emanistan

I knew someone would ask. I don't know. The shifter knob was missing, and I didn't climb underneath to examine it further.

The sixth junkyard B210 I've gotten a chance to visit since joining the Ratsun set showed up this week, and for the first time, it is in my hometown junkyard, the Redding Pick and Pull, not five minutes from my house. IMG_0849 by emanistan, on Flickr IMG_0838 by emanistan, on Flickr It's a much modified 78 two-door sedan. IMG_0836 by emanistan, on Flickr IMG_0847 by emanistan, on Flickr This one is the first standard shift car I've come across, though I'm not sure if it was originally equipped with this transmission or not. I might be mistaken, but I thought standard shift was only available on hatchbacks by 77. It has the fancy-schmancy sport steering wheel that folks get so excited about IMG_0835 by emanistan, on Flickr No, I did not take it, but the week is young and I'm thinking of making a second trip out there for it. Same goes for the transmission, assuming none of you beat me to it. One thing many eyes will water over that I did take was the tachometer: those can fetch $2-300 on Ebay. I know because I paid that much for one and have seen others go at the same price. Much of the interior finish panels are in surprisingly good shape, so much so that I would have snagged them myself if my car had a black interior. IMG_0834 by emanistan, on Flickr Front seats are long gone. It looks as if the previous owner had replaced them with 'racing seats' which they pulled out before selling it to the scrappers. Glass is all good except for the windshield which has a pit. This car had obviously been riced in its autumn years, as can be seen in the engine compartment: IMG_0833 by emanistan, on Flickr and the funny switches bastardized onto the dash. It also was missing its' fuel tank. Maybe you tuners out there can get an idea what exactly they did by looking at the photos. I'm sailing blind just trying to finish my car back to stock, so I haven't the slightest idea. There were several documents in the car revealing it had been on the road as recently as last year. As of 2016 it was registered in Brier, Washington. I plugged the address into Google Earth, but couldn't see the car in the map view or the street view, but I think I had the right person: there was an old Mustang in the carport and some sort of 1960s Mopar looking two-door sedan in the driveway. Repair records indicate It recently had work done on the head and the shaft, so I'm thinking of going back for those too....maybe I'll find a convenient Saturn or Taurus to hide it all in till the next half-price day. So there's much I didn't get. What did I get this weekend?: the tachometer, the license plate lights, the dome light, a second skid plate (it never rains, but it pours: I was so excited when I found the one on the Modesto car back in October) the rubber stopper/plug from the spare tire well, and the wiper and dimmer switches...and one good visor clip!

Thanks 4perrev. No, I don't know what I would do without Youtube videos and the forum. I would love to have use of a nice older fella with knowledge to impart. I know a few, problem is none of them live close by.

Thanks guys. Sorry It's taken me a while to respond: it's been a busy week. You folks can't imagine the envy I have for those of you who have a lifetime of mechanical knowledge. Stupid newb mistake number 999: I didn't know till now that there were inch-pound and foot-pound wrenches. I just ordered one of each. Datzenmike, I was using a cheap clicker model from Harbor Freight. I figure I'll use torque wrenches a lot in the future, and luckily I'm much richer these days than when I started this project, so I went ahead and ordered two good quality Craftsman wrenches. Charlie69, if your offer is still valid, I'll take advantage. I'll email you.

Finally visited the 1979 210 at Redding P&P this week (actually once last week, and again this week.) Here's some photos I took: IMG_0757 by emanistan, on Flickr IMG_0776 by emanistan, on Flickr. IMG_0748 by emanistan, on Flickr IMG_0742 by emanistan, on Flickr IMG_0756 by emanistan, on Flickr -At some point in its life, this car traveled clear across the country. Note the excellent driver's side tail-light. This car had obviously been modded in its later years. A huge section of floor and firewall had been cut away to accommodate a different transmission (as PDP8 said, the tranny is gone), and someone had drilled into the plate between the carburetor (which was also gone) and the intake manifold to enlarge the opening. With all these fancy changes though, it looks as if they did something wrong, going by the state of these cylinders: IMG_0752 by emanistan, on Flickr. I took the grill, which, as PDP8 noted, had some minor cracking at the top, but is entirely fixable. Why? I dunno, I couldn't bare to think of it going to the crusher, especially since, as far as I know, it was one-year-only. If I'm right about that, the fenders and hood are one-year-only too. I also got the oil pan (filled with milkshake oil/water mix) and some inner engine bits: the baffle-plate, the net, the camshaft plate and the bolts holding it in. I had to break the timing cover off to get to the cam plate: that crank pulley nut was not going to budge no matter what. Someone should get the front bumper and tail-light--if nothing else--before it's too late. This car probably has maybe one more month of life left on the yard, if that. two at most.

