New Zealand Datsun Club

Bartman wrote:Yes. I always hardness and pressure test any head before spending a dime on it.

will be one of the first things I'll do.

Been a while since my last update so will just let the pictures do the talking.

To sum up Warrick has been doing some absolutely awesome on the Datto. Had Blaine and Warrick soda blast the entire shell although we had a few areas of problems such as the drivers door which had a literal half inch of paint on it and the hatch mounting point on the body which had a lot of bog work done to it. Have since stripped all of those ready for repair work/painting. The rust work has been started on which is awesome! The car wasn't too bad for its age so that was a plus. Am going with the factory colour (a creamy white or polar white as the can says) with a layer or two of clear coat so am very excited!!!! Honestly never thought the day would come when the Datto would be painted.

Have bought a 240Z 7/8 Master Cylinder to use for my brake conversion and will be retaining my original rebuilt booster. Will figure out how I am going to mount my clutch master once I get the car back. Completely cleaned out the steering box so just have to put that back together as well, man the old gear oil in that was horrid!!! Will also start figuring out the best way to modify my clutch pedal for the hydro conversion.

Also have Barts old extractors so will tidy them up, check for cracks and repaint (pretty sure they are all good). Thanks to Volokovich on the forums found out that I can use my 5 speed x-member with no mods for the 63a so that was awesome! Just have to get a speedo cable angle mount and that should do it!

Have to keep my old rear springs and shocks as there are no aftermarket springs that suit my needs as a bolt in so will have to get the car finished and then get some custom made springs and shocks made to suit. Will be going with 7-8kg springs in the rear with KYB shortened struts.

Was going to prep and paint my fuel tank last weekend but ran out of time so will do it this weekend. Still have to drill and tap a return feed line from my fuel pressure regulator as well.

Now that I know the 63a dogleg will bolt up I can sell my cars original 60a 5 speed so should help the car fund a bit! Once I have the 63a bolted in I'll sell the 60. Also have my original number matching engine ready for modding so will strip it down and mount it to an engine stand to start the build. I am currently looking at:
---Electric fuel pump
---Milpassi fuel regulator
---mechanical fuel pump blanking plate
---custom oil pump using L series pump parts
---either an E15 electronic dizzy or one of those Ebay points removal kits and MSD coil
---lightened flywheel
---heavy duty clutch
---Mazda E5 pistons (oil quenched)
---head crack testing and porting work (to match intake manifold for the supercharger)
---double valve springs
---Kelford cam to suit supercharger
---ARP head bolts
---possibly some more head work depending on time/funds
---rebuilt Weber down draft carb
---Toyota supercharger
---Big twin electric fan radiator
---Oil cooler with oil temp bypass to stop unnecessary movement of cold oil

Maybe some other stuff I missed but thats the gist of it anyway.

Re-welded some alloy on to my 240Z drum fins to get them looking right and painted them. Rebuilt Rx7 4 pots (seals and pistons) as well as endless brake pads, 282mm Prelude rotors etc.
Got some new rear brake shoes and cylinders.
All new drag link, tie rod ends and ball joints.
Diff put back together with new oil and gaskets (head rebuilt)
Bought the RCA spacers from John (skdmrx) for the R31 struts as well as machining up ring cap to suit.
Rear and front wheel bearing kits.
New hardline for rear brakes.
Brake conversion adaptors (still have to tap thread)

And last but not least my coilovers arrived! Still using R31 struts as a base but now have 5.5kg springs and keepers as well as camber plates and new firm struts. Its all been crack tested and ready for cert! The camber plates were initially just round and didn't fit inside the B310 strut housing so took to them with a band saw and a linisher to get them finished in the same shape the original strut tops were for the B310.

Sold my B310 struts to Ron (taiparacer) and they will be helping to resurrect an old sunny up there so very happy about that too!

Still a lot to do but can pretty much put it on its wheels now!

The carb is a Holley, not a weber. lol
And Malpassi fuel regs are regularly associated with being rising rate. No need for that with drawthrough.
Have a good long look at the accelerator pump boss on the float bowl. Even after I replaced the diaphram it still used to weep. Maybe slap it on a surface plate with a bit of wet n dry.
I've seen your shell at Wals. It's pretty tight as far as sunny coupes go!

