KGC10 Skyline 2000GT Build

[Babalouie]

Wax bomb time! I'm using Wurth Cavity Wax, which can be ordered with this nifty 360 degree spray head.

 

There's a 2ft long tube, which is quite stiff, so it can be angled and pointed, like here. The cowl sheetmetal curves upwards to meet the windscreen and that area was impossible to paint, so I'm giving it an extra heavy squirt of wax.

 

Insert the tube down the long hidden channel at the back and slowly drag it out while spraying. You can see it's laid down an even sheen of wax.

 

The wax never sets, it stays semi-solid, and on hot days will continue to seep into the cracks and crevices, so I laid down a little extra at the seams.

 

But even just waving the spray head into an area will give it a healthy coating.

 

...how long did this take? About 10minutes...a lot quicker than painting did!

[moparvwfreak]

damn man! this car is hot! i want one so bad.... but alas, i have only seen one in person. can i has yours??? :)

[Babalouie]

One last little detail before I refit everything was to replace the rubber seal on the back of the bonnet.

 

I couldn't find anything which was quite the same (mind you....didn't look very hard!) but Clark Rubber had a D-section foam extrusion which looked like it might do the job.

 

First perfectly, and with the new cowl gaskets in place, the view through the vents is as the factory intended :)

 

Since the thermostat and fan switch were sorted, the new radiator's been working a treat. We've had a few really hot days and the Hako managed to sit in traffic without losing its cool. But one thing I have noticed is that the temps at cruise are usually maybe 2 or 3 degrees hotter than before. And oddly, when the car is moving (say at 50km/h) the temps are quite slow to fall. But when the fan kicks in, the temps plummet immediately. I had a theory that maybe this was because the natural airflow through the radiator isn't so great. Sure, the Hako has this huge grille, but there is no ducting in the engine bay like a modern car has. The incoming air is welcome to flow over the radiator support and thus bypassing the rad. I figure that the aerodynamics of the engine bay are probably a bit of a mess, with that big vertical panel in front of the radiator probably doing a great job in deflecting a lot of the air upwards over it. And I guess whether you like it or not, the old engine-driven fan probablu did a lot to straighten the incoming airflow.

 

Now that the engine driven fan is gone, I figure some ducting wouldn't hurt. First step was to fill in that gap between the radiator support and the rad itself. The gap probably isn't doing much harm, but it wasn't a difficult thing to do anyway. First I start by bending up some 1.6mm aluminium strap.

 

Add some dinky little brackets...

 

...a pinchwell rubber seal (so that the aluminium doesn't scratch the new rad!)

 

Grind the ends of the strap to suit the gap between rad and bodywork, and it's done.

 

Next step was to make some ducting to go in front of the radiator, which starts with a lot of mucking around with cardboard until I felt I had the right shape.

 

Draw the pattern onto the aluminium sheet (this time 1.0mm) and cut out with a jigsaw.

 

To bend it up, I sandwich the ally between two planks of wood, then use another piece of wood to force the metal over. Not sure if this is the best way to do it, but it does get decently straight folds as long as the metal isn't too thick.

 

To make the folds a little bit more crisp, as a last step I use a little rectangle of wood, press it behind the fold and give it a few smart taps with the BFH.

 

Mock up some side brackets with more cardboard...

 

]

[Babalouie]

In the end there wasn't much space to play with, so eventually I made templates of each little area needed, then taped it all together into one template.

 

I'm so pleased that I bought the big belt sander/linisher...I use it a lot. It turns this rough and ready bit of metal into...

 

THIS in a matter of seconds. Saves so much time and it's fun to shape the metal on the linisher.

 

Test fit the side brackets...which bolt to the bonnet hinge mounts.

 

A mate was joking that since I'm making a radiator duct, that we can't use the dimple dies, since making holes in the duct would defeat its purpose...but when there's a will, there's a way :lol: ...the dimple holes are in the brackets :D

 

Test fit and shave a bit off here and there with tinsnips

 

Pop rivet the side brackets and the top panel together...

 

Polish it up and it looks great!

 

It'll be interesting to see if this makes any difference at all....I suppose in theory it should ensure that the radiator gets a steady uninterrupted flow of air when the car is moving. But if it doesn't do anything...well it looks purdy anyway :D

 

There's a bit of a gap where the top panel doesn't sit flush against the radiator support, but I think a little finessing of the side brackets is all that's needed.

 

For the top panel, I folded a triangle shape in the middle, since it would otherwise be a bit floppy without those creases. And I suppose visually it makes it a little less boring than one straight long flat panel.

