zKars

Even in your darkest moments with your hands deep in the cadaver, you can find unexpected beauty and life.

That's easy. FIELD TRIP! I got to go to farmers field with a Z buddy and drag its rusty a$$ onto a trailer in the snowy Canada North winter, freezy many unmentionable parts, then have lunch at A&W. A treat I rarely get these days.... sigh.... That and the BOAT LOAD of valuable series 1 parts that it contains for the other S1 car I recently aquired. 'Tis only the body that's worthless... And even then there are several little tid bits that must be kept, like rear tail light trim lower clips, and a pedal box for Auto-manual conversions etc etc etc.... Even a neighbor that makes his living by hauling scrap metal benefits. Circle of life baby, circle of life...

more carnage

Might not need a Saws-all for this one. Just pretend its a juicy crab leg...

I saddens me to announce the passing of HLS30 (UA) 02744. It joined its other family members that met a similar fate at the rust recycling pile in the sky (actually Lenny's metal recycling center...) this morning at 10:15am I have to admit I was the one that administered the fatal blow, when I foolishly sat in the driver's seat to check the mileage. The extent of the damage can be seen from the accident scene pictures below. I failed to support myself with my feet on the floor (shop floor, not car) while seated. These pctures are the only ones I can bear to show. We should have seen it coming. When trailer towing it home, the straps at each end kept coming loose no matter how much we tightened them at each stop. Maybe the drivers door coming loose and flapping in the wind half way home wasn't just us forgetting to latch it tight... Fortunately I found a signed donor card in the glove box (right behind the mouse nest). It's remaining useful bits will be used to save the life of as many other UA's as possible with 3798 being first in line. It's especially sad as it is (I mean was) full numbers matching. A DNR was not needed. There no way any sane person could bring this one back to life. Donations to the "save a datsun" charity of your choice are requested in lieu of flowers.

Congrats on your purchase of rusty bacon. Must be the moon's position with Uranus rising or something, early cars are popping up all ova da' place! First I find 3798, then you dig up 7848. Then the suspiciously light and flexible remains of 2744 followed me home yesterday. It's strickly a parts car (don't even THINK about this body...) but it may have some things you're missing that I don't need for 3798. Keep in touch.

These are not shims. If they were in your old axles between the spacer and cap, it was done wrong and you now know the reason your bearings failed. They are noice reduction devices. Really. They stopped being used on the 280's. As long as you have the right spacer that came from the axles, you are good to go. "Most" spacers are stamped "B". The FSM shows you the assembly and length specs of each of the spacers (A, B and C).

I've been asked by a parts customer for a hood and driver's door shell for his 72. Anybody in Ontario or east that has something? 9/10 condition required, little to no rust. Small ish dents and crap/no paint are ok. Let me know if you have any leads. Looking in Canuck land first, but if you are in the NE USA, let us know as well. Thanks!

So this chapter is now closed for the winter. I finished the mechanical/electrical stuff to make it operational and mostly safe, then put it in storage until next spring. We'll see how I feel about its fate then. Restore, flip, pass on to friends (^). Fun to find all the Canadian UN specific stuff (or lack of stuff) on this one. Hope to find others. I have another 510 project to work on this winter and couple of friends with strip/paint/re-assemble projects and the usual quicky stuff that happens, and that's enough. Keep tuned spring 2018.

3798 has no "flow guide valve" or evap line.

That will be fine. Unless you get very high temperatures in Seattle this weekend, there is no fuel pressure issues you need to worry about. My favorite stupid boo boo is to leave the lines un capped, then move the car where the angle changes and later have fuel dribble out from gravity feed without noticing it for a while. Pressure buildup is not an issue.

Well with the gaskets one spacer has on both sides, the total width is very close to 0.25 inches. A completely bare and new one I have is 0.222 thick. If you want one, PM me or email to z240@shaw.ca

On an auction, online or otherwise, the values vary day to day and buyer to buyer based on non-predictable variables. Individual sales should not be used as bench marks, only as data points on the overall recent history. Statisticians love this stuff, car sellers hate it... I would never put a car on BAT (or Barrett Jackson etc) without a reserve.

I always specify the 24F code battery, It has the positive post on the "inside" of the engine bay to keep it away from the fender. Yes you may have to adjust the length of your battery cables. Here's my 1/4 thick aluminum, 1.5 wide with 3/4 notch to fit the battery cap thingy battery hold down. No polish or nothing, just strong. Could make it pretty if I felt like it. Right now 3798 doesn't deserve anything pretty.... If you look close at the battery you can see the 24F-700 designation. Hmmm, not so easy to make that 90 bend in 1/4 aluminum without a press break. Just beating on it in a vice is likely going to crack it.

You need it for proper spacing of the pump arm. It also serves as a heat insulator. You could make one, I can tell you the exact thickness. I'd send you one, but I'm down to almost none at the moment. Let me look. Gott help a fellow Canuck....

