, I had a transmission to investigate in the worst possible way. Edit: ironblock fucked around with this message at 21:00 on Nov 21, 2013 |
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Nov 21, 2013 20:05
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Seat Safety Switch posted:Yeah that place is so Danish it hurts. WHOOPS. I completely fat-fingered that one. I even had the Wiki open in the next tab... Seat Safety Switch posted:Mechanical updates are one thing but I cannot wait to see how painful the bodywork is... Even today, the saga isn't quite over... but like I said, Matt is a beast.
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Nov 21, 2013 20:59
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drukqs posted:INTERWEBS REUNION!! REKINDLE THE LOVE STORY FELLAS Oh jesus. He's referencing the time we both ordered two 4x4s, a fries, and a chocolate shake (each). I seem to recall that he ate both his 4x4s and drank his shake... but I finished his fries. Oh to be 17 again in  ...
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Nov 21, 2013 23:37
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loving gently caress. This has been the worst couple weeks of my life. My weak Californian body is hugely susceptible to weird tropical diseases in Cayman, and I caught some horrible bacterial tonsillitis thing that kept me in bed for the better part of last week. Not a great place for me to be, since I'm on a tiny development team building a huge website that's launching in a month. kastein posted:Really piss 'em off. Put 1600 badges on one side/end and 2000 badges on the other, but make sure you can't see any mismatched badging from any one angle. I can't do this because it would cause me to have sadness seizures when approaching the car. And because I've already done something else. That's enough crying about my various maladies. You came here for the Datsuns, and I got the Datsuns. Seeing is believing It wasn't long before Matt started texting me pictures of the car, teasing me with its naughty, naughty exposed metal and a shitload of rust/bondo. There were some fairly dramatic improvements, right off the bat. One of the worst rust spots on the car was the bottom of the rear right quarterpanel, where some animal or another had clogged the drain hole with detritus from its pathetic life. We also discovered a shitload of horrible bondo repair on what's essentially a big flat panel. Previous owner repairs never make any sense    The late model front apron went on without a hitch.   The rear panel was very obviously going to be the worst, and I had neither the frame or a bumper as a guide for Matt. This would later prove to be a bad idea, but still, there was some progress... and some popped welds where the trunk floor decided to part company with the rear panel.   This was also the beginning of the ballistic and inter-continental parts of the resto-mod. I was in Oakland, the body was in Concord, and the rest of it was in La Honda.  And back at the ol' homestead, there was work to be done. gently caress you, steering rack There are very few parts of very few cars that deserve special design condemnation, but the steering rack on the Datsun Roadster is one of them. It's a simple linkage, but all of the parts are incredibly tight fit, held in with castle nuts, and have about seven zerk fittings each. Getting it apart involves bodily contortion, six or so hands each holding pickle forks and hammers, and the blessing of a loving god. I had about half the list getting it apart, and maybe one of those things putting it back together. At least I painted it first.  I also went ahead and replaced the boots with polyurethane, because the only place rubber belongs in my car is wrapped around the wheels before I smoke it off. Also, new zerks everywhere on the car, because greasy car is best car. I don't have a lot of pictures of this process, because I was in a blind rage, and Helpful Dog was licking my face while I was yelling at the linkage. Sometimes you just want the madness to end.    But the madness keeps on going This is about the time that I decided to take apart the transmission. It coincides almost perfectly with me hating everything about anything, forever. Earlier in the thread, I posted:The early years were rough for this design. 5th gear was not splined, and it was held on by a single nut, with no lockwasher, second nut, or anything to keep that gear from flying off - so it did. By the middle of '69, Nissan had figured out that this was going to be a problem, and switched to a splined 5th gear with two nuts.  ...  ...  So, that happened. Somewhere in this transmission's seedy past, it was rebuilt, and rather than shell out money for the new 5th gear and the double nut arrangement, the nut was helpfully welded on! So the bad news was that I'd have to grind off that weld and do a bunch of other onerous bullshit if I wanted to rebuild the transmission... the good news was that it shifted fine, and someone else had already hosed with it. I continued to disassemble it, though, for reasons related to cleaning and discovering condition. First, I covered my workbench in gear oil.  