 

From the front you can see the brackets quite nicely.

 

Pretty happy with how it turned out....I have to say I'm really enjoying this phase of the Hako project, where we're fabricating stuff and not just fixing things.

[Bob3]

LOVE IT ! ! ! :D

[Babalouie]

The main reason for making the radiator ducting, was that the temps seemed slow to fall. The scenario is: you're stationary, and naturally the temps will start to rise towards the 87 degree fan cut-in point. But once you get the car moving, the temps seemed slow to fall back down to its normal 82 degree cruising temps. First theory was a lack of airflow through the rad (hence the ducting) but the funny thing was, the ducting didn't really make much difference. So what else could it be?

 

The Hako's cooling system is pretty conventional, which is to say that hot water is pumped from the engine, through the thermostat, and into the radiator from the top.

 

The hot water runs downwards through the rad, and the lower radiator hose curls around the alternator, to an inlet right where the water pump is. Notice that long pipe that Y's into the inlet though.

 

That pipe routes the water that comes from the heater matrix, back into the system. Normally, hot water is taken from the back of the cylinder head, and it goes into that fabric-covered pipe, into the cabin, through the heater valve, the heater matrix, and then back into the engine bay again, where it curls around the back of the engine, and joins up with that long pipe. The heater in the Hako was bypassed in Japan (it looks like it sprang a leak) and a common mod when removing the heater from an L-series car, is to loop the heater hose. So a 90 degree hose fitting is inserted into the cylinder head water outlet, and the hot water goes into that long pipe, back into circulation.

 

Plenty of ppl do it this way, but there is a school of thought that says that this is wrong. Normally, in summer when the heater is off, the heater valve is shut, and hence no hot water will flow through the heater circuit. And in winter, when the heater is on, water does flow through that circuit, but the heater matrix cools it, and so the water that re-enters that long pipe is actually cooled. The heater bypass mod, as fitted to the Hako means that hot water from the cylinderhead is recirculated with the cooled water from the radiator. In other words, the cool water from the radiator, is diluted with hot water from this bypass pipe. Now I figure that with the old mechanical fan that ran all the time, that the whole thing probably reached a steady equalibrium, but with the electric fan, you can see the temps rise and fall. And they don't fall that fast...which got me thinking that maybe a cause was because we're diluting the cooled water, with recirculated hot water. And so while it will eventually cool down, it is a slower process.

 

Now, 87 degree coolant temp (just before the fan kicks in) is not really a concern, but if we can make it cool down faster, then the temps will recover faster say, on the cooldown lap on a trackday. So I removed the bypass pipe, and plugged both ends of the circuit with a 1/2in NPT male plug I got from Pirtek.

 

This means no water flows through the heater circuit at all (but then again in summer when you don't use the heater, that's how it is).

 

So far it seems to work, today I got stuck in traffic and the temps must have been in the mid 30s, and once the car got moving, the temps seem to fall a lot faster and more consistently than before. I'll keep an eye on it, but for the time being it seems to be all good.

[kgc10]

Your a great scorce for info, it's helped me fix issues on my Skyline thanks.

[kneesamo]

Your attention to the details rocks, and what a perfect car to be on the receiving end.

[Babalouie]

Recently, the gearshift has become a little notchy, and the last couple of times I drove the car, I heard a squeak coming from the clutch pedal. When I had a closer look, the pushrod that goes from the top of the pedal through the firewall into the clutch master cylinder was a little wet. So I think it's time for a new clutch master. The fluid is all black, from the decomposing bits of dead rubber from the perished seals :)

 

I'd wanted to renew the clutch master for a long time, in fact fixing the clutch was the very first job I did on the Hako. Back then, replacing the slave cylinder sorted it, and it would have been nice to renew the master cylinder too, but the nut on the hardline was rounded, and it was impossible to get off. So I left that job for another day, and 3 years later, that day has finally come...

 

Removing the clutch master now means cutting the hardline and making a new one, and since I hadn't done that before, it meant getting some nice and shiny new tools: The orange case contains the brake flaring tool, the thing with the big handle is the tube bender, and that little red thing on the right is the tube cutter.

 

Tube cutter is a pretty neat little gadget. It has a sharp cutting wheel, like a pizza cutter, and you turn this knob to push the cutting wheel closer to the tube. You then rotate the cutter, tighten the knob, rotate it some more, and after a few turns you get a nice, neat cut in the tube.

 

And so the old dead master cylinder is freed from the car.

