KGC10 Skyline 2000GT Build

[Babalouie]

After faffing around for two weeks with a ricer catchcan :) I thought I'd redeem myself with some proper mechanical stuff.

 

The last time I poked my head under the front of the car, I noticed that the lower control arm bushes were a bit perished looking. They're not a conventional metalastic bush though (like the diff bushes I did not long ago). They're held in place by this plate.

 

Loosen the 2 nuts on that plate, and the bigger nut in front, then unbolt the arm from the ball joint, and it swings down freely.

 

And this is it. The plate is attached to a locating pin, which holds these two cone-shaped rubber bushes.

 

The control arm itself has a female cone shape.

 

Here are the new bushes on the left. I gave a call to Baz at Datsport, and ordered a set of oem bushes for the Kenmeri/240K Skyline. I've found that most of the time, Kenmeri parts are teh same as for Hako Skyline. And for $25 a set, there's no excuse for not renewing them on a regular basis. The old bushes are a bit dried out on the flange bit that sticks out, but the part that goes into the arm itself seems to still be quite soft, so I think at some point in the car's life, they've been changed. But as you can see, the new bushes are somewhat plumper (and softer).

 

Before I fitted up the bushes, I thought I'd repaint the suspension arms. But because they had several layers of paint from various restorations over the years, I decided to get them blasted clean instead. So http://www.wheelrepairs.com.au/ were kind enough to give the parts a good soaking in their painstripper tank, then given a sandblast to clean up the surface.

 

It leaves a nice, roughed-up surface which paints up really well...

 

...and most importantly for those of us on the lazier end of the spectrum, gives a nice silky paint finish without any pesky sanding :) This is after a couple of coats of etch primer, and then about 6 coats of black.

 

By the way, those little shields fit above the bush, and prevent oil from oil changes or leaks from soaking the bushes. This will make the rubber go soft and ensure their swift demise. So it's important that they are refitted. In refitting the suspension arm, it's important to set the arm at the same angle at which it will sit at the static ride height. This is because the rubber bush doesn't rotate on its locating pin as the suspension moves. What happens is that when you tighten that locating plate, it squashes the bushes tightly into the arm, and effectively locks everything in place. When the suspension arm moves up and down, what happens is that the rubber element itself twists. So if you tighten the locating plate while the arm is at full droop, when it's at its normal ride height, the rubber will be twisted, and will wear out more quickly.

 

So you can see, I've put an axle stand under the arm to hold it at the horizontal position while I do up the locating plate and front nut. And yes, now that the suspension arm is all nice and shiny, I've gone all precious about it and put a cloth on top of the axle stand :)

 

When it's all tightened up, the bushes are squased up nicely...

 

And the repainted parts are much better than the flaky finish from before (and yes I really should clean that greasy smudge...)

 

But one other thing that I wanted to attend to while waiting for coats of paint to dry, was to sort out the splashguard. The Hako doesn't have a plastic guardliner like a modern car, instead it has a metal plate, which has a rubber flap attached to it.

 

It goes here, at the back of the wheel well.

 

The rubber that was on it, was more or less disintegrating anyway, and upon closer inspection, appears to be a cut up section of a floormat! I guess at some point in the car's past, it had a reasonably handy DIYer as an owner.

 

Who ever it was, he riveted the section of floormat to the splashplate, so the rivets all have to be cut off...

 

..which leaves your dremel cutoff wheel looking like this :D

 

Then hit it with the wire wheel to remove the surface rust and old paint.

 

Then hit it with some etch primer, then some epoxy satin black. As you can see from its er...charming patina, I didn't get a chance to get these pieces sandblasted too. And instead of cutting up a floormat, today you can get these nifty precut rubber flaps from any Hako restoration shop in Japan (these were from www.rubber-soul.net).

 

The oem-style is for the flap to be stapled to the splashplate, but since the are these big holes in the plate now, I decided to follow the lead of the previous JDM DIYer and use rivets instead.

 

Mock it up with some tape to make sure the flaps are in the right spot first!

 

One of the nice things about Japanese parts is that everything just fits perfectly.

