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It is time for another project thread. I follow several projects around here, and I have been meaning to put together a thread, but I haven't had the time. Instead, I've just been posting sporadically in the “What did you do to your ride today?” thread. The last project threads I posted were in 2007. The first was a practice-restoration of a 1982 F150 (I linked to a copied/pasted version that I am hosting, because I know most people don’t have archives). Before:  After:  The second build thread was the real deal. It was a play-by-play of my round-the-clock mad dash to finish my 1979 International Scout Project. I almost finished it, but some last minute paint technical issues burned up my tight timeline and killed my motivation. In fact, I haven’t touched it since 2007. That will change in the not too distant future. So what has been going on since then? I’ve been up to quite a bit, actually. In the summer of 2008 I rode around the US on my motorcycle for seven weeks (~11k miles). In the summer of 2009 I gutted and redid my kitchen and bathroom. In the summer of 2010 I had a kid. Last summer I parented. In my "spare time" I started a Masters in Mechanical Engineering through Purdue in 2008, which I finished in 2010. It was surprisingly hard to tackle a MS in Engineering with no previous background in engineering  I am a high school Chemistry teacher (also math and physics certified), so I normally have June and July available to be productive. With my son running around getting into everything, that isn’t the case anymore. This summer, however, my wife has agreed to let him stay in daycare during the days for an extra two weeks after school gets out, so I can make some progress on my projects. I currently have two “running projects,” and then the 1979 Scout II. I will break things up into three posts for general background information on each project. This thread is a way for me to have public accountability, forcing me to make progress. We’ll see how that goes… CatBus fucked around with this message at 03:06 on May 14, 2012 |
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May 14, 2012 03:03
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In the fall of 2008 I bought a 1966 International Scout on ebay, and had a guy from the HAMB haul it from Laredo, TX to my house in Lexington, KY. When it arrived, it looked like this:  The ebay listing said it had a bad distributor, and did not run. I gambled on that, and actually paid the “buy it now” price of $3k. I probably overpaid by about $1500, and shipping was another $900, but it was the vehicle I wanted, at the time I wanted it. When it arrived, I hooked up a battery and couldn’t get it to turn over. That was a gut-wrenching moment. I did some troubleshooting and decided the starter was bad. Carquest sourced a new one within a day, and I spent way too long swapping it in. With a new battery and a little gas in the carb, that sucker started right up. I drove it around the block, and it was like one of those kids bouncy cars. The tires didn’t actually have valve stems, just holes, but the rubber was so dry rotted that they were solid. The side indicated that they were 18 ply nylon. Whatever their material was, they were as hard as a rock, and each wheel/tire combo weighed like 100lbs. It didn’t take long for me to just swap over the wheels and tires from my 1979 Scout II. At some point I decided to see how salvageable the oxidized paint was. I know I posted some before/after pictures of that here somewhere, but I buffed it out, and it went surprisingly well.    Last spring I sold the F150 for $1000, which was a huge loss in time and materials, but it was a huge gain in driveway space. I used that money to buy some new wheels and tires for the Scout Truck. I think I posted some “after” pictures in the Offroad thread. It looks pretty badass now.   I have actually done CONSIDERABLY more work on the Scout Truck since then, but I will use that as filler for later posts. It still looks pretty much like that, even with all the additional work I’ve done. Here is a general cost breakdown so far (this is depressing, and I encourage all of you to keep up with your project expenses): Vehicle: $3000 Shipping: $900 Starter: $60 Battery: $80 Body bushings: $60 (I can't remember) Spring shackle bushings: $30 Plastic glove box: $40 Wheel bearings: $100 (roughly- I don't remember) Poly fuel tanks with senders: $450 (approx) Fuel filler neck/cap setup (boat): $125 New springs: $725 New wheels/tires: $1100 Shocks: $130 Used Warn O/D: $125 (plus $50 in gas) Chassis Saver paint for underside: $60 Transfer case gasket set: $40 Parts truck: (net cost $350 to date) Swap Meet transfer case and transmission: $100 New repop right side gas tank cover: $35 Misc. solvents, paints, oils: $100 Transmission rebuild kit: $220 U-joints (4): $75 Windshield seal (with shipping): $90 New repop battery tray: $50 _____________________________________________ Total= $8025 (as of 1/9/2012)
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May 14, 2012 03:03
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In December (2011), I happened to ask a coworker if he still had his Datsun Z sitting around. I’m not terribly into sports cars, but I had seen it back in 2006 or 2007, and it looked pretty clean, and pretty cool. He said that he still had it, and said he would make me an offer I couldn’t refuse. I was ready to refuse because: a) I was glad to have the F150 out of my hair b) I have way more projects than time c) I don’t have a place to store another project d) I don’t really care about sports cars Whenever I had seen it in his driveway, he had tried to sell it to me for $6k or something. Imagine my surprise when he said $500. It really was an offer I couldn’t refuse. I told my wife that I had to buy another car because it was an offer too good to pass up. She was surprisingly agreeable, and I paid the $500, plus $40 to have it towed to my house. It was only $25 to register it (and it already had collector car plates). I put a battery in it, and it started right up. It was filthy, but awesome. I thought I had copied some “before” pictures for reference, but I can’t find them now. I will have to add them later. It was below zero when I first washed it, so it is covered in ice here:  Here it is more recently:  I figured that I needed to use this car for something sporty, so I’ve been autocrossing it. I have done three events, and I suck. I am doing a solo driver school next weekend, and my wife is actually going to do the school too.  I have done quite a bit of work on this car since December, and I will save the specifics for filler later. Here is the project cost breakdown so far: Car - $565 registered and delivered Battery - $100 Seats/headliner - $350 Junkyard parts - $20 Clutch master/slave cyl parts - $50 Exhaust - $125 Speedo cable - $15 brake pads/rotors - $100 Ignition control module - $100 Suspension bushings - $175 Steering boots - $30 Misc used parts - $120 Spray paint - $45 Tires - $388+$45 Hatch struts - $30 _____________________________________________ Total= $2268 (as of 5/13/2012)
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May 14, 2012 03:04
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In 1995 I was in high school, working as a shop monkey at a small auto body shop. I decided that I needed a quick restoration project, and after seeing an International Scout for sale locally, I decided that I needed one of those. Few vehicles in history have rusted as impressively as IH Scouts. I bought one that had been previously “restored,” and that makes it 10x worse than any that had just been left out in the elements. Needless to say, like many projects around here, I had the thing apart in a matter of days. My original plan was to restore it over the winter, and drive the Dalton Highway up in Alaska. It is 2012, and I still haven’t put it back together… I actually don’t have any “before” pictures. Digital cameras didn’t really exist, and I think I tore the thing apart so fast that I never took a picture. Here are a couple “in progress” pictures from around 1997:   Here is where I left off in Sept. 2007:   The 2007 AI build thread was content-heavy, and regularly updated. It was really a third installment of a build thread, with the first one or two happening in the 2004-2006 timeframe. I have archived versions of the three parts hosted: 1) History of the project 2) Moving from WI to KY 3) 2007 Race to the finish! I have no build cost sheet for this project, and I’m glad that I don’t. My goal is to make some major progress on the Scout, starting around May 26 (after school is out). Hopefully I can finally put this project to rest!
