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Bruiser! 78 620 KC project


carterb

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Wow, January 2019...  We've put on a lot of miles since then.

 

Remember February?

 

large.174355362_02042019bruisersnow(2).J

 

large.1979163535_02042019bruisersnow(1).

 

large.174355362_02042019bruisersnow(2).J

 

This was the first snow.  It was followed by a real whopper.  Over a foot and days upon days of disruption...

 

July was much nicer.

 

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Everybody likes the truck.  Even the local wildlife!

 

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Corey has been daily driving the truck for over a year now.  I had him do the oil change and fluid checks this time 'round.

 

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We decided to change the plugs too. Simple right?!  Wrong!  One of the spark plug wire connectors stuck to the #4 plug and I ended up ripping it off the end of the wire - off to the auto parts store then.

 

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Great lesson in reality - not everything goes as planned. 

 

Would you believe the local store didn't have any NGK plugs?!  Granny's engine is still sitting in the garage so I used those for now.  Thanks again Granny!

 

We still get occasional coolant seepage from one of the heater hoses.

 

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It generally only leaks when you close the heater valve (must build pressure in that hose) but I always have it open so I don't worry about it.  Brenda and Corey don't appreciate the foot furnace apparently and turn it off now and then - creating the result above.

 

Just need a new one of these and we'll be back in business:

 

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Anyone know the hose ID off the top of their head?  None of this stuff is available from Nissan anymore.  : (

 

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  • 2 months later...
On 11/2/2019 at 8:05 PM, carterb said:

Anyone know the hose ID off the top of their head?  None of this stuff is available from Nissan anymore.  : (

 

I'd try just replacing that clamp with a nice new worm gear hose clamp and see what happens. Otherwise, it should be a 5/8 hose. You can probably find a premolded one somewhere.

 

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  • 4 weeks later...

 Check out the thread. "Stop Heater Valve Leak"   on the 1st page, you'll see a post by Benso.  (I cant post the link via my phone for some reason)   Perhaps it will help.  Please let us know what you find.  

 

Im going to be replacing ALL my hoses real soon, this will be of great help!

 

 

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Sorry, a little behind on the updates...

 

I grabbed a new 510 heater hose - figured I could cut it up and make it work - but when I was digging in the box to find that - I found another Nissan braided hose that looked pretty good.

 

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So I cut a piece of that U shaped hose to make an L like the old one I removed

 

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"New" on top, old on bottom

 

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Job done!

 

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"Job done"?

 

Right...

 

A month later and we appear to be right back where we started.

 

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I'm chalking this one up to a bad hose clamp.  I was able to give it a little more turn and we've been dry since.

 

Dry on the inside anyway...

 

The new year brought some white stuff!

 

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A long time ago in a garage far far away - okay, it's just downstairs - I bought a pair of speakers to install in the back of the king cab.  Unfortunately when I got them out of the box and fit them to the speaker hole - it was apparent that mounting them was not going to be straight forward so I put them back in the box and figured I'd tackle them later.  That was probably 2 years ago...

 

Well, the other day I thought that's it!  I'm tired of looking at this box of speakers reminding me I failed to finish the job - let's look at it again.

 

Here is one of the speaker holes (thanks SO much previous owner for destroying one of the cab corner panels...

 

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The speaker mostly fits inside the rim of the sheetmetal but not quite - and it leaves nothing to bolt to.  So I figured maybe I could come up with some kind of adapter plate or something...

 

But after drawing the speaker and mounting area in CAD, I realized I could mount them with a couple of clamps.

 

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So I printed them at work and for just under $18, custom speaker clamps ready to mount...

 

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I stripped out the back of the cab, ran the wires to the stereo, and crossed my fingers that my plan would work out.

 

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After sanding a chamfer on the back side of the speaker plate top and bottom, the mounting method worked great!

 

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drivers side panel is uncut and shows the better looking of the two final installations

 

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Corey is pretty happy to have "Quad Sound" now.  : )

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The party didn't last long though...  Corey went to drive the truck today and the clutch pedal went to the floor and his attempt to start the truck in gear with clutch engaged (didn't realize it yet) told him there was a problem.

 

I came home early after lunch to find some tell-tail trails in the driveway.

 

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Two were coolant, one was hydraulic fluid...

