Need more clearance
Need more clearance
Travis, George, Tim, Chris, Jeff and everyone else I'm forgetting to mention by name: it was great to meet you guys today and make sparks fly. Let's do it again soon.
Sorry I had to leave and couldn't stick around to completion. My son had a great time and is looking forward to doing more wrenching.
In reply to Indy-Barely Functional-Guy :
It was great to meet you and everybody else. I need to go check out the live feed so I can see how far things have gotten since I headed home.
Umm, the live feed is down - probably due to the music playing in the background....
Apparently youtube didn't like the music playing in the background.
Love seeing the next generation of GRM joining in!
Wish I could be there to get in the way!
What a turn out! Thanks to everyone who gave up their Saturday to help me build this crazy thing. Last night 7 of my college friends and fellow ex-Wreck Racers road tripped up here to stay the weekend and join in the marathon build. We have a full house and it's great to catch up with old friends!
Some of the big jobs of the day included removing the rear suspension from the crusty underside of the Infiniti, dismembering the entire of both cars, making clearance holes in the floor of the Datsun, and chopping up the front suspension of the Infiniti. This is the G35 rear sub-frame and suspension centered under the Datsun. It effectively widens the Datsun by 3 inches on each side. Box flares are definitely on the to-do list.
Before fender cut:
After fender cut. Needs more fender cut and box flare.
The front sub-frame was a much more difficult extraction. Lots of very strategic cuts meant almost complete removal of the G35 interior and dashboard. It took almost all day, but now it's almost ready to mate to the Datsun.
First test drive. Feedback from the driver: "it's a bit stiff"
It's happening... The night ended in a debate on how to join the sub-frame to the Datsun chassis. It was 11pm, we had been at it almost nonstop since 9:30am and we were falling apart, so we all decided to sleep on it. Hopefully the answer reveals itself after a good night's sleep.
Very nice. I love how you guys are just cutting subframes with towers out.
This is spectacular!
In reply to maschinenbau :
Come here looking for an update...
How'd you guys do today?
I stopped by on my way home from autoX at Walesboro and they had made really good progress getting the front Infiniti parts under the Datsun. When I left, the drivetrain was in the cradle and final adjustments were being made before fixing bits together in a somewhat permanent fashion.
Today was a lot of guessing and cutting and fitting and cutting again. We started the day with the entire front clip of the G35 and whittled it down to something that fits perfectly within the Datsun.
The Datsun and Infiniti both share "frame-rail-like" features in the unibody. Amazing, the Datsun rails fit perfectly inside the Infiniti's. I couldn't believe. That means joining the two is as simple as welding the seam and adding a lap plate over the joint for stiffness.
Then we removed that, and added the engine to the cradle and tried to fit it again, this time under the assumption we would have to cut giant sections of firewall and trans tunnel out. but to our surprise, the VQ35 fit perfectly within the engine bay and the transmission did not interfere with the body. It's almost as if this engine was meant to be here.
The electronic throttle body was a bit close to a seam on the firewall, so we cut and bent the seam down. There is also a bit of harness that might be getting smooshed. Other than that, no real fitment issues.
Here you can see the exhaust modification that was done to the manifolds with the engine out. It's basically just a re-routing of the turn downs so that the overall exhaust width is a few inches narrower and the flanges are easier to acces.
We got as far as joining the upper strut towers to the Datsun chassis. We basically flanged the ends of strut tower, drilled plug weld holes, and bent them over the Datsun with a 4lb sledge and welded it shut. There will be more tons more bracing and clearancing for the upper control arm, but for now the body, engine, and subframe act like one piece of car, which is nice.
Fenders need help like bad.
Thank you so incredibly much to everyone who lent a hand, especially forum members Indy Guy, gumby, minivan racer, and eastside Tim, and all my fellow ex-Wreck Racers who drove from far away for this odd sort of reunion. It could not have happened without you all. I can't believe I drove that pile of scrap to work two days ago.
That's so berkeleying awesome.
That's awesome work guys! A little bit of luck is never a bad thing.
*startsslowclap*
Outberkeleyingstanding gentlemen.
*continues slow clap, increases tempo*
that is seriously impressive, makes me wish I had driven out to join in, or maybe host a northeastern version...
There is way less g35 stitched to the Datsun than what was talked about Saturday night.
In reply to minivan_racer :
Yeah, there is a plan there...but that plan was changing every 2 or 3 hours and continues to do so lol
I thought my build was nuts. I got nothing on this.
In reply to maschinenbau :
Looking great! I actually kinda like the way the G35 wheels look on there.
Oh, about the build thread, you have a pretty good start here, how about just having a moderator change thread title and move this one over?
¯\_(ツ)_/¯ said:*continues slow clap, increases tempo*
that is seriously impressive, makes me wish I had driven out to join in, or maybe host a northeastern version...
I'm in. Say when.
Wow, that looks awesome, wish I'd made it back out on Sunday.
I'm going to start a separate build thread once I compile all the pictures. But first, I will need project name ideas for the thread title. So far we have:
Datsanity. Definitely.
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