1981 Datsun 200sx - Lemons

[Hybridchemistry]

 

awwwww right :)

 

There's a few more pics, but they're on another camera, maybe later in the week.

[athoose]

You should join the yahoo s110 group. A couple of guys on there race these bad boys. I was told to change the injector fuel line on the fuel rail immediately, several of their cars caught fire within a week or two at the track. Something you may want to consider, if you haven't already.

[Hybridchemistry]

Yehahhh more pics!!

No narration this time.

 

Edited November 16, 2009 by Hybridchemistry

[Hybridchemistry]

Edited November 16, 2009 by Hybridchemistry

[Hybridchemistry]

Edited November 16, 2009 by Hybridchemistry

[Hybridchemistry]

Edited November 16, 2009 by Hybridchemistry

[Hybridchemistry]

Video 1

Video 2

[athoose]

Sounds good.

[bonvo]

sweet i like now i have a question how far does the radiator stick out of the hood ? why not make a scoop that goes along the hood and cut everything underneath it out for more airflow and lower engine compartment temps

[Hybridchemistry]

sweet i like now i have a question how far does the radiator stick out of the hood ? why not make a scoop that goes along the hood and cut everything underneath it out for more airflow and lower engine compartment temps

 

Short answer: We're not quite on the ball.

Longer Answer: Making a scoop would have been cool, but we're kind of cramped on time, race is THIS WEEKEND :o :o :D :D

The rad sticks out about... 2 inches or so at the highest, I think, and to make a scoop we'd have to just cut the sides and bend it one way, then bend it back, then makes some side things for it... and at that point it's just cosmetic and we don't care that much, IT'S LEMONS! It's supposed to be crap can racing. :P

[herculesinwyoming]

good to see one still alive, my first car was an 81 200sx.

 

couldnt understand a word of what you typed in the early posts, caulking on the headgasket? OK

 

have fun

Edited November 17, 2009 by herculesinwyoming

[Hybridchemistry]

couldnt understand a word of what you typed in the early posts, caulking on the headgasket? OK

 

have fun

 

This:

[petep99]

Hey, be sure to stop by and say "Hi" at Thunderhill. Just look for the world's fastest $500 MGB (snicker) over at team Killer Bees.

 

Great to see Ratsun folks out at Lemons!

 

Good luck!

[Hybridchemistry]

Oh boy, oh boy, oh boy, oh boy, oh boy, oh boy, oh boy!

Look at that bad boy purrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr :D

 

Moar pics:

[Hybridchemistry]

[Hybridchemistry]

[lil89ram50]

so... ummm did you really use the black silicone for a head gasket?

[Hybridchemistry]

so... ummm did you really use the black silicone for a head gasket?

We had a full gasket kit for all the gaskets and used the silicone where ever a mechanic friend said we should.

[athoose]

race is THIS WEEKEND :o :o :D :D

Good luck, shoot some video if you can.

Edited November 19, 2009 by athoose
spelling

[petep99]

Came by to see you a few times, but you guys seemed pretty busy all weekend.

 

Wish I had gotten a chance to meet you and help out, 'cause I ended up with a lot of time on my hands, lol!

 

How did you guys end up finishing?

 

[521ofdoom]

Hey. it's fish from Evil Genius here.... How'd you guys do overall? Sadly the vovlo was rolled, and the porsche blew up...

[Drahzzel]

Damn, really dropped the ball on this one. I wanted to go by and see you guys race and check the car out since I've got an '80 200SX. Ah well. How'd you guys do overall?

[Hybridchemistry]

Dang, sorry I didn't get back to you guys sooner, I've been busy with personal junk and then got sucked back into LeMons junk :o

 

BTW, Kraz = Stephane

 

So, here's the first part of a write up I was doing to explain how the race went...

I had the beginnings of a write up going' date=' then firefox decided to crap out on me. Now for draft 2

 

Thursday:

During the day I had sanded and painted the retarded Japanese War Flag, the Rising Sun, on the hood and had sanded some other stuff. In retrospect, it wasn't priority, should have taken care of some stuff inside the car. During the night we're taking care of smaller things, zip tying down wires, hooking up battery, looming wires in the engine bay, lowering car of jack stands, etc. When Kraz goes to test the kill switch it doesn't work. Not sure why, and with me and Bruce being rather tired, he says he'll stay up all night till he figures it out.