I made more soup (and finally got some goddamn Marine Clean).   Next, I removed all the casings and got down to    To my admittedly untrained eye, everything with the transmission seemed to be in really good shape. It was tight, the shift action was smooth, there was very little play in anything, and the syncros and bearings looked nicer and newer than the metal around them. So... not smoking, run it. And now that the casings were clean, I decided to take it one step further, and paint/clear them. This was one of those peace of mind things, and based mostly on how loving porous the casting was on the whole case. I decided that any dirt in the future should have no place to glom.    I ordered some new Nissan gaskets from a friend at a dealership, and got this as my receipt:  At some point, I found a (mega-rare) water pump for my Roadster, and installed that with some painted pulleys. These can be seen next to the reassembled transmission.   Paint me like one of your French Datsuns Despite the condensed nature of this post, I actually spent a loooooong time fiddlefucking with that transmission, and while I was Gojo-ing gear oil out of my hair, Matt was hard at work cutting pieces of my body up and spraying the rest with surfacer. This can be seen as kind of the first pass, and a way to tell where the high and low spots were - since there was no way we could tell through that technicolor nightmare.         German surprises If you remember, I ended up with a spare U20 crankshaft. That's the kind of rare and unobtainable part that you just can't put a price on. So I did what you do in that situation, and traded it for another rare and unobtainable part. I was, truthfully, never happy with the KYB Gas-A-Justs. I've had them on other cars, and they're mediocre at best. And for the speeds I wanted to go, there was really only one way to fly: giant monotube shocks designed for other cars.    Bilstein US posted:According to the Bilsteinus website we don’t make shocks for your application. The front shock is of a ‘60’s Volvo and the rear shock is of a ‘60’s Alfa Romero spider. Shocks must be similar in length and the vehicles are similar in weight. Not the first time we have seen Bilstein’s on a non-standard application. Yeah, that should do nicely. This is getting out of hand Another problem I had with the 5 speed swap is that, yeah, I had a U20 flywheel... but... heavy. I decided that the best way to make friends and confuse enemies was with the lightest possible flywheel, which ended up being another Nismo reproduction part. What you're looking at here is a 9.5lb AASCO aluminum flywheel with a replaceable friction surface.   And a mystery! Since you guys seem to love/hate mysteries, I'll close with this. I got a box. From Japan. There are some things in it. Go. 
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Dec 5, 2013 01:41
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Elmnt80 posted:There is a small part of me wishing it could be the 15x15's off of holdbrook's bosozoku truck. Also, same, guessing a set of rims. There's a big part of me wishing it could be. I think that would slightly diminish the drivability, though. And yes, rims, but... which rims?
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Dec 5, 2013 04:00
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Aargh posted:Minilites? Seat Safety Switch posted:It's probably Minilites, Sakuras or Watanabes but I'm hoping for teeny tiny TE37s. Nope nope nope. Though, teeny TE37s would be kickass. The flowchart for choosing wheels as a Roadster owner is basically this: pre: Do you want to keep the car stock?
Yes No
Stock wheels Panasports
I don't like Minilites, Watanabes, Panasports or anything following the pattern of "I am a boring wheel with eight rounded spokes" No, I took a different path. I figure that every part of my car needs to be volatile and a slightly bad idea... So I picked something a little older, and a little more likely to explode into a shower of aluminum dust and flying wheel bolts.
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Dec 5, 2013 15:51
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Dong wheels are a thing? Guys, I feel my goals shifting...
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Dec 6, 2013 03:04
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Sinestro posted:I'm guessing American Racing Le Mans replica wheels. Libres were my backup choice. I came so so close to using them instead of the five slots that I had when I started, but then a friend in Japan offered to help me get a set of wheels on Yahoo Auctions JP, and one thing led to another. Update coming soon. edit: just realized these aren't Libres. I still like this style, but at some point I got really into pushing the vintage Japanese go-fast parts.
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Dec 8, 2013 03:38
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ultimateforce posted:I wish I had Datsun stuff other than S30 for you. Roadsters are pretty cool. I actually have an S30 that wants an RB30DET, but it's in the same situation as this Roadster, and way further from the mark. Someday, maybe... 
