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My Dragon (2) Datsun 521


DanielC

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I have found a stock Nissan jack is one of the easiest to use. I use then all the time, working on my 521 trucks, and other things.

 

They sure work a lot better than the scissor jacks in more other vehicles.

I agree with u, however i use the normal tire shop style jacks, cause the nissan jack feels like it goes 3 inches for every 50 turns lol, and yea scissor jacks are garbage

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Do yourself a favor, if the exhaust bolts/studs have anything left to grab onto with a pair of vise grips, heat the exhaust manifold up till it glows with an acetylene torch, not the bolt, the manifold, hit the side of the manifold near the hole/stud with a hammer, and turn the bolt out, this is the best and only way I know that it will actually come out without a lot of effort.

GOOOD TIP! Have a couple that need the 'treatment'. I think my 4foot demo torch on propane should work as well as set-lean.

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I have done a little more work on getting the three steering column boots usable again.

I put some LDPE plastic around the torn part of the boot, and put a hose clamp in it, gently.

BootHoseClamp.JPG

 

Then I brushed some of the goo inside it.

BootInHand.JPG

 

Notice the rusty part of the boot,

BootHoseClamp2.JPG

 

It got cleaned.

BootClampHand.JPG

 

The Liquid Electrical Tape is self levelling, and if you want it to stay somewhere, you need to figure out a way to hold the boots in the proper orientation to get the goo to go where you want it to.

BootsThree.JPG

 

 

 

Edited by DanielC
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  • 1 month later...

I want to at least try to start the engine that is going to go into Dragon Two, before I put it in the truck.  Monday, I got some  scrap steel pieces, and then made this support.

EngineSupport.JPG

 

 

I need to make a mount for the transmission also, this is how it sits currently.

TransOnBlocks.JPG

 

Edited by DanielC
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I pretty much finished the engine stand that I am using to hold Dragon Two's engine.

This is the mount for the transmission.

TransMount.JPG

 

and the engine sitting on the stand.

EngineOnStand.JPG

 

Sometime soon I am planning on test starting this engine.  Like Wayno, I just want to run it a bit, before I put it in the truck.

Edited by DanielC
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I pretty much finished the engine stand that I am using to hold Dragon Two's engine.

This is the mount for the transmission.

TransMount_zpsr43hkgtt.jpg

and the engine sitting on the stand./

EngineOnStand_zps08n81xsf.jpg

 

Sometime soon I am planning on test starting this engine.  Like Wayno, I just want to run it a bit, before I put it in the truck.

I had my first one set up with a radiator, I wish I had a photo of it completely set up, but I forgot to take one, I ran my diesel engine for over a half hour with this setup in these photos, but not this particular engine in the photo, that engine I test ran was complete, it had a fan and everything else needed to run it.

DSCN1225.JPG

 

DSCN1227.JPG

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I did some work on the engine for Dragon Two yesterday, getting it ready to test run.

I put a new oil filter on the engine.  Before putting the oil filter on, I put about 3/4 of a quart of oil in the filter.

D2OilFilter.JPG

 

I put 3 1/4 quarts of oil in the engine.

D2Oil.JPG

 

I put a new air filter in the air cleaner.  I also put an air cleaner base with the air pump inlet hole plugged, and no evaporative emission port, on the engine.

D2AirFilter.JPG

 

I put a new hose connecting the intake manifold water pipe to the engine.  As of March 2015, this hose is still available at my friendly local Nissan dealer.

D2IntakePipeHose.JPG

 

I put spark plugs in the cylinder head.  These were actually used plugs, but I cleaned them a little.

D2SparkPlugs.JPG

 

Dragon Two has evaporative emission controls on it.  Evaporative emission 521 trucks have a sealed gas cap, and the filler neck is held to the bed with three screws.  521 trucks without evaporative emission controls have the filler neck in a rubber grommet.

D2FuelFiller.JPG

 

Evaporative emission 521 trucks also have a cover in the bed, in front of the left wheel well.  A vapor liquid separator is under the cover.