 

The coolant was leaking from the rubber freeze plug.

 

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That was one of the very first things I had fixed on this truck years ago when we first got it.  Fortunately, I was able to add a couple of cranks to the nut and it seems to have cured that issue for now.  The other fix would not be quite as easy. 

 

No clutch fluid.  (Why does this happen to me on such a regular basis on my Datsuns?!)

 

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Time to replace the slave cylinder again.

 

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I had put this in new with hose and master cylinder just a few years ago.  They sure don't make parts like they used to.  : (

 

I had a new 510 slave cylinder in hand but a test fit said no way - not only is the cylinder position slightly different compared to the mounting holes but the soft hose is aimed directly at the torsion bar.  I would need a 620 specific slave cylinder.

 

RockAuto had replacements for as low as $7 each but I'd have to wait 'till Tuesday to get it.

Amazon had some for about $20 shipped but the timeframe was identical.

Fortunately - O'Reily's 2 miles away.  Brand is "Power Torque".  ???  Whatever - as long as it works.  (I needed to recycle a few gallons of oil anyway so it was a worthwhile trip)

 

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No obvious flaws on the old cylinder but the piston seal is pretty weeny so it must just be tired.

 

I bolted in the new one and Corey came down to help bleed the hydraulics and after 5-6 full reservoirs full of fluid, it still would not push the piston.  I could hear air in the system and I have to ask, what the heck was NISSAN thinking when they put the bleed screw UNDER the incoming hose.  REALLY?! 

 

I grabbed some longer mounting bolts, rolled the slave cylinder over so that the bleed screw was on top, burped a ton of air which allowed the piston to function as intended, then flipped it back over and mounted it like it is supposed to be.

 

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Had Corey take a test drive and he reported no issues. 

 

Any bets on what will fail next?

 

I've been through just about everything on this truck.  It makes me very sad that I'm starting back at the top of the list again.  The price we pay for driving our Datsuns and using cheap Chinese parts to keep them on the road I guess.

 

 

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Well that escalated quickly...

 

Fixed the truck Thursday.

 

Corey drove to school the next morning and then that night after robotics he took a friend home.  Well, tried to.  He called me a little after 9:30PM from the side of the freeway.  He said the truck started to lose power, make some noises, and then the oil light came on.

 

uh oh...

 

I quickly gathered a bunch of tools and liquids and Brenda and I drove down I-405 to I-90 and found him on the shoulder.  I looked over the truck and found that the rubber freeze plug was no longer with us.  And so of course the coolant was missing as well.  I assumed a head gasket failure so I added a couple quarts of oil and a gallon of water in hopes of being able to get off the freeway to a safe spot.

 

I was able to take an offramp off the freeway and get to a gas station parking lot.  The truck didn't actually sound too bad, but that was as far as I was willing to go at 10:30pm on a Friday night with a giant hole in the side of the block so we finished taking Corey's friend home and then drove back to Lynnwood ourselves - formulating a plan to return in the morning and take better stock of the situation.

 

I was hopeful that I could replace the missing plug, fill the engine with water, and test drive to get a feel for whether or not I'd be able to drive it back home.

 

There was an Auto Parts store 1/2 mile from where I had parked so I grabbed one of these.

 

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and we headed back to the gas station.

 

There was some coolant on the ground, leftover from my quick fill the night before.

 

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but otherwise, nothing else on the outside of the engine or engine bay looked out of place, no additional holes in the block, no oil streaks, etc...  No external sign of a blown head gasket (if there ever are any), just a big round hole where the freeze plug used to reside.

 

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First step - fill that void.

 

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2nd step, add water and coolant.

 

3rd step, start the truck.

 

First crank ended rather abruptly.  Hmm...

 

On the second crank it fired right up but with a thump thump thump and a lot of shaking back and forth.  I turned it right back off.  It was not going to make the trip home.

 

 

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4th step, call a tow truck.

 

First time in my life I've ever had to do that, and I've been driving nothing but old cars for 31 years!

 

Sergey showed up 45 minutes later with only a few English words to his name but a nice smile and a fully equipped tow truck.

 

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Oh, by the way.  Turns out my wife has AAA (We had signed up my daughter while she's away at school and add a second person - my wife - for free).  She had failed to mention that until after we got home the previous night.  *facepalm*  It's not the fancy membership with 200 mile free towing or whatever it is but we did get a bit of a discount.