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May 14, 2012 03:04
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bolind: The paint on the green Scout is OK, but I need to wet sand and reshoot all the clear. It came out OK, but I didn't lay it on heavy enough, and it is dry and sandpapery. The BIG issue on that project is that I had to cut the driver's side rocker off to align it better. I will post some pictures of that fiasco later. That will involve reshooting the green and blending it in that area, after building new dogleg section and redoing the body work. That was one of my most hated projects the first time around, so I am not looking forward to doing it again. Hopefully I can pull it off. Other than that, I need to do all the reassembly and interior on that thing. The glass is in, but it will be quite a bit of work. beejay: The Scout Truck buffed out infomercial perfect. It was like a perfect scenario of oxidized paint. The problem is, someone did a horrible restoration on it, and the body work is terrible. It is a 20 footer, but looks great from that distance. Up close it is pretty ugly. The good news is, there isn't too much rust under all the crappy body work.
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May 14, 2012 15:26
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IOwnCalculus: I have already fought the Ignition Control Module attached to the distributor. It looks like the previous owner replaced the fan clutch, and I know he had the tank pulled and cleaned, along with new injectors and a few other things. I have plenty of other potential problem areas! Here is a shot of the misaligned rocker panel from two angles:   Cutting it off and half-heartedly mocking up a fix were the last things I did in 2007. I haven’t touched it since then, but it will be annoying to resolve.  On an unrelated note, some of the first work I did on the Datsun was to recover the front seats and clean up the interior a bit. I just bought a seat upholstery kit from an online Z vendor, and some decent hog ring pliers from a vendor on Amazon. I hadn’t done a seat recover before, but it went OK. The covers did not match the old ones in terms of fabric and pattern, but I guess that is my fault. There weren’t any pictures, and I didn’t realize the old seats were leather and velour, not vinyl and velour. Before:  One done:  Both done:  Yuck.  Cleaner.  Home.  The most recent thing I have done to the Datsun is caving in and getting some new tires. The previous owner had replaced the tires before he parked it, and they are in really good shape, but they were horrible at autocross. I bought some Falken Azenis 615k for $388 shipped from discounttiredirect.com, and had them mounted locally for $45. The old tires were 205/70/14, and these are 195/60/14. They look comically small, but I only had two options in “performance” tires in a 14” size. These tires, and the Dunlop Direzza Z1 Star Specs. The Dunlops were about $125 more, so I went with the Falkens. I may try to sell the old tires, or I may try to find a cheap set of wheels to use with them. I was out on Saturday night with my GPS trying to figure out just how off my speedo is now. It’s pretty off  
CatBus fucked around with this message at 03:43 on Jun 2, 2012 |
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May 15, 2012 02:29
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Last Spring (2011) I decided to fix the horrendous transmission/transfer case leak in the Scout Truck. It would leak almost everything in a very short time, and after a bit of investigating, I decided that there was no gasket between the transmission and transfer case. One of the output shaft seals on the transfer case was also leaking, so I just ordered a full gasket set for the Dana 20 transfer case from Novak. When I went to pull the transfer case, the main shaft of the transmission came with it. That is the transmission main shaft sticking out of the transfer case. Now, it is possible for that to happen even if nothing is wrong (in hindsight you are supposed to wire the main shaft in place before removing the transfer case), but you may see something wrong with the nose end of that main shaft.  The needle bearings between the main shaft and input shaft were also mostly toast, and there was pitting where the main shaft fits into the input shaft (the smooth portion, not the ridged portion in the photo).  Obviously, things quickly went from a half day of tossing a gasket between the transfer case and transmission, to a transmission rebuild. That would have been great, except the rebuild parts for *this* T90 transmission do not exist. Apparently, IH used a special T90 in some vehicles, and the parts are *just* different from every other T90 used in Jeeps and other vehicles. I thought I was smart, and found a 1968 Scout on the local Craigslist postings with a four speed transmission! I convinced the guy to deliver it to my house, and paid for it, at which point I learned that the transmission used with V8 Scouts are not the same as the ones used with four cylinder Scouts. I stripped the parts Scout, and I am slowly making my money back on it, but I wasted several days sweating away in scorching heat tearing it apart. I did get a nicer set of axles that I will save (a Dana 30 front and Dana 44 rear with 4.27 gears, versus my current Dana 27 front and rears with 4.88s), but I don’t plan to swap those in until mine break. I will take a brief moment to go back in time around seven months to December 2010. I dutifully watch Craigslist for Scout deals, and I happened to see a guy selling a parts Scout with the rare Warn Overdrive. I didn’t want the whole thing, and didn’t want to haul it home either, so I offered to drive up to buy just the overdrive unit, and pull it myself. The guy agreed, and I drove three hours each way to pull the overdrive unit in very cold weather. The Warn Overdrive bolts into the PTO slot of a Dana 18 transfer case, and when manually engaged, it offers a 25% RPM reduction. I paid $125 (plus gas money), but a new unit would cost around $900, so it was probably a good find. When I got home from the trip, I realized that I had a Dana 20 transfer case, not a Dana 18. The OD just sat around collecting dust at that point.  In September (2011), I went to IH Nationals in Springfield, OH, and scored a used T90 transmission with a Dana 18 transfer case for $100. That was a double score, because I needed the transmission, AND I needed to switch from my current Dana 20 transfer case to a Dana 18 in order to use the Warn Overdrive. Of course, when I got home and started pulling the transmission and transfer case apart, they were both totally full of water. I was hoping to piece together one good transmission from the two I now had, BUT, by some twist of fate, my “new” T90 transmission was different than the first. The bad news was, little/no parts interchange. The good news was, I could just order a rebuild kit for a Jeep T90. I called up Novak, and the sales guy kindly walked out to the warehouse to measure some things for me, and everything was a match with this new transmission. Here are a couple side by side shots for comparison (there is no external indication to differentiate the transmissions). The bare cases with main shafts removed:  The main shafts (obviously one of the gears is on backwards in this picture, that is not a difference, just my carelessness when I set up the shot). You can see slight length differences, different shift dogs and needle bearings, reverse-cut gears, etc.:  So I rebuilt the transmission. Luckily, there was a good rebuild guide online, and it was pretty painless.  There was quite a bit of wear and metal contamination in the shaft spacers.  Back together.  I eventually pulled the bell housing, to find that the pilot bearing was totally gone, and only a few balls remained in the bottom of the dust cover. The clutch had some broken edges, so I ended up sending that out to be relined. I think that was probably a waste of money, but I guess it was worth the peace of mind. I also ordered a new pilot bearing and throwout bearing.  Eventually the time came to bolt everything back up, and see how successful the rebuildwent. I had a panic moment when I first tried to move the Scout, because no power was making it to the driveshaft. I eventually figured out that the shift pattern for a twin stick Dana 18 is different from a twin stick Dana 20 transfer case, and I had it in neutral. After sorting that out, I rolled it out of the garage and went around the block. It seemed to shift OK, but I felt like there was NO power. Here it is in place, with the transmission tunnel off, in all of its four-shifter glory.  After quite a bit of screwing around, I realized that somehow the pressure plate was not adjusted properly. Of course that meant pulling the transmission and transfer case, and separating them (because they are too bulky to move together). I am guessing that the previous owner somehow misadjusted the pressure plate, and it just worked with the old clutch disc. It was WAY out of spec, and not engaging the clutch fully. I had to build a jig to adjust the arm height, and I ended up screwing things up before fixing it correctly.  With the pressure plate adjusted, my Scout Truck was mobile after ten months of down time. Sheesh. I think the original failure was due to oil starvation between the main shaft and the input shaft, probably in the hands of the previous owner. This is a common problem. I might even wager that it was due to improper towing (it had a tow bar on the front bumper when I bought it). I didn’t put enough miles on it, and I was careful about keeping the oil topped off, so I doubt it happened on my watch. At least I did get several other items checked off of the “to do” list during the down time. I will provide more detail on that later. 