Bartman wrote:The carb is a Holley, not a weber. lol
And Malpassi fuel regs are regularly associated with being rising rate. No need for that with drawthrough.
Have a good long look at the accelerator pump boss on the float bowl. Even after I replaced the diaphram it still used to weep. Maybe slap it on a surface plate with a bit of wet n dry.
I've seen your shell at Wals. It's pretty tight as far as sunny coupes go!

Oh shit haha my bad. I pulled the S/c off it a while ago but honestly haven't even looked at it since I bought it off you. I don't know why I though it was a Weber. Probably just had that stuck in my mind as that Weber 32/36 is the carb of choice everywhere I read about sc setups.
Interesting about the fuel reg I guess then you would only need it on blow through to compensate for the resistance the boost gives but obviously that's not a problem for drawthrough. Saves me having to drill a return line I guess although the more I have looked at it the more it makes sense to convert from 5/16 to 3/8 fuel line. This would mean a fair bit of work on the pickup side though I imagine. I remember you saying a while ago it wasn't a very fun thing to do.
I'm just about to put my engine on the stand and was going to have a go over all the bits you gave me again as its been a year or so since I last looked at them. No point doing all this work if everything isn't going to be in tip-top shape. I'll probably swing round yours to go over the setup once everything is rebuilt before I slap it back together anyway.
Do you reckon that build list will give me a pretty solid start? I'm going more for reliability at this stage and will probably go back and try and get as half as good a motor as you had once everything is on the road and running right.

Are you sure the factory supply line isn't 1/4?
It won't be as hard to upgrade yours with it being up on that trolley.
You will want to upgrade your supply though. Admittedly the fuel bowl on the holley is bigger than the bowl on the weber I ran in the very beginning, but running a 1/4 "fuel flow" electric pump, that supercharger sucked the bowl dry no problem. (Which was a big problem!)

I'm actually really amped about my old setup going back into service.

Big night tonight!!

Got the Datsun back on the ground on its wheels today!! Coilovers are in, RCA's are in, all the bushes are in, diff is back in, 240Z brake upgrade finished and the RX7 brake upgrade at the front is all done as well!!! Also got a full set of RE003 Potenzas on the wheels today 195/50R15 which fit amazingly well although the car still needs some low which I'll sort out eventually.

Good work James!!

Wow third page of the forums! How'd I let that happen.

So have a shit tonne of updates from the last sixish months. Think it will be easier to text block it first and just add photos in last.

So in February I made the leap across the ditch and moved to Melbourne to do some more study. Doing Automotive Engineering at RMIT now learning about the really nitty gritty stuff and really enjoying it so far. Most of my time is spent doing stuff on the F-SAE racing team here and am filling in for Chief Engineer this year so a tonne of work to be done. There is some really cool stuff on the car which I'll post some photos of below.

So, as for the Datto, managed to get a shit load done before moving across, I don't know if I have ever been so efficient at working on a car before.
I may have talked about some of this stuff but will just mention what comes to mind.

-4 pot RX7 brakes fitted and fixed to the front struts

-Rear drums had backing plates shaved and fitted

-Mechanical LSD ordered but not yet fitted

-Got some really really low springs and shortened KYB shocks, car is much much lower than I ever thought it would be. Going to get Wal to pump the guards out a bit and while he is at it I'll fit some wider 205/50r15's to all four wheels. Might as well do it now if going to go to the effort of modifying guards cause wider is always better!!!

-The springs and shocks won't stay as will need way stiffer springs in the rear although they are a good marker of how low I want to go. Looking at going 9kg/mm rear to be just a bit stiffer than the fronts so will have to get them custom made.

-I did have all the brake stuff fitted and supposedly working but while I went away for a small holiday the freshly reconned 240Z master leaked brake fluid in to my engine bay and stripped all the nice new paint off I definitely checked it when pumping the brakes full of fluid but the leak seemed to only occur under low pressure?? Anyway took it back to Safe R who basically told me they weren't interested and that is was all my fault (despite asking them to check it themselves). Gave it to my mechanic who sent it away and it turns out Safe R installed the wrong seals so fuck those guys. Being overseas now not a lot I can do so just have to suck it up and hope Wal can fix it up nice and good.

