Partial restoration of my 1968 1600

[Mainer311]

Yeah, this thread is inspiring me to finally do some body work. Did I say that out loud?

Will you be cutting rust out and welding new metal in?

Yeah.

[C.Costine]

Yeah, this thread is inspiring me to finally do some body work. Did I say that out loud?

Will you be cutting rust out and welding new metal in?

Yeah.

If you have not done a lot of that, you could come up and look at mine if you want. I am about an hour from you outside of rush hours.

[PBJ]

Today we welded the passenger kick plate on to the car. It has been a while since we made it, but my girlfriend wanted to see the job through to completion so today she did. I showed her how to weld and we got this thing installed.

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Now I just need to fabricate two more pieces to finish this side off!

[PBJ]

Its been a busy few weeks since I posted last and unfortunately I haven't done a ton to the car. We have been busy racing the bug recently and now that we have that up on stands in the shop getting ready for some new suspension work I may have a little time to actually get back to the Datsun.

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I did head to the shop yesterday to start making some parts. My girlfriend made a template to start making Rocker caps from and I was able to get about halfway through one of the Outter supports for the passenger foot well. I may have to just go down to the shop in the next night or two in order to finish that project up, it seems to be dragging on.

A couple weeks ago I was able to visit with a few other roadster owners, it was a good group of guys and now that I know what I am dealing with on my own car it is nice to see complete roadsters to compare against.

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We did get a new addition to the shop as well, a TiG and plasma machine. One of my shop mates bought this and I have already started working with it. Time to remember how to TiG weld!

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I will get back down to the shop and bang out these parts soon, pictures to come!

[PBJ]

It has been quite a while since I posted, but I've still been working on the little car... and remodeled my kitchen... and rebuilt the rear end of our offroad car while getting a new job... I've been busy!

So, to get started, I finished up that front passenger corner I made replacements for the two supports, painted them with weld thru primer, got them all welded on and sealed up with seam sealer.

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We also had a new shop neighbor move in, the guy happens to be a glass guy and he just happened to have a Roadster windshield! So for $200 I've got glass! He told me he'll install it too if I want, but I'm not ready for that yet.

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I've been thinking about paint a lot, how do I remove this mess and what should I do about painting it in the end. This car has a lot of layers on it. Lacquer paint is a real pain to remove too, it just loves gumming up tools...

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So Eastwood came out with a new tool and I happened to receive it as a gift for Christmas. This thing is amazing, it cuts through the paint, primer and bondo so fast I really can't believe it. I've been using a paddle wheel on it, basically it is sand paper with scotchbrite in between the flaps.

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So, with the new tool I've been stripping paint, hood, fenders, quarters, trunk lid. It only has a little more paint on it, just doors and a few tight areas.

With the new job I didn't really have the brain capacity to get to making parts to fix the rest of this rust. So I've just started getting back to that recently. I keep finding the extent of this rust, it's a mess in some areas and perfectly clean in others. The rocker caps are all destroyed, but this is the worst of them.

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So, I started cutting out some of the rusty bits in preparation for replacement. I'm starting to make templates so thes parts will all be fresh metal

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Beyond that I started knocking piles of dirt and grease off the front suspension.

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I'm hoping to get some regular time in on this car for the next few months so hopefully I'll get these rockers fabbed and get some quarters on this thing. I have to fix one front fender soon too. Lots to do, but I'd like to have the metal work done by the end of the summer. We'll see if I can pull that off!

[notoptoy]

Nice work, and a good ambitious plan deadline for sheet metal work. Good luck, nice to see the progress!

[GoldHawg]

How hard is that new tool on the underlying metal? Datsun sheet metal is already pretty thin...

[PBJ]

How hard is that new tool on the underlying metal? Datsun sheet metal is already pretty thin...

I'm sure if you lingered on the sheet metal it would take material out, but I'm not sticking around that long. It seems to leave a nice finish without removing a ton of metal. There are a lot of options for drums to fit on here, so there may be some more and less abrasive drums.

[PBJ]

Well, as it turns out this year has been a busy year. It has been nearly an entire year since I actually worked on the Datsun! Unfortunately Racing took over my life last year. It was pretty much an incredible experience, but none the less, the Datsun took the back seat.

Ok so what was the racing? We raced the 50th anniversary of the Baja 1000 in a stock bug (class 11) we were fortunate to be a factory supported team this year since VW took us under their wing! We actually Finished too! 1134 miles in a stock VW bug!

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Today I got back to it. The front drivers side corner was the next task on the list. I cut out a lot of rot last year and now I finally got around to making the replacement parts, welding them in and getting it all sealed up.

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I have been seam sealing the top of all of these new parts so water doesn't get in. I leave the bottom open so water can evacuate if needed. Everything has weld through primer on the inside, Hopefully this thing will hold up to a little more torture.

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Not long ago I took a little time to fix up the scoop on the front as well. It was pretty crumpled up.

