72 2-door Project

[Rushin510]

Hey all. A little background first. I bought my 72 510 near my home in Simi Valley, CA in 1989 just before my 16th birthday and I've had it ever since. I moved to northern WI many years later & dragged the 510 along, but only drove it a short while before the timing chain went out (1997).

 

My dad was a body man, so I had the car in his shop to get it smoothed out and repainted, even though it was in pretty nice shape at the time. Well, the car sat in primer for quite a while because my dad was too busy & one day he shot the purple paint on the 510 to keep the primer from holding moisture.  Right about that time is when the timing chain pooped out.

 

At that time, I had a boyfriend who was a professional machinist and he built a lot of the local racecar engines. He took the head off the Datsun, rebuilt it, and did all the "racing" modifications on the ports, seats, & whatever. Once I put the head back on, I started the car and it hemorrhaged water between the bellhousing and engine. I didn't have the money or mechanical aptitude to fix it at the time, so I parked the car on a slab behind my dad's house. I knew someday, I'd have the ability to fix it, so I waited.

 

Fast forward 17 years. My dad passed away and I had to go get the Datsun from his place before his wife sold the house. Now, I have my car at my house and I have the mechanical aptitude and money to fix him (my Datsun is a him :blush: ) up.

 

Enough of that boring crap. Here are some photos!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

[r0p0doe]

Welcome great intro post with pictures, what are your plans besides getting it running again?

[Rushin510]

Well, I'd like to simply make it a nice, drivable car again. I want to get rid of the plastic racing bucket and replace it with a regular seat that matches the passenger seat. My dad's wife threw my old one away along with my bumper and all spare parts I had. She's an awful human.

 

I plan on blasting the entire car, repairing the rust and returning it to the original orange. Of course, that might change along the way, but that's the plan.   ;)

 

Once I get it running, I'll have to drive it to see what the drivetrain needs. If I remember correctly, it had a pretty good clunk in the front end when I parked it.

 

Oh, here are a few pics from today. I removed the seats icky old, ill fitting carpet and pad so I could check the condition of the floor.

 

 

 

All in all, the floor is decent. 

[r0p0doe]

 

 

What rims are on your car, could you take a pic please?

[Rushin510]

I'm sorry, I don't know what kind they are, but I'll take a pic for you tomorrow when it's light & maybe you can tell. I can tell you they're 13's and I have 225/50/13 BFG's on them (in dire need of replacement). They had gold "webbing" but in my stupid youth, I painted it white. I'll be media blasting them and hopefully, the white will clean off.

[Rushin510]

Here's a pic of the rim. If you know what they are, can you tell me?

 

[hosestop@msn.com]

Welcome aboard and we need more girls that love to repair/restore their cars ,please ask for help when needed ,those wheels may be enkie most people ditch smaller wheels for 15" due to more tire choice and higher gears .

[Rushin510]

Thanks! I was looking for tires online last night & you're right, there aren't many for this size and the ones I did find were very expensive. I remember buying the BFG's that are on there now & they were SOOO expensive even back then.

I'll have to do some research as to what I can fit. These little guys are pretty snug in the wheel wells, but I'm sure I can figure something out.

 

I'm hoping to get my hands on a hoist today so I can pull the engine to see exactly how far over my head I've gotten. ;)

 

I removed, rebuilt and reinstalled the 5.7 Vortec engine in my old 99 Chevy truck last year, so I feel ok working on the Datsun now, even though I still have a TON of Datsun specific things to learn. 

['70dime]

Check out Tires-easy.com lots of good deals there.

 

I think those wheels are SSR Mesh Wheels

[r0p0doe]

Here's a pic of the rim. If you know what they are, can you tell me?

 

I have no clue what they are

[Rhapakatui]

Either they're Enkei Apache mesh and you just can't see the lettering because of the picture quality and the paint.

 

Or, more likely, they're Carroll Shelby Mesh

 

The lips look more like the Enkeis to me, but it seems like we'd be able to see the lettering between the bars.

 

Either way, I'd keep em until I found something I just had to have.  And welcome to Ratsun!  Nice Dime!

 

 

Edit: Looking at them all side by side by side, I'm back to Enkei Apache Mesh.  Where the center circle is crossed by the bars making the tiny circle of triangles around the  lug pattern, the CSS has a hole all of the way through where the Enkeis and your wheels have a deep indention, but no hole.

 

My vote. Enkei Apache Mesh

[Rushin510]

In both the pics you posted, it looks like each rim has a brand stamp near the stem. I checked all of mine & none do, so I don't know, maybe some knock-off of one of those? If I had to guess, I'd say the Shelby ones just because the edges are less round, like mine. 

[hosestop@msn.com]

Play it safe with 15x7 +10 +15 offset with 205x50s or 195x50x15s Really depends on what struts you run most run 280zx which like +10 offset best ,anyway your car doesn't look to rusty for that part of country.

[Rushin510]

Thanks for the info. I appreciate it. 

Fortunately, the car has never been on the road during the winter, but it does have the typical rust from water sitting in dirt in crevices. It could be WAY worse, though. My major problem is the passenger quarter and the back of the rocker on that side.