 

Now that the hardline is cut, I could remove the softline, and get it onto the vice so that I could get a proper spanner on that retaining nut, which really was corroded on and stuck.

 

Here's the new master cylinder (which I think might be for a 610 or something). First thing you notice is that the outlet for the hardline points the opposite way to the original Hako master cylinder. But since we're making a new hardline for it, this is ok.

 

The new master cylinder has a slightly different bolt pattern to the Hako firewall, but it's only a few mm difference, so this wasn't hard to accommodate with a bit of filing and redrilling. But now the new hardline has to be made, and it starts with this little fitting.

 

The hardline is clamped into the main bars/jaws, that little black gizmo is fitted into the top of the tube, and then you start to apply pressure by winding down the flaring tool.

 

This has the effect of turning the end of the tube into a bubble shape.

 

You then remove the black fitting, and apply the flaring tool directly to the end of the tube.

 

...and you end up with this. It will fold the edge of the tube back onto itself and make a nice cone shape.

 

The mating surface on the clutch master is a male cone-shape, so when you tighten down the tube nut, it'll squish the freshly-made cone on the end of the tubing, forming a nice, tight seal. This is called a 45 degree double flare, and I believe european cars do it differently to Japanese ones.

 

Flaring the tubing is a strangely tricky job though, sometimes when you're done, it's all kinda crooked...

 

...or the flare has a crack in it.

 

The trick seems to be to have the tube as straight as possible, and then file the top of the tube perfectly flat and perpendicular. Otherwise as you wind down the flaring tool, you'll see the whole thing shift slightly to the side and it'll be crooked. It did take me a few goes to get it right, so it's probably not a bad idea to start off with a slightly longer length of tubing than you need, that way you can cut off the ruined flare and start again :)

 

Next thing is to mock up the desired shape of the tubing, which I did with a little fencewire.

 

Then you just recreate the same shape in the newly-flared brake tubing...the bender makes it pretty easy to make nice, even bends without crimping the tubing in the corners. Compared to flaring the tubes, this was the easy part!

 

The finished product!

 

Turned out a bit neater looking than I thought it would. After adding some fresh fluid and bleeding it, there was a little leak in the bottom joint, but it turned out we didn't tighten down the tube nut enough on that end, and it was fine after we gave it another half turn. The freeplay at the pedal was next, and adjusting the pushrod got the freeplay down to about 15mm, and the biting point about 3/4s along the pedal travel.

 

A quick drive, and it feels great! The gearshift is slicker than it has been for a long time, and thankfully...no leaks (don't want to reflare that tube again...)

[Babalouie]

Couple of interesting tidbits...

 

First one is word from the US is that one of the Hako owners provided his black coupe for filming in the upcoming 5th instalment of The Fast and Furious. Supposedly it's Paul Walker's personal car in the story, but since it's a personal car that's been borrowed for filming, presumably it's just used for eye candy and not for any driving sequences. Supposedly the car was also in the parking garage scene in Tokyo Drift, but it's either too far in the background or didn't make the final cut. But this time as you can see, PW drives it, so that should be interesting to see the final product.

 

The other news is that one of my mates is selling his KGC10.

 

 

 

 

Details are:

Engine L28: (L20 to go with the car as well)

Mild camshaft

Triple 40mm Webbers

Mild cleanup of the ports

Standard bore N42 (ready for 3.1Lt conversion !!!!!)

Recent freshen up

Flat top pistons balanced bottom end

Extractors

5 speed manual

Aftermarket Steering wheel (Standard one to go with the car)

3.9:1 locked differential (also provided is an 4.4:1 R200 LSD)

1980 280ZX rotors and callipers braided brake lines

R32 GTR front seats (standard ones go with the car as well)

SSR Wheels

Adjustable strut tops

Adjustable rear shocks

Nakamachi CD/Radio

Very reasonably priced at A$25,000: location Sydney. PM me if you're interested, and I'll fwd your details to the owner.

[Babalouie]

Since forever, I've had one of these little filters acting as a cam cover breather. Every now and then I have to give that section of the cam cover a bit of a wipe to get rid of the oil mist, but it works ok. But I'm entered into a supersprint in a few weeks, and given that's a sanctioned event, the scrutineers might insist on a catch can.

 

On the stock Hako, there's a tube going to the stock airbox, but the K&N filters I have on the Webers don't have any facility for a breather hose. And a recent very kind gift from a good mate got me thinking. It's an old Greddy breather can, and if it looks different to the cylindrical sheetmetal ones, it's because about 10yrs ago, Greddy used to make them out of billet, so it's a pretty nice little bit of gear.