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May 17, 2012 03:06
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*Edited 6/1/2012 to add pictures* Yesterday I had a simple list of small projects to knock out on the Scout Truck before diving headfirst back into my Scout II. Of course, I lost today and yesterday to those "small" projects, and I will lose tomorrow as well. I started yesterday by pulling out the spare fuel tanks from the Scout I parted out in July 2011. I have been trying to sell those, and they needed a few patches due to rust holes. I cut open the first tank, and found a mouse nest inside, along with a million other rotted spots. That tank is officially junk. The second tank just had one bad area, so I cut that out and welded in a patch piece I cut out of some scrap steel. I will have to post some pictures tomorrow when I get a chance. It turned out pretty well. It isn’t perfect, but it will work. Rusty edge “before”  After cutting out the rust and making a patch panel:  Tacked in place:  Finished up:  I installed aftermarket poly fuel tanks in the beginning of April, but never had the time to do the wiring. I did run string for the wires though. Yesterday I pulled the wires through, which (of course) ended up a fiasco. Today I traced all the wiring, pulled the dash apart, and connected all of the wiring to the tank selector switch. I installed a manual valve for actual fuel delivery, but there is a switch to determine which tank is shown on the fuel gauge. Of course, the previous owner installed an aftermarket gauge, and it doesn't work correctly with my new (stock style) senders. That is a problem that I will sort out later (apparently this is a major issue because the stock senders are linear from from 10 ohms full to 73 ohms empty, all the gauges break, and no aftermarket gauges exist. Oh yeah, and it uses some stupid pulsing 5v hot for some reason). I may try to order a programmable fuel gauge at some point, but that is some serious coin. For now, at least all of the wires are in place and working. I also took a look at all of the brakes, because there were some weird noises. The back looked OK, although one of the shoes seems to be disintegrating?! In the front, I had a leaky wheel cylinder on the left side. Then, while I was blowing dust off of the right side, the pad material blew right off of one shoe. I guess it is better to have that happen in my garage, as opposed to out on the road somewhere. Friction material on the floor:  Wheel cylinders shouldn’t look like this, but both sides did. At least the boots on one side were good:  I think the front pads are the ones that were on it when I bought it. I am pretty sure I replaced the rears. So that was a disappointing end to the day. Now I need to run to the parts store tomorrow to order shoes and a wheel cylinder. I checked the spare Dana 30 I have sitting in the corner, and it appears to have the same brakes as my current Dana 27, but I don't really feel like swapping questionable used parts over to save $40. *Update – When I found out new wheel cylinders were $45 each, I DID pull one off the other axle. Sadly, those wheel cylinders were just as bad as the ones that were on the Scout Truck already, or worse. I ended up buying two rebuild kits at $6 each, and new pads for $30. I honed out the wheel cylinders and rebuilt them. We’ll see how that goes.  I ended up having to redo the short jumper lines from the wheel cylinders to the rubber lines, which was tedious but successful.   Everything is finally back together.  After all of that is sorted, I still need to fix the driver's side window that fell out of the regulator. I also need to sort out the carb settings, because the truck has never idled without the manual choke at least part way out. As a result, it runs super rich, and that just isn't good for the long term. Maybe I can find some special sealing washers for my overdrive bolts too, because I just used lock washers, and it leaks a small puddle every time I drive it. On a semi-unrelated note, I have been selling all kinds of spare parts and stuff around the house to buy Datsun parts. The new tires are awesome, and my new shocks/springs arrived today. I also ordered adjustable tension control rods. Now I just need to find time to do the shocks, springs, tension control rods, all of the suspension bushings, and swap over the used steering rack I picked up before the next autocross on June 17th. The bushings and new springs will bump me out of any stock class (I was running RTR ES), but it's not like a 30 year old car can compete in a stock class anyway. I still won't be competitive, but at least the car will (hopefully) feel better. Shocks/Springs: 
CatBus fucked around with this message at 03:13 on Jun 2, 2012 |
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May 31, 2012 03:20
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If you have this thread bookmarked, scroll up one post. I updated it and added quite a few pictures. As for new progress, it’s one step forward, infinity steps back. I left the key in the “on” position on the Scout Truck overnight, and it killed the battery. Then, today, when I tried to charge it, my charger gave up at around 70%. Apparently the battery is shot, which sucks because it was brand new in Fall 2008, and I have only put like 200 miles on the truck since then. That was yesterday. This morning, I bumped the key while screwing around with the dash installation and the truck jumped backwards into my BMW R1150GS Adventure (motorcycle). It hit squarely on the Givi top case mount, and put a huge dent with crease in the back of the right fender. Argh. I spent quite a while trying to make that look less terrible, but it isn’t pretty. I didn’t have the heart to take a picture. At least the motorcycle is OK. With that out of the way, I began “progress” on the 1979 Scout II again today. Step one was to unbury it. Over the past five years, it has basically become storage for junk. Before:   Ahhh, much better:  When I last left off in 2007, I had cut off and realigned the driver’s side outer rocker panel. It has been held on with clecos, collecting dust, since then. After a quick inspection I was happy with how things had lined up, except that the front was about 1/4" too low. I popped the clecos off and quickly saw the problem underneath. Whatever mess I had used as a support was crooked. That was possibly the old mounting point of the outer rocker, or who knows. I certainly don’t remember. It was ugly, and crooked, though. (sorry for the horrible picture, you’ll have to take my word for it)  I ended up drilling out all the pop rivets to start from scratch with that piece. After poking around in my scrap steel piles, I found some old outer rockers from something (the F150 maybe?).  I cut off a strip that was pre-bent to a close angle, and attached it where the old support had been:  I should have taken more pictures along the way, but I am out of practice, and I was pretty frustrated. I just wanted to make some progress. With that piece in place, it was time to move on to the doglegs. I bought some repro patch pieces at the IH Nationals with the intention of saving countless hours trying to fab up my own (again). They were $75 each, and to my horror today, I found out that they sold me a front left dogleg (good):  and a rear RIGHT dogleg (VERY BAD). It is labeled LR (LEFT REAR), but it is clearly a right rear piece. ARGH. These guys don’t sell to the public, except at IH Nationals. Normally they just supply repro parts to the IH vendors. That means I have no way to get in contact with them. I will just have to try to cut up and modify this piece to work. It is better than starting from scratch, but still very frustrating (especially for $75).  With that setback I ran out of time and motivation for the day. There probably won’t be any progress until next Thursday, because we had a death in the family overnight, and we will need to travel to Alabama. After the rocker is done, I need to wet sand almost everything and re-shoot most of the clear. Then I can think about reassembly. I have barely started, and I am almost out of the time allotted for this project this summer. Oh well. Some progress is better than none. I can do the assembly bit by bit over time, if I can get the clear coat knocked out.