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Dec 9, 2013 16:30
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It's that time again! I'm swamped today, so I'll make this a little shorter. It's irritating, because we're starting to get to the really good stuff. I'm not going to get to the wheels right away, but I'll give it away to those in the know. This should explain what I said before about exploding wheel bolts.  With that out of the way, let's look at some primer. Presto, change-o It doesn't even look like the same car, does it? Matt really put the extra work in, massaging panels, tweaking gaps, and getting the curves just right. I really doubt that the Nissan plant in 1967 put this much effort into making it fit together properly. White is just the primer color. Who knows what color I'll eventually decide to go with?      Chronologically, I should have posted these before the transmission rebuild, so there's some time dilation in here. Even without that, Matt moved quick on the next phase of paint, which I'll show after I talk about wheels for a minute. Wheely nice The mystery is over. They're Hayashi Command 500s WITH CENTERCAPS , with a +15 offset. This gives me a pretty decent opportunity to shove wider rubber under the car, and once they're properly restored, will look great with the paint I've chosen.  Here they are next to the old 5 slots. Now, I like the 5 slots just fine, but they aren't special vintage Japanese racing wheels for hooligans, so they weren't fitting my image of the build anymore. I'll most likely keep them and put autocross tires on them.  Of course, it's never all sunshine and fairy dust, is it? These wheels were on someone's shelf for a while, but they were certainly used. They were also coming from somewhere in southern Japan, next to the ocean. I opted not to trust my life and livelihood to the remaining strength of those wheel bolts, and put in an order at McMaster Carr for some replacements.  But since I had the wheels, I opted for a test fitment. Looking good so far!  ... ... clonk  The massive Volvo brakes occupy the same margin that the wheel bolts needed open to fit  . Now I'm gonna need a spacer, and the McMaster bolts will definitely be too long. This is the price of style, I suppose...Now for the good part I had previously left Matt with my expensive new emblems so that he could get them on the fenders where they belonged.  And boy, did he ever.        These pictures were taken with the paint at a claimed "95%". The paint is like everything else on the car, and it was here that I finally cemented my vision and guidelines. Everything should be based on the original concept, but improved to the highest possible extent.  It would have been possible to do a base-clear job, but that gives the car a luster/wetness that it didn't have from the factory. It also makes it harder to repair when someone inevitably can't see my tiny car and runs their Explorer into it. It's a single stage urethane paint, and it's the same color as the factory's 505 Thunder Black - it has just a hint of red in it, which is only really visible in the sun. The paint is rock hard, and impossible to scuff (I've since had ample opportunity to try). The interior got a very generous coating of POR-15, as well as new floors. Putting my foot into the freeway at speed would have been funny, but probably only the first time. These floors will never rust again.   With Matt nearing the end of the body/paint extravaganza, it was time to prepare the other half. Rolling, but too stiff to rock Preparing for the inevitable, I put wheels back on the frame, thus finishing most of the suspension work. Until the Bilsteins are refinished, she's gonna have to make do with Crap-A-Justs.  Once again, the original frame pads were horsehair and tar, so I replaced them with some kind of eco-horror soft rubber sheeting, intended as much to make my car a solid, NVH fuckfest as to seal the frame where the original pads were.  No, I still hadn't figured out that the spring shackles were upside down. And onto the trailer it went, in preparation for The Rejoining. 
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Dec 9, 2013 22:51
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Seat Safety Switch posted:This last update delivered on the promise of the thread. I hope it will continue to get better. Wait 'til I get to the part with the avionics remanufacturer.
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Dec 9, 2013 23:46
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Hypnolobster posted:There is something intensely satisfying about a correctly rebuild body that got a good coat of POR-15 and body color. It's so new and clean and perfect. I spent about an hour sitting on the frame when it came back, right in the middle of the X. I just sat and played pretend. Seeing it that way changed my perspective a lot. The body I didn't want to touch, because it looked so perfect and I felt so unworthy. Chrome is even worse, mentally.