D2EvapCover.JPG

 

On the air cleaner base, this small port goes to a valve, and that vents the gas tank.

D2AirCleanerBase.JPG

 

This small pipe capped with a red cap, that also has white paint on it, also goes to the evaporative emission flow valve, and the truck stores gasoline vapors in the engine crankcase.

D2CrankPlug.JPG

 

This is the evaporative emission control valve.  "A" on the valve goes to the Air cleaner.  "C" on the valve goes to the Crankcase.  "F" on the valve goes back to the Fuel tank, but is actually connected to a port on the vapor separator tank.

FlowGuideValve.JPG

 

This pipe on the Intake manifold is for the air pump.  The air pump on most 521 trucks no longer works, so this pipe needs to be plugged.  It is threaded to a British pipe standard, and if you want a fitting to plug the hole, you need to get a 1/4 British tapered pipe plug, or with the intake manifold off the engine, retap the hole to a USA tapered pipe size.

D2AirPumpPipe.JPG

 

This capped fitting is also used with the air pump.   It goes to a valve on the hose from the air pump, to the intake manifold.  It also takes a 1/4 British tapered pipe plug, but I would just cap the existing fitting, because you can put a vacuum gauge there to help tune the carburetor.  If you add a brake booster to your 521, you could use this port for the booster vacuum hose, or use the pipe in the above photo.

D2ManiPlug.JPG

 

These extra holes are used for the bracket that holds the air pump.  I am going to temporary put a steel plate here to hold the ignition coil.  I do not yet know which hole, I just chased the thread on all six holes, M10-1.5

D2Tap.JPG

 

I also put a starter on the engine, and got an ignition coil, and an old gutted distributor, that I will use to run the oil pump before I crank the engine. 

Edited by DanielC
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  • 1 year later...

In Spring 2016, I took a class in metal forming at Clackamas Community College.  Along with instruction, it gave me access to bead rollers, english wheels, planishing hammers, shears and other metal forming equipment.

 

The battery shelf, or tray had a fair amount of corrosion, and I decided to see how difficult it would be to reproduce new parts to replace the damaged parts.  

 

In this picture, I have removed the old battery shelf parts, and filled in the holes from where I used a spot weld saw to remove the old parts of the battery shelf.

BatteryShelfArea.JPG

 

This picture has the front and rear struts that held the battery tray.  The two struts with spot weld holes in the bottom came off Dragon Two's inner fender.  The two struts without spot weld holes in them started out as a flat piece of sheet steel.   After cutting the sheet steel oversize, but somewhat close to the shape I needed, i used a bead roller to make the groove going the long way of the strut.  Then I used  a "tipping" die in the bead roller to form 90 degree bend at the edges of the strut.

ShelfStruts.JPG

 

Big hole forming in the struts.

To make the big hole in the strut, with a flange, I first drilled a smaller hole, about a 1/8 or 3/16 smaller than the diameter of the flanged hole, in the new steel I was using to make the strut.

 

I used a hole saw in a drill press to make this hole in a piece of steel about 1/4 or 3/8 of an inch thick.  The hole is about the same as the outside diameter of the flange in the old part.

HolePlug4.JPG

 

After cutting the hole in the steel, I was left with this slug.

HolePlug3.JPG

 

They fit together like this

HolePlug2.JPG

 

Then I placed the sheet metal, with the too small hole centered over the big hole in the 1/4 piece of steel, and then put the round slug on top of the sheet metal, again centered, and used a hydraulic press to push the slug through the sheet metal.  This picture shows the slug in the sheet metal hole.

HolePlug1.JPG

 

This is the flange it forms.  

HoleFormed1.JPG

and then a bit of hammering and bending of the tabs over, and the two struts are close to being done.

 

In this picture, are forms I made to make the bracket that goes under the battery tray, at the front.  The curved part on the left side matches the curve on the inner fender.

