My new ugly betty, '84 Maxima, not diesel.

[HRH]

Well I might have tackled the project tonight, but instead I'm going to watch Deathrace 3.  I spent an hour at urgent care this morning because I somehow scratched my cornea.  Thought I had a piece of metal in there from the previous night's projects.  Anyway, have some eye ointment, spent the day in annoyance but at least the doc didn't find any metal fragments in there.  Super excited with the parts though, they should work awesomely!  (Crossing fingers nonetheless)

[q-tip]

Metal in the eye sucks, especially when they have to grind it out.

[HRH]

After a shitty week of eye issues and down two people at work which upper management didn't have coverage for, I finally got the rear coilovers installed!!  I have pictures, but am heading to bed.  The good part is now I can start on the front suspension.  So freakin' happy the rear is good and seems to even be the right spring rate now that the range has been corrected!! :)

[HRH]

Okay, finally had the chance to upload some pictures to photofucket.  I don't think I posted the earlier pictures.  What I did was use a 240sx rear strut and bang off the press-fit stock perch.  That was welded to the other '90s Maxima rear strut tubes that didn't work.  Ended up cutting them up to add as spacers for the new adjustable coilover lower perch.  They bang down in place just like the factory perch that comes with them.  Also used another section of them to make the drop hat.

 

As you can see, the results are great!  They work perfectly now.  Strut bumper is from a Toyota MR2 I think, can't remember.  Cut a little off and notched a little off the plus shape on the upper so it fits better onto the top strut shaft where the factory bumper used to sit.  The Toyota bumper conveniently fits inside the upper spring perch ring that's bolted on.  Yes, I used loctite.

 

 

The original upper mount.

 

 

This was my original plan.  Harbor Freight hole saw set.  THESE SUCK FOR ANYTHING OTHER THAN WOOD, I DON'T CARE WHAT IT SAYS ON THE BOX!!!

 

 

Slick, huh?  Cut out a piece of wood to use as the center for cutting the hole bigger?  If the hole saws worked, it would have worked better.

 

 

 

This is the Harbor Freight angle air drill I got two year ago.  Think it cost me $9 on sale.  It was worth 9 dollars, but I killed it during the very first of this project.

 

 

This was the second idea.  Except HF hole saws suck for metal.

[HRH]

 

So after attempting to do multiple cuts with the dremel, I finally went back to my only efficient option being the torch. HOWEVER, the gas tank is right next to the rear strut housing and torching down there with an oxy-acetylene is a very bad idea.  Fortunately I had some leftover stove piping.  Cut that off the correct length and put a fan by the rear bumper to suck any potential gas fumes away.  It made a nice little flame catch area.  As you can see, it worked and I didn't explode the car or myself!

 

 

This hole was then ground down with various wheels and burrs.

 

 

This is what we're installing!

 

 

 

MR2 bushing.

 

 

 

Happy accident, it fits!

 

 

Here's how it sits now!  This is with the collar all the way down for the most part and about an 1/8" of spring looseness during full extension.  Which means I can run it up no problem once the springs work in and it should be perfect for adjustability!

 

 

Hard to tell there, but it's even a little too low, lots of camber.

 

 

This was the crux of the issue.  I needed a strut with a shorter extended length.  Since that wasn't happening, moving the upper mounting point up about 2 5/8" took care of the problem!  Suspension feels great now, and it seems I may have even picked the right spring rate.  We shall see with more testing.  The only thing I haven't checked is full compression, have to make sure the wheel won't hit.  I have about 5" of travel on the strut ram now, hopefully it won't tuck too much.  If it does, I'll replace the bumpers I cut with some a little longer.

[HRH]

Hey, check this out:  The first three non-pinned topics in Project Datto are 810 Maximas.  How about that? ;)

[datzenmike]

Hey Matt, you bringing Betty to Canby? Can I have another ride?

