Half Pint - Z22 swapped 510 goon

[Lockleaf]

All I own is mapp gas, and i just can not ever seem to get enough heat into cast metal with it for it to make any difference. Had to go true old school, blacksmith style :)

[Lockleaf]

Manifold round 2 continues -

 

Snagged more freeze plugs.

 

 

Pounded in great, no grief. I pounded them in slightly deeper than the edge of the manifold again.

 

 

Then epoxied them in place again. But this time I just lightly coated the bowls for appearances sake. Same crap as before.

 

 

Then started block sanding the flanges.

 

 

After this pic I got these two finished tonight, but the bottom flange still needs a fair bit of work. I should have that done by tomorrow night.

[Lockleaf]

Bottom flange is pissing me off. In spite of my best efforts, I did not get it sanded to a smooth even plane. I will need to change tactics to get this thing flat. Sick of it, so I changed direction.

 

I built the upper radiator mounts tonight. I was able to use some existing bolt holes which I hope will be substantial enough for this.

 

I bent up some 1 inch strap, drilled a hole, then took another piece, drilled another hole, and tack welded them together. And I welded a nut in behind one of the holes I drilled.

 

Passenger side

 

 

 

Built the other one and test fit everything. Works good, clears everything. When I really hang it, there will be a rubber isolater from the mount to the radiator.

 

Finished construction, they will still need paint though.

 

 

 

 

All mounted up

 

 

 

 

I got started on the lower mounts, but didn't get very far, so that is for another day.

[Lockleaf]

Made up a new to do list tonight. Stuff with a triangle requires welding on the actual car, which requires moving the car. I want to do all or almost all the prep work for those jobs before moving the car, so I can get them all welded in one day or two.

 

[datzenmike]

Epoxy probably won't stand up to the heat. If the plugs are physically pounded in and expanded they should be ok.

[Lockleaf]

They are pounded in. And that stuff is exhaust manifold repair goo. It's supposedly rated to 2000 degrees.

[Lockleaf]

Radiator is almost finished, but I will post the rest of the pics once I finish that up.

 

I've been trying to decide how to go about mounting my fuse/relay blocks. I finally decided my best bet was to hang them from a bracket.

 

I ended up with this. It's way more burly than necessary, but that is how it ended up when I decided what would look best.

 

 

 

 

 

I'm hoping I can finish it up and get it looking decent today, but I may not have the time.

[Lockleaf]

Welded up and lanished back. Nuts welded to the back for threads.

 

 

 

 

And installed

 

[Lockleaf]

Finished up the last of the work to fully install the radiator. last step will be a few tack welds to mount the lower radiator mounting studs to the car.

 

Prepping the bottom of the radiator to mount took a few simple steps.

 

Remove this thing

 

 

Find center, drill hole. Hole got twice as big after pic was taken.

 

 

Jam in pcv grommet, the best isolator I could come up with.

 

 

That's all for the radiator itself. Now for the car.

 

Buy large low grade 1" bolt. Cut a couple of 1.5 inch lengths out of it.

 

 

Lathe a step into pieces

 

 

 

Then test fit.

 

 

 

Now to just tack them in where the radiator will sit down on them.

[Lockleaf]

I also tried using a big belt sander to resurface my exhaust manifold. The by hand thing just wasn't working.

 

 

 

I did the manifold I had abandoned first, to see if it would even work. I think it worked well enough, so I did the other one.

 

I may finish it with an 80 grit or something real quick, but it's flat and relatively true now.

[Draker]

Mini-lathe!! Sweet!

[Lockleaf]

I built the wiring harness for the fans. Didn't get any pics taken though. It's temp installed in the car right now.

 

I also started working on the fan relay/fuse box/diode wiring. Lots more to do.

 

 

The white panel clips in to the bottom of the fuse block, so the diodes are hidden under there.

[LTJ]

Great work on that fuse block holder and nice solution to mount the radiator too!

Always impressed by this thread.

[Leche]

Wow what an awesome thread, you really have a knack to overcome all the obstacles that come your way in this build. It also helps that you have good fabrication skills, good job!

[Lockleaf]

Thanks guys. I appreciate the support, especially from guys with great builds of their own.

[Lockleaf]

Finished fan block.

 

 

I built in a connector because with it hard wired in, the harness cannot come out of the vehicle. I just need to put the other connector on to the harness in the car.

 

Then i will remove my other fuse box and attach a quick connect to it as well. Hopefully at least some of that will occur tomorrow.

[Lockleaf]

I changed the order of operations due to weather complications this week. I haven't done any work to the harness in the car yet. Instead I cut the other fuse box back out of the car and wired it to connectors as well.

 

Finished box 2.