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I cleaned it up, straightened it out and coated it with RustStop. I'll get some primer on this soon and paint it up.

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Onto the rear drivers quarter next, Rockers on both sides will follow that. Im looking forward to starting on the interior.

[PBJ]

I went through last weeks work on the front of the car and finished up a few missed spots then threw a bit of primer on there to finish it up.

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Onward to the next parts of the car. I have the final inner fender to repair on the car, this is the drivers side rear and I spent a lot of time today working out a plan to tackle this side.

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I straightened out the rusty metal, templated this side and worked on a plan for creating the metal replacement parts for this corner. This corner is a lot curvier than what I have had to deal with, so getting a part to fit is challenging for a novice sheet metal guy like me. As much work as I can put in ahead of time to understand how the metal needs to bend, stretch and shrink is going to help out so I don't put a bend in before I should put a stretch in or something like that.

I have been toying with tape templates, Using tape to find all the shapes of a panel so i can reconstruct the panel from that tape mold. I learned this from the Proshaper site but I haven't figured it all out yet.

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Finally I started evaluating the rocker panels. These are all garbage. So replacing all the metal in here will be essential. I'm looking for some usable metal right now. If that doesnt' work out then I will need to make all of the metal. I have seen the remanufactured end caps and rocker panels, but that stuff is just too expensive, so I'll have to make it if it isn't available from a parts car.

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[PBJ]

I have been having a little trouble getting the shape right for the rear fender on the drivers side. there is a new dimension I am working with on this side and I was finding that i was getting a little frustrated with it. A good friend of mine always says "when you get frustrated Give up" what he means is "move on to something else and let it all simmer for a bit till you are read with new ideas." So I moved on to the front suspension for now. Lets get some progress under our belts.

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I started pulling all of the front suspension apart on the drivers side. i am leaving the Passenger side in place, just in case I need a reference point. For the most part everything is in pretty decent shape so far. I've been cleaning a lot of surface rust off everything and treating it all with rust stop, but nothing appears to be structurally problematic.

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I have spent a lot of time cleaning 40 years worth of grease off all of this stuff, it is truly baked on there. But over time this stuff starts to shine again.

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Of course as I got to the lower control arm I got to a stopping poing when I didn't have the appropriate socket size. It appears to measure to 33 mm, but I don't have anything above 32. I've stopped by a few parts stores and had no luck so far, hopefully I can get my hands on the right size soon.

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Through the entire removal I broke only one bolt on all of this, and that is on this lower shock support tray. I have 3 more bolts to go on this tray and I have my fingers crossed (and a pile of liquid wrench soaking on there)

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I ordere new ball joints from DatsunParts, new KYB Gas-A-Just shocks and Chassis black paint from eastwood. All of the suspension components will get coated with this paint. I am going to POR 15 the underbody once I get a little farther as well. For now it all soaks in a layer of rust converter...

[PBJ]

I have been working on a number of projects, but mostly I have been cleaning up all the suspension bits for the passenger side. I have developed a method at this point which basically starts with a heavy cleaning till the grease and dirt is gone. A full buff with the wire wheel, a coat of rust stop, a few days cure time then another buff with the wire wheel and abrasive pads. By this point the rust is neutralized so I throw a bit of Eastwood chassis black primer on the parts then finally go to the chassis black final coat.

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With all of the parts done I took the pivot spindles to my friends shop to work on the threads. They were actually not bad, but I wanted to make sure everything was threading on smooth and he has much cooler tools than I do.

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We cleaned up the threads on these parts both internal and external threads and now they are smooth and ready to go back on the car.

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Next up, I need to clean up all the parts on the chassis and POR 15 it all. Then I can reassemble this side.

[2mAn]

Very cool thread I was seeing all the activity from 2016 and was hoping that the thread didn’t die out. Glad to see you’re still at it.

BTW how do you like that TI? I had a M52 swapped E30. Such fun cars but a pain to make legal in CA so I sold it and just have a basic M20 powered 325i.

[PBJ]

Very cool thread I was seeing all the activity from 2016 and was hoping that the thread didn’t die out. Glad to see you’re still at it.

BTW how do you like that TI? I had a M52 swapped E30. Such fun cars but a pain to make legal in CA so I sold it and just have a basic M20 powered 325i.

Hi Simon, I took a little break from the Datsun last year as I was starting a new career and racing the VW. This year I’m back on the Datsun and hoping to actually get it solid soon.

The Ti is a great car, plenty of power and it has all the e30bits in the back half and e36 bits for the front half. I’m hoping to get that out to some races this year also! I’ve been helping a friend with an f80 swap into an e30! That thing is a little over the top!

[PBJ]

Well, it turns out I forgot to order the seals for the lower wishbone...and I somehow didn't buy new hardware for the upper ball joint. But, all the rest of it looks pretty nice after all the cleanup. Once the new seals arrive I will get this all bolted up. In the mean time I am working on the steering knuckles and I'll start to paint the chassis mounting areas with POR15

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