Datsun Roadster Forum-311s.org

charlee0620 wrote: Wed Apr 24, 2019 7:28 am I like the mock off the dash. I too had a time settling on which gauges to use. I’ve chosen the speedhut ones and am going to customize them. I think I’m going to have 9 gauges when it’s all said and done.
I’ll get more into it on my thread, don’t mean to hijack

Thanks Matthew, they mock up definitely helped me visualize the size, placement, and number of gauges that would be comfortable with. I have been thinking about it non-stop, and came up with a couple more ideas in my head that might help the dash not look so home-made. I am going to mock it up with some of that corrugated plastic board, and duct tape. This should give me a flat pattern for when i take it to sheet metal. I ordered my gauges today. The tach and speedo are VDO Cockpits, and the coolant temp, oil pressure, fuel level, battery voltage, and vac/boost are Cockpit International. I feel like this is a classic/retro look, and they are side-lit like I love! I still have to buy all of the sensors for them, but its okay. I would love to see the speedhut gauges when you get them. They are very quality pieces.

charlee0620 wrote: Wed Apr 24, 2019 7:28 am
Did you finish the rear? What springs did you go with?

Crazy jealous of your progress.

Cheers
Matthew

I definitely did not finish the rear, but I sure made a mess today. I took a half day off work, and went after it. I was dying to know how what I had would all work together. I tacked the pushrod brackets to the axle, and then out it came to be fully welded. I was confident that no matter what changed up top, I could still use these mounting points so I went ahead and did it. After reinstalling the axle and all of the links. I ran a quick stringline around the wheels to get a better eyeball measurement that the axle isn't way off in alignment. I know it's not precise, but it was enough to have confidence in proceeding.
I tacked up the rod ends into the tube, and purposefully left the pushrods long. I then took the remaining rectangular tube and made some quick pivot mounts. These were tacked (heavily) in place, and some temporary bolts were inserted to hold everything in place
I cranked the preload, the compression, and the rebound damping down to the minimum and finally put the roadster's weight through the suspension. I works, but there is some things that both I planned on changing, and will change now after performing this test. So here is a video I took of me stompin' around on it.

[youtube][/youtube]

Just a gut feel, this effective spring rate will work... I dont know how well, but it is a good start. The stock springs on the R1 shocks are 600lb/in. With the mechanical advantage of the pivot arms,1:1.75, that puts the effective spring rate at 340ish. The spring rate is variable throughout the travel however. As the pivot pivots, the angle of the suspension travel changes. I do not like this pivot as the radii that the connections travel along is just too small. The car isn't going to have much suspension travel, and with a 1:1.75 pivot ratio, It wont be using much of the shocks stroke.

What I want to do is get some custom springs made at maybe 300lb/in. Then I will make my own pivots instead of trying to reuse the aluminum ones from the Yamahas. I can (1) make it look much cooler, (2) bring the pivot points lower so the brackets won't need to be 8" tall (the rec. tubes were always meant to be temporary), (3) get a pivot ratio to allow the roadsters suspension travel to be soaked up by more of the shocks stroke, and (4) I can even add multiple pivot mounting holes for adjustment. Now that I have the basic points, I think I am going to take this project into SolidWorks, and either laser cut or waterjet them out. This will give me an opportunity to add that wow factor that I'm going for with this whole concept

Cheers,
Wade

you passed the wow factor about 10 posts ago!!

So I did a little bit more planning on the dashboard. Also, I GOT MY GAUGES!!!! I gathered inspirational images of other vintage cars, and did some sketching. I figured out what I did and did not want to look at on my car. It seems like most vintage flat dashboards share the exotic wood face and the leather/vinyl top/bottom.I found some images of rich peoples boats, and really liked how the top of the dash was wood instead of leather. After deciding that I liked my original layout better than anything else I could come up with, I sketched it out a bit more and quickly added some color to it in photoshop. I think i'm going to do something like a brushed aluminum face with a wood top. that might be pretty slick. maybe I'll get some time to work on it this weekend.