 

Friday:

Early in the morning, around 6am, I get a call from Kraz ("GOOOOOOOD MORNING CAMPERS!"), time to get up and get ready. After a half hour of packing and heading down to the house, I see Kraz and Boris blury eyed but happy the car runs and dies on command. We load up the car on to the trailer that Bruce has rented and pack some extra parts and supplies into the truck. We finally leave the house in SJ around 8, from which Kraz did a beautiful drive thru of his neighbors yardwaste, stop by my house to grab a canopy and drop off my car, then we're on the road. A few stops at Lowes to pick up parts, and 4 hours later, we're at Thunderhill raceway in beautiful Willows, Ca.

It's now about noon, and there are already a bunch of people at the track, many were probably waiting at gates at 7am when the park opened. Luckily we were able to score a spot in the paddock between Team 1up (the SMB theme'd car) and the CRX Ferarri guys. After staking our claim, and pulling out the canopy, we get to work on the final touches for the car, oil cooler, more wire looming, etc. Finally as the closing time for tech inspection draws near, we're done with everything and we head on over to tech. For the most part, the car passed just fine, Kraz did a great job at the fire drill, jumping out of the car like a jack rabbit. BS inspection went better than expected... Boris had prepared the cost sheet and outlined all of where we went over on budget, but when the time came, the BS judge took one look at the car and gave us 0 (zero) penalty laps. :D We, in reality, had gone over by several hundred dollars in getting the car ready for the race. Maybe later I'll post the final expense report.

Later, car is parked, all the drivers on the team went over to the Turn by Turn Tutorial for newb drivers (20$ a head), which was somewhat informative, but seemed to me like a lot of the info we'd get the next day at the drivers meeting. Tired (Boris and I nodded off more than once in the meeting) and hungry we headed into town for dinner at Denny's and finally to our hotel's in town.

 

Saturday:

Race day! It's here! Excited for our almost promised deaths, Boris and I suit up before heading off to the track. We needed a few supplies for the car... Like extra oil and some other small stuff I think, from Napa, and then it was breakfast at McDonalds, and then it was time to get to the track. After arriving, there isn't much time for dicking around, drivers meeting is about to go on at the main control building. Drivers meeting goes over basics, how to win: don't be a dick, don't get black flagged, entertain the judges if you do. They go over the flags, potential hazards on the course (mud, it had rained pretty hard on the trip up), and other safety issues. After the meeting, time to get back to the car, get our first driver in (Bruce), and get queued up for getting on track.

To make it somewhat fair, and to be sure there isnt' a flurry of crazy drivers off some start line, cars are queued onto the track a few at a time until everyone is on and then after a few pace laps (THEY DROVE A DELOREAN AS THE PACE CAR!!)

 

I'm going to stop now and submit before I loose this again, I've lost my train of thought and will continue later.[/quote']

 

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

FUCK, 10,000 character limit?! :

Edited December 13, 2009 by Hybridchemistry

[Hybridchemistry]

Ok... let me see where do I pick up... I guess we'll start at the beginning of the race... Bruce saw that it was starting and with very little practice with the car (one lap around the block before we loaded it up onto the trailer Friday morning...), he went in to turn 1 a little hard and played slip 'n slide till he T-boned some other guy (video coming) and pushed him out off to the grass. Bruce kept on racing like a champ, but I think that guy was knocked back a few places. While Bruce was T-boning that other guy (in a rx7 i think), the lower radiator hose popped off (number 1), and we dumped all our water. One lap around and we were back in the paddock scrambling to assemble a shorter and improved version of the radiator hose system. BIG thanks to the guys from the blue Jeep team for charity, they handed over a radiator hose like it was candy on Halloween! I believe we have since paid them back with a new hose and 6 pack :)

 

So, after some skilled and well crafted modifications to the hood (read we bent the shit out of a corner in the hole so we could fit the pipes), Stephane was out on track next! googogo! I think he got a few laps in... then I think he came in for another loose radiator hose (number 2), and we popped that back on, now it was my turn to get out there! Oh man was I nervous. I had been a passenger on a track day, and I do a lot of back road rallies, but I had never been in a position where potenetial death traps were whizzing by at 50 MPH! Wait, I live in the Bay Area... This is the same as merging onto any freeway :P JUST PUNCH IT!