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Dec 12, 2013 05:10
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Team140 posted:I bought a '68 1600 that was a bucket of poo poo. I SO wanted to do what you've done with this car, but mine was in really bad shape and the only things it was actually missing were the most expensive things you could buy for the car These cars are shockingly expensive to restore. I've heard it said it takes three Roadsters to make one good one. Things like water pumps sell for $200 plus, USED, because nobody makes them. Nissan will do a production run, and then sell them for $250, and then the vendors buy them all immediately and resell them for more. I lucked out and got a reman for $45 - Cardone or Beck/Arnley or someone - and then they were all gone a day later when I decided I should buy and store some for the future. Things like the interior and upholstery are pretty well covered, but god help you if you need a reverse light or a syncro or a radio or some interior plastics.
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Dec 12, 2013 19:09
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ultimateforce posted:By the time you are ready to go on that idea I'll have it all sorted out for you. I have a similar problem to the girl that "can't hug every cat", but instead I can't own every Datsun. But, god drat it, I'm going to try, and I'm going to put turbochargers in all the right places. By "sorted out", do you mean beautiful manifolds, ready for giant turbochargers? Or do you have a hookup in Australia that can get those shortblocks? Either way, I can't prioritize things to save my life and any money spent on a Datsun is the most noble possible use. Basically, I won't be hard to convince.
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Dec 13, 2013 19:16
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Aw jeez guys. I haven't forgotten you, I promise.  Irony of ironies, I'm in California for Christmas and I can physically touch the car, but my pictures of it are on my computer in Cayman. As recompense, I offer you this selfie taken with the car.  That being said, there are some other parts of this story that have less pictures, and more words. This is a discussion forum, after all, so let's discuss... Carburetors This is a sore subject for me. This is a sore subject because I tried to do something awesome, and it's been a world of poo poo ever since. There are a series of problems that have become showstoppers for different areas of the car even today, and carbs are the biggest among them. I'll lead by explaining my awesome idea. In the 1960s, Datsuns were cheap cars, maybe a bit like Kia/Hyundai today. They got by in the world by cutting out all the fat, and delivering only the important specs, and delivering them in the cheapest way. Yes, it had a radio, but it was AM only and used a single speaker with a paper cone. Yes, it had door locks, but uh... good luck with that. The carburetors were no different. Like many of its contemporary European rivals, the Datsun Roadster used one, and later two constant-velocity (CV) SU carburetors. Designed in 1905 [citation needed], there is no simpler design for a carburetor than this, and they're enormously effective and efficient for what they are. The fuel mixture is determined by the taper of the needle. As the engine loads, the piston is drawn upward, exposing a thinner area of the needle, which allows more fuel by. In this way, the air entering the engine is always moved at the same velocity, making for a very maintainable, predictable carb.   The SU, however, is a total dog for performance. When you put your foot down, you're relying on the action of the butterfly to induce load in the engine, which will allow more air and fuel in. Your foot does not directly control the aperture, which is a little weird when you first drive something with SUs. Now, you'll get some  action from some greybeard sects, and they'll claim that you can make all of the horsepower with SUs. These people are bad and wrong.So when people in 1960 wanted to go fast, and they knew that a carb from 1905 wasn't going to cut it, the next best design was something from the 1940s. There's some incestuous clusterfuckery that went on between Weber, an Italian company, and Solex, a French one, but the end result was a line of mostly similar two barrel sidedraft carburetors. Mikuni, a Japanese company, got in on the fun when it licensed the design from Solex, producing the much lauded Mikuni-Solex PHH44.   The Weber DCOE-style are the carbs you'll most often see on vintage race cars, because by the time anyone had come up with a better design for carburetors (again, about 40 years later), it was too late to put them on cars. All we got then were some  '80s sportbikes.So even today, most people who want to go fast in a Datsun with the original engine use Mikunis if they can afford them, and if they can't, the current Spanish sand-cast bullshit Webers that you can buy now. gently caress aaaaallllll of that noise.  