 

And with that, we're done!

 

I took it for a quick drive and the front end definitely feels tighter. I never felt like it was worn out feeling before, but from time to time you could feel some clunks from the front end, especially when reversing at full lock out of the garage. But now there's no more clunks and it's more solid feeling over bumps. In terms of handling, I'm finding that I'm subconciously winding on more lock than I have to in familiar corners, and then having to wind some off before the apex, so I definitely think it steers better now.

 

Tomorrow night...we start on rebushing the back end :)

[sick620]

keep doing this thing justice mang!!! :) I would sell my soul for a car like this... keep up the good work.... :D

[Babalouie]

One of the first things I did after the Hako was run-in, was attend a trackday at my favourite racetrack, Wakefield Park, which is 2hrs south of Sydney. This was in August 2009.

 

It was really just a shakedown run for the Hako, and while we were all pleased with how she went, in truth I'd got a lot of things wrong. The spring rates were way too soft in the rear, and the front end was undertyred, so my laps were all a mess of squealy understeer. But one thing that did work very well was the freshly minted engine, which provided heaps of brute force out of each corner and down the straights. So while the brakes and handling weren't too pretty, we did come away with a half-decent 1'15.5 laptime. So as far as shakedown runs go, it went pretty well.

 

Since then of course there's been some pretty constant fiddling with the car, and I've always wanted to come back to Wakefield to see how much better she goes. In terms of mods since that first trackday in 2009, we've doubled the rear spring rate (and there are new GAB adjustable shocks back there too), the skinny Yokohama C-Drive front tyres have been swapped for stickier and wider Falken Azenis hoops, the brakes are shod with Endless NL97 pads and shoes all round, and there's about 30 more horses in the stable.

 

So when the opportunity arose to attend another Wakefield trackday a few days ago, I jumped at the chance.

 

Well I won't put you in too much suspense, but the new best laptime is 1'13.95, which was timed on my iPhone by the really rather cool Harry's Lap Timer app.

 

It's a GPS-based lap timer which works out your laptimes using GPS waypoints around the circuit using google maps (or something like that...)

 

I'm not sure how accurate any iPhone can be compared to say a Driftbox or something, but it does have some cool features. There are three ways you can configure the laptime display, but I chose this one, which shows your current laptime, and sector time, compared to a "reference" lap, which in my case was my best previous lap. And it flashes red or green depending on whether you are in front or ahead.

 

The app also allows you to record a video and overlay some data onto the display too. Unfortunately the camera mount fell off during the 1'13.95 lap, so here's the second-best lap :)

 

The day was quite well-attended, so there was a lot of traffic to contend with as you will see.

 

But overall the Hako ran just great. The handling balance is pretty much where I want it, and the heavy understeer problems I had before are now gone. In fact, even in the fast sweepers, you can still push the tail out quite easily with the power, so the balance is great...like night and day compared to before. If you compare these vids to the previous 2009 trackday, I'm using far less steering lock to turn the car into the apex, and once at the apex, I'm actually unwinding lock now as the power feeds in....compared to before when the understeer got even stronger on corner exit. At the end of this run is my fastest lap of the day, and you can see what happens to the camera as I begin the lap! :)

 

The brakes are better, but still fading badly during a 20min session. I guess in a supersprint context, where you only do 3 flying laps at a time, the heat buildup could be managed better, but after about 6 hard laps the pedal starts to get really long. One thing that did stay cool was the temps, and the ducting and upgraded rad seem to be doing their job, and the water temps didn't go over 85 degrees all day.

 

But here's a cool feature of the Harry's Lap Timer. You can plot speed-vs-trackposition traces and compare laps against each other. Here's the traces for the traces for the 1'13.95 fastest lap, against the 1'15.10 hot lap above with the data readout on it.

 

The 1'13.9 is the red line, and as you start from the left, we are hammering down the main straight and you can see that the braking point is the same. Then the line goes downhill as I brake, and the entry speed for the first turn is actually the same too. The exit speed is the same too, and the 2 laps are neck and neck as the Hako speed uphill towards the little esses at the top of the hill.