 

So, today, I removed the engine and cleaned up the bay and the engine itself. I also removed the freeze plugs. There is A LOT of scale in the water jackets, but I'm hoping the machine shop will be able get it all cleaned out of there when I bring it in. 

 

Here are some pics. I love pics.

 

 

 

 

[r0p0doe]

You work fast  :thumbup:

[Rushin510]

Lol! Yep. It's supposed to rain the rest of the week, so I wanted to get the engine out of the car and into the garage where the rain won't matter. I can hang out in there and tinker with the engine.

 

It was really hot, sunny & humid today, so I kind of had a small window of time before the rain. The neighbor was mowing his property next door and he kept looking at me like I was out of my mind pulling an engine by myself in 90º heat! Haha!

[Rushin510]

I'm tearing down the engine right now and my service manual (UK version, apparently) shows the timing pointer on the opposite side of the engine than mine. The diagram of it also looks different than mine.

This is mine:

 

It also states "rotate the crank until the O timing mark on the camshaft chain is in alignment and clearly visible with the timing mark dimple on the camshaft sprocket".

 

That's clear and all, except I can't find any "O" mark on my chain and I'm dimple-rich! Which dimple?

 

With it in this position, the pointer points to the leftmost (as I'm facing the front of the engine) notch on the pulley, and the rotor points to the #1 wire.

 

I believe the timing set was installed incorrectly, maybe a tooth off or something. It ran like crap when I parked it 17 years ago. I'm kind of fuzzy on the details after all these years.

 

Can anyone help?

Thanks!

[Rhapakatui]

http://community.ratsun.net/topic/40714-hains-video/?hl=video

 

Watch these videos, and you'll have all the answers to questions you haven't asked yet.

[Rushin510]

Thanks for the link. I'll watch them. I watched them. VERY informative! Thank you for the link and to the guy who made them.

 

I tore the entire engine down today. Since I have to rebuild it anyway, the timing setting isn't important yet.

 

LOTS of carbon on the top of the pistons. The head still looks new, so I'm all set there, at least.

 

This guy had a bad day sometime in the last 17 years. ha!

 

I discovered my engine is .50 over. And a couple pistons have some scarring on the tops. Does anyone know what brand these pistons are?

Also, how much bigger does boring .50 over make the engine?

 

And the #2 & #4 pistons both have one side of the piston skirt broke off.

 

This is the freeze plug that was leaking between the tranny & engine.

 

So, there's some bad news, but on the bright side, the bores are nice and the rods & mains seem just fine, so hopefully I don't need any crank work.

[Rushin510]

After a lot of digging, I believe my pistons are 240Z pistons from a 2.4L. Knowing the application will be really helpful in finding replacements. So far, it seems like 0.50 is an odd oversize, but I need to do some more research.

 

It's kind of fun uncovering all my little car's secrets. I always thought it was totally stock except for the Weber and header.

[Rushin510]

I'm not really getting much input here, but I'll ask anyway. Can anyone tell by the numbers on the crank if it's an L16 crank? If not, where can I look up the information?

 

My #1 piston is broken, too.

 

So, pistons 2 & 4 have broken skirts and rings, and #1 is cracked in half, also with broken rings.

 

The very top of the lip of each bore has a half-moon gouge out of it. I'm guessing it's from valve contact at one time. The valves and head look just fine, so I'm assuming it was from before I had the headwork done.

 

When I brought the car here way back when, I went back to CA for a few months. My brother was driving my car (without my knowledge) and I believe he did a lot of beating the shit out of street racing in it which is what caused the carnage.

 

On the bright side, I was able to strip all the paint off the valve cover and I started the process to polishing it.

[Rhapakatui]

I'm not really getting much input here, but I'll ask anyway. Can anyone tell by the numbers on the crank if it's an L16 crank? If not, where can I look up the information?

 

 

I honestly don't know, but I find that people rarely answer questions in my build threads directly either.  My usual strategy is to search as much as possible.  Then if that doesn't work, I either bump the thread in the tech section that comes closest to my problem, or start a new one there. 

 

Typically asking in the Tech section gets the attention of the gurus around here who know everything.

[Rushin510]

Thanks for the tip. :)

 

I did a bit more work on the car in the last week or so.

I "unshaved" the door handles. That was boatloads of fun. I don't know why I shaved them to begin with, I guess because I was 17. These days, I'd like to actually use my doors, so they had to be fixed. Now I just need to find some exterior handles...

 

 

 

 

They're in primer, ready for body work with the rest of the car.

 

I moved on to the floor. I removed the rear seat to find 17 years worth of mouse crap & wiz and some super nice rust holes.  :sneaky:

 

 

 

I also found the crispy remains on my Simi Valley Nissan plate. It's totaled, so I'm going to make a replica with my plotter.

 

I stripped down the engine bay, then epoxied and primed it. I also POR 15'd some of the easy to reach frame areas.

Blasted:

 

Epoxied:

 

Primered:

 

 

 

[mattyhacks71]

Here's a pic of the rim. If you know what they are, can you tell me?

 

 

Carol Shelby meshies. I used to have a set!

[Rushin510]

Those must be them. They're identical.  Thanks for the ID.