 

But the problem is, the outlet on the cam cover is huge, and the resulting hose I'd need to plumb in the catch can looked pretty unsightly.

 

Then one day I was browsing the hybridz.org forum, and noticed that a fellow aussie forum member there, RB30X offered some nifty cam cover attachments for sale. The cam cover has a strange thread, but RB30X found an industrial fitting that had the same thread, and then welded on a standard AN fitting. So you could then attach a bit of braided hose, with a pretty red/blue -8AN motorsport fitting. But recently making up new hardlines for the clutch master cylinder was fun, so that got me into thinking about maybe making up a solution with hardline...

 

So I get some 1/2in copper tubing from the hardware store, plus a 1/2in spring mandrel to bend it with. The little handheld tubing bender we used for the clutch lines isn't big enough to handle 1/2in tube. What you do, is you insert the spring into the tube, then bend it by hand, and the spring prevents the tube from kinking.

 

First things first, I have to remove the stock breather tube, which is held in place very tightly with some sealer, which has gone hard over the years.

 

But eventually it's out...it may look bigger than the new fitting, but the stock tube has an inner diameter of 12mm, and the new one is 11, so that's pretty close I think.

 

At first I thought it would look nice like this. The copper line would run along the top of the cam cover, and it would be parallel to the copper hardline I already have for the brake booster line.

 

This is now the AN fitting works. AN stands for Army/Navy, and is a mil-spec standard that was developed in WW2, but since then has been adopted as pretty much the gold standard for motorsport applications. It's what is inside those pretty blue and red fittings you see on race cars. First you flare the end of the tube, but unlike the brake tube, where we had to do this complicated double flare, this is just a single flare, like a trumpet in profile.

 

The flared tube then butts up against the male AN fitting, and when you tighten it up, that sleeve you see will compress the tube end against the AN male, and you get a nice super-tight seal. I should point out that the brake flaring tool I used flares the tube at a 45 degree angle, whereas AN really requires a 37 degree angle. So if say we were making a high pressure fuel connection, it would probably leak. But since this is just to carry low-pressure air, I reckon we're ok.

 

But then I realised that the end of the tube closest to the firewall is unsupported, there isn't anywhere on the cam cover where I can attach a bracket to hold the tube still while the engine vibrates. I think what will happen is that the tube will wobble about and stress the joint at the fitting. So that ain't gonna work.

 

The alternative was a fair bit more complex....what I quickly discovered was that making one bend in the middle of a tube is pretty easy. Just insert the mandrel, then use something like a socket, mounted in a vice to make your radius.

[Babalouie]

But if you want to make a more complex shape, then it's almost impossible to bend the stiff tube by hand, and you have to get creative.

 

Just the same, it was impossible to get the bends tight enough, so I needed to make a little bracket

 

So the tube can sit alongside the brake booster tube. The plan was for it to sit above the booster tube, but I just couldn't get the bends tight enough to sit closer to the cam cover. If I used a smaller socket to get a tighter radius bend, it would get a nasty kink in it (notwithstanding the mandrel spring inside) so this was about the best I could do.

 

Then we assemble the Greddy catch can, which has a nifty little tube so that you can see the oil level. The fittings are industrial brass compression fittings that I got from Pirtek, which as you will see work a little differently to the AN fitting.

 

This kind of fitting doesn't require the tube to be flared, you just insert the tube into the fitting, and when you tighten it, that "olive" that you see in the middle will compress into the tapered ends of the fitting, which will then crush down onto the tube and form a nice seal. It isn't quite as strong as the AN-style of fitting, but will do for our purposes.

 

Then we drill a hole into one of the filter covers. I'll insert a 90 degree fitting, which will be held in place by that brass nut you see there...

 

...and if you're thinking that we really, really don't want that nut to come undone and fly into the engine, then we're on the same page :)

 

So I drill a 2mm hole into the nut and fitting, and then insert a splitpin. Hopefully this means it stays together forevermore.

 

This is what it'll look like, the fitting only protrudes inside the filter a little bit

 

And I attach some flexible oil-safe hose.

 

Do up the brass compression fittings...

 

And we're done!

 

Very possibly the stupidest, most overcomplicated breather can arrangement ever :lol:

 

But it looks appropriately vintage I suppose. Bending the tubes was a real pain in the arse (you should see the mountain of dead tubes under the bench) so I'm not sure if I'd ever do it like this again :)

[bonvo]

all i have to say is that is dead sexy your sure running out of room in that engine compartment though reminds me of my 610 :P got any overall pics of the engine compartment?