 

That's where the time is gained on the faster lap. You can probably tell from the hotlap footage (at 18secs) that I'm not really fully committed through the esses, but in the 1'13 lap I'm not lifting as much and holding much more speed through the esses and then through the 90 degree right hander (at 22secs) at the top of the hill. Going flat(ish) through the esses meant that the right hander was taken in a bit of a mess of understeer, but it's actually the fastest way, and you can see there's a lot of time gained there.

 

Then the line goes upwards towards the half-way mark again, and this represents the downhill right hand sweeper in the middle of the lap (at 32secs). If anything, the 1'13.9 lap is a bit slower here, and the 1'15.1 lap gets up to a faster speed on the sweeper exit just before braking. I'd put this down to the brakes being fresher at the beginning of the day when I put down that 1'15, when I did the faster lap, it was later in the day when the pedal was a bit long, so I probably backed off earlier.

 

At the half-way mark on the trace, the line plunges doward again and I hit the brakes heavily for the long slow double-apex left hand hairpin that we call the Bus Stop (at 41secs). As we accelerate out, the lines go upwards and it's line-ball, and that little downward dip is me backing off for the right hand sweeper (at 49secs), and on the red lap, I'm backing off later on entry and keeping my entry speed much higher, so this is the second spot where we gain a lot of time.

 

Then we go flat out and the traces plunge downward one more time as we brake for the hairpin coming onto the straight (at 1min), and it's line-ball between the 2 laps again. Interestingly, on the red lap the last peak before braking is a square shape...this is because the brakes were getting really long, and I had to give the pedal a couple of pumps before committing to braking, so that's why the speed is constant for a heartbeat or two (and that gives the trace that weird square shape).

 

It's interesting that a bit more aggression in just 2 corners of the track make such a big difference to the laptime. But I remember from events in my old MX5 that it was the same thing, and that run up the hill and blitzing those esses as fast as you could really made a huge difference, because you were maintaining speed going up the hill. Lift off more than you should and the gradient meant that heaps of speed would bleed off, and that would be reflected in the laptime.

 

As I said, I really don't know how accurate this is, but as a self-training tool, it's fantastic! Certainly the next time I'm at Wakefield I'll be tracing my laps against the data from the 1'13.9 lap, just to make sure I'm subconciously not being as aggressive and losing time without knowing why.

 

But I can't complain about how the Hako performed, and if I look back at the Aug 2009 trackday, a 1'13.9 would have put me right in the middle of a pack of Lancer Evolutions and Silvias running motorsport tyres, so Hako isn't going too bad for an old crate. You can probably hear that at a few spots on the track, there is a lot of inside wheelspin, so an LSD will improve things a little, and that should hopefully be sorted in the next couple of months. The other obvious area for improvement is the brakes, and I reckon some sort of 4 piston caliper upgrade up the front will be what the doctor ordered, so I'll start looking into it. You can also hear that the left rear tyre is touching the bodywork on corner exit sometimes, this is because I'd removed some of the packers under the bumpstop when I fitted the stiffer rear springs, I didn't think I needed them but I guess I still do.

 

But unfortunately, at the end of the day we also had this:

 

...those water marks are leaking coolant, which means a blown head gasket. Funnily enough, it isn't using any coolant, and drove pretty normally on the way home. It was using a bit of oil though, especially on decel, where you could see some smoke (I presume that's from cylinder vacuum pulling oil into the combustion chambers). But I take heart from the fact that it wasn't overheating, so fingers crossed that the head is fine and not banana-shaped.

 

So at the moment, the Hako is all apart, and the head will come for the first time since 2009. But...sadly, in taking the car apart I did find something else quite interesting, but fixing it will mean that we won't be able to make the Datsun Nationals at Wakefield Park this weekend.

 

More of which anon, but I think Hako will be off the road for a little while until this issue is sorted.

[WAGON JON]

Head gasket problems are always a drag! O-ringing the block fixes that problem!

[Babalouie]

Head gasket problems are always a drag! O-ringing the block fixes that problem!