SEM makes some wonderful vinyl dyes that let you change your plastic and vinyl color to the original stock color if you feel that's important. Originality only really matters when everything is truely original, not restored in any way.

It's true. They are different. Driver weight compensation. Whether you notice a difference on 45+ year old springs, well, your experience my differ from others.

Could be worse. 2+2, beige, smoker PO, sticky rugs, national park stickers on the rear glass, Anybody else got something better?

You just noticed my addiction now? You looking for another project? Talk to me in the spring.

For completeness, here is the back of the two types of fuse boxes. First the early long tail. Power comes in on two identical white wires and powers all five fuses on the right side of the box, including the top two for the head lights. The later short tail box has the top two right side head light fuses separated from the rest. The lower three are powered by a single white wire with a ring terminal and screw fixation system. I wonder if my wire crimp corrosion and those aweful 0.312 spade connectors in several places that corrode and melt the coverings.

Staying on the topic of electrical issue handling, yesterday was combo switch cleanup and modification day. Now this car is a 5/70, and as I mentioned the dash from a 71, but fortunately the dash wiring harness is still the early type. Now what does that mean? Well two things identify it as such. One, the fuse block is the LONG pigtail style, and two, the head light wiring is what I call "Ground Switched" rather than the later "12V switched" variety. In the early cars, the head light switch connects the dimmer switch common terminal to GROUND to turn the headlights on. When in the OFF postion that terminal is simply left to "float" (not connected to anything). The headlights themselves have their common terminal directly wired to the fuse box (top right two fuses) and has power at all times. The dimmer switch just decides if hi or low beam bulb terminals are grounded. In the later cars (can anyone nail down a build date or VIN where this started?) the headlight switch connects the battery (white red wire at the switch) to the fuse box two fuses via the red wire at the switch to turn the lights on. The center terminal of the dimmer switch is hard wired to ground all the time. The position of the dimmer switch determines if hi or lo beam is on. Electrically it is better to turn power off in most of the circuit except when needed. Also its an easy system to design and document. Now in my case, while the dash wiring harness is "early", the combo switch that is in the car is the later version. Who knows where that came from. So the head light switch has the usual White and Red 12 gauge wires dangling there. And worse yet there are no 12gauge white/red and red wires coming to the combo switch in the dash harness from the battery and fuse box. So what to do? Get an early combo or modify what I have? Well I only have one early combo half with the ground switch wiring, so I don't want to use that up, so I just modified the wires on the late combo I have to appear to be the early type. All you do is un-solder the. white/red and red and solder on black wire and terminals so that you replicate the early arrangement. The dimmer switch common (center) also gets a red wire rather than the usual black. All other components are identical. Here is the starting point combo head light switch wiring. Fat white/red and red wires. Red wire turns on the fuse box top right two fuse positions. White/red comes direct from the battery. Here is what a real "early" switch looks like. Two blacks on the center terminal, and a red pig tail with a FM bullet. The fatter black goes to a large 0.313 spade FM that connects to the fat black chassis ground in the dash harness in the wiring at the combo. The smaller 18 gauge sneeks under the bottom and provides a ground for the wiper switch. Here is the finished mod with the Fat and skinny black on the center HL Switch (skinny black sneaking underneath to the wiper). The and the new red pigtail connected to a new matching red pigtail from the center of the dimmer switch (instead of the usual black). Now the switch when turned on connects the center dimmer terminal to ground.

The common fix is to trim some of the front of the hole, and possibly to obtain the right shifter. In fact if you move the vinyl and sound deadening at the front there you may see an outline in the sheet metal that tells you exactly where to cut to. If you need the oval-ish ring (4 screw holes ) that is used to hold down the stock manual shifter boot, let me know.

I love these thread threads... More to add to the ever growing hardware database. The other engine studs that come to mind are: 2 M8's on the fuel pump mount 3 M8's on the "other" end of the exhaust manifold at the downpipe. 1 M10 on the alternator mount 8 M8's on the SU manifold 4 M6 on the fan clutch to water pump flange. 2 M8's on the clutch master, though those are special splined ones BTW, I feel remiss that I did not check my "bolts verses studs" on the upper 6 intake issue. I have 6 bolts on 3798

Without concern for originality, the "right" thing to do is install a new fuse block with modern ATC fuses ALA what MSA sells, or make a new one. Maybe a couple of more circuits so adding a couple of basic things isn't an effort in futility. I'm trying to get this thing reliable and mobile, restoration comes later. Maybe really later.

If any of you haven't experienced this electrical issue with Datsun's, let me show you something. I need to clean and change some of the wires in the long-tail fuse box in this beast. The two 12 gauge white high current input wires needed new terminals on their ends, and appeared quite corroded where they were crimped onto the bus bar. So I decided to just change the wire. When I opened up the crimps on the bar, the situation is much worse than it appears on the surface.