Yellow SR510

[15om]

I bought this 1969 Datsun 510 6 months ago and have slowly been getting it road ready. The previous owner raced it for many years on the track and so it came completely stripped down to the bare minimums for track use so I have a few things to do to make it street legal. He wanted more power so swapped in an SR20DET but never got it to run due to wiring issues and so has been sitting since 2005. I happen to have a friend that specializes in electrical work that can get it working and so he and I made the 6hr drive to pick up the car. My friend will be the main one building my car and helping me get it all back together. This is my first project car so I look forward to learning a lot through the process from doing some things myself and working along side my friend (some of you might know him from here for his shifter that he makes--ATP)

 

 The car came with an SR20DET red top engine, front mount intercooler, tial external wastegate, adjustable shocks, roll cage, Kirkey racing seat, Diamond 15" rims, wilwood disc brakes front and rear, sway bars front and rear, racing slicks, full exhaust, an LSD and a racing fuel cell. It also came with a few boxes full of spare parts.

 

Here are some pictures from when I got it (sorry for the grainy photos, they were taken from my phone, some of them are rather large as well)

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Over the last 6 months we have made custom seat brackets for the corbeau bucket seats, a transmission tunnel cover to fit the new shifter, took out all the interior "rubber" flooring material, patched a few rust spots in the interior and parts of the engine bay. POR15 interior and removed rear seat rail, tore apart dash, took out all wiring from dash and engine bay in preparation for my friends custom wiring harness he is making. Spot welded and filled all holes in engine bay in preparation for bondo work along with pulling out all old brake lines, brake cylinders and steering box.   

 

 

They fit perfectly!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

From this

 

To this!

 

This is what I had to work with...with every fitting!!

 

 

 

 

Some new things I have bought along the way:

 Intake manifold

Clutch

Flywheel

Both of these were quite a surprise. We pulled the transmission off to find this HUGE twin disk clutch...which turned out to be an OS Giken from Japan!

Heater

replaced water pump

bought material to make top mount fuel rail

[15om]

 

 

 

OS Giken twin disk clutch

 

 

Old water pump

 

New water pump

 

Another surprise after finding the clutch fried was the inside of the transmission was covered in a thick layer of grease

 

...after a few hours of scrubbing

 

[jalen]

Good find, I can't wait to see what happens

[15om]

Here are a few more progress pics to catch up to were it currently is.

 

The previous owner did a really nice job with the exhaust

 

 

See those parallel welds in the pipe? Those are fins that he put inside the tube to spin the air, I am assuming which is to help pull the exhaust out faster...never seen that before.

 

Cut the water heater metal hose in half because we will be rerouting the heater hoses to help keep them hidden and the engine bay clean.

 

Some other random bits that I have picked up

The rubber heater hoses that connect from the core to the plastic piping behind dash and the kick panels at your feet under dash. They are in poor condition so i will be using them as a stencil to make new ones.

 

Also picked up a steering column cover.

 

Finally got the rear quarter windows in

The bracket on one was broken, luckily the car came with an extra set of windows, one of which had a good latch, so I took it off the extra and put it on the yellow window

 

Nice shot of the cage with the rear paneling that it came with, which is in great shape

 

My friend moved shops, from his 600sq ft. hole in the wall to this giant 3000sq ft. beauty!

The 510 looks small in this place!

 

He has plans to have another lift in soon and eventually get a Dyno so he can get more into the tuning and performance which he loves.

 

 

 

[Jdm720]

This is pretty sweet. I'll be watching this.

[mrbigtanker]

awesome man,cali cars are the shit.keep up the great progress.

[510 OC]

Nice build you got going. Keep up the good work! 

[15om]

Here is what I have been doing the last few weeks

 

Bondo!!

 

This is my first time using the stuff and it turns out I kinda like it and am decent at it

 

Week 2

 

Done!

 

Bondo/body work takes so much longer than I anticipated! It was a lot of work but I cannot wait to see it all one color and how smooth (or not!) it turns out.

 

That now brings us up to how it currently sits now that all the time consuming tedious work is done. We plan on having it running by the first week of August so stay tuned.

 

Still to come:

spray engine with black primer

install engine, steering box, brake cylinders, brake lines

finish and install wiring harness

reroute heater hoses

put fenders, bumpers, headlights back on

figure out intercooler piping and install

weld metal plate covering trunk (it currently is a big hole looking at the ground from taking out the aluminum plate that the previous owner tac welded in)

install gas tank, fuel lines and fuel pump

set battery in trunk and run cables

fab metal for new dash and housing for tablet

 

....im sure there will be more that turns up but that's all I can think of right now

[15om]

Here is the first coat of the black primer/filler that the engine bay will be for awhile until I get a good paint job. It looks amazing!

 

The firewall is more like what it all will look like since we ran out of primer. The firewall is the only one with a thick coat, the rest needs more primer.  

 

This turned out to be a learning curve with mixing the primer, first batch we tried there was too much hardener for the temperature we were in so it fouled up the gun. Had to throw out what hardened then clean the gun and retry. Got it right the second time. Now I need to go buy more primer on Monday. After all the bondo work and it looking all funky with different colors and spots, I am finally getting really excited. I can see the final result of all the hard work!