 

 

If you look at the yellow wire, I did some professional capping there, since I'm not using it right now. By professional I mean I discovered that the clicky part of a click pen slid snuggly over the wire and then i used heat shrink to hold it there. Booyah! And thank you Rex's diesel for your pens donation to datsun-ing.

 

This box was originally hard wired by me.

 

 

I had to special order in butt connectors in larger gauges to finish this. Bought a few extra just in case. I forgot to slide on the shrink wrap before connecting one of the wires. Whoops. Tape it is for that guy.

 

Here's the two finished boxes.

 

 

And in case anyone was interested, here's the fully disassembled connector I'm using on the fan block, after I stripped all the old wires out and before I attached these terminals to my new wiring. I cut this connector, originally with a couple inches of wiring on each side, out of some car in the junkyard. With all the wiring I've been doing lately, I have cut many random connectors from cars, long as both sides are there, hooked together. The connectors on the other box are taken the same collection of random connectors.

 

[Lockleaf]

Did some more wiring. Like a smart guy, I built the fan harness and didn't make a diagram. I spent a while just figuring all that out, so I could start wiring the harness side. Got my professional grade pin out diagram done. :)

 

 

Yes, that's a brown paper lunch bag.

 

I got a little actual wiring done, but then decided to add the fan circuit to my wiring diagram.

 

 

I covered up some diesel wiring with paper and added the new circuits. I still need to add wire colors.

[Lockleaf]

Christmas was good to me. My wife is awesome and is happy to buy me car parts. I got a new parking brake switch which was cool. But the great part was this -

 

 

2 inch mandrel bent exhaust components to fab my wagons exhaust. It also came with 10 feet of straight tubing. I also have the flex pipe and a muffler. I just need to purchase flanges to assemble it in pieces.

 

The pipe is all aluminized to prevent rusting. I will be welding it with stainless steel mig wire, so my welds also won't rust.

 

For a muffler, I bought a junkyard muffler out of a 99 G20. They are a "variable capacity" muffler. At low to medium exhaust flow, exhaust flows through the fully chambered muffler. At high exhaust flow (WOT OR high throttle), a valve opens in the muffler and it passes basically straight through, acting like a performance muffler. Low rpm noise cancelling with high rpm performance benefits. I figure the much higher power sr20 from the g20 will push more air than my old z22, but hopefully the variable valve will be in approx the pressure to be useful.

 

Buying 3 (or maybe 4) of these to clamp it all together.

 

 

And I may or may not install a resonator as well.

[Lockleaf]

I finally finished up my fuse boxes! I got them buttoned up today.

 

 

My kitchen floor looked like this for the last 2 days. My wife is pretty freaking cool. She was just fine with it.

 

 

And a random shot of the car today.

 

[Draker]

Looks a bit cold over your way. Hope you've got a nice warm place to work.

[Lockleaf]

Yup. The kitchen :) that's why the harness is out of the car for this work. It was about 15 degrees F outside at the time I was working on that harness today. Once it's back up in the 30s I will get the harness back in the car.

[S30Jay]

Lockleaf.... I'm a big fan of this build.

 

It's actually a shame that no one but you will "see" just how much you've done with this thing. To most people they will never know.

 

You've shown me new creative ways to use stock parts from damn near anything to make repairs or modifications. I actually want to pick up another project car just to use this newfound knowledge!

[Lockleaf]

Thanks Jay. It's a bit silly how much I appreciate you saying that, man.

 

I might have mentioned this before, but my sister was looking at the 510 a few months ago and I told her I had over 100 hours of work in it already. She just smirked at me and said "Really? It looks like you just pulled it out of a junkyard." I laughed and said "I know, but it's worth it."

 

I reuse so many pieces because I don't make much money. I have no other outlet for stress, so I actually HAVE to spend some personal time in the garage. During my first semester of law school, I stopped spending ANY money or time in the garage. I got so wound up and bent out of shape from having no way to reduce stress it was damaging my marriage :). Sounds silly, but it's true, garage time saved my marriage. I graduated now and will be taking the BAR in February, but I'm not working in the legal field right now, so there's plenty of stress to go around.

 

This car deserves to be renamed from Half Pint to Precious Sanity. :)

[Lockleaf]

On the car note, this exhaust is EASILY the most money I've spent on any one part of the car. I will invest between $250 and $300 in parts for this all told. That's really expensive for this build, but most of that is Christmas gifts, so it's easier for me to swallow.

 

And honestly, I've wanted to actually build a full exhaust for some time now, and you can't buy aftermarket 510 wagon exhaust anyway.

 

Putting some Christmas cash in the bank tomorrow so I can order my exhaust flange kits.