Cheers,
Wade

Good Evening fellow 311'ers. I'd just like to share some pics of the car. I did some work on the dashboard as well as started the very first steps of what will hopefully be a fiberglass wide-body.

First the dashboard; The plan is to build a sheet metal "tub" in the shape of the finished dashboard that will be secured to the car. This gives me an area to house the ECU, some wiring, and the fuse/relay blocks, which will be covered by the dash top. I am still debating on carving this top out of wood. I have my eye on a couple nice pieces of Walnut. Since I don't have the tools needed to bend and brake long pieces of sheet metal, I bent 4 pieces and welded them all together. I know that it is all warped and ugly from the heat of welding, but it is just intended to be a skeleton and will be covered with more appealing panels. For the dash face, I am currently cutting out a sheet of aluminum and plan to give it a brushed finish. I just stuck the gauges in the skeleton to see how well I could see everything while in the driving position.
Cheers,
Wade

Before starting the wide body kit, I rolled her out of the garage to snap some further away photos, and also to clean the garage.


For the wide body kit, I had imagined that I would buy a great deal of that green floral foam, glue it onto the body of the roadster, shape it by sanding/bondo/sanding, pull a female fiberglass mold of the fenders, use that mold to create fiberglass fenders, and rivet fenders on to the car. I very quickly realized the floral foam was not the right product. It comes in blocks so it was going to be difficult to adhere to the car, It was expensive, and was very static clingy when sanded. I realized it would be a bad idea to procede with this, so I switched it up to Great Stuff spray foam for the front fender. Going back and fourth like a 3D printer I deposited layers of spray foam to build up a mass to carve. I am just going to add/remove foam to visualize the overall proportions and style, and then finish it off with a filler material that will allow me finer details. after playing around with the foam, It was much easier to apply and cleaner to carve than the floral foam, so I removed all of the green stuff and proceeded with about 10 cans of foam. I still have a lot of thinking and visualizing and carving to do, but I just wanted to share the current state.

I still have a looooong way to go.



Cheers,
Wade

Love the progress! It’s looking great can wait to see the fenders fully shaped. The dash is looking bad ass! Like the making of a spot just for the ecm

Oh, I also love the stearing.......square?!

Cheers
Matthew

Thanks Matthew! The steering square is absolutely necessary, Every car I have had I've nicked the steering wheel with a key, or a tool, and put a tiny cut in it. Driving around with a knick in the steering wheel always irritates me more than it should haha. It's just cheap insurance while sharp things are being moved around it.

It has been a couple months since my last post, and while I haven't made much progress on the roadster, it looks like I did. Basically, I just cleaned up the engine bay a bit, and finished some of the small items. My main focus though has been getting my 240sx put back together. I had the engine out to replace the oil pump, water pump, and to put a much more streetable clutch in it. all of the progress on the Datsun was pretty much made while I was waiting on parts to come in for the 240.

-Valve cover: I had planned on shaving polishing the valve cover, but I was starting to feel that there was going to be too much shiny bling. I decided to paint, and went with my current favorite: 3 coats of Duplicolor "Cast Iron" and 3 coats of Duplicolor "Matte Wheel Clearcoat". I topped it off with an E-bay special billet oil filler cap. The coilpacks are from a 350Z and have a built-in ignitor, so there will be no need for the additional ignitor chip. I am going to cover these with a custom milled aluminum coilpack cover that looks vintage and says DATSUN or something.

-Turbo: So for now, I am sticking with the stock T25 as I want the fastest spool I can get without spending an additional $1000 for a ball bearing unit. I rebuilt the journal bearing center housing, and polished up the compressor housing. Since I will be using the external wastegate, I welded up the internal wastegate flap and the linkage. It is pretty tricky to weld the steel to the cast housing, but I feel that there is enough weld in enough places that it should hold. I will probably check it after the first couple of heat cycles to make sure the welds aren't cracking. The CHRA and the turbine housing received a coat of VHT 2000 degree matte black paint, and everything was assembled. I also put a little K&N cone air filter on the inlet since I will be running a MAP based ECU, and a MAF is of no use.

