Back when Joe found the deal on a pack of Datsun roadsters, Kurt, Justin and I agreed to take one and start a build. Out of the 4 cars Joe purchased I belie e there are 3 current builds. Robbie has 2 of the cars, Joe still has one and then there is our car. We got ours in hand a little over a year ago and it landed at my house for clean up and engine swap. Justin picked up a full K24de engine/tranny takeout and we spent a few weekends getting it into the car. I've got photos somewhere and will get them added at some point.
The car then made it's way to Justin's new house to annoy his wife that it was taking up one of their 3 garage bays. Justin got a bunch of the electrical sorted and organized the spares. He also collected a set of wide wheels with the right bolt pattern I found on FB near him. Kurt collected the car last weekend and got it to his shop. He has started making videos so I thought I would get this thread started so you could see our progress. More details to come.
Kurt is on FIRE with the life lessons today.
Remember kids, when you weld aluminum it stays hot for a LONG time.
I'm more of a forum/pictures guy so I can scroll at work, but I'm really enjoying the build videos when I have the time to watch. No lame "youtube persona" clickbait dramatics and crap. Just good work documented well and to the point. Keep it up.
For anyone not paying attention, this is a seriously cool build! I recommend watching from the start.
In reply to maschinenbau (I live here) :
Yeah I don't generally bother with videos, but i like Kurt so it's nice to hear him
I still need to check if my wheels fit those datsun hubs for you. It would be easy except it requires untarping and retarping the pile in my driveway, the same pile that I'd rather not anyone from the village hall mistake for a car.
So really, it is easy and so far I have just been lazy
Our progress may have been impacted by the acquisition of another project.
I may have enabled. We will be back to productivity as soon as we can get this thing seaworthy enough to move to it's next location (hopefully this Saturday).
In reply to hobiercr (FS) :
I'm sure you're aware of this but welding on a straight axle tends to change it. Double check camber and toe.
Also you do know you'll need to take your sway bar in for heat treat? Any big truck spring shop should be able to do it for you and it's not expensive.
In reply to frenchyd :
At Kurt level of fabrication I wouldn't be surprised if he didn't build his own DIY heat treating oven in the spare time between making a gas tank "I've never done this before look at how perfect it turned out" and customizing a PT Cruiser intercooler to fit like it was factory in a Datsun roadster.
Even better than, running, it now IDLES! Exhaust and vacuum leaks FIXED! Still a ton of work to do and it won't be off the jack stands for a few more weeks but great progress made today! We shot some video so hopefully, it will be up soon.
Quick update. Because we turboed an NA motor there are fuel/timing concerns using the stock ECU. We had a line on a chipped ECU and injectors but the FBM seller totally flaked. I found a decent deal on an AEM FIC so we grabbed that and wired it in yesterday. Now we have a no start issue. The interweb is sketchy at best on writeups for these and we are kinda shooting in the dark. We'll figure it out but it will not make this fun, fast, or easy.
Also, because of the turbo we had to switch to a single circuit MC. For some reason, we just cannot get a good pedal feel after mucho bleeding sessions. We'll keep at it and hope we can get it diagnosed/corrected soon.
hobiercr (FS) said:
Also, because of the turbo we had to switch to a single circuit MC.
Please excuse me, I have to go shoot myself while jumping off a tall building after reading that.
I have zero surefire ways to deal with bleeding issues. I feel your pain.
In reply to AngryCorvair (Forum Supporter) :
Entirely because of interference issues. Trust me, we would all rather have a dual setup. Maybe next year.
One step forward, one step back...
Got the AEM FIC hooked up to the wiring harness and got the car running. Did some research, built base fuel and ignition maps, and had the car idling fairly well. The AEM allows for data logging so we did a couple of tests on Sunday. I built a more robust map and we ran the car today. AFR's looked good but it was still breaking up. We logged a few runs then went back to the garage to look at the data. Things are close but we notice that we had all "0" data for injector 3. We looked back through all the test logs and noticed the same issue. Arghhh.
We checked the injector off the car (good), checked continuity on all the harness lines (good), and bypassed the AEM and still had the issue. It seems to be in the ECU we got with the drivetrain. We are now on the hunt for a replacement and hope to be able to source one so we can dial in the tune before next week.
