New Zealand Datsun Club

And nope. Not ready at all. Car won't go, fuels been put in, spark has been checked...

Drove it to work fine, wouldn't start after work, or since. I'll have a bit more of a play tonight, but unless it kicks into life. I won't be going anywhere.

I'm feeling a little John Kirwan about it to be honest.

Car fixed! I cleaned the carb and had it back on at lunch time. No difference, but clearly the carb was working fine. Went back to work and sorted a Dizzy cap and points and put them in at smoke-o. No difference. New coil after work... Still didn't run.

Out of frustration I swapped the condenser with one I had on an old Datun J series engine in the shed.... It run on 3 then cleared to run sweet as on all 4 pots! Happy days!

Jealous of the guys who are on track right now... Never mind. Someone will have video!

So I started an engine conversion, details can be found here. It's all in, with just the finishing off to do.
http://www.nzdatsun.com/forums/viewtopic.php?f=2&t=7843


Seeing it's just the boring stuff now like exhaust, brakes, pumbing and what not, I'll update the rest of the cars progress back to the road here.

This week end has been a bit of a disaster. On Saturday I put on my best welding shirt and poo'ed up an exhaust. I used that gassless wire stuff, and found it to splatter heaps and generally make a hell of a mess, but it should seal... I made it with the plan of making it one piece with a flange between the extractors and the muffler section.

Here's a progress shot with the exhaust system I took off A12 engine on the right. At this point it wasn't looking to bad.



I pieced together a section this morning to finish off the rear, and went about setting to fitting the extractors to the engine. While test fitting and finding all the bolts and washers I noticed the intake manifold wouldn't sit flush with the head due to interfering with the centre pipes of the extractors. Clearly the extractors were made to run with sidedrafts or at least an aftermarket intake manifold.

I had a badly corroded manifold sitting idle so had a grind at it to see if I could find the clearance I was looking for without beating in the extractors. The answer was no... I can not find enough clearance.



New plan is fit a standard exhaust manifold this week and see what happens from there.

See if you can find a pair of SU style hitachi carbs with manifold. Such good carbs when set up right, and they look the part too.

Hey.

Bartman wrote:See if you can find a pair of SU style hitachi carbs with manifold. Such good carbs when set up right, and they look the part too.

I have a pair of the SU carbs, and the manifold but have heard they are a bitch to tune so really just haven't considered them. They remain an option for the future.

Right. I have been really slack recently and just haven't seemed to get much done. What I have been doing is just the small half hour jobs that seem to be very painful, but need to be done. Simple things like putting the oil pump on (required the removal of the sway bar, which doesn't clear the oil pump anyway, and can't go back on) led to more problems.

My extractors have been put on the back burner and I have ended up using a LD20 exhaust manifold raided from a R31 Skyline wagon. The standard intake manifold isn't a problem now so I have pressed on in getting everything else together and sealed up.



Tonight I brought home some hose clamps, and hooked and clamped all my hoses and poured some oil into it. It didn't bleed out so I bypassed the start lock out wiring for the old auto and cranked it over with the ignition disconnected, until the battery then the jumper pack went flat. With any luck that's taken care of the oil pressure but the fuel still hadn't reached the carb so maybe tomorrow I'll get it running....

I couldn't help myself today at lunch so I stuck a charged battery in the car and gave it a few turns and got the fuel to the carb.



After sealing up the glass window, I went back to work.

Came home, and was able to keep fuel in the carb, so started checking for spark at points, fuel from accelerator pump etc, before putting the cap on for a genuine attempt at starting it. Motor was turning over nicely, when it suddenly went tight and seized. I'm not really sure whats happened, but the engine is stuck just before TDC, I suspect there may be an issue in cylinder 1.

For someone who knows what they're doing (not me btw) theyre a breeze to set up. I got a mates dads to titavate mine when I had them. And they ran super smooth, and were unreal on gas too.

First things first. I unseized the engine. I reckon it was a carbon build up that just jammed the piston... I dunno, I squirted some petrol in the plug holes and managed to turn it back, then forward past the point where it seized. It now turns over fine, can't complain there.

So after more turning over of engine I started to suspect I had no oil pressure. I was very correct with zero oil pumped. After swapping out another oil pump (this time fulling it with oil before installation), and still pumping zero oil , I hung the engine from the roof and removed the cross-member to drop the sump off to check the pick up. No obvious problems were found so I sealed the pickup and sump back up and will bolt the engine back down in the morning.

no oil could be the reason for it nipping up tight.

I did think that but lets think positive for now! The engine has been sitting for maybe 6 years so i could have been anything! This engine hasn't been checked over, history is pretty much unkown. I'm rolling the dice on this one for sure!

This morning I got the the engine back bolted to the cross member, and the cross member bolted back to the car. As I was un-bolting the chain I had the engine hanging from I dropped a washer down the front cover of the engine. Right in there with the timing chain... I could have cried, I sure as hell swore. After fishing around with a magnet for a bit, I removed the radiator, removed the fan, removed the oil pump, removed the crank pulley, removed the front cover. etc. You know the drill.

Got the rouge wash out, and re-sealed the cover taking great care to ensure that it actually sealed. Once all back together and oil pump primed, I gave the engine a crank and the bloody oil pressure light went out! The oil level in the sump dropped and oil comes out the cam at the top.

It would seem it was destiny that saw that washer fall into the engine.

Right now, I have spark, I have fuel, and I have an engine that is firing into the exhaust so clearly the timing is out. I'm thinking the oil pump in and out so many times has caught me out, and the shaft isn't where it needs to be. The distributor rotor is pointing down rather than towards the radiator when the engine is at TDC so that's the first thing to look at tomorrow.