Boaty's list of tidbits.

[Boaty]

You know you've run out of things to do, when you sit on your front porch for an hour and a half - staring at your car.

 

You know, I've had my dime for years now (9 years or so), and it's been my daily driver forever. Was my first car.

I'm just... really not happy with where she is right now. But since I have the twin-cam going in next week, my motivation level

has skyrocketed. I am most certainly going to go broke soon, since work is slowing down again. But if I don't do it, it's just going to be

that much longer until I'm satisfied.

 

Thankfully this KA swap isn't going to cost me much (already spent money on the expensive stuff, so that's out of the way) so

I'll have my spare money going towards getting what is left completed. I've been making a list of all the small stuff today.

Lots of thinking about little things.

 

So since I'll forget half of it if I don't write it down and save it, I figured the best place would be here. That way I can get some feedback

and it'll be on the site for me to refer back to. So here goes. :)

 

Boaty's grand list of miscellaneous stuffs!

1.) When the KA goes in, I'm going to stich weld the engine bay a little. Nothing major, I just see so many people doing it

and it's been recommended to do so by a few people. It's easy and cheap reinforcement - why not?

 

2.) Think I'm going to take the fenders off, wire wheel the inner fender wells, give it a coat of ZeroRust and top it all off with

rubberized undercoating. I may even be so bold as to just use roll on bedliner - worked with it before, lasts a long time.

May not be the best solution to kill road noise but at least I know it'll offer some good protection. If not, I'll just spray it out.

 

3.) Since the fenders will be off, it'll give me access to some spots to stitch weld again. I am also going to get some of my

spare sheet metal out, and gusset the upper frame rail to the door frame. This is already done on station wagon's from

the factory - why they didn't do it on sedans as well, I'll never know. But technically it'd be better to do so, and will give the

front just that much more rigidity. Wouldn't hurt with the KA and beefed up suspension bits. I like over engineering things.

 

4.) Wire tucking. If I'm going to put the time into the engine bay and such, I may as well do a wire tuck - or at least make sure

it's a very clean install. I hate the look of a wiring mess. I already have one as it is, and it bugs me every time I open the

hood. So I'll be getting some pictures together to refer to. I know the wiper harness that goes along the firewall and cowl

is long enough to be routed inside the cabin of the car, so I'll be looking into doing that. As far as the engine harness,

guess is as good as mine. A little wires showing doesn't bother me but I'd like it to look presentable. A pet peeve of mine

is using plastic wire loom, wrapped with cheesy electrical tape. A long time back I remember seeing ACTUAL loom wrap

which is fundamentally the same, only the wrap is a cloth-like material. Looks better in my opinion, and all of that IS a

cosmetic thing - may as well do it the right way the first time and never bug out about it again. Make sense?

 

5.) Engine bay paint. Sure it'd be cool to have the engine bay painted at the same time as the car, but that'd require me to rip

the engine out when I take it to the paint booth. Really don't like that idea, so I think I'll just spray the engine bay out in

Krylon satin black, maybe with a satin clear over the top to give it a little more protection. It's an engine bay so it doesn't have

to be perfect. If it works for fully restored American muscle, I can't see how it wouldn't suffice under the hood of a Datsun.

 

6.) Everybody knows they should run relays for their headlights, even if running factory lights and such. I've already installed

relays for my H4 lowbeams and such, but I think I want to re-do everything using factory bits from a late model car. Maybe

not the relays and wiring itself, but perhaps the relay box/fuse panels from a late model vehicle? Would give the relays and

such a nice little enclosure, and I can use it to hide some wiring. Would be nice to just push in a relay and call it god. Same

goes for fuses, even though I'm going to try and retain the stock fuse panel if I can.

 

7.) Counter-blinking side markers. Why I never did this to begin with, I'll never know. I've praised the idea for years but just realized

that I never actually did it on my own car. Go figure! Think I'm going to clean all that wiring up with new terminals and heat-shrink

as well. (I'm kind of a wiring nazi. If it's important, I like to make sure it's perfect and not prone to failure. It bugs me when people

solder everything together on a car. I still await some future complaining when their solder job fails and all the wires break off.

 

8.) As anal as I am about keeping things clean and presentable, you'd think I'd spend money on a bead blast cabinet. I could literally

spend 24 hours straight, just beadblasting miscellaneous crap on my car. I have a feeling that eventually I'll be bringing half my car

apart to have things powdercoated.

 

9.) The little dents and dings in my grille and such are starting to really tick off my OCD. The proper way would be to just replace them

with good, undamaged bits. But I want to try and find a good way to clean them up, even if I have to resort to body filler and having

everything painted. Too bad you can't powdercoat over body filler - that'd ease my pain just a little.

 

10.) It is my firm belief, that everything on a car should be stainless unless it's structural or load bearing. So when the car gets put back

together post-paint, everything is going back together with stainless fasteners. I'm even anal enough that I'll be crayoning the threads.

 

11.) Maybe I'll get goddy and use stainless hex-head fasteners on the engine instead of traditional fasteners. It's a cosmetic thing, of course

but it does give it that 'custom' look. I'm not restoring the car, I'm resto-modding it so we'll see about that idea. Last time I checked, those

fasteners were not exaclty "cheap", and I know for a fact nobody around here (even Fasten-All) doesn't carry very many metric fasteners.

Especially those that are stainless. Even less, if they are chrome (ew).

 

12.) I'm going to buy some bamboo and an AK for Siqx20.

 

13.) ... damnit.

 

I ran out of beer, and I'm hungry - so the rest of this is gonna have to wait.

Feel free to offer some feedback! If somebody wants to move this around to another forum, then by all means. Figured this was the best

place to keep it.

[Siqx20]

......

[Twodoordime]

There is filler you can powdercoat over we used to use it at my work. I forgot the name right now but ill text and ask my old boss.

[HRH]

I have a gigantic list of things my 510 needs as well. Think I'll be figuring it out in a few weeks here, I haven't driven her in a while and that's starting to annoy me. I plan on having the "new" 510 ready by Canby and my time is frittering away.

[Trophy24]

I totally have a list of stuff. I am bringing the car home next weekend to start things off. If you are making a list, you also must have a vision of what you want it to be. That is a good way to keep your car from getting off track. Your list sounds familiar to me in many ways. Keep it up!

[Boaty]

I have a massive vision.

 

It's just that I get massive burn-out on doing things lately. I lose interest so fast that it never gets done, but it always gets started.

So if I have a list and see some feedback, it makes me happy and motivated. Therefore, the list is a double-win.