KurMot

If been driving my project calling it “Art” after my Opa for a couple months now and it’s fantastic. I’m having so much fun taking it to car meets and just driving around town. Had to do valve cover gaskets and a CV, but that’s all mechanically I’ve had to do so far. The Whiteline sway bar kits are incredible, it’s so tight in the corners, no body roll at all. I’ve been scaring myself and passengers driving lately. I’m still running the Subaru factory wheels. Hoping to get some sweet winter wheels/tires once it’s snowy here in Alberta. Gotta make a grill and door panels still. https://imgur.com/a/mGnvz2S https://imgur.com/a/b2kPfsK https://imgur.com/a/NcOd2cc https://imgur.com/a/IqakXHT https://imgur.com/a/j07hpzU https://imgur.com/a/XnqWE17

I’ve got it sprayed with a smoked clear coat. Putting all the interior parts together, covering the rear seat MDF with speaker carpet and I had to build a splice plate that took the Datsun defrost vents and attached them to the Subaru dash https://i.imgur.com/zz2SxA0.jpg https://i.imgur.com/pDBDJQ3.jpg sorting out the headlights was challenging cause all my new lights are LED. Had to use 4 relays up front for the headlights and then solder in resistors on all 4 corners for the signal lights. I’ll take more pics here soon. Just taking it apart again cause I need to paint a few more places, inside doors and tailgate

here’s a couple pics straight outta the paint booth. I was hoping for it to be darker but so happy with the quality of the clear coat. Starting to put the interior together now. Hopefully be on the road here in a month

It looks so tiny here between my truck and my sons GTI Used Endura gloss black for the interior mused a box liner kit for the box and as a an undercoating

https://i.imgur.com/PoJKRQQ.mp4 here’s a video of my first rip in the field behind my place

Hey so as far as the tools, I’ve borrowed an 18” sheet metal Brake from a friend and I bought a little Magnum plasma torch. Other than that I’m using a Miller 250 mig welder and a shit ton of cutting discs, and I started using 36 grit sanding pads to grind and put the swirly marks on the metal. No fancy tools just lotsa hours.

the Datsun looks so tiny here between my 96 Chevy truck and my sons Mark4 GTI

took it for the first rip the other day. Feels absolutely amazing!!! going to be taking it to a friends paint booth here in the next couple of days to shoot a smoked clear coat on it

Slowly working away on it still, I’m planning on doing a smoked clear coat for the exterior so you’ll be able to see the welding, Im not sure what wheel/tire combo I’m going to run on it, but I do love me some 1980’s era wheels for sure. Right now I’m about 400 hours into this project. Hoping to start having fun in it soon instead of just working on it. Wife is getting a little tired of all the time put into the project, hahahaha thanks for all the positive comments. It’s so cool to be able to share my project with everyone

All the welding is done now. Time to start with seam sealer

lovin the looks of the A pillar dimple dies here’s the rear seat/ ext cab. I’m planning on covering all the MDF with the carpet that you see on sub boxes. top view of the ext cab. I’ve got a kit to do a truck box liner on all this sheet metal in the box. This project just keeps taking so many hours. Starting to get close now, hahaha

got the A pillar dimple dies installed I’ve nearly got all the fab completed. Then it’s on to welding, man there’s a lot of feet of welding that needs to be done one inch at a time

Here’s the quick run down on what I’ve got so far Started with an 81 Datsun 720 diesel, couldn’t get it running and after doing tons of research (not actually very much) found that there’s virtually no parts available for that truck I had fallen in love with the truck and wanted to use it as a daily driver, snowboarding and getting around Figured the best thing to do would be a body swap onto a modern drivetrain in comes the 2004 Subaru WRX Stripped the car down to this point Within a few days had the truck cab fitting where I wanted it. It looked great but was only sitting on wood blocks and straps holding it together. Now started the long journey of mounting it to this chassis. Now I had completely removed the structure of the WRX chassis and needed to strengthen it up, so I built an 8 point roll cage out of 1-3/4” DOM tubing Once the cage was fully welded I got the cowl all sorted out I learnt that there’s is a tremendous amount of work in tying both the inner and outer cowls in The hood is much longer on the Subaru than the truck so I was going to have to stretch it. As soon as I knew that I would be stretching it for sure I was going to try to emulate the Hakotoro Sunny truck and get the grill shape to look like the Hakosuka GTR I really like the shape of the grill so far, and as far as the rust on the rest of the truck I thought that if I was to cut it all off and do a wide body like the Group B rally cars of the 80’s that’s be the simplest I built a side skirt out that that same DOM tubing and the rear bumper Shortened the box by about 7”. It’s now wider than it is long, hahahaha that’s where I am up to date, please let me know what you think so far

Hey your build looks great Tons to learn from getting your hands on a project like this Nice to see another truck being brought back to life

wow it’s been a ton of work but I finally have the box/tailgate and bed sides mounted in. I’ve built inner fenders that tie in from the Subaru pinch weld all the way out to the wide body, this will allow a lot more room inside the truck box and structure the sheet of metal that will eventually cover the side