1971 Skyline 2000GT Sedan (Hakosuka)

[mlracing]

Quiet afternoon at the shop so I thought hell with it, I'm gonna fit these triples on the car!



I've ordered some new jets to bring it back down to OEM spec as at the moment they're way too huge (came off L28, big cam). Highly likely to run like garbage on the 2L but whatever, will look and sound sweet haha. Give me motivation to get an L28 working.

Obviously there are a few things to work out before we can try to start it.. such as fuel hoses, coolant hoses, throttle and so on so there's a bit to do.. but they look rad! Will have to polish up the trumpets for sure!

And annoyingly still the left brake caliper sticks. The whole brake system could use a going over so I will look into rebuilding the front calipers.

PS: If you know of/have an L28 for sale holla at ya boi. Don't need most of the bits mainly just long block will be good. Needs to have been running, or still running.

[mlracing]

OK since last post I have got the smaller jets now, just need to put them in. I also purcased the throttle cable mount and hooked that up.. but then suddenly the stunt went horribly wrong..



As I was tightening the nuts to hold the cable in place it snapped off. The metal is so old and soft it had no chance. I was able to jimmy it up and make it work but I'll probably just go to a bike shop or similar and get a new cable made up. Can confirm it does work well and opens the throttle bodies

Also that white stopper thing seems to just dangle around and get in the way, perhaps not necessary for triple carbs.



Scraping off shitty old gaskets is not fun..

There's still much to do.. get the fuel lines sorted and also block off a coolant hose which used to run to the single carb setup. Thinking I'll just get a bolt slightly too big and wind it in with a hose clamp on it too. OK so there's not actually that much to do.. just some small things that take ages.

Oh, and regarding the sticky brake situation.. I've decided to just upgrade the brakes instead of fix it.. because that's what you're supposed to do right? I've also been toying up getting a new stainless exhaust manifold in because that rusty one looks nasty.

[broke]

Nice work,

the Lokar throttle cable you can get from all the hot-rod shops is really nice if you want something that looks a bit fancy too.

Plenty of Japanese outfits seem to be making sexy stainless headers but good lord the prices!

[240znz]

Nice work. Been watching this thread for a while now.

Some people don't like the sound of stainless extractors. I'm in that camp. Just a standard equal length set HPC coated inside and out will do the trick for me. I saw that a crowd here in CHCH is now able to HPC coat in black instead of the usual silver. Probably cost a lot less and the idea with the ceramic coating is that the more of the heat says in the pipe than in the engine bay. With the carbs so close the an extractors, that's a good thing. Food for thought.

The little faded oval sticker on the side of the carbs would have had SK written on them in case you were wondering. Also consider putting a filter over that rocker cover breather vent too.

Cheers

James

[mlracing]

Nice work,

the Lokar throttle cable you can get from all the hot-rod shops is really nice if you want something that looks a bit fancy too.

Plenty of Japanese outfits seem to be making sexy stainless headers but good lord the prices!

Actually turns out you can get repro brand new throttle cables with a slightly better design out of Japan for pretty cheap so probably just do that.

[mlracing]

Nice work. Been watching this thread for a while now.

Some people don't like the sound of stainless extractors. I'm in that camp. Just a standard equal length set HPC coated inside and out will do the trick for me. I saw that a crowd here in CHCH is now able to HPC coat in black instead of the usual silver. Probably cost a lot less and the idea with the ceramic coating is that the more of the heat says in the pipe than in the engine bay. With the carbs so close the an extractors, that's a good thing. Food for thought.

The little faded oval sticker on the side of the carbs would have had SK written on them in case you were wondering. Also consider putting a filter over that rocker cover breather vent too.

Cheers

James

Car already has a full stainless exhaust from the manifold back so might as well go the full way.. get that crisp noise! Because let's be honest the 2L isn't going to make it go fast so might as well sound fast haha.