This is what's up. What you're looking at is four Mikuni HSR 45s - an SU replacement. Mikuni makes these carbs for people who ride Harleys and wish they had bought a motorcycle that didn't use carbs from 1905. They're a flat slide design, and your throttle linkage is directly connected to the throttle slide. When fully open, the only obstruction is the needle. No air dancing around a butterfly, no constant-velocity nonsense. You use your ears and your noggin to figure out where to put your foot for that delicious sweet spot. If you've ridden a modern sportbike, you're familiar with these carbs and how they feel. Four of them in a 2000lb car with a 10lb flywheel should feel very nice indeed. If I ever get them. Aye, there's the rub If there are any Volvo guys reading this, perk up those ears now. I bought the carbs from John Parker of Vintage Performance Developments in Syracause, New York. He mainly sells to Volvo guys, but he has a very thorough tech page about the HSR. And hey! There are pictures of a dual kit installed on a Datsun Roadster. Perfect, says I. I'll get four, and show all those grouchy oldsters how carbs perform when they were designed in SolidWorks instead of by sausage grinders with slide rules. The problem is... I paid an appreciable sum of money for these carbs in March of 2013, which is seven months ago now. I've gotten one email from John, asking if he could delay two weeks because they were out of the size needles/jets I ordered. I've sent some increasingly frantic emails since then that haven't gotten a response. How odd, I thought. Is something wrong? Is he dead? Short answer: No. Long answer: God loving dammit. http://www.thevolvoforums.com/general-motoring/12556-john-parker-v-performance-no-performance.html http://www.volvoforums.org.uk/showthread.php?t=174787&page=3 http://www.brickboard.com/RWD/index.htm?id=1532733&show_all=2 So I'm left with little recourse. After the Holiday season is over, I'm going to call John from a different phone number, and see if he answers. If he doesn't, I'm going to fly to New York and do some stuff in person that perhaps he won't like. There's lots of stuff I can do legally, since I have good records, but honestly, I don't want the money back, I want the goddamn carburetors. So here I sit, looking at a car that needs carbs. I can buy stopgap Webers, but I hate everything about that. Anyone in Syracause want to go be menacing in the cause of Datsuns?
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Dec 26, 2013 01:01
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You know, it's hard to tell, because most of the people who would benefit from these carbs are not the ones who would buy them or use them to their full potential. I found some carbchat on various Australian forums, and they all seemed quite enamored with them. I suspect that like most carbs, it's all in getting them set up right and synced with each other. I theoretically ordered a wide range of jets and needles, so hopefully I'll have the wiggleroom that I need. As for the noise, my basic concept was that stomping on the throttle in neutral should sound like a tiny thunderclap. I kind of regret now that I was poor when I did the engine, and I think it's going to be the weak link in my entire setup. With the exception of a few last piece parts, you guys have actually seen more or less the current incarnation of the engine. I'm not going to tear anything apart now that it's together, at least not before I run the car, but the future may involve forced induction and forged pistons / con rods. As for the guy who has my money and my carburetors... I have a lot of options, legally, but I'd like to do whatever will get me these carbs. If I don't get them from him, I don't really have any choice except either "use Webers" or "buy HSR conversion kits and try to modify the carbs myself". I'm not hugely optimistic about the outcome of either of those things, so I really want this to work out.
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Dec 26, 2013 03:01
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Jesus, gently caress traveling around Christmas. Dulles is always a shithole, but that was one of the worst connections of my life. I've spent the day making delicious clam chowder and trying to get caught up on work. Holidays are no excuse for poor output, after all. murphle posted:What all does the guy do to the HSRs to adapt them to the Datsun engine? There's a couple things. Since he has some sort of direct relationship with Mikuni, he's getting the carbs, parts, and jets without having to buy the Harley Total kit, which includes all the things you need but a lot of poo poo that you don't, like the intake manifold. To actually physically mate the carbs up, there's a rubber SU mount adapter that Mikuni ships in the Total Kit (but not the Easy Kit, the fuckers).  