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"Zeke"- '72 510 2Dr


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No, it turns out that the ding was actually a stamping from the previous driveline shop and not in the range of where the seal rides or where the shaft rides in the bushing in the trans.  The tech said it did look like it was getting hot, judging by the discoloration along the polished yoke where the seal rides.  He postulated that vibration from the wonky u-joint (trans end) may have been causing gear oil to get by the seal. I decided to leave the new trans seal ( has < 20 miles on it) in place, and try it out with the new u-joints.  If it still leaks, I might consider replacing the seal, or replacing the yoke.

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With the engine oil leak fixed, I took Zeke back out into the wild today for a little tour around Palos Verdes. Ran great!  There's now 57 miles on the odometer since the new engine went in. So far, so good.  I did notice a few drops of gear oil on the garage floor after the drive, but it was under the rear of the diff, not the front where the aforementioned drive pinion seal would drip. What the?  Looks like it is leaking from the top and dribbling down the diff cover, probably overflow from the breather. I'm going to have to check the fluid level and make sure it's not overfilled. This afternoon I got distracted fixing the sink in my bathroom, so haven't yet put the car back up in the air for a proper inspection. Seems like all I've been doing is fixing leaks lately...  Enough already!   

 

Here's a couple of glamour shots of Zeke out in the wild:

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Got a chance to get the car up in the air and get underneath for a closer inspection. Overflow from the diff breather is defintiely the source of the drops on the garage floor, but the diff is not overfilled. No gear oil dribbles from the filler hole with the fill plug removed and car level. Not sure why gear oil is getting pushed out the breather. Will monitor the situation.  At the front of the diff the drive pinion seal is definitely leaking (imminent oil drops forming underneath), so I ordered a new seal from Courtesy Nissan. I have a spare stock diff and endeavored to pull the drive flange to assess ease of seal replacement. Pretty easy using a breaker bar to remove the 27mm nut and a puller to remove the drive flange and gain access to the seal, so I don't think I'll need to remove the diff from the car to replace the seal. Here's the new seal from Nissan. It comes pre-lubed with grease which is a bonus.

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Also received the new tranny output shaft seal from Courtesy, but with the new driveshaft u-joints, that leak seems to be under control now. I'm cautiously optimistic that the diff oil overflow situation will stabilize and replacement of the drive pinion seal will fix the last of Zeke's oil leaks...

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  • 2 weeks later...

Turns out I was able to replace the leaky diff pinion drive seal without removing the diff from the car. Once I removed the driveshaft (and drained the gear oil) I hit the 27mm nut with my cordless impact wrench. No go.  So then I wrapped multiple loops of bailing wire through one of the bolt holes on the driveshaft  flange and around the rear sway bar to resist the torque of the wrench, then tried using my 1/2" drive ratcheting torque wrench. That broke it loose, though hitting it with the impact wrench first probably helped a lot (torque spec is like 130-140 ft-lbs on that nut!).

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I was then able to remove the drive flange and gain access to the offending seal, which is obviously aftermarket (made in Spain):

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After noting that the seal is installed flush with the end of the diff bore, it was a piece of cake to pry out the seal using this seal puller:

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Lacking a proper drift to drive in the new seal, it was off to the hardware store to hopefully find a suitable piece of PVC pipe of the right diameter. I found this coupler that fit and  seemed like it would serve the purpose. 

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I applied a thin coat of ultra black sealer to the OD of the new seal (the ID came pre-lubed from Nissan) and endeavored to drive in the new seal using my improvised drift and a dead blow hammer. This would have worked perfectly had I known to beware that it was possible to drive the seal well below flush. After wailing away with the hammer that is exactly what happened, and it was crooked to boot. Damn it! I couldn't figure a way to expediently extract the new seal without damaging it, so I wrote it off and pried it out, then ordered a new one from my local Nissan dealer. In the meantime I realized that I could have used the drive shaft flange and retaining nut to push the seal squarely into place, which is what I ended up doing. I still had to drive it in the last 1/8" or so using my improvised drift and hammer, but with patience I got it in square and flush, and put everything back together.