Well I think the combustion sealing is prolly ok, it was probably the coolant passage section which blew first. But I'll be replacing the (possibly stretched) 30yr old head bolts and upgrading to ARP head studs, so fingers crossed this clamps the head down a bit better and this won't happen again.

[bonvo]

what was the other problem?

[Babalouie]

When the head was ported in Japan, they went through to the water jacket in one spot, and puttied it up with some sort of 2 pack.

 

As you can see it's starting to bubble up and lift.

 

So it's got to be all ground out, and either refilled with Devcon or welded up and ground back again.

[Babalouie]

With the Hako out of action, I thought I'd cheer myself up by fitting some parts I had lying around.

 

I'm amazed that you can still get this kind of stuff from Nissan as oem parts.

 

This badge goes on the edge of the bootlid. In my case, in a previous restoration the badge was removed, and the holes filled up, so I'll have to redrill the bootlid to fit this. I think the car has more of a "race" look without the badge but I reckon the sheetmetal looks a little naked without it.

 

The other badges go on the front fenders (the old one is at the bottom, it's not in bad shape, but some of the black paint is flaking off, and the chrome isn't as shiny as the new one)

 

They seem to be made the same way as the originals...

 

The red GT badges I got from the Tokyo Nostalgic Car Show in 2008 I think, I fitted them pretty much as soon as I got back home. At the time, the Skyline badges were available, but I thought mine were in good enough shape...but of course the nice new GT badges immediately made them look old once fitted...

 

Ok, I'm feeling a little better now :)

[Farmer Joe]

wow good you caught that blob of goo in the intake port...

 

that wouldnt have been good if it made its way in the engine.. let alone the coolant after...

 

in any case though, kinda neat to see parts like the emblems that lasted this long and just didnt get tossed..

[Babalouie]

in any case though, kinda neat to see parts like the emblems that lasted this long and just didnt get tossed..

Well that's the thing, those badges are not old stock, they're new Nissan parts boxes, so these are from a relatively recent production run, I think.

[JP521]

Man, your Skyline get's better everyday, keep improving it!!! =)

[Babalouie]

wow good you caught that blob of goo in the intake port...

 

that wouldnt have been good if it made its way in the engine.. let alone the coolant after...

 

That's a good point...even if say the chunk of goo didn't fall into the engine, the first step to it falling out would be the coolant leak, and if enough coolant flows into the cylinder to hydrolock...

 

But the cylinder head has been safely delivered to Knight Engines, we got 5 days of holidays here in Australia for Easter, so he'll get onto it maybe late next week.

[Babalouie]

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

 

 

 

 

Details are:

 

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

SOLD....and gone to a very good (multiple-Datto-owning) home :)

[Lüdvig]

i just came.

[Babalouie]

To recap, during the trackday a few weeks ago, this happened. Tracks of coolant could be seem running down the side of the block, which is a definite sign of a blown head gasket. Funny thing was, the car drove quite normally, it was a little down on power, and a bit smoky under decel (which I figured was oil being sucked past the gasket into the combustion chambers under vacuum). But it didn't overheat and we managed to gently limp home without any dramas.

 

Blowing the head gasket at that exact spot seems to be a bit of an L-series thing. I had a chat with L-series engine guru Stewart Wilkins about it, and he said that sometimes it just happens, and you get some coolant leak at that spot. Sometimes it's just a little bit of a crust from dried coolant and that isn't worth worrying about, but in my case it's obviosuly more serious.

 

So that weekend, I started to take the engine apart. The Hako engine's been pretty trouble free since my mate Nathan rebuilt her in May 2009, so it's been a while since I took it all apart like this. In the early part of the build in 2008, it seemed that I was constantly stripping the engine like this to diagnose all the various problems, so it only takes just over an hour to get to this stage, with the manifolds and carbs removed.

 

But remember the oil breather can? This is the fitting that goes into the air filter, and after a trackday, there isn't any film of oil there at all. If there is any meaningful blowby coming out of the rocker cover, then the breather can is doing its job and scrubbing the oil mist out of the air before it ends up in the air filter. So that's good to know it works...