Manifold:I finally got around to cutting the hole in the collector for the wastegate port. I say "cut" because I had to use a series of abrasive discs and grinder bits. My drill bits wouldn't even touch the stainless steel for some reason. I got the hole cleaned up and welded on the V-band flange for the Tial MV-S. Now, All that is left on the manifold is to straighten the edges of the main flange and have the gasket surfaces decked. I also did get a stainless bellow flex pipe from vibrant, and along with a couple more bends, the wastegate will be plumbed back into the downpipe before it passes through the fender.

Intercooler Piping: There will only be 2 short pipes on this car since it is so small. The one on the intake side is just a 30 degree bend from the throttle body to the intercooler elbow. this was just a purchase part that I cut to length. the one on the turbo side I took a 180 degree bend, cut it at 90 degrees, then rotated one section 180 degrees and welded it to for an S bend. This allows it to jog around the air filter.


The next things on the list are to figure out the fuel tank situation, finish and mount the dash board, and make progress on shaping the foam for the wide body kit (I'm just not looking forward to the mess). Maybe I will work on the brake system a bit. Who knows haha! Also good news! I got a new phone that takes much much better photos! this was a long time coming. Anyways, Enjoy the photos and have a great day!

Cheers,
Wade

Heres a few more pictures that I could put in the last post due to overall size. Basically, I just wrapped the turbine housing in a turbo blanket to reduce the underhood temperatures, and I think the look badass!. Also, I started playing around with how I'm going to route the turbo oil and water lines. I know the AN fittings are the racer red/blue. I am going to most likely remove the anodizing, and replace the stainless braided hose with either black rubber, or braided black nylon throughout the engine bay.

Cheers,
Wade

Love the updates! Keep em coming

Lookin good!
Again jealous of the progress!
Keep it up!

Great progress!!

S

You have a unique combination of skill, creativity and fearlessness! Enjoying the build!

Thank you for the kind words everybody! I'm really getting to the point in the project where things are starting to come together, and motivation is starting to pick up exponentially! I am going to really love this car, I can tell!

I did a bit of work on my dash today. So I know the actual frame is just thin gauge, ugly, warped sheetmetal. I was always planning on adding a cap/faceplate to the front before putting the gauges in. I found this architectural product sample of some sort at the office that was a big piece of extruded aluminum....SCORE!!!. I cut it up and ended up with a piece of 1/8" sheet that was long enough to be my face plate. I clamped it to the dash frame and match-cut the gauge holes. At first I used this awesome sheet-metal nibbler that attaches to any drill. It's like $25 on Amazon, and makes cutting sheet metal a breeze. the only downside is that it creates the razor sharp curly-q's that become a pain in the foot. Then I finished the holes with a carbide burr bit on a high speed drill. The rough shape is cut, and now I'm going to finish it off by hand with files and sand paper. I think that I'm going to fix the dash frame to the body, and paint it the same POR-15 grey that i did the engine bay along with the rest of the interior. The faceplate will just be VHB taped to the frame, and I am currently searching for a nice board of Walnut or Mahogany that I can carve the dash top out of.
Unfortunately, the other pictures are just too large to insert
Cheers,
Wade

Well, I got the faceplate to match up with the dash frame, and all of the gauges were put into it. Then I took it all apart, and then leveled/evened it out with a file. I'm going to remove the file marks with a DA sander, and then put a horizontal brushed finish onto it with a sanding block and about 320-400 grit, clear coating afterwards for a bit of a shine. The dash is very thin and minimal, so the plan was to have a little drop-down switch panel in the center to both hide the windshield wiper mechanism, and to house the switches for wipers/lights/ignition/tbd/etc.

Also, I got a little 12" Mishimoto electric cooling fan and a mount kit. Got that all installed. I really do hope that this 2-row Honda Del-Sol radiator is enough to cool everything. Soon, I'm going to take my little wire route radiator hoses to the Auto parts store to see if anything matches. If not, I might weld up some aluminum pipes, and just couple them on there.

Anyways, here's tonight's progress. I feel like I should be updating this more often than I have been. Cheers,
Wade