I have installed now (not pictured) the drip tray thing which goes under the carbs as well for fuel leakage. Yep will get a filter on the way and there's also another breather hose underneath the carbs it looks like, used to go into the factory single carb area which I need to do something about.

[mlracing]

Went down to the shop and did some fiddling today. Short story, car runs on the triple carbs now, but won't idle. With a bit of throttle actually doesn't feel too bad but yeah long way from running nice yet. I purchased some new gaskets but turns out there were a few that weren't right so need to get a few more which I hope will improve the idling and running of the car.


Old gaskets meet new gaskets.


This is where I set the timing. Originally it was a bit on the retard side but read that it should be advanced for triples and this seemed to be about where it ran the best. What I'm not too sure about is the vacuum thing on the side. I presume I've got a vacuum advance distributor so unsure if leaving that vacuum line unpluged will make it run worse or better as there's nowhere for it to go.



The new throttle cable looks and feels super nice, and it's strong too. A bit thicker than the original. It is a little longer though which is kind of annoying to route but seems to work.


Janky ghetto fuel hose routing seems to work.. no leaks amazingly. Ideally get an electric pump, fpr etc down the line.

So next on the list is to get the cold start/choke circuit working as I did find it would idle better when I activated couple of the chokes on the carbs manually. The interesting thing is even with the OEM single carb it wouldn't idle properly when cold (but it did run better than this) so I wonder if there is a different cam in here or something; it was always a bit lumpy on idle even once warm.

Specs on carbs anyway are:

Triple mikuni 44s
150 mains
200 air
60 pilots

I did get some 57.5 pilots but seems like it runs a little better on the 60s which is kind of interesting as Mikuni recommends 52.5 for an L24 which is about as close as USA gets to an L20.

[broke]

Nice work man, don't worry about the vacuum advance. My L20B on 45s ran fine without it, most of the yanks making decent numbers don't use it. It might not even be working anyway, a lot of them don't when they get old.

If you don't already have an electronic dizzy you might want to get one though.

[mlracing]

Yeah I'll leave it undone for now, probably just plug it up with something. There is a spot for it on the manifold but as you've said, most people saying don't worry about it.

[mlracing]

I like setting easy goals because then it makes you feel good when you complete them. For my brief time back in NZ I decided I needed to get the car running with the triple carbs as when I left for Aus I had just got it running but it wouldn't idle and was generally not going well.

Since buying the TA22 in Aus which also has Mikunis on it I've learnt quite a bit about tuning them and setting them up which I've been able to transfer to the Skyline. So when I had a bit of spare time I started by checking the pilot jet settings which were waaaay off. No wonder it didn't run well. Fixed those up, cranked it over for a while to get the gas to go through (mechanical fuel pump) and with some dodgy choke opening and throttle fiddling the car started.

Took it for a burn up an down the road and considering I spent only a couple of minutes with synchrometer it works really well. Idle is a little high at around 12-1400 at the moment but it sounds good when the carbs are on song !

One thing I haven't checked is the timing so I've purchased a timing light to do that sometime in near future.

Aaanyway novel over, here's some photos of stuff.





Another one of the tasks I wanted to do is install a choke cable (or starter wire) for the triples. The one that was for the OEM single wasn't long enough and as I found out it anyway the previous owner just used one which was for a twin carb setup and cut one of the wires off! Mine is kind of janky and sort of works but it's not really that good. Maybe not required now that I've sorted out the basic jetting but it's something. Mainly has issues on the right side where it goes into that first holder. Needs a better mount somehow.


So being that I just took the car out for it's maiden voyage on the triples there was of course teething issues. One of them involves this pipe here. The brakes worked pretty much as well as they did before (to my knowledge) however the brake pedal was pulsating kind of with the motor. I'm informed this hose should have a one way valve in it so have now purchased one and should be here next week.


And a parting shot for your time. Also a quick walkaround if you're on Instagram - https://www.instagram.com/p/BkqjBL3gbW7