My name is Dave and I just purchased a 1966 1600 Roadster. I've been a fan of Datsun/Nissan for a while as I own a 350Z that I bought new in 2008 and is now a full time track car. I wanted a fun car to drive on the street now that I can't drive the 350Z.
I've been looking for my first project car since I'm slowing down on the racing stuff. I've always thought the roadster was a beautiful car and already having one "fairlady" in the garage, I thought two would be better. I found one in Alabama, and pulled my trailer out there from Texas to get it. It was bit of an epic weekend project. We drove 12 hours out there Saturday morning and got to the seller's house at 6pm. We looked the car over and bought it. Then we started our drive back that evening, getting in two-ish more hours of driving before finding a hotel. We drove the remaining 11 or so hours Sunday.
The car runs and drives. The body and paint are in great condition with very little (almost no) rust. It needs some electrical help, the brakes aren't very good (I'm not even sure what "good" is for brakes w/o power), and the trunk floor is cracked from the weight of the gas tank.
The interior is in pretty good condition but it is a mishmash of toggle switches and stuff is painted black that should be shiny. Original seats according to the owner which sounds amazing to me. The foam is gone but whatever. It has a roll bar that I want to remove.
The goal is to get it back to as close to stock as reasonable. I'm going to clean up all the suspension and driveline components and replace any bushings/seals/gaskets/whatever along the way. I'll touch every nut and bolt on the suspension. I want to do the SR20 swap at some point, but I want to learn a carburetted engine first. The only other non-stock thing I want are the panasport wheels.
Looking forward to the journey. I'm gonna need help as I'm a complete noob to 50 year old cars, haha.