 

The next step before we cam remove the head, is to make a chain wedge. In an L-series, the chain tensioner is spring-loaded, and is in an inaccessible spot, right at the bottom of the timing cover, just above the lower chain sprocket. If you just remove the cam sprocket, the chain will go slack, the tensioner will pop out, taking too much slack out of the chain. The only way you can reset the tensioner is to remove the timing cover (and that requires the crank pulley to come out, etc which is a big job).

 

So I made this out of some wood, initially too thick on purpose, and then gradually shaving it on the belt sander and test fitting it, until it could slide down the vee of the chain, and snugly keep the tensioner from popping out. The foot of the wooden wedge rests on the lower chain sprocket. Once you slide it in place, the cam sprocket can be carefully removed.

 

I also like to use a bungee cord to keep some tension on the chain, just in case it decides to slide down a bit and jump a tooth on the lower sprocket.

 

With the chain out of the equation you can then undo the head bolts, which have to be done in a certain order.

 

And then the head just lifts off. The engine's only done 12,000kms since the May 2009 rebuild, so the head separated easily by hand, and the gasket came off easily. Sometimes the old gasket really gets baked on and you have to scrape it off, but it peeled off no worries leaving a pretty clean surface.

 

Pistons and bores look ok...the piston crowns are a little greasy, presumably from the blown gasket allowing oil into the combustion chambers, but the bores look ok. There's a little bit of bore glazing, but I think that's probably because the Webers probably overfuel a bit when you're doing low-rpm commuting, which is basically what I use the car for. So the excess fuel has washed the lubricating oil off the bores, which have become slightly polished over time. It's only minor I think, but it's a reminder that I really should take the Hako out for proper hard drives every now and then, instead of just using it for sitting in traffic on the way to work :)

 

This is the spot where the gasket blew.

 

But the head looks fine once it was on the bench

 

 

Of course, we now know that the head had to go back to Knight Engines to have that putty issue sorted out, and I'll let Tony Knight take over:

 

Head stripped, hole opened up, 2-Pack blasted out & dressed for welding:

 

 

 

Welded:

 

 

Weld dressed:

 

 

Manifold face, top face & gasket face skimmed, seats touched up with a stone, valve lightly refaced & head scrubbed clean:

 

 

 

 

Back together again:

 

 

Tony did an absolutely BRILLIANT job, in repairing it, he made a wall of welded metal to fill the hole, and the repair is imperceptible, and is smooth as silk.

 

The valves and seats are redone and so basically the head is all brand new again!

 

[Babalouie]

So now that the cylinder head is all lovely again, it's got to go back onto the block. First thing was to clean the block surface in readiness for the new head gasket, so I've used a razor blade and gasket stripper spray to clean the few spots where there was some residue from the old gasket. One theory that Tony Knight had for the gasket blow was that I had used coolant in the first fill of the radiator after the 2009 rebuild. Coolant has wetting agents to break down surface tension and improve heat transfer, but the wetting agent can also wick into the new gasket and soak it. That can create a leak path later. Makes sense to me, but it also means that we should make sure that everything is clean and dry before reassembly for the same reason.

 

I then cleaned out the head bolt holes with a tap, to get any crud out.

 

In readiness for these! ARP head stud kit.

 

Another possible theory for the gasket blow were that the old oem head bolts had gone soft. When you tension the head bolts down on a cylinder head, the thing that provides the clamping force is actually a slight, elastic stretching of the head bolt material. It's quite possible that after several decades, and at least one rebuild, that the bolts have lost their elasticity and so don't provide good clamping force anymore. Well anyway it seemed like good insurance to replace the oem head bolts with the ARP stud kit, which as you can see, is a stud and nut, rather than a bolt. First you install the studs, which screw in just by hand.