[Bradinnes]

That's gonna be a nice clean engine bay! Sweeeet!!!! Nice Work.

[15om]

My buddy just got in a new batch of shiny shifter parts! So order them while their hot!

 

 

Bad picture but here is what it looks like installed. Ill try and get a better pic this week, it really is a short throw shifter, not just a "short" shifter like so many out there.

 

 

[15om]

So I have not posted in awhile... and that is because not much has been done. The shop got busy so the Datsun did not get much progress and the engine bay has taken way to long. I have been primering and sanding like crazy, I am to much of a perfectionist. It finally got to the point of putting a top coat sealer on and I went with retailers suggestion rather than a person I knew because it was cheaper. I tried the POR15 black chassis top coat instead of an epoxy primer filler because it was cheaper and it turned out to be a disaster. I got it perfectly smoothed throughout the engine bay then had it sprayed with the POR15 topcoat. It was way to shiny and textured than I wanted. So then we started sanding it completely off which was a pain! Its super sticky and did not want to come off, plus the texture of it left bumps that resisted sanding with 180grit. We got it almost completely off, thinking that the epoxy primer would fill in the rest of the spots that were not wanting to sand off. My buddy sprayed the epoxy sealer this morning, all looked good, then disaster...the primer reacted with the POR15 and started crinkling!!!!

 

...so, super frustrated as now I have to sand everything off pretty much back to the bondo then start over with primer, sanding then primer sealer....I am so sick of this engine bay...

[15om]

So here was the engine bay, completely done and ready for top coat...

 

 

and here it is after top coat of POR15...

 

 

what a nightmare.

 

I have now sanded it all off and am ready to start primer coating again. Once that is done it all should be coming together quickly so stay tuned.

 

[mrbigtanker]

Good job,it will all come together real nice.

[HEATHEN]

Nice build. Looks good.

[15om]

Look what I just got! New parts!

 

 

 

Fuel pump, pre and post filters, fuel regulator, AN fittings and a new aluminum 10gal fuel cell. Had to ditch the old tank because it did not have a sender unit to tell me how much gas I have, so the shiny new one with everything I need already on it. I am starting to get excited again.

 

[15om]

Today I sanded the engine bay for the LAST TIME. We will be spraying it tomorrow evening if all goes well then the reassembly begins. Along with sanding today I took off all the excess parts on the block, cleaned it and prepped it for a nice new aluminum spray coat to make it look new again as well as sandblasting and painting some of the engine block parts just to make sure everything is up to par with the engine bay and engine.

[DottiBlue]

Nice looking car. It's very frustrating and discouraging when things go wrong like that. Glad you are working through it. Car looks like it will be a beast when all said and done.

[El Compa_510]

Nice work bro! I remember I was really close in buying this car! I'm glad someone with true dime love got it keep up the good work!

Subscribed!!!!!!

[15om]

Nice work bro! I remember I was really close in buying this car! I'm glad someone with true dime love got it keep up the good work!

Subscribed!!!!!!

 

Thanks. It was a great find, it just needed a genius in electrical and some love

 

 

Nice looking car. It's very frustrating and discouraging when things go wrong like that. Glad you are working through it. Car looks like it will be a beast when all said and done.

 

I am getting very excited now, seeing progress and parts coming in now really got me motivated again!

[15om]

Here are a few more things I got done while we wait to paint the final coat of the engine bay

 

Cleaned up the engine block and sprayed a lite coat of aluminum spray paint....man what a difference it made! Looks like its brand new!

 

 

 

Also cleaned up a lot of the parts on the block

 

 

And did a little grinding on the top hat of the coilovers

 

 

 

 

[El Compa_510]

Looking good

[15om]

Here is a quick update:

 

Engine bay is finished, spray painted all parts and ordered a few seals and gaskets along the way. If all goes to plan it should be put back together tomorrow and into the car depending if the seals come in/are in stock. When taking apart the turbo we found that the seals are starting to go since their was some oil in the housing...now I need to decide if I should replace the turbo now or wait till it goes completely...seems like a good excuse to go bigger sooner to me =)

 

Ill have more pics hopefully by tomorrow!

[Greiggy]

definatley put a bit bigger turbo on it while its out ! over here in aus we call them disco potato's ( garrett GTX2860) are a great one for increasing power and keeping the lag at a sensible place.

[15om]

definatley put a bit bigger turbo on it while its out ! over here in aus we call them disco potato's ( garrett GTX2860) are a great one for increasing power and keeping the lag at a sensible place.

 

Ive heard of those, not sure if I will go that big though, I am researching turbos for what can give me: more power, not to much lag and at a decent price.

 

I have been cleaning parts then cleaning some more. Once you start you have to do EVERYTHING! at least that is how its felt for me. When one thing is clean and other parts are not, you(I) notice the dirty parts even more.

 

Finally got the gaskets needed to start putting the pieces back together, probably tomorrow we will set it back in the car. My friend was considering running the brake lines first before we drop the engine in so we will see tomorrow.

 

Stay tuned.