Michael's 180B Sedan Z18ET

[Bartman]

Go the mighty B!

[Mikewazowski]

Looking promising to get it all legal beagle by the end of the week

I am a man of my word.

As of Friday she has WOF, Rego and cert plate.

Went to Hamilton and back without a hitch (except for scraping my resonator on a surprise speedbump at Sky City and it isn't even low yet).

[Mikewazowski]

610 went into the panel beater's yesterday morning. I called past after work and they had cut out a few sections of rust and welded some new metal in.
There is just one section left to do (the worst one) where it had rust in the outer and inner skin of the roof near the driver's side A-pillar.

Hopefully that should be all done by the end of today and then I will have a rust-free datsun (seems like a juxtaposition) which does not leak anymore
Then it's probably time for more low, some hours of prep and a new coat of paint. Can't wait to drive it every day.

[Bartman]

Great stuff mike!

[dirtyleppa]

good to hear man, but pics say 1000 words

[Dattochriswagon]

Yeh dude good to hear! Your probably the only one working ion thier car at moment. Im too scared to at moment. Was working on pips 140j in the garage . grinding away the whole fuckn garage started to sway and i thought f this im outta here

[Mikewazowski]

good to hear man, but pics say 1000 words

Yeah I would have loved a pic but unfortunately I called into the panel beater's on the way home from work (so I didn't have a camera) and my phone isn't new enough to take pictures

Your probably the only one working ion thier car at moment

Well I've got to make up for the 13 weeks I was down in Palmy somehow. I also have the advantage of not living in Christchurch at the moment. Besides, I'm so close to having a "finished" car that I can drive around again without having to do any work on it. That is really keeping me motivated to get the work done.

Should get the 610 back today

[Mikewazowski]

So got the 610 back with the rust work done and it is looking good. I went over the car and managed to find one other section where it looks like there is some rust (bottom of the driver's side front guard) so I'll take the car back in and get that done as well.

Now onto lowering the 610 a little more.
I measured up a few things and it looks like:
1. My front crossmember is 150mm off the ground so I've got plenty of room there
2. The lower spring cup shouldn't hit the tyres until they are ~40 - 45 mm lower than they already are.
3. The spring cup can be 40mm lower before the spring will become uncaptive.
So I'm going to aim to move the cup down the strut by 35mm, which should give me ~15 - 20 mm between the top of the tyre and the guard as opposed to the 50 mm it has presently.

So I started doing the suspension in the weekend:
Took my front struts out and removed the inserts. Turns out I need new ones as one of them has almost no rebound (one makes it to about half extension on its own). That's all good though, better to find out now so I can replace them while they are out.
I scribed a mark around each strut at 35 mm below the current lower hat position (using a nail and a hoseclamp )
I just need to pick up a grinder today so I can grind off the welds which are holding the cups onto the strut.

I'll test fit a tyre onto a strut with the cup in the lower position just to double check clearance before I get them welded on.

P.S.
I know
I actually went to take photos of the suspension but it turns out that our camera doesn't get back until Saturday.

Oh, and I also changed another ball joint while I had the suspension out, so now both of my front ball joints are new

[gingofthesouth]

Good shit. Nothing beats nice new shocks. Makes the car feel 200x better on the road!

[Mikewazowski]

Good shit. Nothing beats nice new shocks. Makes the car feel 200x better on the road!

Yeah I'm looking forward to it

Speaking of which I priced up some KYB Excel-G R31 Inserts today so I'll measure the ones that I took out just to double check that they are the same overall length.

I cut the spring cups off my struts today and moved them down to the marks I had scribed on there (35 mm lower).
I put the spring on and with the top hat and nut done up it looks like it'll all be captive
Also test fitted a tyre and it clears the spring cup so it looks like a go-er.

Two questions though for those following this thread:

1 - It looks as though I'll have about 100 mm of travel down with then new setup before my shock bottoms out, will that be enough? I assumed that it would

2 - When doing up the nylock nut (at the top of the strut) that holds the spring top hat on, how do you stop the insert rod (the part with the thread) from spinning around? It seems to me that it will just spin around instead of the nylock doing up. I know it mustn't somehow as I've done it before but I can't remember