 

Then on goes a new OEM gasket, to suit the 89mm overbore that Hako has (I got it from http://www.swmotorsport.com.au/ and suspect it might be a factory gasket for an LD diesel)

 

This actually means that refitting the head is a bit more tricky, since you have to carefully thread all those studs into the head. The holes in the head are 10.5mm, and the studs are 10mm, so it's a very snug fit, and some of my mates were kind enough to come and lend a hand. The cylinder head isn't that heavy, maybe 20kg or so, but it would have been a challenge to lift it over the fender and then work out how to slide it on over the ARP studs! So it really does make it a lot easier if you can snaffle a few guys (preferably with long arms and good upper body strength!) to help. But once the head is in place, it does slide into position very satisfyingly on those ARP studs.

 

ARP's instructions for torquing up the studs are pretty specific. You have to follow the factory pattern for torquing up the nuts (which is basically...start in the middle and work outwards) but ARP recommend torquing up in 3 steps of 20ft-lbs, working up to a final torque of 60ft-lbs.

 

And you have to use a special lube provided with the stud kit. The theory is that often, torquing up oem head bolts to 60ft-lbs doesn't actually give you 60ft-lbs of clamping force. Friction in the threads will account for some of it, as well as losses from the twisting of the head bolt against the block threads. So the ARP system of using studs eliminates most of that friction, and the supplied lube means that the friction experience between the threadsm nut and washer are consistent with the amount of friction that ARP has factored into their 60ft-lbs recommendation. Sounds good to me, and so the stud kit should in theory improve the head clamping, even if it's just from better/fresher materials. I don't want to do this again, so I was happy to try out every theory I heard of to make the engine better!

 

Once the head's all torqued up, the cam sprocket can be refitted, and the chain wedge pulled out. The sprocket went on easily, so thankfully the chain wedge did its job and the chain stayed put during the couple of weeks that the engine was all apart. You might also see the paint marks I made on the sprocket and chain to help in reassembly. Oh and yes for all you L-series guys out there, yes I did forget to refit the big washer onto the cam sprocket bolt, I fixed that after I took the photo :)

 

The next step is to refit the manifolds, and I've used a "bigport" gasket from Stewart Wilkins. He's got this process where he can stamp bigger holes into regular gaskets, to suit L-series heads which have enlarged ports.

 

The headers, which I painted in POR15 Black Velvet, have held up surprisingly well over the years, so all they needed was a wipedown.

 

The inlet and exhaust manifolds share a stud in a few spots, where you use a "bridge washer" to tighten down both manifolds. Because the exhaust flange is a little thicker, I made a step in the bridge washers.

 

The step allows the nut to sit flat on the bridge washer, which otherwise would have sat at an angle. The nuts are only torqued to 12ft-lbs, which isn't very much, but then again the 8mm studs aren't the strongest design.

 

Before the carbs go on, you have to fit these rubber softmounts, which insulate the carbs from engine vibration. By rights these shouldn't be recycled, but the rubber was still soft and pliant, so I figured they were good for another go.

 

The softmounts mean that you can't bolt down the carbs with conventional nuts, so you use these, which are a combination of rubber washer, metal cup washer, and nylock nut.

 

You tighten the nut so that the rubber washer squashes up a little bit, but not too much that the carb is deprived of movement.

 

Under the carbs go the heatshield, which might not look like much, but actually does a lot. The Webers sit directly above the headers, but I've never had any issues with fuel vaporisation or hot starting. Remove that heatshield and immediately you start to have problems.

[Babalouie]

On go the filterbases and air horns too. You might notice that I've swapped out the old rubber fuel hoses for vintage-look braided cloth ones.

 

And then the filters.

 

Fuel rail...

 

Then I started to check the valve clearances...but quickly realised that Tony Knight had set them up on the bench already...sweet!

 

New plugs...I find that NGK BP6ES-11s work best. BP7ES seem to get a little more top end, but don't seem to idle so good.

 

Then we set up the carbs. One common thing I hear when people see the engine bay, is a comment about how the Webers must be so hard to keep in tune. But to be honest, it's really quite easy. Now that I'm reassembling everything, I decided to give the carbs some TLC. First step is to measure the carb linkages, to ensure that they are all the same length, and they were...after all, why should they mysteriously get longer or shorter over the years :)

 

Then I set the idle speed this way. Under these brass plugs are the progression ports.