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Jun 2, 2012 03:36
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I finally made it out to the garage today. I put in a solid eight hours, and made progress, but not nearly as much as I would have liked. The 20 hour days of 2007 spoiled me in terms of daily progress expectations, but those days are gone. Today I tackled the dogleg sections. I spent $75 each for the front and rear, and the rear was a mislabeled piece intended for the passenger side (labeled for the driver’s side). Anyway, less talk, more pictures: Here is how things looked at the start of today. I pulled the door and fender, because the fender was in the way, and it won’t come off with the door attached. I marked the bolt locations on the hinge with a punch, because it is always a major pain to align the door. We’ll see if that works.  Starting front section:  All of the old stuff cut off:  Here is a shot of an early test-fitting of the patch panel. At this point I had already beat on it with a hammer for a bit, resulting in a broken weld that I had to fix and grind down. It fit OK, but it was too short left to right AND top to bottom. Plus, the bends were WAY off initially.  I cut and bent an extension piece for the right edge:  Then I welded it in place, and ground everything down:  Then I cut an extension for the bottom:  Here is the semi-final piece in place. It fit much better, but it took about 3.5 hours. This was the patch panel that was supposed to be correct, so I was dreading the work on the other one.  With a little lunch break, it was on to the other side. First, there was a welded seam/edge that needed to come off before I could even begin to test fit the piece:  The initial fit was bad, to say the least. I know it looks like you could just bend things into place, but that isn’t how things work with compound curves/etc.   I cut some slices out and hammered a bit to get things closer to where they should be:  Then I cut more out, because the flat portion was way too wide (I guess it wouldn’t have been an issue as the vertical section on the passenger side, as it was intended):  Then it was more pounding, grinding, and cutting, until things started to fit OK. I used a couple small magnets to hold things in place.  At this point I welded up all of the relief cuts for a test fit. It was OK, but the bottom and right edge needed some work. I cut the left edge a bit shorter, since it was way too long (again, that probably would have been OK as a vertical piece on the passenger side):  I ended up putting a bunch of slices in the first piece I removed from this patch panel (before the test fit), allowing it to bend along the vertical edge (as it would have been originally). I also had to add an extension to the bottom, so that is held in place with magnets here.  The right edge ended up needing a small patch piece. I probably could have made it work without it, but it only took a few minutes. You probably have to look pretty closely to even spot it (it actually looks like LESS material is there, but that is just how the final bend ended up folding out). This side took me around 4.5 hours. I won’t be winning any awards for speed restoration, but I guess that is self-evident after the project has dragged on for 17 years.   So that’s it for today. I made it to daycare to pick up my son with 15 minutes to spare. I have a backlog of parts showing up for various projects. I bought a can of weld-thru primer for the rocker re-installation. It was like $35 after tax. Hopefully it is worth it! The adjustable traction control arms for the Datsun are here. I bought a set of spring compressors for the suspension work on it as well. The fans are for my KTM 625 SXC. I have been running computer fans for cooling, and they work really well. The old ones have finally died though. I also have to put in the new battery, and put in some new suspension bearings at some point.  That is it for now. We are heading out of town for my wife’s family reunion, tomorrow, and we won’t be back until Monday evening. Hopefully I can complete final assembly of all the rocker pieces on Tuesday. That would be big progress.
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Jun 8, 2012 05:10
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blindjoe posted:Weldthru primer is great. Just remember to wear a resparator when welding it as the aerosol zinc probably isn't good for you. Good tips, thanks! There are zinc or copper based weld through primers available. I went with the copper-based product because that is what they had locally. I was reading around online and in addition to what you said, also saw suggestions to only coat the inside edge of panels that are going to be welded. Apparently there is poor adhesion, and painting over it isn't an option.
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Jun 8, 2012 22:34
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I was only able to work in the garage for about four hours today, but that is still progress. I removed the support piece I had made and primed it. Then I installed it with all of the rivets and adhesive. Well, to be more honest, I got it half-attached, then realized that my pneumatic rivet tool wasn’t working correctly. Then I spent like two hours tearing that apart. I eventually looked online for a manual, and immediately found the problem (low hydraulic oil, because it is pneumatic-hydraulic). Now it works like a champ again.  Then I cleaned up and primed the bottom extension strip for the rocker.  Here it is attached to the bottom of the rocker. This piece was necessary because the outer rocker was installed too far in, and needed to be cut off and spaced farther from the body. This was a result of having no floor, and no anything really, when I built the floor. It’s a miracle that this was the only issue I had.  With that resolved, I reattached the outer rocker.  Here is a quick mockup with the door jambs clamped in place. Hopefully I can get those installed tomorrow, and maybe knock out some of the body work on the rocker area. Then it is primer and paint.  On an unrelated note, my programmable fuel gauge for the Scout Truck arrived. I took a picture, but somehow I didn’t upload it with the other ones. I will have to do that in the next update.
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Jun 13, 2012 03:59
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I managed to squeeze in about six hours today, with a 2.5 hour doctor appointment with my wife sucking up the rest of the day. I blew about three hours doing some additional massaging to the door jamb patch panels. Then I sprayed everything with the weld-through primer. Before:  After:   Fitted into place:  Welded into place:    The weld-through primer seemed OK. I think there was some extra soot, and the welds seemed a bit more porous (which I had read about online), but surrounding areas seemed to hold up under the high temps. Hopefully that is true for the back sides, where it actually matters. I definitely had overly-thick coats, but I couldn't control myself. Then I slapped on a thick layer of long strand fiberglass. I used way more than I should have, mostly on the bottom to cover the patch section. Obviously you can’t see that in the picture. I feel like I’m finally making some progress.  After the body work is done (hopefully tomorrow), then I will prime and paint the area, and blend it into the rest of the vehicle. Then I need to wet sand the whole thing and reshoot all the clear. I screwed it up the last time around, and didn’t lay it on thick enough (and shot it too dry). It looks OK, but I want it to be better. Best case scenario is getting it in primer Friday, and starting on the wet sanding. Then clear Monday or Tuesday (hopefully), and on to final assembly! I will need to get a new battery, as the old one is toast. Hopefully it will fire up easily after sitting for five years. The weekend is already booked with non-Scout stuff. My wife wants to do family stuff on Saturday, and there is an autocross on Sunday. I won’t have time to do any work on the Datsun, but that is OK. It seems to be functional. Once I replace the suspension bushings, it will bump me from a stock class to STR, so I am not in a hurry to get beaten even worse. Here is a picture of the programmable fuel gauge for the Scout Truck. That is a fiasco situation, and I hope it works when I get a chance to install it.  I will lose a couple hours tomorrow because I have to pick up a large item for the Datsun. I’ll try to post a picture tomorrow.
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Jun 14, 2012 03:14
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thegst posted:I just like to see Scouts with holes in the bodywork that are intentional for a change. Don't think they made a bunch of Rallyes and that is a nice green color. I really like the color, though it isn't the factory original. It is a dark green, with a gold metallic, and it looks pretty awesome in the light. This Scout was mint green from the factory, as far as I can tell (though it is a legit Rallye). When I started this project, there were a few junkyards around my mom's place in WI that had Scout IIs. When I needed a hood in 2005 or 2006, I ended up getting one from North Carolina, because I couldn't find one around here. Now I know of one run-down scrap yard that has a Scout II. I've never seen a first generation Scout in a scrap yard. There were a ton of crazy custom and limited edition Scout and Scout II trim packages. I'm glad I don't have anything special, but a diesel would have been nice. We need more Scouts around here! I know Trouser Chilli has one, and maybe Deleted.
