A 510 goon named Cactus Peel

[KELMO]

I'm planning some time in the shop tomorrow. Yesterday was just a bit too cold.

I have the mat and just need to lay it out to see what the fitment is.

[KELMO]

At the top of the back seat.

Back by the tailgate.

Crap, I should've rotated that.

[Duncan]

I had the same questions when I did my wagon. (way back when)  I believe the back of the rear seat was painted a grey-ish color, and they had a mat attached to it.

 

I actually put a decent black paint job on mine, and I had a black carpet mat made to attach to it.  It looked nice as I had black carpet in the rest of the wags, as well..

 

 

[datzenmike]

My 710 is so. Very thin carpet so the seat back can be let down and up. I also blackened the carpet with fabric spray paint.

[Anonymous Waffle]

@KELMO Thank you for taking the time to take those pictures! It looks to me like the mat is attached to both the back of the goon, and to the top-back of the rear seat. Definitely makes sense, seeing it helps! Much appreciated.

[Anonymous Waffle]

Back again with more stuff. 

 

I bought this carpet kit at 510keeper's spring swap meet. Nothing fancy, and it fit pretty decently. This was my first time installing a carpet that's not 100% pre cut or formed, so it took some trial and error, especially with my battery being on the passenger floor. I didn't do the best job cutting it up, but for a pretty cheap swapmeet carpet kit, it does the job. I turned it into a 3 piece carpet in order to lay it down as tightly as I could, (more so user error than carpet error). 

 

 

 

 

I really want a carpet kit that has the rubber mats on the driver floor. With my first 510, I wore through the carpet on the gas pedal within a year or so. So this carpet is temporary until I buy a really nice one. I've heard that troy ermish sells a carpet kit, anyone got any experience? 

 

I also only installed the front half. The rear half didn't want to fit because of pre-existing brackets that are hanging off the honda seats. So I'll fix that another time, probably when I find better seats. I really want e30 sport seats 🤤

 

Weather here in Sacramento has been pretty cold (For california) but its been nice and sunny. I think I need to tune the weber more for this cold weather. It definitely needs some help when I drive it at night when its below 50 lol. 

 

 

 

[Anonymous Waffle]

I also upgraded my dying starter. I bought a AC delco remanufactured gear reduction starter for a 1984 maxima. Seems to be a nice unit, hopefully it doesn't crap out soon being a remanufactured. I figured that AC Delco is a pretty good brand. I would have loved to find a Bosch but I couldn't find one that was affordable lol. 

 

 

 

I'll have to find a way to change the routing of that battery cable, I just don't like it hanging in free space like this lol.

 

I also tore apart my gauge cluster to fix a few problems.

Problem #1 : The odometer didn't work, but the speedo does.

Problem #2 : My dash lights don't work.

 

This is again, a swapmeet part, so I cannot confirm if its a 68 or 69. I got some pointers that's telling me it is a 69 cluster. I've got two spares that are basically rusty piles of trash, but after taking this and a spare apart, I noticed some major differences between the two. 

 

 

 

This clip was just rattling loose inside the cluster. Nice. 

 

 

I noticed that even if you spin the speedo unit and the centrifugal(?) style clutch engages, the odometer didn't turn at all. One of the gears was slipping entirely. After a further tear down I found this.

 

 

It looks like the main gear on the odometer unit cracked, and became oblong. I noticed it was also really tight in its slot, and may have seized in the past, and also caused one of the spiral gears in the unit to wear down its teeth. So, I started taking apart one of my spare clusters, which came with the wagon. 

 

 

It looks like it came out of the bottom of the ocean. 

 

Here, I noticed a bunch of differences. 

 

VS

 

Every small part is different. Brass gears, different mounts, lenghts. The chassis of the cluster is designed differently, and also crudely. The number font is different, and I noticed the brake light is a BRAKE/PARK, vs just a BRAKE light. Well no luck. I tried cleaning up the orginal unit, reset it to 0 (because my title is marked at 0) and it still doesn't work. Its a bummer.

 

 

I fixed a path on the lighting circuit, and installed LED lights in. Looks great! But as I learned from a friend, the diodes can be installed the wrong way, and will disrupt flow through the circuit, so my turn singal lights stopped working. Oops, I leanred a little something about light emitting diodes, so I'll have to fix that later. 

 

I also wired up my lights so I power the lo beam of all 4 lights at the same time. I don't have the budget to upgrade to super nice (not ugly) looking LED headlights, but wanted good lighting on the road, so I did this. I like it. 

 

 

 

[Anonymous Waffle]

Here's a little video of me doing a nice little pull at night. Feels pretty damn good. 

 

 

 

But if you have a keen ear, you can hear the biggest problem I've got. 