 

The progression ports are these holes, which give a slug of fuel when you crack open the throttle. You should set up the throttle, so that at idle, the edge of the throttle flap just about covers the topmost hole. Mine seem to idle best when the throttle flap covers the top 2/3s of the top progression hole. It's very important that you get this the same on every carb, because when they're off, you don't get that nice, crisp response when you gun it off idle. I used to sync my carbs by using devices that you stick into the airhorn while the car is running, to measure airflow, but I find that this is much more accurate. And easy, too :)

 

By the way, to adjust the throttle flap, you tweak this throttle stop screw on the side of the carb.

 

Next parameter are the idle mixture screws. I know from tuning with the wideband sensor, that the idle is best when these are screwed out 7/8ths of a turn from closed. But as you can see, it's very easy in my case to see that they are in adjustment, because the flats on the idle screws are both at the 9-3 o'clock position. You can easily verify that they are still properly adjusted everytime you open the bonnet, and they never seem to go out of adjustment by themselves (as I said before...why would they :) )

 

Now that the carbs are all "zeroed", you have to follow suit with the throttle arms. First I hook up one of the carbs to the throttle arm on the jackshaft, and I loosen the remaining two throttle arms.

 

Refit the linkages, and tighten the remaining two throttle arms, while you are taking up the slack with your other hand. And that's it, I find that after you set up the carbs and linkages on the bench like this, it isn't necessary to do any further tweaking once the car is running. I run these basic checks every time I do an oil change, but generally you don't need to adjust anything.

 

 

The last thing, is to fill the radiator with plain, distilled water. As Tony Knight recommended, maybe coolant isn't such a great idea until the head gasket breaks in. I'll swap over to proper coolant after the engine's had a few hundred km under its belt.

 

And she's alive! :)

 

I only had time to take her for a short drive around the block, but she feels great, and everything is back as it should be. Fingers crossed it stays that way...

 

[Rustina 510]

Great looking rebuild

[Babalouie]

Well here's what the brakes look like. I'd thought that the Hako came with the same brakes as the 240Z, but it seems that while the caliper might be similar, the disc is 250mm instead of 270mm.

 

After Wakefield the pedal was very long and there wasn't much braking power, even after I'd bled the fluid at the track. The pads must have been pretty cooked, so it seemed a good idea to replace them.

 

This is part of the problem :lol: the disc may be small, but the pads are tiny :D

 

But changing pads in the Hako is pretty much a 5 minute job, you just pull our these pins...

 

And the old pads just slide out. I then use the old pads to lever/push the caliper pistons back.

 

New pads just slot in and you're good to go.

 

I find that when pads get really overheated, they kinda go into a concave shape, so I'd sanded back the old pad to a semblance of a flat shape and also filed an angle into the edges of the pad (you'll notice the new pad comes with them). I find that if brakes feel a little secondhand after a trackday, this (along with a fluid bleed) brings them right back again. But not this time, the pad material was actually a little crumbly.

 

New pads refitted, the brakes feel great again. Well, they'll do for street use until we come up with some sort of disc/caliper upgrade.

[Farmer Joe]

man... youve been throwing it around a track with this dinky brakes?

 

maybe some 4 pot calipers and vented rotors would be nice..

[Babalouie]

man... youve been throwing it around a track with this dinky brakes?

Yeah I really should do something about it :) There are plenty of options for 240Zs and 4 piston calipers and bigger discs, so I'm pretty sure I can find a combo that works for the Hako

[Topher88]

Do you have any running videos? these cars sound flipping amazing and id love to hear this freshly rebuilt one sing.

[Babalouie]

There's some trackday vids a couple of pages back.

 

That footage was before/in the process of... blowing up tho :)

[bilzbobaggins]

Super read. Like reading a good book you hope will never end.

 

Thanks

 

Jeff

[Babalouie]

By the way guys, check this out :) http://japanesenostalgiccar.com/2011/05/18/hot-wheels-x-jnc-hakosuka-nissan-skyline/

 

And I didn't expect to see our magazine logo on the door! Consider me blown away...