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Jun 15, 2012 03:55
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I started out the day with a little trip in the Scout Truck. “Little trip,” is relative, because it was by far the longest trip I have taken in the Scout Truck, at about 25 miles each way. Shortly after leaving the house, I stopped at a gas station. This was my first attempt at filling the new tanks (I had just used a five gallon can to fill one tank before). I inserted the nozzle, pulled the handle, and was sprayed with a backwash of gas as most shot back out at me. Poor filling dynamics is a common issue with the side-saddle tanks. I eventually found a position where I could get gas to go in, without spraying back, on the slowest flow possible (handle at around 5:00, surprisingly facing slightly away from the tank). I actually ran into one of my former students at the gas station, driving his BMW, and he found the whole thing very amusing. Anyway, the trip was successful. The truck drove straight, stopped (eventually) each time I pressed the brakes, and hummed along smoothly at 55mph without any issues. The steering is loose, due to a worn steering box I think, so turns and bumps were a little scary, but overall it was great. The sun was shining, and the weather was perfect, so I didn’t roast. I had at least four people either flag me down at stoplights, or pull up next to me on the highway to ask about the truck. The guy who had my Datsun part really liked it too. There is some noise when the clutch is out, but maybe that is just the throwout bearing clunking around. Here is a picture after I arrived back home:  I scored a bumper (bumper cover) for the Datsun for $50 from a guy I met at autocross. He ordered it from one of the Datsun vendors (I think it was probably about $350 shipped), and it came with the corners damaged in transit. They shipped him a new one, and told him to keep the old one. He offered it to me, which was incredibly generous. The damage seems pretty superficial, so hopefully I can get it installed at some point. I don’t think it is technically “legal” for STR classing, but I doubt anyone will notice or bring it up. This makes one fewer piece of trim I need to find. I still need the piece on the front fender, behind the wheel opening, if anyone has parts connections. Here is the bumper cover on the ground in front of the car:  Somehow my ~50 mile round trip took like three hours, and by the time I got home it was time for lunch. Then it was out to the garage to sand. Then sand more. Then continue sanding. I managed to get all of the fiberglass rough body work done in about five hours. Really, at this point, the “rough” work in long strand fiberglass is better than what most people consider “finished.” It’s not great, but most people have low standards, I guess. Tomorrow I will just skim coat with polyester filler and sand everything, until I’m satisfied. I need to go buy a new battery, but hopefully I can get it started and moved around to shoot some primer. Here is what it looks like at this point: Full view:  Sides:   Bottom (it looks uneven, but that is just a result of the flash on the dust pattern that didn’t get blown off well with the air nozzle):  I am very glad that I added another 120 gallons of air storage. My compressor is a 7.5hp IR unit with an 80gal tank, so I have 200gal total (with a bunch of valves to give me options when filling/emptying). You can see my collection of used motor oil that I need to get rid of soon. Don't tip me off to Hoarders.  Within the past few years, I added two more 60gal auxiliary tanks to reduce the on/off cycling of the compressor on bigger jobs (sandblasting mainly, though sanding eats a ton of air too). This was one of the best decisions I’ve ever made. I put the two tanks in the “loft” of my garage. It was quite a chore getting them up there by myself, but I was eventually successful.  Here is a gratuitous shot of the other side of the garage, with the KTM and BMW gathering dust next to my eventual axle upgrades for the Scout Truck. 
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Jun 15, 2012 03:58
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Trouser Chili: The problem with *every* first generation Scout's fuel gauge dying is that there was some bizarro decision to use a non-standard sender/gauge. It is a 73 ohms empty, 10 ohms full, LINEAR setup. Apparently everyone else used a non-linear scale, and none of the senders or gauges will work. Hopefully the programmable one can figure it out, otherwise I lost a $120 gamble. I didn't get a chance to update last night because I fell asleep putting my son to bed. Here is yesterday's semi-productive update: Today started out with Doughnuts with Daddy at daycare for Father’s Day weekend.  Then it was off to Wal-Mart to buy a battery for the Scout. My old one is stuck in a motorcycle lift I bought off of Craigslist for $100 several years ago. It’s actually really nice, and probably worth that much in scrap. However, it is currently buried under axles, an engine hoist, parts, and many other things. As such, I can’t get to the battery at the moment, because I can’t move it to access the battery compartment. That battery is toast anyway. Sadly, it is a side terminal battery, and it has the bolts I need for the ground and power wires. I ended up finding some bolts and cutting them to fit. After that, I disconnected the coil wire, and periodically cranked the engine for 5-15 seconds over the course of the morning, between applying and sanding coats of body filler. It was a big day for sanding. Unlike yesterday, almost everything was done by hand today. Ugh, I forgot how tedious sanding all the little nooks and crannies was. I think I spent four hours or so sanding and touching up the body work. It turned out pretty well. There are a few small pinholes, but this isn’t a critical area, and I am tired of screwing around with it. I like to switch up alternating body filler hardener color from red to blue, since that gives me a good picture of what I have done. Anyway, here is the result. The first shot doesn’t look great, but that is mostly a trick of light. There are a few low spots, but they will be hidden anyway. Front:  Back:  Full:  Bottom:  While working on all of that, I managed to get the Scout started. It was surprisingly easy. I hooked up the coil wire, poured some gas in the carb float bowl, and it fired right up and ran perfectly on the first try. That is semi-surprising, since it was running off the five year old gas in the tank. It actually sounded really good. Here is a little video clip. It is surprising how different it sounds standing behind, as opposed to the front or side. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vqUkEOjFt8s I spent about 40 minutes cleaning everything out from under and around the Scout, and lowered it off the jack stands. The two front tires had lost their air, but luckily kept a bead. I almost forgot to tighten the lug nuts. Then I fired it up and backed it out of the garage for the first time in five years. The rotors were rusted in place, but eventually broke free. There is a skid mark the entire length of my garage for the front left tire, though. Haha. You can see the cloud of smoke fogging the neighbor’s yard. I don’t know if they were too impressed.  Hopefully I can get the primer and clear knocked out Monday and Tuesday next week, then move on to reassembly.
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Jun 16, 2012 13:15
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I wish I had a super-productive update, but yesterday was not a good day. I rearranged the garage, jacked up the driver’s side of the Scout, and masked everything off. Then I did some final sanding with 120 then 220 grit sandpaper. I shot the primer (MP182 2k urethane), and it looked surprisingly perfect. I didn’t need much primer, and accidentally mixed too much, so I put it on pretty thick. Here is my primer spray gun:  Then I went in for lunch, giving the garage a chance to air out, and the primer a chance to set up. When I came back out it looked like this:  It was a double moron mistake on my part. It was like 95 degrees outside, and I only had a “fast” hardener. When I sprayed it on thick, the heat caused the top to set up before the thick wet layers underneath had a chance to cure, trapping the gases that needed to escape. What a massive mess. I was almost ready to mothball the Scout for another five years. Time is tight, and fixing this set me back about eight hours. Before shooting the primer, I had the body work almost perfect. I knew sanding off all of the primer was going to take forever, and removing all of that material would inevitably screw up my body work underneath. I ended up having to re-skim coat a fair bit of the rocker, and eventually got it ready to shoot primer (again).  Then I carefully re-shot the primer. Of course I had a million pinholes for some unknown reason. I was pretty pissed at that point, but I got smart for once. I just took a small brush and filled in the pinholes with primer manually. It actually worked really well, and after wet-sanding the whole rocker, you can’t even tell. During the drying times today and yesterday I got to work wet-sanding panels to re-shoot the clear. I knocked out the passenger side rear quarter yesterday, and the fenders and driver’s side quarter today. I may not do any of the other panels, because the doors and top were good, and the hood may be OK too. I will have to take a closer look at the tailgate and windshield frame when I get braver. Here is a “before” shot of the driver’s side. It actually looks good in the picture because I did some test wet-sanding/buffing on the top back edge. Don’t be tricked though. It looked like a golf ball up close.  I’m going to try to do the final prep on everything tomorrow morning for the clear, then shoot the clear on Thursday morning. I learned in 2007 that shooting in the morning (say 4am if possible) is best to avoid bugs and heat. It makes a huge difference, especially on the bug issue. Hopefully the rest of this will go smoothly. At least it’s progress.