 

puh puh puh poooOOOOoooo puh. That's what I felt the engine would have been doing if it had a mouth. I would put my foot down on the gas, get going a bit, start to merge, ok, let's give it some more power... more gas.. hmmm shouldn't the speedo go up, not the tach? WTF is going on?! I limp around the track going somewhere between 35 and 50 MPH and finally I'm coming into the pit lane thinking "what the hell happened? I know we have a wimpy little engine (99HP stock I think) but this is silly!" I make it back to our pit and tell them what's happening, everything felt okay for Stephane and Bruce, maybe I can't dive. Yeah that's it. :rolls eyes: I get conned into slamming the car in third and taking it out on another lap because the other guys thought we were over heating the clutch. This is a brand spank'n new clutch and pressure plate by the way. So to keep the "damage" down on the clutch, I'm not to shift out of third because that's our happy middle gear. Out again I go and this is just as worse as before, I'm limping around the track, dropping down to 25mph on the long hill on the north side, and barely making it over the top. One more lap around and I can't keep this up. Pitting in again, I get out and we start to really use our heads.

 

Hmm... That slave cylinder doesn't look like it's being depressed all the way... COULD THAT BE THE PROBLEM!? A few hours later we have the clutch "plate" to normal operating position and our "new clutch" swapped out and old clutch swapped back in. Now, to be fair to everyone on the team, we wanted Boris to get out and get his laps around. For the record, Boris hasn't driven stick in several years, so he's a bit rusty, but he still looks good on the course! Go Boris! 1 lap around! Alright! Turn 5... oh nuts, get off the dirt! Hmm, that's a bad location to try and merge back into the traffic, right after the crest of the hill, but there he goes... and he's pulled back onto the dirt. A tow truck later, he's back in the pit and we take a look under the hood, hmmm, everything looks okay... AH! Fire! It was a tiny one, but the fusible links we had replaced on Thursday night were toasting on up and a few puffs put out the fire. What else is wrong? Oh man, another hose popped off. (number 3) Well Bruce is handy as all hell and manages to scrounge up some metal pipe that will fit the inside of the radiator hose and get clamped down (like you're supposed to -__-). While that gets fixed, the sun is setting and soon the race is over for Saturday. I manage to get out to Napa and back and get the right fusible link for the car, and that is fixed, but we also burned out a relay. Hot wiring it works, but Stephane is worried about how well it'll work.

 

Things get a little hazy around here... Boris and I end up at our hotel, and it's decided that tomorrow morning we'll go out hunting for a relay in Chico, 45 min north east of Willows. Nothing at the Napa on the way to Chico, but there is a Pick and Pull in Chico, and we need a relay. Show up at the Pick and Pull, 2$ a piece, in we go. One of the first vehicles we see happens to be a 720 truck! Woot! Z24 engine.. carbed... ehh. not so useful. A bit more walking around in the import section and there's a few older model Zs, and I think we found a few relays, but they're crammed way the heck up in there under the dash, and we can't really get at it with just a crow bar and a mult screw driver :( So, it's 11am ish and it's time to head back. On the way we pick up a pizza, (i'm starved) or three and then ... dinner distracted me.. where was I?

 

Ah, picked up pizza, and along the way Boris just had to say "Watch, when we get back, they'll be pulling into the pits, with something else gone wrong"

Well... As soon as we pulled up, we saw the car sitting in our pit, with Bruce and Stephane looking under the hood. Now, the car had been running just great during the day, Bruce and Stephane were having a good 'ol time racing it around and even managed to rack up about 50 laps! But then tragedy struck and a radiator hose slipped loose yet again (number 4). We let the engine cool down and our worse fears were confirmed. Blown head gasket. The starter would turn, but we had no ignition. After removing the driver's side spark plugs and starting it, we had quite the piece of motor head lawn art in the form of an engine water fountain, spewing oily water all over the place.

