Florida Dime

[cleanone]

This is a very interesting buildup right here, i love the engine swap from rotary to Miata engine, and the crossmember fabrication was just awesome nice technic there, you can do the same for the rear bumper. just saying!

 

Thanks for checking out my post, I am glad you are enjoying the build.  It has been a bunch of work but it has definitely been worth it.

 

So are you saying you don't like the rear bumper that I made?  That is cool.  

 

I had never seen any pictures of a 510 with a custom tube style bumper so I wanted to give it a try.  I debated on building a box type bumper using techniques similar to the front cross member like you suggested but I did not know how exactly that would look and it seemed like a lot more work. I have a few thoughts going through my head about a front bumper too.  We shall see what happens...

[datsunfreak]

If I remember correctly, that metal line is supposed to point straight up, not angled forward. I think that's why the hose is a little kinked?

 

 

 

 

 

So I replaced all of those too

 

 

 

 

[toyota1515]

Thanks for checking out my post, I am glad you are enjoying the build.  It has been a bunch of work but it has definitely been worth it.

 

So are you saying you don't like the rear bumper that I made?  That is cool.  

 

I had never seen any pictures of a 510 with a custom tube style bumper so I wanted to give it a try.  I debated on building a box type bumper using techniques similar to the front cross member like you suggested but I did not know how exactly that would look and it seemed like a lot more work. I have a few thoughts going through my head about a front bumper too.  We shall see what happens...

Oh not at all the bumper is just cool, but IMHO i leave tube style bumpers for Off Road vehicles, but that is just me, lol,

 

Yeah i know the effort and dedication of fabricating a sheetmetal bumper is very time consuming but i know the end result will be satisfying, keep up the good work and keep us updated on this awesome built buddy!

[cleanone]

If I remember correctly, that metal line is supposed to point straight up, not angled forward. I think that's why the hose is a little kinked?

 

Interesting.  The bracket had that angle on it so I just went with it.  I do not know anyone who has a 510 to reference to.  I know that the line looks a bit kinked in that picture but when the car is sitting down on the coilovers and the control arm is pointing up, I am pretty sure the kink goes away.  Thanks for the heads up though.  I will check it out next time I have the front end up on jack stands.

[datsunfreak]

I do not know anyone who has a 510 to reference to. 

 

I'll look at both of mine in the morning to make sure I'm not full of shit.   :rofl:

 

 

I know that the line looks a bit kinked in that picture but when the car is sitting down on the coilovers and the control arm is pointing up, I am pretty sure the kink goes away.  

 

Yeah, I spaced on that.   :blush:

 

When the struts are compressed I'm sure the kink goes away completely.   :thumbup:

[cleanone]

So the drive shaft has been vibrating under acceleration.  I have am pretty sure that this is due to less than ideal operating angles of the U-joints.  I really needed to lower the engine to try to better align the drive shaft.  The main thing holding me back was the drag link for the steering.  The transmission bell housing was already pretty much sitting on the drag link.  So out comes the drag link for a complete re-design.

 

Here it is fresh out of the car and all cleaned up;

 

 

 

 

 

As you can see it is not quite straight.  So I took some time to improve on that;

 

 

 

 

 

 

Now that the drag link was fairly straight, I needed to make a jig so I could drop it and move it back all at the same time;

 

 

 

[cleanone]

Then came the cut-off wheel and some new steel;

 

 

 

 

 

 

Once it was all attached I could remove it from the jig;

 

 

 

 

 

And finish welding up the rest of the drag link;

 

 

 

 

[cleanone]

I cut off 1/2" from the motor mounts on the front cross member.  This brought the engine down like I wanted to do.  In the next pic you can see that I am almost back where I started with the relationship between the drag link and the front of the transmission bell housing;

 

 

 

I had to cut off that tab that you see in that pic because it interfered with right turns;

 

 

 

More front end goodness to come!

[The Taterhead]

Glad to see you back at it. Looks good, yay for progress!

[cleanone]

Thanks Taterhead!  Always lots to do on a 41 year old Datto!

 

I forgot to add that I bought the idler arm bushing kit from Ermish racing.  A very nice piece especially with the included thrust bearing!  Thanks Troy!