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Jun 20, 2012 03:48
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Ok, it has been a busy two days (if not as productive as I would have liked). At some point I had to do some vehicle shifting to move the Scout under my hoist to pull the hard top. You’ll notice that it isn’t centered under the hoist. I wasn’t paying attention, and I may have caused a huge chip in the quarter when it finally popped up. Or, that chip could be from the time the Scout fell off of the jack stands when I accidentally nudged it with the Datsun a few weeks ago. Anyway, there was a massive chip in the top of one quarter that I had to fix. I did the body work and brushed on some primer yesterday. I think most of the day was spent doing final prep work on everything, and scuffing all of the irregular edges and contours. It was a massive pain to get all the edges along the Rallye stripe. I originally painted white, then the green over that. So there is a little ridge where the colors change. I ended up buying some Scotch Brite pads to get all those edges, and the irregular contours in other places. That is some tedious work for both quarters and both fenders. When I quit for the day, this is how things looked for the fenders:  I don’t know what I did for the first 90 minutes today, but that is about how long it was before I finally shot some color. I am assuming it was masking and getting organized. It also took quite a while to prep the door hinges, which I had forgotten about. Those were a fiasco. This is the greatest thing ever for masking:  Once I finally had the gun loaded with color, I shot the top, middle, and bottom of rocker panel, and something wasn’t right. There was a HUGE run in the top somehow. I don’t think I overreduced it, so I think it was just me being out of practice. I forgot it would take like five or six coats to darken up, and tried to lay the color on heavy. Not to be daunted, I grabbed some paper towel and wiped the whole thing off. Then I wiped it with laquer thinner, and re-scuffed it. There were several mistakes here. I should have remasked after doing the primer, because all of the sanding trapped a bunch of dirt and debris in the masking paper, and it was kicked up when I shot the color. Oh well. Round two went much better, and it actually turned out really well. It took about 800 coats to get it dark enough, which I blame on Omni products. That is PPG’s cheapo line. Someone told me the clear was good, and I stupidly bought the basecoat too. I think it’s just like cheap house paint. It’s “cheaper,” but it covers horribly, and takes a million coats. Then you end up spending just as much to buy enough material to get the same coverage as a good product, plus you waste a ton of extra time. Blargh.   I hit the blend areas with some 800 wet sand paper, and remasked for the clear.  Luckily, I had about 1/3 of a gallon of clear left over from 2007 (and about 1/5 of a gallon of color, and a quart of primer). I didn’t have to buy any paint materials for this round, which saved a ton of dough. I ended up shooting the clear after lunch, which was around 2:00pm. That is much later than I wanted, but such is life. There was more dirt flying around than I wanted, but overall things went OK. Coverage was good, though I did somehow put a 5” run in the right quarter panel. Grrr. Here is how it ended up: I closed the garage door on top of the fans. It didn’t work as well at dust control as my previous setup, which used cardboard to block all of the non-fan space. Plus the garage was FILTHY. Oh well.   Good:  Good:  Run:  Bling (I wussed out and only painted/prepped the visible surfaces of the hinges):  Then around 4:30pm I started tearing into the Datsun, to slap on some of these goodies. I also caved in and ordered new sway bars, which should be here tomorrow. Hopefully I can knock out the suspension bushings, shocks/struts/spring, traction control arms, and sway bars in one day. Double bonus if I can swap the steering rack that is leaking like a faucet. Triple bonus if I can get the new front valence on before Sunday. I’m not banking on getting the steering or valence done, but I need to get the other stuff done tomorrow so I can get an alignment on Saturday before the autocross Sunday.  It’s actually a huge mental hurdle to have all the nitpicky paint stuff and body work done. I can wet sand and buff it once everything is reassembled. Now I need to use the little spare time I will have to start reassembly. My wife asked about the reassembly timeline, and I told her it could be on the road this summer (though with many interior items needing completion), or it could be after Christmas. I really don’t know. I am debating buying three more of the same tire/wheel combo I have on the Scout Truck, to use for this Scout. I already have one extra for the Scout Truck (the spare). That would be an OK option. Otherwise I would just get new rubber for the Rallye wheels I currently have. I just feel like I wasted money on that spare wheel/tire, and I could make use of it this way. It might be lame to have the same wheels/tires on both Scouts, but it would be practical! CatBus fucked around with this message at 03:37 on Jun 22, 2012 |
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Jun 22, 2012 03:24
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Thanks for the support! I really like that green too! I didn't get a chance to update last night because I didn't get done in the garage until around 2am. I had to get cleaned up to go to a fundraiser with my wife from 7-10pm, but then I went back out to finish. In the front I knocked out the suspension bushings, traction control bars, gutted the old struts and installed the Tokico inserts and springs, and installed the new sway bar. I ran into two issues that cost me major time, so in the rear I only had time to do the shocks/springs and sway bar. The rear bushings will have to wait for another day. My time killers were: 1) I had problems getting the right ball joint off, even with a ball joint press/puller. At one point I flipped over the castle nut and threaded it flush with the top of the ball joint to hammer without damaging the threads. Somehow, that stripped every thread off the castle nut. The nylok strut nut was also 12x1.25, so that is on as a temporary fix. 2) the captured nut for the sway bar stripped, along with the bolt. The bolt was rusted in just the wrong spot so that it couldn't catch when it was half-way tightened down, resulting in a massive mess. I ended up drilling a hole in the top of the "frame", and drilling the threads out. Then I dropped a bolt in from above and used a nut. That was much more work than it sounds. I had to get as much as possible done last night, because I had an appointment for an alignment at 7am today. I ended up getting like 3.5 hours of sleep, but it is progress! I don't know that they actually did anything with the alignment. After about 20 min the guy came in to tell me that their computer only went back to 1984, so they didn't have specs for my car. I found some generic setting online on my phone, but who knows. At least I paid the extra for unlimited alignments for one year! Now I can take it back with better settings after finishing the rear suspension bushings, and after swapping the steering rack. We'll see how things go at the autocross tomorrow! I will try to get some pictures up in the next couple days.
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Jun 24, 2012 01:47
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The Datsun didn’t blow up at autocross today, but I think the fuel pump bracket may have broken on the way home. I heard a loud “bang” while going down the freeway, and I thought someone around me had blown a tire. No one seemed to have any issues though. When I got off the freeway, I noticed the fuel pump was VERY loud. I didn’t have a chance to jack it up and check, but I am pretty sure something is up down there. Autocross went OK. I actually ran faster today, on a longer course, than I did last week. Maybe all the mods helped! Here are some of the pictures from the Datsun overhaul: Crap from inside the left front strut boot:  Front suspension bushing:  Using a ball joint press to push the sleeve out of the bushing (I then pressed the bushing out, and cut the outer sleeve out with a sawzall):  New/old front springs:  New/old rear springs:  New/old tension control rods:  New/old front sway bars (from 23 to 29mm):  New/old rear sway bars (from 20 to 22.25mm):  Wheel well shot “before” (notice the bad tension control rod bushings, and the sway bar bushings aren’t looking too hot):  Wheel well shot “after” (opposite side, but you get the idea):  Stance before and after:   Now I just need to find some time to get the rear suspension bushings done, and I will have taken care of my stack of Datsun parts (except the headliner kit). Progress will be sporadic from here out, because my “grace” period of daycare is over, and now I’ll be parenting full time until school starts back up.