The rubber dingus (happily) works on the same spacing as the DCOE mounts, so the other thing that Parker is doing is ganging the HSRs together in pairs, hard-mounted together with DCOE spacing so that they can be used as a DCOE replacement. Thirdly, the HSR is designed for gravity feed, being situated under the fuel tank, so there's some modification he does to allow for normal carby fuel pressure (5-7psi). zundfolge posted:it'll be years before you get your parts if ever I have lots of air miles, and they do direct flights from Cayman to New York. Might be that if I pay a little house call, the wheels get greased... or, might be that my proximity to local government agencies in combination with some financial records cause Mr. Parker to have a very upsetting afternoon. Time will tell, lads. I really don't want to have to figure all that poo poo out myself, especially given that it takes me 11 hours and two airplanes to touch the car. Maybe if I buy a place down here with a garage... but that's a discussion for later. Savington posted:I'll never understand why people will stick with carbs over fuel injection "for the simplicity." IOwnCalculus posted:Neither hold a candle to an OBDII fuel injection system. A loving $20 bluetooth adapter and the cheapest Android device you can get your hands on will get you instant and real-time access to every sensor your computer sees, not to mention the actual trouble codes. I like 'em both, with the exception of '80s era garbage, which can gently caress right off. I think of it as being the difference between a paintbrush and a laser printer. If you hand me a paintbrush and ask for a meadow, you'll get my interpretation, and it'll be close, but it'll be artistic and have lots of character. If you want another one, I'll have to start over. If you hand me a JPEG of a meadow, I'm going to open Photoshop and tweak and toodle and then I can print you out as many copies as you want. I like carbs, I like fuel injection, but I like them for different things and for different reasons. Carbs are fun, though, and it really seemed to me that the HSRs would suit the spirit of this build. They're in keeping with the original intent, but they're also as good as it gets. They also have lots of room to play, in case I decide to supercharge later on.
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Dec 30, 2013 00:21
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kastein posted:Looks like the shitheel with your carbs is around 6 hours drive from me. drat, I forgot upstate NY is so big. The air is cool and silent. It's just before dawn, and rays of pink light are starting to creep over hilltops and into the sleepy valleys below. A golden-brown thrush alights on the branch of a lone aspen. She preens her soft feathers, fluffing them up as though to ward off the cold. She sits and waits, looking for breakfast. The branch quakes lightly, almost imperceptibly so. The thrush doesn't feel any breeze, and she is alone on her perch. What could it be? She cocks her head and listens. In the distance, she can just make out a soft roar, like snow avalanching off a tree's branches, or maybe a torrent of water splashing down onto rocks. Then, she sees it. Chasing away the muted rays of morning sun, the harsh yellow cascade of halogen high beams blasts over the rise. The furious trundling of the enormous diesel mill is nearly overcome by the sound of ten knobby tires chewing up the country road at 54 miles per hour. The morning's peace is shattered, but inside the truck's cab, there is a different kind of silence. A purity of intent, of focused will. An understanding between the truck's occupants that whatever comes to pass, whatever may have been ordained by fate, whatever transgressions against men and Gods are about to occur, that these things are right. That no questions need be asked, no answers need be given. As the country road gives way to to city street, and then to suburbs, the passenger smiles. The target is home. He and the driver share a moment of mute understanding, and the five ton truck commits a federal offense, obliterating the flimsy mailbox. A copy of Us Weekly flutters back to Earth in the neighbor's yard. With a grunt and a small lurch, the truck seems to regret its enthusiasm, cautiously backing its rear tires off the lawn while bringing its nose about. With the truck's formidable lighting array now aimed directly through the living room's picture window, sunrise has come early to one house in Syracuse. Red-faced and sweating, the man of the house bursts through the front door, flinging open the screen with wild abandon. His eyes widen as he takes in the scene in his front yard. The truck is still aimed at him like a ferocious beast, quietly rumbling sooty exhaust onto the petunias. Just as he puts his hands up to block the blast from those brilliant headlights, they're switched off, and the truck's doors open. IronBlock and Kastein jump down and form ranks in the muddy horror that once was the man's lawn, their jet-black suits contrasting sharply with the damage around them. IronBlock carefully adjusts his Rolex and clears his throat. "Mr. Parker," he intones, "you're late."
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Dec 30, 2013 04:44
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Really it was just a crime of opportunity. It's Mikuni's most recent design and has some improvements over the older "smoothbore" carbs. The fact that it's an SU replacement also makes it really really easy, wheras most bike carbs are already stuck together. It might be that if I get my money back and go to Mikuni directly, I could get the problem solved. This is on a CSP311 Silvia, but that's got the same engine/frame as my Roadster, so this is as close to a preview as I can get: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jl6LoeHmrgs
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Dec 30, 2013 20:08
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