Australian 610 project - lots of pics !!

[Dave]

Hi all from a fellow enthusiast from "down under" - Australia

 

I posted a few pics of my project in the "610's unite" thread, thought I'd post a bit more info about my project. Its a 180B SSS coupe, or 610 coupe.

 

Here's a rundown on the project anyway (lifted straight from an Australian forum).

 

Here's my 1972 180B SSS project. It was a two-owner car before I bought it. The guy I got it from was a friend of my father-in-laws and I had often seen and admired the car over the years. He had passed it on to his son, who then decided to upgrade to a commodore wagon, so one night I got a phone call to see if I was interested in buying it.

 

Money changed hands, and I then used it as my daily driver for a few years till rust started to take over.

 

I then tried (unsuccessfully) to sell it for a while, before deciding to do it up a bit.

 

The plan then changed to be a full restoration to original. Then after datnats 2005, I was inspired to really go all-out with it. I intended to fit a Z18 that I've had for a while.

 

And then I had yet another change of plan, going with a supercharged L18. This is pretty much set in stone now, as I have acquired most of the bits for the project. Just have to finish the rust repairs, then I can start using all the goodies stashed away in the shed.

 

At them moment the rust repairs are pretty much done, front x-member and steering is done, head has been ported, and the exhaust manifold is well underway. I'll be building and fitting all the mechanical components, before pulling them out again and painting the car. Then refit the mechanicals, fit the interior, and hit the road.

 

Anyway, here are the planned specs.

 

Engine

L18 with

- nitrided crank

- polished and shotpeened rods

- ARP rod and bearing cap bolts

- Flat top, forged 280ZX JE pistons

- U67 head to keep compression down

- Stainless 44mm inlet and 38mm exhaust valves

- Upgraded valve springs

- undecided on cam specs

- full custom efi inlet manifold.

- Eaton M45 supercharger, done less than 50klms since new - off a current model Mini Cooper S

- full custom extractors to clear the supercharger

- Subaru Liberty water-to-air intercooler

- Water injection

- Haltech E6X ecu

- LS1 coils

- CA18 CAS

 

 

Drive Line

Skyline 5 speed

Exceedy heavy duty clutch (thanks Mitch !!)

Either 4.11 R160 Subaru clutch type LSD, or R180 LSD, or shortnose 4.375 R32 GTS-T skyline Viscous R200 in a custom rear crossmember, using CV joints. Final choice will depend on how much work I feel like doing and how much money I have when I get to that stage !! I already have the R160 and R200's, so it'll most likely be one of those

 

 

Brakes

Front

Z32 4 spot calipers

Z32 rotors

Datsport caliper adapters

 

Rear

R31 rotors and calipers

 

15/16" master on stock SSS booster (or no booster at all, if the engineer likes that idea)

Wilwood proportioning valve

 

Suspension

Front

R31 struts with home-made coilover kit and adjustable strut tops

S12 hubs

Tokico Prodra-G Green rally shocks ( NOS from the USA via eBay !!)

Modded caster rod to increase the caster (as much as possible without having to mod the guard for clearance)

Modified 200B x-member, using slightly extended LCA's to get required camber in a 180B (as the strut towers are further apart than a 1600)

 

 

Rear

Home-made adjustable x-member (or full custom x-member if I go with short-nose diff)

Tokico Prodra-G Gold shocks (also NOS from eBay)

Adjustable ride height

 

 

Interior

Original trim and seats, with a race seat for the driver for competition use.

Seat belt bolts to be replaced with harness eyelet-style bolts so I can fit harness for the track, but retain the original seatbelts for the road.

Original '72 model dash with full instrumentation and round guages

Real Australian Red Cedar timber veneer to replace the tacky plastic wood in the dash

Fire Extinguisher

 

 

Wheels & Tyres

Road

16 x 7 +35mm offset ASA rims (BBS copies)

215/45/16 Falken RT215 Azenis

 

Track

Most likely wil share 15" wheels / Toyo R888 semi-slicks with my 1600 (if they clear the brakes)

 

Body

1972 180B SSS

Has a fair amount of rust, which is gradually being repaired

Colour will be Angel Blue, off a Proton Gen 2

Will retain all badges and chrome trim

All nuts and bolts to be replated.