 

 

So the drag link was not the only thing I was working on for this last go round; I also wanted to replace the T/C rods (drag struts or whatever you call them) with something adjustable and solidly mounted to the chassis.  I took inspiration from Duke and his '72.  All of the info I needed was on page 5 of his project Datto thread ( http://community.ratsun.net/topic/4137-dukes-72-510/page-5 ).  Thanks Duke!

 

So I bought a pair of Z car inner tie rod ends and a pair of Honda nuts (Duke has the info on the page I linked to) and some steel tubing.  After taking some measurements I cut the tubing and tapped the hole with a M14x1.5 tap.

 

 

 

 

Next I had to cut down the original T/C rods so that I could weld the tube to them.  Here are all of the parts laid out with each other so you can see how I made the cuts and such;

 

 

 

 

 

Here are the modified T/C rods after welding

 

 

 

 

Then I ground the welds down to smooth it out

 

 

 

Here are the completed T/C rods painted and ready for install.  Also in this picture are a new set of roll center adjusters from Techno Toy Tuning. 

 

 

 

I plan on raising the control arm mounts 1" and adding rod ends similar to Duke in the future.  But for right now I went ahead and raised the mounts for the T/C rods by adding a piece of 3/16" sheet steel to the T/C rod chassis mounts and then putting an appropriate size hole for the Z car inner tie rod.  The hole is 1" above the factory hole;

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

I also added a set of T3 outer tie rod ends to replace the beat to hell stock units.  I must say that the T3 pieces are very nice.  Along with all of that I also upgraded the strut housings and front brakes to 280ZX units and added a new 7/8" master cylinder. Unfortunately I did not take a picture of all of the new pieces installed on the car.  Sorry about that.

[cleanone]

I have had this idea for a graphic that I wanted to do on the hood for a while now.  I sketched it out a few times and did some research and decided to go ahead and paint it up last week.

 

Here is the design taped out on the hood that recently got a fresh coat of satin black paint;

 

 

 

Then came a coat of aluminum;

 

 

 

Next is some masking;

 

 

 

Then green;

 

 

 

I did some red next but did not get any pictures because I was working against some incoming rain showers.  Here it is after a couple of coats of yellow;

 

 

 

And now the final product;

 

 

 

 

I hand painted the Ratsun Rat and the lettering on the tail fin.

 

 

The hood is the most rusted out part of the car and will eventually be replaced so painting this graphic on there was not a big deal for me.  

[datsunfreak]

I like it.   :thumbup:

[cleanone]

It's not dead yet.

 

 

This thread that is.....

 

 

Back in August of 2014 I was driving home from work on Interstate 4 in Orlando moving along in the left lane when the hood let go!  Fortunately I was able to pull off to the median without any issues.

 

 

 

Unfortunately I did not have any tools with me so I had to trash what was left of the rusted out hood to get it off of the car so I could drive home.  I had to do a lot of bending a twisting to tear some metal and free the hood.  This did not work out too well for the hinges either.

 

 

Here is a pic from the drive home.  Yes, it was the first time it rained in two weeks as well!  Perfect time to be without a hood right?

 

 

 

I had to fold up the hood to get it into the back seat of the car to get it home.  I did consider for a moment leaving it on the side of the road but I did not want to be "that guy".

 

 

 

 

 

The reason it let go was because the hood support around the latch had rusted out.  The hood latch was still in the radiator support when I came to a stop.  When I pulled the hood release the latch shot up about a foot and landed on the ground in front of the car.

 

 

 

 

 

So here are some pics of the damage

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Turns out the hood was mostly bondo

 

 

 

 

 

 

So the car has been sitting in this busted up state for the last year while I restored a 1992 Sentra SE-R

 

From this

 

 

 

To this

 

 

 

I just sold that car so now I will be back on the Datsun.  The next post will detail the windshield replacement.

[r0p0doe]

 

 

Bitchin Sentra man

[cleanone]

Bitchin Sentra man

 

Thanks for the compliment r0p0doe.  It was not my intent to sell it when I started working on it but the option to purchase an '86 C10 meant it had to go.  You can see the build thread for the Sentra here;  http://www.sr20-forum.com/members-rides/77435-92-se-r-slick-top-resto.html

[cleanone]

Back to the 510.