 

Refilling the diff took far more fluid than I had drained out. WTH? The car "looked" pretty darn level on the jack stands, but a bubble level on the door sill indicated that it was actually sloping downward from back to front. Guess I should have checked the car level more closely when I was trying to figure out why oil was being pushed out the breather!  With the diff finally filled to the proper oil level, I took the car for another 20 mi tour of Palos Verdes, and I'm stoked to report that the diff is now leak free and no more overflow from the breather!  Tranny output shaft seal and engine rear main seal also remain leak free, so I think I'm finally over the hump with the oil leaks! Me, my driveway, and the environment will all be happy! 

 

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I've been having trouble getting the new hood cowl seal to stick using 3M weatherstrip adhesive.  My experience is that the 3M adhesive is usually pretty damn effective with door and trunk weatherstripping, so not sure why the adhesive is not sticking to this seal. My theory is that there must be excessive residual mold release (silicone?) on the seal (neoprene?), even though I had washed it in soapy hot water before installation. This time I cleaned the bonding surface of the seal with rubbing alcohol (70% Isopropyl Alcohol), hoping that it would remove the release agent. I also clamped the seal to the gutter rail this time. I know that with the 3M adhesive you are supposed to apply it to both surfaces (metal and seal) and let it get tacky before mating, but I haven't wanted to risk accidentally gluing the seal to itself which would probably happen if you pre-applied the adhesive in the slot which fits over the metal gutter ridge, so I have only been applying adhesive to both sides of the gutter ridge. I had to raid my kitchen for chip clips, augmented with clothespins to clamp the seal in place while curing. We shall see how well it sticks tomorrow.

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In other news, today I removed the seats in preparation for carpet installation. But after driving around without carpets on test drives, I realized that more sound insulation would be good, so I changed my mind and decided to apply some Dynamat to the tranny tunnel before the carpet goes in. 

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Next up is to fit the carpet kit...

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Maybe my problem is that I'm using the 3M Black Super Weatherstrip Adhesive rather than just the regular 3M Black Weatherstrip Adhesive. Super means better, right?  Right. Looks like the difference is that the regular is specifically formulated for EPDM "rubber" which is the common material for automotive door, trunk, etc. seals.  I have no idea if my hood seal is EPDM. It feels different than door rubber. At any rate, I pulled off the clips this afternoon and it seems to be sticking pretty well. The true test will be to close the hood, go for a drive to get everything good and warm, then see if it pulls off when I open the hood. 

 

In other news, I've been noticing an occasional minor stumble or sputter of the carbs when initially pulling away from a stop. Recall that I recently bumped up the main jets one size to account for the ethanol that is in now in the gas versus when the carbs were originally tuned in the pre-ethanol days.  Since it's now stumbling in the transition from idle/pilot to main circuit, I'm thinking I need to also bump up the pilot jets a size, and probably richen the idle mixture a little, too. So I ordered a set of 57.5 pilot jets to replace the 55 that were in there.  I also ordered two Z70-1044 Mikuni rebuild kits with diaphragms for when the time comes to go down that path. I ordered them from Upgrade Motoring on Wed and they were in my mailbox Fri. Nice!  I've installed the new pilot jets, and backed out the mixture screws about 1/8 turn, so we shall see how that works.  Too bad I lost my Gunsen Colourtune set. That worked pretty good for setting and verifying idle mixture.  

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Alright then, time to get busy finishing up Zeke's interior.  Before I could install the Newark carpet kit, I needed to do something about the bare interior vertical panels that run below the door sills. This area was trimmed with vinyl on my other '72, so I decided to go that route and managed to find some marine grade black vinyl fabric at JOANN's in Torrance. Fitting the new brushed stainless door sill thresholds from Z Car Depot was a minor pain since I had to file just about every hole in them to fit the existing threshold screw holes in Zeke's sills. They do looks great though!

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Before the sill plates could go on, the carpet piece for the rear seat bulkhead had to be installed since it's captured under the stock rear aluminum thresholds at each end. 

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With the rear seat back in, next up was the tunnel carpet which had to be carefully cut out for the shifter boot.  

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So far, so good.  For the front carpets, I was concerned about them sliding around on the Dynamat, and I didn't really want to glue them down, so I found this rubber mesh stuff at JOANN's

(kind of like tool box liner) to go between the floor and the carpet.

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The front floor carpet pieces fit well, as did the rear floor carpet. Re-installed the seat belts and seats, and voila!

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Before I declared final victory on the interior, I did something I wish I had done back when Zeke was a shell- check for water leaks!  You can guess where this is going. After removing the front carpets (glad I didn't glue them down!), I doused the windshield with water, and of course a puddle formed in the driver's side footwell.  Damn! The passenger side was dry, so that's good. I should start calling this car "Leaky" Zeke!

