What did you do TO or FOR your Datsun today?(Roadsters only)

[cbez]

tires look great, what size please? I have a set in my Tire rack shopping cart 185/75 14... is that correct?

Yes same size.

[cbez]

Door caps?

To finish the weatherstrip on the door.





That sloppy upholstery glue is gonna bother me...

[cbez]

Good news. Fixed my reverse light. Bad news...wasted $50.

No reverse light. I tested my reverse switch and had an open in neutral and reverse. My trans doesn't have the grease zerk for speedo cable, and my reverse switch looks like the new style (clean, rubber end, wire leads not just prongs) so my dumb brain immediately jumped to, oh later transmission. Ordered a 68-70 switch.

Switch has voltage to it. Test my reverse light just in case, open. The rubber boot that holds the positive connector to the bulb is dying. Fix it up for good contact again. Test leads at transmission, shorting them and the physically moving the new switch both turn light on. Skip testing old switch (dumb). Pull old switch, clearly diff threads than new switch. Fk. Put old switch back in but with the spacer washer I was going to use for new switch (either I tested the open wrong or this step fixed me...). Now light works.

Unfortunately now I got a brand new 68-70 switch I can't return cuz I put spade connectors on it. May just give it to somebody in need lol.

In other news I fixed my gas cap door with Dean's kit. Now the rest of my cap looks shabby with the nice chrome on the door!

[RustyBucket]

Wow - that looks great

[RustyBucket]

Remember to take out your iPhone and photograph every nut & bolt , wire connections and pipelines.

[bossbob]

Sprayed 3 more coats of primer on the doors, hood, and trunk lid last night. Will spray 3 more coats on the body over the weekend. Final sanding next week and color over Labor Day Weekend. It's been a long process with limited time to work on it, but getting excited. Did I mention, "I hate sanding".

[Gregs672000]

Sprayed 3 more coats of primer on the doors, hood, and trunk lid last night. Will spray 3 more coats on the body over the weekend. Final sanding next week and color over Labor Day Weekend. It's been a long process with limited time to work on it, but getting excited. Did I mention, "I hate sanding".

Yep, the final push is sometimes the hardest cause you just want the darn thing DONE!

[cbez]

Well our good local alignment shop is booked a month out. So I did my front toe as good as I could with a measuring tape. It started toe out significantly so I can't have made it any worse.

Also wired in a circuit breaker. Probably not the optimal way to do it but it should work..



Currently chasing engine noise. It's running louder than it used to, all the valves check out and everything seems ok...

[Gregs672000]

I used an inline fuse back in the day to protect the wiring, but not before I fried the amp meter and some wiring on a busy freeway while going to work when I lived in So Cal. To add insult to injury, as I jumped out of the car to take the post off the battery, a semi truck blew by me and the resulting air wave whipped the door out of my hand and hyper extended it because I had (and still have) no limiter. Yep. Not a good day. But crap like that teaches you that you'll figure it out and get beyond it. It just sucks at the time!

[RustyBucket]

Hyper extended door.
Pre cellphone days.
I lost my clutch whilst sitting in the middle lane of a 5 lane wide highway in a traffic jam. The clutch slave hose blew, followed by the engine over heating. . The push of shame as I pushed tge car to the side of the road and walking 3 miles to the closet phone booth.
Older but wiser , I hope

[Gregs672000]

Well, it's been more like three weeks since I had to tear it apart, but yesterday I finished installing the head, hooking up everything and firing it off. Went without a hitch and I ran it for the recommended 20 minutes at varying rpm to help seat the rings and break in the cam.

This whole thing was prompted/required after the head gasket blew as I was doing some hard run testing before a planned trip to the dyno for final timing work. A scratch in cylinder #1 prompted a removal of the pistons, and while the scratch was not an issue, the broken top compression ring in #4 was. This finally explains the plug burn differences in that hole, as well as the slightly less draw it had on the air flow meter. Amazingly, it had the same 205lbs of compression and undetectable leak down as all the others. This ring probably broke very early in the previous build and appeared to be due to too tight a ring gap (doh!). I decided to drop compression right this time and had half the crown on the pistons machined down to drop compression to somewhere around 10.5-11.0 from the previous 11.7. Ordered new rings (Total Seal) and honed the bores. While it was apart, I noted that the intake valves seemed a bit loose, and sure enough both the valves and the guides were worn (exhaust were fine), so new valves were sourced, modified (Chevy LS1 cut down to 48mm, 8mm stems) and the head was cleaned up and lightly surfaced. There was a slight change to the assembled height of the intake valves, so I took the rockers to Delta Cam and he surfaced them for just $2.00 a piece while I waited to make sure the cam and rockers would wear a new pattern together. A few hours later she came back to life.

Today I will put some miles on the engine and retune the EFI now that it's not being confused with oil and coolant in the mix. I expect #4 will now have equal flow to the others. I feel very fortunate to have a fairly quick and competent machine shop to work with. They are getting harder and harder to find, and when you do it's often months out. Assuming all is well, I may still get on the rollers this month for a final timing map tune and a WOT run or two to see what kind of power it's making. After that, I HOPE IT'S DONE! I'm out of money honey...

[datsun65]

Right on, Greg!

[RustyBucket]

Ca-CHING!!! Looks great and for what it must of cost - it better......... Hard to find a "machine Shop" or a transmission shop in my area. ALL the experienced machinists have retired or going to ...
Cam

[Gregs672000]

Thanks all. Yes, these guys are old time buddies who have built and raced together for years and now run a shop together. They didn't charge the crap out of me, and I feel it was very reasonable. The head has already had a lot of work over the years, so it's custom work to do the valves. They didn't batt an eye, nothing new to these guys. I feel fortunate for sure.

I just came back from the first 50 miles and all is good. Checked the adjustment on the valves, found that the exhaust loosen by .02 and the intake loosen maybe .01 vs cold settings. I did however have a serious scare just before I got home where I heard this horrible "screech!" sound while accelerating... wasn't sure it was me or the car next to me, but then when I got into the garage and reved it up, there it was, and loud! Ahhhh! What the hell is that?! Jumped out, reved it again... screech! Sounds metal to metal to my panicked ear. Is something not getting oil? Pull the valve cover, all looks good. Bearings? Hmmm. Alternator? Loose. Ah... calm yourself grasshopper... simple things first...

Car runs great and I can already see much more consistent tuning with autotune now that there's no contamination. Let's hope it all stays that way, eh?

[nismou20]

Sure it wasn’t the fan belt? Sometimes they can sound metallic. Maybe take it off to see if it’s WP or Alt? Or other. Good luck