[HRH]

Haha, no Betty to Canby.  No windows, stripped with a limited comfort race seat wouldn't be good for a long trip.  However, I am planning on taking the wagon to Canby, and you can most definitely have a ride in that!  Sadly though, the automatic sucks a bit of power, and it's a lot heavier than Betty.  Still, it's faster than the hardbody!

 

I haven't thought of a name for the wagon yet either.  Nothing has popped out at me.

[HRH]

Now this....is funny.

 

[HRH]

Well fiddle.  I'm finding the front coilovers not to be as easy as I thought.  The QA1 coilover hats really are meant to be used with QA1 shocks.  T3 has the same upper hats with built in roller bearings that I'd like right now, then it would go together swimmingly.  Going to pontificate on a few other options before I hang it up and order some more parts.

[HRH]

Heading to dad's to play with the lathe, oh boy!  Should have this figured out by tonight.

[HRH]

I am back, with all the pieces needed to put together the front suspension if I figured everything right.  We'll see tomorrow.  It's late, I'm tired.

[HRH]

Well, I figured out a way to make it work just perfectly.  But.  The 10" springs on the front are too long.  This time, I can't compress the damn thing enough to make it fit back into the hole.  Apparently I have much less range of motion on the front suspension.  Think I'm going to have to order 8" springs.  And the nice T3 bearing top plates would help too, since I'm still using the stock front bearing which is about 7/8" thick after washer and rubber sleeve.

[HRH]

Today:  Operation clean the garage and get the autocross car front suspension done and go test drive!  To the Bat Cave!!

[HRH]

Garage clean!  (Or at least much cleaner)  Lunch, then suspension time!

[HRH]

Okay, so updates:

 

We have the front suspension and rear suspension set up.  Front got the T3 upper hat with bearing to fix the height issue.  Running 10" springs up front now with 185 lb rate.  Rears are 140 lb.  It's actually a little higher than the wagon in the front, but that's ok.  Still has the right amount of rake and suspension travel.  The problem was when I went to take her out today.  Considering I moved the ranger of the rear suspension, while the sidewall clears the fender lip just fine, I found it hits the inner wheel arch.   :(

 

So after driving very gingerly home to not rub off any more rubber, I set about whacking the shit out of the inner fender liner with a 2 lb hammer.  Got it pretty good but still on full stuff it hit.  After that I changed bumpstops in the rear struts.  I have an even longer set of bumpstops I could use, but I'll have about an inch before they hit.  Granted they're fairly soft squishies on suspension loading, but it's almost right to stop the tire before it goes just that little extra.

 

 

 

So here was my brilliant idea:  Go to pull and save, get some hardbody bump stops and the other small ones are off a Mazda B2600.

 

 

 

Conveniently there is a spot on the lower control arm that's just perfect for mounting the hardbody bumpstop and it appears to have the right amount of rubber to limit the wheel.  Or so I thought.  I drilled a hole about where that stud sits, and all was well and good except the inner edge of the control arm apparently rolls.  Consequently the bumpstop won't sit flat, with the little locating nipple at the edge of the large hole like I planned.  It kicks it up at a 5 degree angle or thereabouts.  So I was going to move it sideways and weld the edge to the control arm.  Anyway, dicked around with one side for quite a while and then it got dark.  I decided to tackle it in the morning.  The air drill is pretty loud too, I'm sure the neighbors don't want to hear it at 930 at night.

 

For the moment I'm a bit stuck.  I'll sleep on it, maybe I'll come up with a better idea by morning.

 

 

Here's the problem, see that mark?

 

 

And here's the other problem.  Using an even longer bump stop in the strut is going to make for a bump stop that is continually in use.  Pretty sure I can make the hardbody mount work the way I want it to, just have to be a little smarter.

[HRH]

Oh boy, have I hacked the fenders.  It looks bad.  It's all there, but need to make some flares to fit the rear.  I had to cut all the way into the door.  My bodyman is going to be soooo pissed at me! :rofl:  Oh well.  Had the Datsun guru tack the initial, now I just need to fill in the rest.