 

I could find no drips or obvious signs of wetness under the dash or on the firewall, so this was a sneaky leak. The worst kind! Turns out the water was making its way under the factory mastic sound deadening and emerging under the gas pedal.  This is probably why the driver's floor rusted out in Zeke and needed to be repaired when Randy got the car. 

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I removed the tunnel carpet and the top of the tranny tunnel was dry all the way back to the firewall and up the firewall, at least to the level of the heater inlet and outlet pipes. The mastic extends further up the firewall, under the firewall padding behind the heater. Before even contemplating removing the heater and firewall padding (what a PITA that job is!) I decided to see if I could find the cabin entry point on the exterior, starting at the cowl and working upwards. I poured water into the cowl and whaddya know? Much of it ended up leaking onto the driver's floor from the spot noted above.  Further strategic dousing pointed to the entry point somewhere around the center cowl drain, the one that drains into the tranny tunnel and always gets clogged with debris.

 

I also found water leaking into the engine compartment from a seam a the top of the firewall where it meets the cowl, right under where the wiper motor cable and washer tube runs across the top of the firewall. I unbent a paper clip and pushed it through the gap in the seem and sure enough, it went right through to the corner of the cowl drain!  You can see in the next two pics where I pushed the paperclip through from the engine side and where it comes through at the cowl drain.  Since there's a sandwich of panels there, I'm thinking this is probably also where water is finding it's way to the cabin side of the firewall and ultimately to my puddle on the floor. 

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I decided that before tearing apart the dash and removing the heater, it might be worth running a bead of seam sealer along the forward edge of the cowl floor and along the forward edge of the drain slot. I had to remove the wiper mechanism to get my hands in there. Given the tight space it's pretty awkward to run a finger full of sealer along the seam, so it got kind of messy. It's not the smoothest application of sealer I've ever done, but hopefully I've plugged any leaks. 

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I'm going to let the sealer dry overnight, and with any luck, no more water leak. We shall see...

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Found this interior firewall pic from a build thread on the Realm ("Rebuilding Tracey's Old 510"), and cropped it to emphasize the cowl drain "funnel" and where I think my water leak is coming from at the left corner of the cowl drain (black arrow):

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In unrelated news, while crawling around under the dash and getting up close and personal with the pedals, I noticed that my brake pedal pad is toast. It was a cheap repro from the parts stash that came with the car when I bought it. It didn't last 100 miles. Clutch pedal has a good used OE pad and is still in good shape...

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Well, the good news is I fixed the water leak into the engine compartment. The bad news is it still leaks like a sieve onto the driver's side floor.  Looks like I'll be pulling the heater to see what's going on back there. I've got an appointment with the alignment shop early next week, so I'll probably wait until after that to tear into the dash. I can hardly wait...  

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Took Zeke in for a 4-wheel alignment this afternoon at West End Alignment in Gardena. Darrin and his son Chris are real pros and run THE go-to custom alignment shop here in the LA South Bay. Here's Zeke on the rack:

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Chris spent most of the time working on the rear suspension. Going in, the rear had a ton of toe-out and about -1.5 deg of camber. My goal specs were 1/8" total toe-in and -0.5 deg camber, which has worked well for me in the past for dual purpose street/track use. Chris was able to nail the toe with the shims supplied with the DP Racing mod'd crossmember. Since the rear fender lips have not been aggressively rolled, he was only marginally comfortable going to -0.7 deg camber as the tops of the tires were threatening to rub. He bounced the car and we could not detect any interference, but to be safe we decided to add a little more negative camber, so the final setting was -1.0 deg. 

 

In the front, my specs were -1.0 deg camber, zero toe-in, and +3 degrees caster. Going in I had the camber plates pretty much maxed out (no mods to strut tower hole) and camber was in the -1.5 deg range, so my settings for camber and toe-in were easily achieved. However, on the caster, we settled on +2.5 degrees per side as the RF tire was close to rubbing the forward edge of the fender arch with the wheel turned.  He also advised me that due to the typical crown in our roads, they like to add some caster "lead" on the right side to counteract the tendency of the car to pull to the right because the crown causes the road (in cross section) to slope downwards from centerline to shoulder. I opted to keep caster symmetric so we left it at +2.5 deg per side rather than dial back the caster on the LF. 