 

After this we knew we were done, so we packed up and by the time we were done it was just about time to hit up the awards ceremonies and roll on home.

 

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

 

STILL TOO LONG?!?!

Edited December 13, 2009 by Hybridchemistry

[Hybridchemistry]

And here's a recap of what's happened recently:

So one of our teammates leaves on the 16th for France, and returns mid January as I recall. The plan is to race at Infineon, and we gotta get our application in by the 26th. Paper work I'm not too worried about, getting the rest of the engine ready will be some work though.

 

Let me start at the weekend after the race... Or maybe it was the weekend after that.. But anyhow, Stephane and I got the head ripped off, saw a bunch of oil and water in the pistons, it was pretty nasty. We got the head separated from the rest of the fuel injection stuff and then Stephane brought it to Clarks Auto (I think that's the name of the place) and had it checked. We managed to warp the head a bit and make a few pistons leaky. The total cost to fix the head was close to 300$ and even though Stephane and I had spent many hours porting and polishing and cleaning, we hit up the Pick and Pull on Montery Blvd in SJ and were able to score a W53 peanut head off of an L engine in a old 720 truck. I don't know how long it had been sitting, but it was gross inside. It looked like someone took a dump in cylinder 1 :(

 

So, right now we kind of committed to a L-Z build, which will end up being: L head (check), Z block (check) over bored to 2.1L (in progress), with Z22 or VG30 pistons, and a special, possibly custom ground camshaft, balanced crank (in progress), and if we can score one, a dogleg 5 speed tranny. Phew. It sounds like a lot of work, and I think it kind of is, but hopefully we'll have free Friday nights, weekends or any other time while Stephane is gone, and we can start reassembling the engine in the garage.

 

Also, because we're running the L head, the intake and exhaust are on the same side. With the Z engine, the head is tipped a little to the drivers side. With a L engine, it's tipped to the passenger side. Luckily we were able to grab the engine mounts off the L block at the Pick and Pull, and they mate up just fine onto our Z engine since it's practically the same thing (Hurrah Nissan/Datsun lazy designers!). So, now the head will have room for both the intake and exhaust, we're still looking for a nice 4 into 1 exhaust manifold so we might have to rework the exhaut again. Which reminds me.... when we were cranking over the engine and shooting water out the spark plug holes at the race... we didn't really think about where the rest of the water was going... thru the exhaust and puddling in the muffler... When I looked at it last, there was a nice bead of water hanging by it, and I can only assume that there is more water inside. :(

 

As far as intake goes, we are pretty much set, last night Stephane and I drove up to Orinda and picked up some sweet 44mm Mikuni carbs with official Mikuni intake manifold adapter for... a very good price... :)! A bit expensive, but for what we got, I think it was a good deal. The guy we bought them from used to work on some 510s he had, and recently got into Subaru rally cross or something, so he was ditching all his 510 stuff. "I never want to own a Datsun again as long as I live" was his exact quote I think. Bad ass carbs (check), service manual for the carbs (check!), so all we need to do, or it might be in progress, is get the w53 head checked and then start porting the intake side, port the exhaust side and polish the exhaust side. Which I imagine will take about two weekends with a Dremel and all the right parts, which we now know what they are (Carbide cutting bit, flappy wheel sanders and mini round sanders).

 

And that's what has been going on. Right now, all I have planned out for sure is to buy a new clutch and pressure plate and get them balanced along with the flywheel towards the end of December. And somewhere in there hopefully we can start putting things back together. I believe there are a few more parts to buy for the head... I think Stephane has a list and hopefully we can get them before he leaves.

 

 

Phew that's a lot. I wish we hadn't of spent so much time in the pits so we could have talked to everyone else, but we learned our lesson the hard way :P

oh! Place wise, our grand finale finish was.... DRUM ROLL PELASE!

buh dada buh dada buh dada

139 OF 152 TEAMS THAT RACED! wooo! go team! we're not last!

Stephane calculated that if we had actually stayed on the track most of the time, we could have ended up in the top 50. Oh well :( There's always next time :D

 

phew. I think that's everything, hopefully we'll have pics and video to throw up soon...