Since the body is off at the paint shop, it was time to get the frame torn down and ready to get restored. We will be going thru the front suspension, replacing all the worn parts, and powder coating all the components.
Ok-- on to the frame:
Frames are always a bit dirty, but this one was an exception-- it was very, very grimy, and I spent a lot of time scraping off the years of "protective grease" to get it as clean as possible before sending it down to the powder coaters (who will sand blast the frame before powder coating):
I have been playing with roadsters a LONG time, but I have never seen a frame this dirty before-- oil mixed with some sort of fine dust made for quite the mess. Weird-- especially for a car with this low of mileage. But where did this oil come from? After staring at the transmission, and looking at where most of the grime was centered, I finally figured it out...
If you look at the body of the transmission, you can see that the back half of the case is dirtier than the front half. After checking that out for a bit, I noticed that the vent tube on the top of the transmission was missing, and had been broken off at some point (probably when a clutch was changed?)
This broken off tube should have a breather like this sticking out of it:
https://www.datsunparts.com/2203
Since that is missing, as the car was going down the road, there could be a fine mist of oil coming out of that tube, coating the frame with sticky gear oil, and slowly building up more and more grime as the car went down the road.
Ok, now that was sorted out, I took apart the entire front suspension (which was also covered in gunk):
When I had the spindles apart, it appears that this may have been driven thru some water at some point (or it could be from years of sitting)-- note the rust on the spindle-- the bearing surfaces are good, so no concerns there, but I have not seen this before:
The rear differential was also caked in grease and dirt-- so dirty in fact, that I will have to send this housing out separately for powder coating, as it needs some serious attention.
So, all that was left after removing all of that was to cut off the exhaust-- no big deal at all. I was not prepared to see that it was full of dog food (and possibly rat poison?)-- man, that mouse sure was busy!
And the ENTIRE length of exhaust was plugged full of dog food-- this view is going up towards the bend in the header!
In all my years playing with Datsuns, I have never seen that before-- (I had a good laugh!)
Then it was time to pull the engine and trans,
I pulled the valve cover so there would be no chance that the ultra-rare "C" rivet cover could be damaged-- a little dirty under the valve cover:
Not too bad under the valve cover, but we will be going thru all of this when we rebuild the engine:
The hole in the rear of the frame was welded up (on both sides):
And when I was all done for the weekend, I had a friend help me load the bare frame into the back of the truck:
So, this week I will be getting all the parts together and ready to go to the powder coaters (still some clean up to do on components) as well as getting some of the other parts that needed to be coated gathered up (might as well get as much done as possible).
More soon,
Michael