 

Anyway, gave us something to giggle about.

 

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Trip home gave us more giggles, as quite often along the journey a few ounces of water/coolant would come pouring out the exhaust pipe.  Not too many ways that much water can go from the radiator to the exhaust pipe.  Bruiser had turned itself into a bilge pump right there on the side of the freeway the night before.  Transformers aint got nothin' on us!

 

Home sweet home and wallet $83 dollars lighter.

 

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I pulled Bruiser into the garage and removed the hood to get a good look at what I was in for...

 

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*sigh*

 

I've been under that air cleaner before and hoped I'd never have to do it again. 

 

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I realize it wasn't the 80's yet but even in 1978 - auto manufacturers were going crazy with emissions garbage and vacuum tubes.  This was not going to be fun.

 

It took WAY too long just to get to this point.

 

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Some of those manifold bolts were nearly impossible to remove.  I can't imagine how I'm going to be able to get them started back in their holes when I have to put this back together.

 

Top end still looks healthy.

 

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This may surprise some of you but I've never replaced an L motor head gasket before - not in the car anyway - only on the stand as part of a full build.  I remember something about a tool to keep the timing chain engaged on the crank and keeping the tensioner from falling out.  I found measurements for a simple one and a fancy one.

 

large.802078799_02222020bruiser(13).JPG.

 

So I made both!  : )

 

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I took someone's advice and drilled a hole near the top and added a loop of chord to facilitate pulling it out.

 

Looking at the two tools, I figured if the one of the left is right-sized, I had no idea how the one of the right would even work.  So - the left one it is...

 

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Documented cam gear/timing chain position so I could put everything back the way it was upon reassembly.

 

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And now, the moment we've all been waiting for.  Drum roll please...

 

 

 

Edited by carterb
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So this is what the inside of a bilge pump - er, um, L20b - looks like.

 

large.02222020_bruiser_(17).JPG.d7fa47e9

 

Wasn't sure exactly what I was looking for at this point but  I didn't see any super obvious signs of a head gasket failure or cracked block or anything like that...

 

large.02222020_bruiser_(18).JPG.6f8da69c

 

Dried out the cylinders best I could.

 

large.02222020_bruiser_(19).JPG.357e2ece

 

block and pistons looks really clean - save some odd streaking on the back side of #2 and #3.

 

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So the bottom end is fine?

 

As the therapist says - "It's all in your head"

 

large.02222020_bruiser_(24).JPG.995dd604

 

Found a crack on #2.

 

And more than that - look at the erosion of the water ports between #2 and #3

 

large.02222020_bruiser_(25).JPG.3e4e06e7

 

The opening in the head gasket is significantly larger than the relief in the head too so as it turns out - that erosion nearly opens right into the cylinder.  Not positive if that was the problem or if it was the crack or if both or something else entirely but either way, this head is not going back on the motor.

 

Another look at that erosion

 

large.02222020_bruiser_(26).JPG.8472de9d

 

And the crack

 

large.02222020_bruiser_(27).JPG.86dda48d

 

large.02222020_bruiser_(28).JPG.0a20b960

 

And I'm just now noticing this in the photos, what is that off color area around the hole in the bottom of this picture?  Was this head repaired with filler at one point in time?  Or is that just a witness mark from an opening in the head gasket?

 

large.02222020_bruiser_(29).JPG.54c015a9

 

I'll have to overlay the two and check it out later.   Probably just a witness mark.

 

Truck beds make great parts holders...

 

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Any of this stuff going back on the truck or is it all going to the dump?  I'm considering my options at the moment.

 

 

 

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  • 2 weeks later...

Still curious if the actual problem was the head gasket or the crack, I put the headgasket against the old head.  You can see how big the headgasket bore is - it brings the edge of the gasket so close to those blown out coolant ports!

 

large.02272020_bruiser_(9).JPG.073bad22e

 

Gasket is degraded at the ports too but still not obvious it was getting past the copper edge.

 

large.02272020_bruiser_(8).JPG.f1fc3bcd8

 

Worn in other places too

 

large.02272020_bruiser_(7).JPG.dce497c51

 

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50-50 to me...

 

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What do you guys think?

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