So coronavirus gave me a week off just as the weather starts to warm up here in Redding, to start putting my engine back together, then today this happened: IMG_0778 by emanistan, on Flickr And that put an end to my engine rebuild for the week. Thing is, that damned camshaft has been the bane of my existence. First I put it in too far and had to tap it back out once I realized what I'd done, then it wouldn't turn as well as it was supposed to, and then once I got it turning, I over-torqued one of the bolts on the locating plate and snapped it off. Luckily I was able to extract it and there was a 210 at my local Pick-N-Pull, so I spent 3 hours the next day stripping down it's engine for those bolts, went back home, and used the salvage bolts to put the plate on again before moving on to the pistons and the timing. This afternoon I was about to put the timing cover back on, but was worried the timing sprockets might not be all the way on the shafts, so I tapped down on the top sprocket with a hammer, and off snapped both bolt-heads again. Again; at least I was able to extract them. So where am I going to find another pair now? I think the main problem is my unfamiliarity with the torque wrench. I tried to go religiously by the specs in the shop manual, setting my cheap wrench at whatever numbers they gave. At first I blamed my wrench and went online to investigate better ones, and here I think I see where I went wrong: it looks as if most consumer-grade wrenches are not designed to go below 5 foot pounds. Maybe the expensive ones at the Nissan factory can go into the tiny fractions of a foot-pound, but I'm wondering if, for the average home mechanic, any number below five should just translate to :"until it feels tight enough".

1979 210 (first year) just arrived at Redding P&P. Haven't been to see it yet, but it looks good from the photo.

It can't be that old, they've only been made in Spain since the early 90s I think.

Would you look at that: Filthy! Absolutely filthy.....

Maybe, but its a rare car in this part of the world, and hopefully the seller would be open to negotiation. Also, Im of the opinion that if you really want something and the price is something you can afford, you should seize the day. Everyone has an opinion on what things 'should' cost. Some think I overpaid for my little junkyard B210, but Ive seen others in worse condition going for 2 or 3 times as much, and prices fluctuate all the time, so who knows. Like I said, I don't have the space for another project car anyway, so its all just fantasy.

If only I had the space....

Interesting. I would think the other main candidates would be West Germany and perhaps Indonesia which appears to have a big vintage Datsun community. Its odd though that Europe--even if it's just the UK--got them while North America didn't. One would have thought the demand for a compact wagon in the states then would have been huge, and unlike Europe, at that time it was relatively untapped. I wonder if it was uncertainty around the chicken-tax laws, since the wagons were thought of as vans in the Japanese market?

Thanks Seeker. I've had worries about just the sort of things you're talking about, but luckily I live in an area with a lot of old-school mechanics and restoration shops, and the bottom line is, I'm determined not to be one of those guys with a stripped rusting out hulk in their driveway that they've been saying they're going to restore for all the decades since they had it hauled home. If something isn't done right and it has to be fixed, it's better than having a once good car hopelessly rust away because I didn't have the time or skills to get to it. I think I'll definitely go to Powerland this summer, and...is this Hugh I'm talking to? I've been shut out of the forum so long I forget your screen name and I'm to lazy to check my old messages at the moment...anyway, whoever you are, I'd love to meet up as you head this way. If this is Hugh, I emailed you my number.

I was just thinking about the elusive (to us yanks) B210/120Y/third-generation Sunny station wagon/estate/kombi/universal this afternoon and suddenly wondered: did Nissan ever build a left-hand drive version? In these pages there's a lot of confusion between the B210 built from 1974-78 and the similarly named 210 built from 1979, whose station-wagon version was widely exported to North America. I'm talking about the 1974-78 B210. Nissan built a wagon version, but these were not exported to North America. They were used in the Japanese domestic market--right-hand drive--and they were exported to the UK--also right-hand drive. Does anyone know if Nissan built left-hand drive versions, perhaps for parts of mainland Europe or Asia?

My B210 hasn't had much public exposure yet. In a month or so it will be two years since I had her hauled out of the junkyard, and as of now she's sitting in a tent in my driveway, her interior stripped out and her engine mounted on a stand in the garage. When I first got her, my problem was always money, and now that my financial situation is better, I just don't have the time; and my workspace leaves a lot to be desired too. I think I'll swallow my pride this year and farm out most of the work so that I can hopefully have her back on the road by the beginning of the 2020s. Regardless, she's already put me in the Datsun nostalgia confession circuit. Back on the day when I went to the junkyard to await the tow truck, at least two guys stopped to admire her, remarking to their wives/girlfriends "oh wow, it's one of those little old Datsuns." Unfortunately, Redding junkyard people aren't that friendly, so I wasn't able to get them into conversation. From the junkyard I had her towed to a storage unit where I'd visit her and do minor repairs for a few months until I was able to bring her home. One day, as I was preparing to shut the unit for the night and go home, a meth-head looking woman walked by and stopped, excitedly telling me how her father had a B210 on his ranch when she was growing up and taught her to drive in it. I posted a few pictures on my facebook page and several older women I worked with excitedly told me about how their first cars had been B210s. A little less than a year after buying the car, two B210s showed up at the Newark branch of Pick-N-Pull down in the Bay Area. It's odd how different junkyards have different cultures, but the Newark yard seems to attract a much friendlier group of pickers than the Redding yard. Before getting started on the first car, I got into a half-hour long conversation with a guy working on a 280ZX just across the row. Later on, as I was struggling to extract the bumper corners, a Mexican man walked by and talked about seeing so many of these cars on the road in his country when he was young, and how they were used as police cars and taxi-cabs there. His eyes almost seemed to mist over as he looked over the car and remembered. The second car in the yard was a hatchback, and as luck would have it, just as I was crawling around in the back struggling to free the stuck lift-gate, two other Mexican guys stopped to admire the car, and helped me get the gate open and braced from the outside. I can't wait to get mine out on the road and enjoy a bit of celebrity...until it gets old.