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Jun 25, 2012 03:46
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Hey, if anyone out there had a lead on that piece of trim on the left front fender (between the door and wheel), I seriously need that. I also need the black piece of trim that goes above that, but that is a lower priority. The piece that goes in front of the wheel will be obsolete when I put the new bumper on, so I don't really need that (though I won't turn it down!). On a related note, Nerobro:
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Jun 25, 2012 21:45
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Nerobro posted:I'm reporting you to CPS as a perfect parent. Good job! Hah. I'll have to dig up some of the other incriminating evidence. That will put any rumors of good parenting to rest. thecobra posted:Silly kid doesn't even have the airline hooked up to that die grinder. That is a 1/4" air ratchet, but yeah, no air hooked up. He also tried to stick a screwdriver in the quick-coupler for my sandblaster. Pfft. trouser chili posted:Scout II has the same or similar problem, which is why my gauge reads 3/4 when full, and E when I still have five gallons left. ...I love how owning a Scout means also owning an ever-growing pile of parts. Oddly, I think my Scout II sender works (even with the 33gal tank). I am trying to slim down my parts horde. I just shipped a v8 radiator to UT. What a pain. I don't even think the money was worth the time/effort. I am planning to attend Nationals this year. Hopefully I'll drive the 1966 Scout up there. Hopefully. Are you going? I just got back from a week up in Wisconsin and Illinois. Before I left, I did spend a morning fitting the new bumper for the Datsun. I hate fiberglass parts, but it was cheap, and covers one of my missing trim pieces. This type of fitment is typical:  With a bit of trimming I got it to this, which is as good as it will get without adding material:  Here is the current profile view. I think it is starting to look like a Camaro:  While we were up in WI, I ran into my old boss/mentor/friend from the body shop. He had his Caddy out, and I got a shot of him next to it (holding my son, Luke). It is a “survivor” car, which is pretty impressive for WI. He has a dozen or so cars from the 1930s to 1970s, most of which are pretty cool. I really want the shoebox ford he has been working on for the past few years (no picture, sorry!):  On a semi-car related note, I got something awesome while in Chicago. We were visiting my aunt and uncle, and they had a bunch of my grandmother’s stuff stored from after her death. I knew they had taken an old tricycle that my mom and aunt used to play on back in the late 1940s/early 1950s, but last I had heard, they gave it to my uncle’s niece. They still had it, though, and now I have it.  Luke loved it. He kept calling it his “motorcycle.” He is still too little to pedal, but he still tried. I would put my foot on the back platform and scoot him around, though, and he loved that. 
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Jul 5, 2012 03:27
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Things have been pretty busy since my last update. I wish I could say that means I’ve been busy in the garage, but that is obviously not the case. I have knocked out a few small tasks, and have several crisis moments. Jumping back to July 8 (two weeks ago), there was an autocross that I was originally going to miss. Plans changed late Saturday (July 7) night, and I was ON for Sunday. My morning started spectacularly, when I couldn’t find the keys to the car, which had the key to the locked gate on my driveway. It took about five seconds to find a spare Datsun key, and about 30 minutes to find the spare gate key. “Behind schedule” is a bad way to start the day. Of course, when I was on my way out of town, the Datsun stalled on a busy road, and wouldn’t restart. There was no shoulder, so I had to coast backwards down into a subdivision. Luckily it was a Sunday morning, so traffic was light. I had the new bumper temporarily mounted, but I had not trimmed it for hood clearance, so I had to take the bumper off to get the hood open. I swapped out the ignition control module with the new one I had in my toolbox, and put the bumper back on, and it was a race to make it to the autocross before registration closed. The car was running, but it was very low on power (probably about ½). I made it to the registration window at 9:25am, just before it closed at 9:30am. There was a long-time Nissan mechanic at the event who advised me to swap over to the old ignition control module. This is the second new module, from two different manufacturers, that hasn’t worked, and I have no idea why. Pulling the bumper again, and swapping over the old ICM, ate up most of the walk-around time, so I only got to walk the course twice. At least the car was running, with the original power. There were two heats, and I was running in the first. The Datsun died when I got to my spot on the grid, but started and kept running OK. Then, during my first two runs I noticed it stalling. On the first run I thought it was the ICM cutting out, but on the second run I realized it was only stalling on long left-hand turns. I had 1/8 of a tank of gas, but apparently that wasn’t enough. I made the executive decision to try to run to the gas station between my second and third runs. That worked out OK, and I had no issues for the rest of the day. When I got home, I noticed the fuel pump was SCREAMING. It had done the same thing after the last event, as well. The next day I needed to pull both Scouts out of the garage to get the Datsun in to work on it, but my brand new battery in the Scout II was flat dead. Apparently I had left the ignition in the “on” position for five days. The charger wouldn’t even get it past zero volts. The good news was that I still had the receipt from Wal-Mart. The bad news was, my wife had the keys to my Scion, and she took her CRV. I didn’t want to take the Datsun, but there was no other option. Of course, it stalled in the middle of three lanes, in heavy traffic, and I couldn’t get it started. Eventually a police officer pulled up behind me, and I got out and popped the hood (as high as it would go, since the bumper still wasn’t trimmed) and jiggled some wires. By divine intervention, it started back up, and I was off. It only stalled two more times in traffic, and I got my battery for the Scout. I was frustrated. When I got home, I quadrupled-checked the part numbers on the distributor and ignition control modules (new and old) and they all matched what they should be. I decided to start looking for problems in the fuel system. I knew the car had been sitting, but the previous owner told me he had dropped the tank, had it flushed, and put in a new fuel pump and lines. I pulled the fittings on either side of the pump, and everything looked OK. I pulled the top line on the filter (in the engine compartment), which resulted in a fountain of crystal clear gasoline since there was still pressure in the line. I pulled the bottom line, and horror poured out. I drained the filter into a couple spray can caps, and cut the filter open to get a look at it (it is a sealed metal filter). Here’s what it looked like:  If that wasn’t my problem, it was still a problem, and it needed to be resolved. This definitely explains the screaming fuel pump after getting off the freeway. It could possibly explain some of my stalling problems. It doesn’t explain why I have swapped in two different new ignition control modules, and neither has worked correctly. The next evening I flushed the lines and put in a new filter. I’ll change that filter out in a couple weeks. The previous owner obviously did not flush the lines from the pump to the filter (though the filter looked new, so that may have been changed). I haven’t had a chance to do any test-runs, but I left it running in the garage for a while and it didn’t stall (not that it means anything). That is where I left off on the Datsun last week.