 

My rear end is howling 🙃 Now I cannot confirm 100% if its the rear end, or 4/5th gear, but I'm pretty confident that its the rear end. Around 45 to 65, it sounds like the rear end is howling pretty loud on acceleration/load. 

 

Now I gotta research what goes bad on these 23 spline h190s. Is howling typically a bearing noise, or gear noise? It basically sounds like straight cut gears. I may need to put it up in jacks and run it to see if I can pin-point the noise. 

[datzenmike]

I wasn't at all happy with the ground cable going to the bolt on the L head behind the mechanical fuel pump. A trip to the local yard found me a set of side mount battery cables from a Chevy Lumina van. Battery on front left and starter on the right of the transverse engine. No more top battery posts. I didn't want to cut the cables so I ran them full length and they matched up to the starter lug and the mounting bolt for the ground. Oh, and they are monster thick compared to the original cables.

 

 Yes, that's a gear reduction starter from a Canadian '84 maxima wagon. Very tight fit because I have the Nissan oil pressure sender for the gauge.

 

[Anonymous Waffle]

Gotta love junkyard ingenuity! 

[iceman510]

Did you do anything to fix that cracked gear?  If you didn't, I would try gluing it together and maybe epoxy the center as you mentioned it looked ovaled.

 

I'm guessing you tried something, but you didn't mention specifically.

[Anonymous Waffle]

18 hours ago, iceman510 said:

Did you do anything to fix that cracked gear?  If you didn't, I would try gluing it together and maybe epoxy the center as you mentioned it looked ovaled.

 

I'm guessing you tried something, but you didn't mention specifically.

 

So at first I just wanted to clean it up and free the odometer barrel to see if it just needed a clean. That didn't work, so I took it out again and took a deeper look. I also needed to fix some of the lights again, and it turned out the ground side of the panel just didn't work. 

 

I cleaned all the contacts and freshened them up.

 

 

Then I noticed the ground side of the circuit for the lights are riveted onto the board, and they were all loose. So seeing I cant just re-rivet it, I chose to solder a new wire from the ground lug, to the chassis of the cluster.

 

 

 

This fixed the grounding issue I was having with these lights.

 

Now I went and took a deeper look into the odometer housing. The first gear that runs off the speedometer cable is chewed right up. I'm betting that when the odometer barrel seized/gummed up, it ended up chewing up this gear. It also may have just completely worn out from lack of maintenance. 

 

 

Nice chunk taken out of it. 

 

Since my spare 69 (What I now think is a early 69 cluster) has a different design, I dug around the garage, and I found a broken 620 cluster. Well, lets take it apart and see if there's a part I could use!

 

 

 

Doesn't that look familiar??

 

 

So I started disassembling this unit, since its already broken anyway. To further disassemble this, I needed to undo these crimp things. 

 

 

 

voila!

 

 

Taking a look inside, the gear that is messed up on my odometer, looks very similar to the one inside this unit. I had to very lightly punch this brass plug out from the inside, to remove such gear. (Note, complete disassembly of the odometer housing is not 100% necessary to remove this one gear, but I'll explain later as to why this had to be done just for this 620 housing)

 

 

Take a look at this.. Its the same part! 1974 used simliar parts as my 69. You can see just how worn out the yellow (69) gear is. Now this new gear has some wear, but its got alot more teeth than the old one.

 

 

Now back to these two housings. Note the blue gear on the left hand side, this is off the 74 620. This gear is similar, but not the same as the 69. This blue gear is straight, not at a 45 degree angle like the 69. The broken gear on the 69 unit can be easily removed without disassembling the assembly, but in the 620 unit it needs disassembly before pulling the white gear out of the brass plug hole. 

 

 

Also bonus points, the odometer barrels are the exact same! So I can use this 620 barrel that doesn't have a cracked gear on my cluster! I'm thinking of taking the old worn out parts, and measuring them to see if I can 3d print them new. 

 

 

 

 

 

Edited November 23, 2022 by Anonymous Waffle

[datzenmike]

On 11/21/2022 at 10:13 PM, Anonymous Waffle said:

Gotta love junkyard ingenuity! 

 

Well out company van got a new battery just before it was scrapped so I swapped my old one in. It was side post and bigger. Cables are neat and out of sight. I covered them with split wire harness coverings. The ground is now directly on the starter case rather than to the head, to the block through the head bolts, to transmission through mounting bolts and to the starter through the mounting bolts.

[Anonymous Waffle]

Replaced the lenses on my wagon, and got new seals. Rubber ones at that! Not that foam crap.

 

 

 

 

I got some all red lights from Mexico. I like the look of them, and ill be attaching a roadster style reverse on the bumper. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

[Anonymous Waffle]

I've got almost all the black paint off the car now. It's now down to the small deets, like the door jams, door handles, bits of the roof. Looks great so far.