Initially, I made forms for the front and rear lower brackets out of MDF, a wood product, but they proved to be not very durable when forming metal.  I then made some forms out of thicker steel, just by cutting out the rough shape with a cutting torch, and using a grinder to clean up the rough cuts and slag.

Across the bottom of the picture are five pieces of metal.  The piece on the right is the base, and the thinner piece of metal with the four sided hole is put on top of the base.  Then the sheet metal with the hole to be formed, and a smaller hole already cut in it, the small four sided piece of metal, and finally, the triangle shaped piece of metal on the left.

FrontBracketForms1.JPG

 

In this picture, the two pieces of metal from the right side of picture above are under the piece of sheet steel, the old rusted sheet metal part is used to check fit.

FrontBracketOld.JPG

 

Then the plug is put on top for form the flange,

FrontBracketPlug.JPG

 

With the top piece of metal.

FrontBracketTop.JPG

 

I used two bolts to draw these forms together.

FrontBracketFormsAssy.JPG

 

This is a rear strut, and lower bracket bolted to the inner fender.

RearStrut+Bracket.JPG

 

 

This post was started in June 2016, and got forgotten for a while, now it is Jan 2020.  

This is Helga.  She developed bone cancer in her right hip in June,  2016, and I had to put her down.   After that, I did not feel too good for a while.   I still miss her.

Helga.jpeg

 

 

Edited by DanielC
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  • 5 months later...

A quick engine update.   The engine for this truck has been put in to Ratsun, because the engine for Ratsun developed a miss, due to the valve adjustment being used up.  This engine runs a lot stronger than the engine that was in Ratsun, but still has some problems.

I checked the compression on the engine after running it in Ratsun, and it is OK for now, but I probably will do more work to this engine.  Compression results, #1, 155  #2, 171  #3, 130  #4, 150.   It also does blow blue smoke when I accelerate after a closed throttle slowing down.

 

This is the link to Ratsun.

http://community.ratsun.net/topic/30606-my-ratsun-datsun-521/

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  • 2 years later...

I want to put one of my five speed transmissions into this 521, but I am using it as a daily driver.  I have a third 521 in my garage, that is a long term project, but in the mean time, I am going to use it to set up the parts I need to put the five speed in the running white 521.  This is some of the parts I took out of the 521 in the garage.

Parts1.JPG

More parts and stuff that was on and in the cab of the green 521.

Parts2.JPG

 

Still more parts, and I took the doors off the green 521 cab.

Parts3.JPG

 

This is the empty cab after I moved it off the frame, and set it on the garage floor

CabEmpty.JPG

This cab need paint, a new battery tray, and some other work.

EngineRoom.JPG

This is the frame after I got the cab off it.  The engine and transmission was already out of the truck.

FrameFront.JPG

 

I got a L-18, and two five speed transmissions into the garage before I took the cab off the frame.

L18_DogLeg.JPG

 

I have set the L-18, and a 1980 720 five speed on the frame.

EngineOnFrame.JPG

 

I need to finish this transmission mount.  I just started with a piece of angle, did some raw cuts with an oxyacetylene, and then used a grinder to finish off the rough cutting marks and slag. 

TransBracket.JPG

 

Just another picture of the 1980 720 five speed transmission.

720Trans.JPG

 

When I pulled the engine and five speed transmission out of the 1980 720 in the junk yard, I also grabbed the front half of the drive line.   This is the front half of the 1980 720 drive line bolted to the rear half of an 1970 521 drive line, with the front yoke in the five speed transmission.

720DriveLine.JPG

 

For comparison, this is the 1972 521 drive line front half sitting by the 1980 720 drive line.

TwoDriveLines.JPG

Edited by DanielC
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More work on putting a five speed transmission in a 521.  I had two transmission mounts, one from a 1980 720 truck, and the other came on a five speed dogleg transmission  I bought.   Mike, in the post above, has a pretty good guess on what that dogleg transmission came out of.