All lights to be replaced with NOS ones (only 1 more to find !!)

Undercarriage will be fully detailed and painted in same colour as the rest of the car

All extra holes in engine bay have been welded up

 

Here's what it looked like before I stripped it down

 

 

Rust starts to rear its ugly head :eek:

 

 

 

 

Rear corner de-rusted :)

 

 

By the time I'm finished, there won't be any original paint left on it

 

 

 

Interior is treated to a coat of POR15

 

 

As is the inderside (POR15 in grey colour underneath so it won't be as obvious if exposed by stone chips)

 

 

Rust in the rear quarter

 

 

 

 

 

And on the other side

 

 

 

Complete new inner section - completely handmade

 

 

And new outer section fabricated and welded in

 

 

 

Rust at the top of the rear quarter all fixed

 

 

Starting to look a bit straighter (and less rusty !!)

 

 

Australian 200B (aka 810) donated its complete front x-member and steering so I could build my own "copy" of the Datsport 510 fitting / handling kit, but modified to work properly in a 610 (the 610's front end is similar to a 510, but different enough that my front end isn't exactly the same as the Datsport 510 kit)

 

Here's the modified end, so it bolts up to the 610's chassis rails

 

 

And the finished x-member

 

 

Still plenty more work to be done (including filling the floor of the inlet ports), but I needed to finalise the port shape so I could make manifolds to suit. Inlets have benn raised up as far as possible without hitting water galleried, both to provide a straighter port and to get the inlet manifold up and out of the way of the exhaust manifold and supercharger plumbing.

 

 

Supercharger pulley - I turned the ribbed section off a CA18 pulley, shrink-fitted a chunk of aluminium (or aluminum to you guys in the USA :P) to the stock pulley, then joined the two bits together

 

 

[Dave]

Two 200B lower control arms were cut and shut to make one that is 20mm longer than stock (for more camber)

 

 

 

My first attempt at a supercharger bracket :eek::lol:

 

 

And the completed supercharger bracket, made from the stabilising feet on a Hewlett Packard server rack I scrounged from work :cool:

 

 

 

Extractors / headers mocked up in PVC pipe

 

 

Exhaust flanges

 

 

 

 

The finished flanges, plus the primary-to-secondary collectors

 

 

And some of my collection of NOS goodies :)

 

 

 

 

Well, that's about it for now. I have hopefully finished most of the time-consuming work so the rest might progress a little quicker.

[610SSS]

G'day mate, Awesome stuff:thumbsup:

[Pacific coast Datsun]

Looks like a serious build & it's coming out great !

[Charlie69]

Man what a night and day difference in the body. Iwish I had your skills and talent. Beautiful work!:cool:

 

Bonvo needs to be watching this build, I think he would love it!

 

Keep up the great work I will be adding this to one of my favorites.

[nosh1t]

wow flaring your own exhaust frist i have heard of that in oz lol

thats pretty kool man keep it up

[Edz280zx]

Awesome work! Love these types of builds.

[72240z]

This is a cool build. I'll be waiting for more :-).

[stilltwisted]

this i a bitchin build

[WICKED JESTER]

you have got skills :thumbsup: i can't wait to see what's next keep us posted

[bonvo]

i have seen pics of this and i love this car when is it supposed to be road worthy?

[Dave]

Thanks guys.

 

The original plan was for it to be finished for the Datsun National meeting in 2007 :eek:

 

Will post more pics as I progress.

[paradoxx]

beautiful work, I might have some questions for you regarding the L18, as its going to be my powerplant in my project.