 

I purchased a new windshield from Rock Auto and I bought the "cal-look" seal from Datsun land So-Cal.

 

 

 

I did not anticipate how much of a pain in the ass it would be to remove the old windshield.  There was a lot of old hard sealant holding it all together.  Is that factory?  I did not think that these rubber gasket style seals required liquid sealant.  I had to clean it all off with a wire wheel on my 4.5" angle grinder.  There was a little bit of rust in a couple of areas that I cleaned up too.  Then I hit all of the clean metal with some primer sealer.

 

 

 

 

 

I watched several videos on youtube so I could figure out how to install this windshield.  I was not familiar with the gasket style.  I had some tie line that was used to pull the seal into place.  That line or cord needs to be inserted into the seal before it goes on the car.

 

 

 

 

With one person inside the car pulling on the cord and a couple of friends on the outside gently pressing the windshield into place it will eventually pop in and just like that it is done!  Ha Ha! It sounds so easy doesn't it!  It actually takes some time a patience to get it seated just right but overall it was not too bad.

 

 

 

Now I could drive the Dime again without worry of getting pulled over for a busted windshield!

[cleanone]

The incident with the windshield also took out what was left of the original rear view mirror.  I don't like driving without one and I was not sure where to find a replacement but I needed something.  So I started digging around in my garage and found the original rear view mirror from my 1992 Sentra SE-R race car.  I was unsure how I would mount it up until I took a closer look at the mount in the 510.  Would you believe they are the same?  I was a bit dumbfounded myself!  THANK YOU NISSAN for not changing your rear view mirror bolt pattern in 20 years!!!!!

 

 

 

 

 

 

[cleanone]

So I got some new wheels for the 510, Volk Racing TE37v 14 x 8.5 -5et

 

 

 

I had a set of 185/55/14 Yokohama S-drives mounted up.  They have some stretch but nothing crazy.

 

 

 

 

 

There was an issue with the front wheels contacting the T3 outer tie rod end.

 

 

 

 

 

The easiest solution was to swap out the regular T3 RCAs for a pair of their negative camber RCAs

 

 

 

Here is the result

 

 

 

[cleanone]

The rear wheels fit well with the fender lip bent up but once the suspension compressed a lot the tires rubbed really badly on the inner fender well.  So I followed the BRE team car build instructions for removing the inner fender well (the BRE team car build is on the dime quarterly website).

 

You can see where the tire was rubbing in this pic

 

 

 

 

Here are the inner fender wells marked for cutting.

 

 

 

 

I used my 4.5" angle grinder with a cut off wheel to remove the metal.  Here are the results:

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The next step was to cut out the new inner fender metal.  I know it seems tacky but I had some aluminum diamond plate sitting around so that it what I used.  First I made a cardboard template that I could trace onto the aluminum. 

 

 

 

 

 

I used a jigsaw to cut them out and then the I carefully bent them into the proper shape.  Once I was happy with how they fit up I pop riveted them in place just like the BRE guys did.  I then coated all of the seams with some seam sealer from my local auto body supply shop.

 

 

 

 

 

As I was working on the right rear fender I discovered some more bondo.  I fear what this car really looks like underneath.

 

 

 

 

 

Now that the wheels were on and the ride height adjusted to where I wanted it the car needed to have the toe checked.  I purchased a lifetime alignment for this car over a year ago so I can do this as much as I want!

 

 

[cleanone]

I picked up an old hood and some tail light lenses, amongst other things,  from a local guy that has a ridiculous stash of 510 parts.  I was so happy to finally remove the blacked out tail lights!  I absolutely hated those things!!!

 

 

[cleanone]

And here are some pics of the car with the new setup!  

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

In the future I would like to modify a set of steering knuckles so they don't interfere with the wheels when using the standard RCAs.  I am not crazy about the extra width of the front track with the negative camber RCAs installed. But for now I am happy!

[fisch]

Really enjoyed finding this build today. Love your dogged determination to keep this one on the road.

[cleanone]

Really enjoyed finding this build today. Love your dogged determination to keep this one on the road.

 

 

Thanks  fisch.  These cars are just too much fun!

[sebpv]

Coming back to your tie rod grinding problem, cant u flip the rod over the idling/pitman arms? Im not an engineer, Im just wondering...

[russaroll]

Nice