When I was removing the transmission from the 1980 720, in the junk yard, I just tossed the bolts that went through the trucks cross member, into the transmission mount in a bag.  I thought the bolts were just M10-1.5 bolts used in a lot of other places on Datsuns.  The bolts are M10-1.25.  Remember that, or if you are harvesting a five speed transmission out of a junk yard, put the bolts back into the transmission mount, or keep them separate in some other way.  Anyway, I went to a local Ace Hardware store, and found bolts that fit the transmission mount, M10-1.25, 25 MM long.  The bolts were screwed into the transmission mounts.

720Mounts.JPG

 

I wanted to clean up the threads in the transmission mounts.  The mount that was on the dogleg transmission had sat outside for a while.  I could not find a M10-1.25 tap, so I bought a longer M10-1.25 bolt, and cut a slot in it with cutoff disk, to clean the threads on the transmission mounts

M10-1.25Cut.JPG

 

After getting the bolts at Ace Hardware, I went to a local steel yard, and wandered around the scrap steel bins, looking for some pieces of steel to fabricate the rest of the transmission mount from.  This is one of the pieces of steel, I am started to clean it with a 3M clean and strip disk, in an air sander.

SteelClean1.JPG

 

Then I used a small orbital sander to do a final clean on the steel, mainly on the corners.

SteelClean2.JPG

 

Next, some crude layout work.  I already had a piece of angle steel bolted to the 521 frame, waiting for the attachment of a piece of steel that bolts to the transmission mount.

Layout1.JPG

 

I just drew a line, and then started cutting away metal on a piece of 3 by 1 1/2 rectangular tube.

Layout2.JPG

 

I did some more cuts, and grinding, and sanding, basically removing metal that was in the way.

SteelCuts.JPG

 

Test fitting the transmission mount into the piece of rectangular tube.

CheckFit.JPG

 

This is how I did most of the cuts on the steel.  Just a cut off disk in a small angle grinder. 

CutoffDisk.JPG

 

After working on the 3 by 1 1/2 rectangle tube for a while, I then went a different direction.  I just cut a piece of 3 1/4 by 1/4 flat, or bar stock, and drilled two holes in it to match the transmission mount.

SimpleCut.JPG

 

This is that piece of bar stock bolted to the transmission mount.  At the far left of this picture, there is some wood building shim stock, holding the tail end of the transmission up off the frame of the 521 truck.

BracketFit.JPG

 

Just a picture below the trucks frame, looking up.

BracketFit2.JPG

 

Then I did two tack welds, attaching the bar stock to the piece of angle steel I had bolted to the frame cross member earlier.

TackWeld.JPG

 

After the tack welds, I unbolted the transmission mount from the bracket I was making.  Then I lifted the transmission with a hoist enough to unbolt the bracket from the frame.  After that, I was able to unbolt the tack welded bracket from the frame, and finish welding the bracket on a bench, and after it cooled a bit, I put the welded bracket back on the frame, lowered the transmission on the bracket, and bolted the transmission mount back to the bracket.  I know, I should have taken a picture of the bracket welded, before putting back on the frame. 

WeldedBracket.JPG

 

With the transmission mount bracket welded, I then unbolted the 720 front half of the drive line from the rear half of the 521 drive line, yes, the two pieces of drive line will bolt up, and pushed it forward until it bottomed in the transmission.  This is so I could check and see if I needed to shorten the 720 front half of the drive line.  The carrier bearing holder, and drive line is pushed forward in this picture, so I do not think I need to shorten the drive line.   I can also use this to get a good measurement on how much I need to shorten the front half of a spare 521 drive line front half.

720DriveLineFit.JPG

Edited by DanielC
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I first thing I thought about was the Barracuda rear glass, it is not the glass for that top, the rear edges curve down in the photo, that curve is not there in the roadster rear glass, and the size is way off, that Roadster top is not very big.

Mine does not have the rear trunk lid, it was fiberglassed closed for some reason.

It is a rare aftermarket item Crash.

 

I think the thread highjack should end.

Edited by wayno
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