 

Once all the adjustments were made, I was instructed to take a test drive, which convinced me that everything was satisfactory. All paid up, I set off at ~5:30 PM to negotiate the congested city streets for the ride home. This was the first time that I had Zeke out amongst weekday rush hour traffic so I was sweating with anxiety the whole way. The fact that the air temp was over 80F didn't help.  Fortunately Zeke performed without a stumble and I made it home without causing a Sig Alert.  Now, about that water leak...

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Well, I finally bit the bullet, tore the dash apart and removed the heater in search of that water leak. With the heater removed, I carefully inspected the seams in the firewall for leaks after dumping water into the cowl. The firewall was completely dry!  WTF?  I peeled some of the tar off the cowl "funnel" at the bottom, thinking maybe there was a rusty hole under there, but it was dry, too.

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SInce water was still coming in under the gas pedal, I peeled back some of the Dynamat and tar where the water was emerging.  That is when I realized that the water must be coming through the panel seam that goes up and over the tranny tunnel. I poked with a wire and sure enough, it went right through to the tunnel. Here you can see where I pushed the wire through from the footwell side in the first pic to the tunnel side in the second pic.

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Turns out water from the cowl center drain has been running down the underside of the tunnel, finding the seam, and eventually leaking into the footwell. Too bad I wasn't smart enough to figure this out before ripping the dash apart!  Oh well, glad I finally located the leak. I wire brushed and cleaned the area, then applied seam sealer to the length of the seam that I could reach, let that dry and lo and behold, no more leak!

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Taking the heater out wasn't a total waste of time though as I was now able to easily access and remove the non-functioning e-brake warning lamp switch. I gave it a good cleaning with a wire brush and now it works again!  Here's what it looked like after I removed it.

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Idiot lights all work now!

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Now that everything is put back together, I'm pretty stoked that Leaky Zeke is now 100% leak free!

   

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  • 4 weeks later...

Getting ready to drive Zeke to San Diego tomorrow for the Coffee and Datsuns San Diego meetup. Aside from the opportunity to hang out with fellow Datsun-heads for a few hours, it will also be an opportunity to rack up a few hundred more shakedown miles on Zeke.  This will be Zeke's first real road trip, and I'm looking forward to spending some quality time behind the wheel. Gotta admit there's also a certain level of trepidation, but no real pressure.  I can always turn back if sh#t happens, and there's always AAA.  Anyway, I've got Zeke loaded with a tool roll, quart of oil, gallon of water, jumper cables, spare Pertronix ignition, spare spark plugs, multimeter, wiring kit, spare fuses and most important of all- duct tape!  What could possibly go wrong?

 

Something I've been wanting to do is change out the NGK BPR6ES-II resistor spark plugs for BP6ES-II non-resistor plugs. I had initially installed the BPR6 plugs out of habit since that is what I always ran in my L-series motors back when my 510 was more of a daily driver with a nice audio system. The resistor plugs suppress ignition noise making for cleaner sound from the speakers, but they also drop some voltage in the resistor so the spark is not quite as hot.  Without a car audio system, Zeke can do without resistor plugs and benefit from a slightly hotter spark.  I found this 10-pack of new Nissan BP6ES-II NGKs on eBay:

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The nice thing about the factory Nissan NGK plugs is that they have solid lugs instead of the screw-on lugs that you get with the auto parts store version.

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I pulled the BPR6 plugs, which looked pretty good. I would like to see a little more tan coloration on the porcelain, but who knows what shade is optimum with today's ethanol blended CA gas?

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Since I had a set of 10 plugs to select from, I tried to index them i.e. choose and install each plug such that the spark gap faces the piston rather than the head. Theoretically this results in more optimum ignition, or so I've heard. I started by gapping each plug to a tight-ish 0.034" and marking each plug with a red line aligned with the ground electrode.  This way, the red line should ideally be facing straight up when the plug is installed, indicating that the gap is facing the piston.

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 I eventually found a set of four that were close to optimum. Racers use shims to index their plugs to the ideal position for each cylinder, but this is as close as I could get by just juggling plugs. You can see that all of the marks are well within +/- 2 hrs of 12 o'clock, thus the gaps are pointing towards the piston at 6 o'clock +/- 2 hrs.   

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Really looking forward to the drive tomorrow!

Edited by Tedman
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