[HRH]

Alright, so after this past weekends autocross, as you all probably saw in the General thread, Ugly Betty handled great!  Much better than last season.  So now we have three things to improve:

 

Power

Traction

Weight

 

Weight I'm not that concerned with yet.

 

Power I am.  I have the other camshaft which will be installed today and at the same time I'll be installing the high strength valve springs so I can rev it to the moon without damage.  I also may consider a bigger throttle body, but we'll see.  I have one to try, not sure if I have the associated plumbing to make it work right.

 

Traction is important, apparently a Quaife LSD gear locker is *only* $1200 plus shipping.  WTF Batman, over?  I don't want to spend that.  The options?  Concentrate on the other part of grip, and that would be tires.  Stickier tires would definitely help.  The other option would be backdating the car to the R160 LSD for the 510 I have.  I don't see what that wouldn't work except the swapping of the side shafts to fit the different axle stubs might be a problem.  And sticky tires would cost $1000, but I can sell the existing race tires and offset that by a bit.

 

That said, it's my Sunday, making breakfast then disappearing into the batcave!

[q-tip]

Search the junk yards for a subi lsd

[fisch]

I love this build HRH. Been following. The definition of sleeper happening. I had dreams of putting an RB into a Maxi wagon this winter, but found my 510 wagon, and went with that. Then the other day, a RWD Maxi showed up on CL for $300 locally. Man I wanted it, but I've met the cap with the wife. 3 Datsuns and only one on the road.

 

Anyway, keep it up!

 

Always liked this one too:

[HRH]

Yeah Fisch, I hear that.  I'm down to 3 cars and they all run.  2 dailys and a race car.  That's it, as much as I want more, I don't want more.  Too many mouths to feed.  My wagon is super comfortable, really like dailying that.  Need to get the center console fixed though.  And do the periodic maintenance of intake/exhaust gasket.  I'll probably wait until this fall to do that.

 

As far as Subi diffs are concerned, I need an R180, not an R160.  Already have an R160 LSD.  I may just go that option and back date the car to it since it's a lot lighter now.  On the other hand, clutch type LSDs aren't that great for autocross.  The Quaife gear LSD is really quite superior.  Just a lot of cash.

[fisch]

Yeah Fisch, I hear that.  I'm down to 3 cars and they all run.  2 dailys and a race car.  That's it, as much as I want more, I don't want more.  Too many mouths to feed.  My wagon is super comfortable, really like dailying that.  Need to get the center console fixed though.  And do the periodic maintenance of intake/exhaust gasket.  I'll probably wait until this fall to do that.

 

 

Right! My problem, and why I was thinking about a Maxi, is that I need a winter car. As ratty as Chapman (my 510) is, I can't drive him in the winter. SO I started doing the math as to what I would like, but also not be scared to 'occasionally' drive in the winter. I work at home so in reality it'd get out a few times a month at most during winter in whatever it is. But RWD Maxi's are getting more and more rare too. So maybe I'd feel bad about winter driving it. Why does everything I love and can afford have to be old!

[HRH]

Buy the Maxi for me and drive it over, I'll fly you back! :D  Maximas are not a good choice for winter cars.  Reason being, it's about the most shittiest of Nissan's rust control measures.  I'd get a D21 or 720 that has a frame for winter.  That way the seat will fall on the frame when it rusts out and you can still drive it. Lol.

 

As for the racecar, she's pissing me the f off!  Stupid valve springs are a bitch to get because the new uber-Schneider ones are wider and the cam spring tool is a little too thick.  Ground some off already, it's working better near the cam towers.  Should have just removed the cam and used a different spring puller.  And now I have a valve that refuses to break loose from it's keepers.  Doused it with kroil, making a cup of tea, we'll see in a bit here.

[q-tip]

I have a viscous type r180 LSD...

[HRH]

Oh you do, do you?  Want to sell it?  And what Subi did you pilfer it off of?