 

 

 

 

Messy, but this is the first step to clean paint. The passenger side has been alot thicker than the rest of the car. Also I did try graffiti remover, but turns out its just acetone and xylene, nothing special. So its just been a slow job.

 

 

 

 

Slowly cleaning all the black cloudiness

 

 

 

 

 

And how it looks now.

 

 

[Anonymous Waffle]

I ordered and installed a 50f9 idle jet to replace my 50f8. Helped with the low rpm popping I had in cold weather. If it was colder than 60 out, it didn't like to drive. 50f8 helped a bunch, and it's very easy to drive around town now.

 

A 55f8 was too much fuel. 

 

I'm finally almost done with the paint repairs. Its alot of small details that are a pain in the ass, but it makes the difference. Door handles were especially annoying.

 

 

 

 

 

A while ago I bought some paint from automotivetouchup in the hope to paint some of the mismatched panels I've got. I finally got it out to paint the rear bumper guard thing. Now since the color code is faded, I tried researching a bunch and bought 2 cans of Kasumi 554.

 

 

 

I tested the paint on some aluminum scrap to find out that it didn't match lol. It matches my "mismatched" hatch, and after asking around, I believe my 510 is Green 546. Sometimes called grey green. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Well, does anyone want two good cans of Kasumi green? Lol, it does match nicely to the hatch Kasumi green though.

 

 

[bilzbobaggins]

Any updates?  I have been enjoying your progress.

[Anonymous Waffle]

On 12/10/2022 at 11:36 PM, bilzbobaggins said:

Any updates?  I have been enjoying your progress.

 

Haven't had too many updates, I've mainly just been trying to drive it and enjoy it. I'm waiting on some bearings and a spare rear end to rebuild, but its been fun to drive. Took it to my local datsun club meeting, and also drove it through some heavy rain we had in Sacramento. Windshield leaks of course haha. Ill just drop some pics I've been taking. I also really need to figure out how to post pictures that aren't huge on the forum page, sorry y'all.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Edited December 13, 2022 by Anonymous Waffle

[Anonymous Waffle]

Here is some stock exhaust noises 👍

 

 

[Anonymous Waffle]

Took the 510 out on a datsun club lunch run, fun drive, steering is a little sketch though haha.

 

 

 

 

I had a bundle of weatherstripping sitting in my room forever, since it was for my first 510, so I started on the driver side. What a pain in the ass it was. Took forever to remove the old weatherstripping and seals, it's still kind of soft, but crumbly, so it just tore off in tiny chunks and would not scrape off.

 

 

 

Replacing the window felt.

 

 

htps://i.imgur.com/z46D85L.jpg

 

 

 

The thickness of this felt I bought was thinner than the older material, and created gaps in the window. So I took some scrap rubber and glued it underneath it to space it out better for a tighter window seal.

 

 

Got a new door seal installed too. A days worth of work was just for the driver door. And I still need a source for the outer window squeegee.

[Anonymous Waffle]

Thought I'd share this too, I posted this in another thread, but I've been working on 3d printing and CAD and made up the vent brackets that were broken on my 510. 68/69 vent brackets are different than 70+. 

 

Also I plan on putting a tach in the driver vent, so I'll find a tach and re-enginerd that bracket as a tach mount.

 

 

 

 

 

Just some prototypes in PLA, Asa will be the final material, maybe petg. 

[Stoffregen Motorsports]

Hey, that's Garden Valley. Didn't realize you were so close.

 

My friend Brian has a red 240Z he just bought. Did he join you guys?

[Anonymous Waffle]

On 12/24/2022 at 10:36 AM, Stoffregen Motorsports said:

Hey, that's Garden Valley. Didn't realize you were so close.

 

My friend Brian has a red 240Z he just bought. Did he join you guys?

 

I think his name was Brian, deep red 240z with a triple weber l28, t5 trans, mustang style Recaro seats? I think he mentioned it used to be supercharged. I believe the fellas name was Brian, but yup drove up to garden valley for lunch

[Stoffregen Motorsports]

2 hours ago, Anonymous Waffle said:

 

I think his name was Brian, deep red 240z with a triple weber l28, t5 trans, mustang style Recaro seats? I think he mentioned it used to be supercharged. I believe the fellas name was Brian, but yup drove up to garden valley for lunch

Yeah that's him. He's working out a few bugs, but the car has a lot of cool parts.

[Anonymous Waffle]

1 hour ago, Stoffregen Motorsports said:

Yeah that's him. He's working out a few bugs, but the car has a lot of cool parts.

I agree it was a sick lookin Z, is he on ratsun? He should post it up!