[xonix_digital]

Whoa. The copper tubing looks AWESOME!

:blink:

[Babalouie]

Alright...take 2...

 

Now that I've had a day to get used to it, I think while there are sections that I like (the bit on the cam cover is nice), the section from the catch can to the airfilter wasn't such a great idea. I'd bought some aluminium tube today to see if I can make something up that blends in with the silver paint of the engine bay, but it turns out that I suck at buying ally tube: it was 12mm instead of half-inch and so the spring mandrel didn't fit, and also it seems to be a sort of extruded tube which is really hard and impossible to bend by hand.

 

So I decided to have another go using what I had on hand. First thing was to move the 90 degree brass fitting to the firewall side of the catch can. This means that the tube coming off it can be straight and not do that big looping turn that everyone seems to dislike. Then I removed the short copper tube coming off the inlet side of the catch can, and just ran a longer flexible hose to a regular barbed fitting.

 

A new copper tube comes off the firewall side of the catch can, and instead of going around the top edge of the engine bay like before, tucks down below the catch can...

 

...and then points forwards. I've rotated the fitting on the air filter to point the hose towards it.

 

And with the windscreen bag in place, most of it is hidden away.

 

I'll give myself a few days to get used to it, but I think this is much better: it's a lot simpler-looking and less showy.

 

I think with the longer flexible hose at the cam cover end, it looks less fussy too. I'm getting used to it.

[jalen]

I know have to change my pants, i love this car. It needs to be lower. no point on having flares of you got wheel gap.

[Babalouie]

I know have to change my pants, i love this car. It needs to be lower. no point on having flares of you got wheel gap.

Can't really go any lower at the back anyway, if the wheel tucks even a little, the tyre will lock on the wheel tub :)

 

I've spent a bit of time recently trying to track down some of this elusive cloth braided hose...but I also did some research, and it seems that the reinforced plastic hose was commonly used in motorsport applications back in the day. Here's a Porsche 917

 

Oh, lookee there... :)

 

But at the end of the day, black cloth hose would be a classier look, and when I found this pic of a vintage Hako racer from the early 70s, it sealed the deal.

 

But the cloth hose was quite hard to find. Most VW resto suppliers had the 5.5mm cloth fuel hose, but not the 12mm breather hose I needed. Then I discovered that the cloth hose was commonly used as vapour hose in LPG installations, but while plenty of LPG workshops had 15mm and 24mm cloth hose, the 12mm size was nowhere to be found. The only supplier I did track down was http://www.completerubber.com.au but they only sold 20m reels of the stuff. Plenty of VW and Porsche resto suppliers in the USA had it for sale by the metre, but most of them were quoting $90 in postage :lol:

 

So finally I found some at vintage VW parts specialist Stokers VW in northern NSW...I also got some 8mm fuel hose too, in case I decide to re-do some of the existing hoses at a later date.

 

The cloth hose is a light grey colour though, which is quite nice, but black would be better.

 

A little spraypaint later...and it's black! :)

 

I do think that looks a lot nicer overall.

 

I think the hose might actually be from vintage stock, since the cloth is a little fuzzy and aged looking...which isn't a bad thing.

[bonvo]

dude this car is sex on wheels seriously nice man

[datsun510w]

your car is awesome, and I wish you guys were in the state cuz I would be all over your buddies KGC10

[sinner720st]

looks great dude. just curious, what are the splices in the hose for that are coming from the greddy can running over your carbs?

 

 

Edit: and they dont appear to be cloth, but rather rubber.

[jalen]

I love your skyline. I now want one.

[Babalouie]

looks great dude. just curious, what are the splices in the hose for that are coming from the greddy can running over your carbs?

 

 

Edit: and they dont appear to be cloth, but rather rubber.

Oh right, those are the rubber fuel lines that feed the carbs. They don't touch the Greddy can, they just kinda look like they do because of the angle :)

[dennis]

looks great, are you going to do the fuel lines in copper? That would give it that old school hot rod look.

[Babalouie]

looks great, are you going to do the fuel lines in copper? That would give it that old school hot rod look.

Thought about it, but I think it's probably going to be too much copper if I overdo it. That's kinda why I tucked the recirc copper line behind the wiper washer bag.

[WAGON JON]

I like the copper. It gives the engine bay an old school flavor! Nice!!