New Zealand Datsun Club

All im reading here is, you have done heaps of work in a short amount of time and I am ashamed of the feeble effort on my car this year. well done looking great

Had a bit of a go at welding the two bits together today, I tacked them last week which worked okay but the tig is struggling a bit to actually weld them. I've bead blasted, wire brushes, used wax & grease remover etc etc but it's still pulling up quite a lot of crap from the ali. I might try and get a thicker tungsten tomorrow and maybe a gas diffuser. I really think it needs a water cooled torch but I don't think my budget will stretch that far. Will have a go at pre-heating it with the LPG torch before welding it too.

do you have much adjustment on the tig? you may need to play with the freq settings, if you have any. basically the the freq range can give you clean weld and little penetration at one end of the scale, and heavy penetration with ugly scale at the other.

Thanks Wal, I guess that would be the "clear width" adjustment, the only other frequency stuff is for the pulse settings and I haven't quite mastered pulse yet. I've wound the clear width up to 50% this morning and turned the gas flow up a bit and it seems better, I think it's probably on the limits of this particular tig, it's 12mm ali plate welded to a big piece of cast so it's a massive heatsink. I might still try and get a bigger tungsten to try, the tip keeps disappearing.

If you are still struggling we have a decent AC tig with a water cooled torch at work. We did some 12mm with it the other day seemed to handle it alright.

let me know and we can organise something.

P.S I am still keen on those RX7 seats

Thanks man, I've bought a water cooled torch, not sure it'll make much difference but I'll give it a go! The seats are still here

I thought I'd put the Laurel back together today so I could give it a run, I've bought new front and rear bumpers in the same colour I'm just waiting for them to turn up at work in Auckland, they were the last thing I was worried about as the front one was pretty much rooted and the back one has a crack in it.

I gave up trying to get some paint matched for the engine bay at the moment, I found a Pulsar the same external colour at Pick'a'part so I took the battery try out of it as that had a similar colour on the underside, I also cut a piece out of the radiator support as that also looked like a similar colour, got home and neither of them matched. I went into Spraystore and they had a base colour listed to go with KL0 silver but it looked way too light. I'll worry about the bay when I take the motor out.

Ever since I got the Laurel it's been a bit noisy when running, I had a feeling it was the VCT, when I ran it again today the noise was still there, I pulled the oil cap off and had a look and there was a bit of sludge in there so I decided to give it an oil change, warmed it up, whacked a new filter on it, took the drain bung out and nothing came out for about 10 seconds then plop a bit slug of sludge came out - I guess it hasn't been very well serviced. I chucked some 20/50 I had lying around in it, I might get a proper engine flush tomorrow. After running it with the new oil in it I'm pretty sure it quietened down quite a bit.

The seppos reckon atf is the shizz for desludging motors internally. Their motors get uber gummed up from high milage.

Took the rear end out today and took it to pieces, the trans is pretty much ready to come out if anybody wants a free L series auto.

I've got new control arm bushes and sway bar bushes which is why I took it out. One of the wheel bearings sounds suspect, I'm going to water blast, wire brush and then paint everything while it's out. If I can find an R180 clutch LSD I'll do that at the same time. I would like to do the subframe mounting bushes but nobody makes aftermarket ones for these, apparently you can spin down Z31 polyurethane bushes so I'll investigate that.

There was a whole 910 IRS rear end on Trademe the other day for $100 but the guy withdrew it while I was thinking about it, I would like to do CVs while the rear end is apart too.

I think I ended up wrecking one of the original control arms, had it in the 50 ton press at work and I think the socket I was using was slightly smaller than the bush shell, it started to go into the shell which flared it out a bit, it was too late by then so I kept pushing it through but the flared part has oversized the hole so now the new bushes are loose. I found a spare arm behind the garage which just happened to be the correct side which was good! So I've pushed the bushes out of the 3rd arm with a more suitable socket. Will wire brush and paint them up over the weekend.

Lucky you had a spare would've sucked big time otherwise!