[Dave]

I've decided I want to try to get the shell painted this summer so I can start re-assembly over winter (its just coming into summer over here). So, I've moved back onto bodywork again :mad: This is the 2nd last bit of rust in the whole shell :glare: Last bit is in the radiator support panel, underneath the radiator.

 

I've also had a bit of a change in plan - I'm thinking of painting it white rather than the light metallic blue I originally had in mind. White was its original colour, and I want to use the original door trims, etc which are in perfect condition but are brown (which I don't think would really match the blue exterior)

 

Here's the before pic of the spare wheel well

 

 

Half-fixed

 

 

Here's what it looks like now

 

 

The repaired "floor" of the wheel well - there's 16 new pieces of metal in there, all carefully shaped with just hand tools. Pretty much all the metal with surface rust (lower right hand third of the photo) is newly fabricated.

 

 

All ready to weld the repaired section back in, and its done :thumbsup:

Edited November 10, 2009 by Dave

[Dave]

Supercharger modifications also completed. The MiniCooper S runs its water pump of an extension to the rear of the supercharger. Since I don't need this, I thought I'd remove and blank this bit off. As usual, blanking plate was cut out with hacksaw, drill and file, and polished with sandpaper and Brasso :)

 

Simple enough, except I spilled the "supercharger oil" that was in there and had to buy a little bottle of it from the local GMH dealer (the only model of car I could think of that runs an Eaton supercharger and is fairly common was the Holden Commodore). Easy enough, except for having to pay $45 for 100ml of oil :eek: . Since there's no meshing gears in this section anymore (I removed one when I took the plate off the back) I probably didn't need the special oil in there anymore but thought it was better to be safe than blow up the supercharer because I didn't put oil back in.

 

Water pump drive for mini

 

 

Off it comes (and out comes the oil)

 

 

New blanking plate

 

[bonvo]

so when are you comming state side to fix my rust :D how difficult was it to form the rear quarter stuff i have a little rust there and of coarse the spare tire well

[datsun 160J SSS]

nice metal work ,top notch :):):)

[Dave]

so when are you comming state side to fix my rust :D how difficult was it to form the rear quarter stuff i have a little rust there and of coarse the spare tire well

 

Rear quarter wasn't too hard. We have a place here in Australia that made replacement sections, so I used one of them, plus a few hand-formed bits.

 

The inner piece was completely hand-formed. I used a router to make grooves in a bit of wood, then hammered a flat bit of body sheet metal down into the grooves to form that piece.

 

Spare tyre well - that was difficult :rolleyes:. I'm better at welding than shaping metal, so its made up of lots of little bits welded together. Again, the shaped bits were hammered to shape over pieces of wood that were used as a "former". the rounded grooves in the well were hammered to shape using a bit of 50mm wooden dowel.

 

I'll come over and do your rust after I finish all my projects - after this one, I have two Datsun roadsters to restore, and then a 510 that's even more rusty than the 610. I reckon sometime around 2020 I might be done :lol:

 

Spare wheel well is finished now. Just need to put a coat of POR15 rust proofing paint on, then tify up a few other bits and I can get the complete underside of the car painted in the next month or two. Then I can finally start re-assembling a few bits.

 

Edited December 10, 2009 by Dave

[bonvo]

awsome glad to see man i cant wait till shes road worthy its gonna be bad ass im also considering going the s/c route but it would be with a paxton s/c in the states we cant really get to fancy with making custom headers due to being lhd

[Dave]

Yep, I'm finding it hard enough to squeeze everything in.

 

Dunno how you would do it with the steering box / brakes / clutch on that side as well :confused:

[bonvo]

thats why for the most part there is one basic header shape :P i like the idea of supercharged alot but i have to see what unfolds. have you started making the headers out of steel yet?

[Guest DatsuNoob]

:cool:

[fisch]

How have I missed this thread? I am blown away man! It is a sick build. 5 stars all the way!

[Alchemist]

HI Dave,

 

Do you have any updates to the car please? It's looking incredible from what I seen on this thread.

 

Thanks,

 

Ernie