-Dynamat got laid in to the car, still have to do doors and boot but thats easy enough and will need to order some more anyway to patch a few of the areas I couldn't quite get.

-Brand new carpet put in and laid down, what a nightmare that was. Looks really good though.

-Dash is all back in including heater box and air vents. Will have to take it back off eventually to fix a few things that are going to annoy me but that's all good.

-All of the interior panels bar two were all stripped and repainted and look amazing. Also had the newly refurbished seats put in!!

-Fuel tank was modified so pick up is 3/8 now.

So yea a lot done but still heaps to do. Coming back to chch in June/July so that I can take the car to get the paint in the engine bay fixed and also the guards done.
The only bad thing is that I felt as if I really rushed some areas and will likely take them out again to re-do at some point. Not everything, but the wiring loom (which I still want to de-loom), more dynamat put in, carpet tidied up, top dash pad fixed up, heater core reconned properly, seatbelts refurbed and actually thats about it so not too bad.

The basic list of things non-engine related to do is the above plus: fitting the LSD, getting new rear shocks and springs, getting the wheels refurbed, fitting the fuel pump underneath the car, fitting new rubber seals all around, refitting glass and doors, installing alarm and gps tracker, putting in driveshaft hoops.

Still so much to do and I have a massive shopping list of engine parts that I talked to Alex at moonlight about a while ago so once I finish at the end of this year and am earning money again I'll be back in to it. Won't be moving back to NZ so not sure what I'll do when I finish the car but definitely won't be selling it.

My poor paint Is this enough low Bart? A shot of the interior, was literally installing this a few hours before my flight to move to Aus haha. More interior, fuel tank and cover back in etc.
For anyone interested we run an oddfire 10-valve two cyliner engine with a turbo. Also has a completely in house designed three speed sequential gearbox in a transaxle with LSD. The top photo is a shot of the carbon fibre trans case and the second shot is all of the gearbox bits. We also run three piece carbon wheels, a full carbon monocoque, carbon a-arms, ohlins dampers and a heap of other cool things!

Forgot how long it had been since I updated the build. It looks like the Datsun isn't going to sell for so for the time being I'll be putting it in long term storage and leaving it until I get money/time again (I'm sure Bart will be happy about that!).

For those that don't know I'm now living and working in the UK, currently spending time between the Nissan Technical Centre (where all of Nissans research work gets done) and at Renault F1 Team. Hopefully I'll have a full time position with Renault F1 next year but we'll have to see how we go as places are pretty limited, especially for non EU citizens.

I had a big splurge of money I don't have when I visited NZ back in November and thanks to Jesse I got a heap done. The interior is now 99% how I want it. I just have a few trim bits and carpet tidy ups and she'll be mint. I also need some more dynamat for the doors but that's not hugely crucial. I continuity tested the old loom and it all works good so will make do until I have the time and money to remake it myself. I'll be stripping the entire interior out again to finish the paint off on the body anyway so will probably do it at the same time.

Wal was kind enough to paint the doors and hatch while I was there so I assembled them both and even had new rubber and glass put in the hatch. Put the new rubber seals in the doors as well and everything shuts up really nice. I had the glaziers put in the front glass with the old rubber as well so the entire car is now safe from the elements which makes me feel a heap better about leaving it in storage.

Body wise I just need to reconn the bumpers, suss the sunroof and put some paint on and it will be done. I got the gearbox and driveshaft in as well (well almost, circle track is still working on my driveshaft). You could drop a block and head in right now and the thing would probably go which is pretty awesome. Since I'm holding on to it I'll still continue with supercharging the engine with a tonne of other bits and pieces and since I'm committed now anyway will do a rear disc conversion when I get hold of an AE86 LSD head for my diff.

I'll be sure to post a heap of photos I took while I was there once I get a chance. I'm not sure when I'll be back in NZ next, flights are expensive and F1 pays peanuts in comparison to a normal 9-5 so not even really sure when I'll be able to finish the Datsun off - may be cheaper just to ship it to Europe (as I'm sure it'll pass emisssions.......