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Jul 19, 2012 20:39
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Back in April, I did a dual sport ride in Indiana on the KTM. It made me want to ride some of my local terrain again, so a friend and I did some pre-running of some of the stuff I had mapped out in 2005. In the summer of 2005, I went out almost every day on my KTM, with spare gas strapped to the back, and rode around all day exploring on and off road. I had a primitive Garmin GPS 12, and some USGS maps that I printed off of the internet and taped together. I would ride all day, then extract the track log (just a line, no maps). Then I would overlay the track on the maps in Photoshop to figure out where I had been. It was tedious, but it’s the only way I could identify many of the unnamed and unmapped county roads. Here is most of what I mapped out: http://matson.home.insightbb.com/route_full.png The last time I had been out there was 2008, and several things had been gated off or re-routed, but I had a pretty good idea of what we could do. I declared that I would organize a dual sport ride some time in July, and eventually I had to make good on that promise. I posted a thread on Advrider with the ride scheduled for Sunday, July 15, opening it up to interested riders: http://advrider.com/forums/showthread.php?t=803526 I decided to pre-ride a modified route on Saturday (July 14, my birthday). I told my wife I would be out about four or five hours, but the best laid plans… 27 miles into the ride I was feeling pretty good:  30 miles into the ride my chain snapped:  I walked up and down the gravel road for about 30 minutes looking for pieces, and actually found a master link, the clip (but not the piece under the clip), and several tiny x-rings. I actually had two extra master links in my toolkit. BUT, as you may notice in the picture, one of the male links snapped somehow, and I didn’t have a chain breaker on me. I ended up hiking about a mile uphill, and found a kid who directed me to a house where I was able to use a grinder to remove the pin for that link. Then I hiked back and reinstalled everything. I forgot to tighten the bolts on the front sprocket cover, so those disappeared, but I had the cover at least. With 90 minutes lost to the chain fiasco, and 80 miles to go, I hopped to it. The rest of the day was pretty uneventful, until I hit about mile 85. I was coming around a sharp bend, and there used to be a big red covered bridge on the side of the road before the turn. I did a double-take to confirm there was no bridge, and when I turned around, there was a huge pothole in my line. I went wide of the pothole, but then there was a huge chunk of the road missing along the outside line. I couldn’t cut back in, so I decided to just shoot offroad, but my back tire caught the edge of the hole, throwing me offroad into a tank slapper. I was doing an easy 45 mph or so, and slid forever. Luckily, it was deep grass and wet ground, and I had been thrown mostly off the pavement. The view of where the bike stopped from the missing pavement:  Please replace your divots:  I think the bike eventually went high-side, and I fell on top of it, but it just happened too fast to recall clearly. I got very lucky. One of my handguards sheared off at the bar mount, my front fender broke in half, and my rear right turn signal ripped off. I had a decent gouge in my chest-protector, and a chip in the chin portion of my helmet (probably from hitting the bars, mirror, or GPS). That’s it. I rode the bike the rest of the way home. My 4-5 hour trip turned into 6.5 hours. I had problems with high engine temps all day, too. When I got home, I decided to do some maintenance. I put in the new battery (tired of kick-starting it for the past few years), fixed the computer fan I had on the right radiator, and added one on the left radiator. I also noticed the coolant was way low, so I topped that off, changed the air filter, and put on an old chain I had sitting around. Then I rigged up the handguard and stitched the fender together with zip ties. Bang: Like a new bike My dual sport route can vary greatly in difficulty based on the amount of rain we’ve had. KY has been in a drought for several months, but of course it started raining here on the Wednesday before my Sunday ride. It was even raining Sunday morning, so I was pretty worried. Luckily, things went really well. Eight guys showed up, and everyone made it through the day. We had a few mechanical issues (I broke a shift lever, a DRZ cut a coolant hose, some bikes ran out of gas and needed some from the big-tankers, etc.). Mainly due to those issues, and a non-starting two-stroke, the ride took around eight hours, but everyone had a good time. Here we are crossing the KY river on the Valley View Ferry: 
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Jul 19, 2012 21:06
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I forgot to mention it before, but I did find one other weird thing on the Datsun. There is a burned fusible link for the accessory circuit. It seems to carry voltage OK, and the terminals have welded themselves in place, so I don’t know if it is worth “fixing.” I guess a fix would be putting in a new piece of wire with the same gauge as the old piece (though I have no way to find out what that was). My radio doesn’t work, but I doubt that is because of this fusible link (though it may have caused the fusible link burnout!?). Anyway, I can’t get the old piece out, even if I wanted to fix it. It just connects two spade terminals. Yesterday, I got it in my head that I should paint the new bumper for the Datsun. Many I hate fiberglass panels. Horrible fitment, wavey as hell, and tons of pinholes in the gel coat. I got a deal on this bumper because it had two broken corners:   The original fit (picture from earlier): With a little grinding the fit still wasn’t great(picture from earlier) : When I fiberglassed the corners, I decided to fix the fit along the fender as well. This is what I ended up with:   Then I wet-sanded the whole thing, spot-repaired a bunch of bad gel-coat, and sprayed on a few coats of urethane 2k. Then I wet-sanded that and shot the white. It turned out OK. I think the color is off, but I’m not too worried. The white gel-coat was a different white, and the car looked OK. Hopefully a “matched” color will be a closer fit. I didn’t have a chance to test-fit it today, but maybe tomorrow I will have a few minutes.  In unrelated news, I finally caved in and bought some wheel dollies. I was just about to buy the cheapo 2/$50 set where you have to jack up the car, but I got an email coupon for these for $65 each:  They are pretty awesome. Today I got an email with a coupon for 20% off an entire purchase, and I am thinking about picking up a couple retractable hose reels so I don’t have to step/roll/trip over my air hoses all the time.
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Jul 19, 2012 21:21
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Well, progress has been made. To most people, this will probably seem like the biggest update in the history of the project, but it was only like four hours of work. I went to the only "backwoods" local junkyard, with the knowledge that they had a Scout II sitting out in the grass. I was trying to assemble the doors for my Scout II, but there were three small pieces missing. The junkyard was the fastest way to solve that problem. I ended up pulling both doors, the hood, rear liftgate, turn signals, brake lights, etc., and took them home for the surprisingly reasonable sum of $200. It got HOT, fast. The sun was blazing down, and the heat index was over 100F by around 11:30am. I had brought a bottle of water, but that didn't last long. I was soaked from head to toe in sweat, then I wasted like 45 minutes digging around in the tall grass after dropping both of the phillips bits in my toolbox. The last 90 or so minutes was spent working for around one minute, then laying down for like five minutes. I was almost blacking out every time I stood up(but too dumb to stop). Anyway, I made it home OK.  The Scout Truck has some crazy rattling noise that I think is the throwout bearing flopping around. When I lightly depress the clutch pedal, the noise stops. Otherwise, there is an erratic rattling that is pretty loud. I really don’t want to have to pull that transfer case and transmission again. Yesterday, my friend came over to help work on the Scout II. We got both doors assembled (except glass and handles), and the hood, fenders, windshield frame (that I had pre-assembled), hard top, and doors on the truck. It is starting to look like a vehicle again. Sorry for the bad pictures, things have been BUSY. (that is my friend in the picture)  In other news, today was another autocross, and another day with a broken-down Datsun. I swapped over to the new ignition control module on the side of the road, and ran the day with it. The power was down at least 50hp, and the car was not running well, but it was running (unlike the random stalling with the other ignition control module). I have no idea what to do about this problem. Two new units, from two different manufacturers, both didn’t work. Swapping them out immediately allows the car to start, but it is not running correctly. The part numbers seem correct for this distributor. Argh. At $100/each for the modules, this is getting old. I need to find a known-working old one to swap over.
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Jul 30, 2012 04:47
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Poisonlizard posted:This, Does it read a PIP or tach signal from the distributor? An intermittent failure on a pip sensor will cause pretty much the problems you are describing. That was a good lead, but I think that only the turbo models had a CAS. I did some continued digging, and I think the ignition control module I have is for a four cylinder Datsun of the same time period. Everything online says it is for 1982-1984 Datsun, and Rock Auto said it was for 280zx, BUT it doesn't work. Looking around, the four cylinder ICM looks exactly the same, but has different part numbers. This unit is not available anymore on the Rock Auto site, and does not seem to be a version of the LX554 ignition module that all of the other aftermarket vendors appear to use. That could explain why my current ignition control module causes slight misfiring, and drops my power by about 30% (it is trying to run my 6cyl engine as a 4cyl). I found an LX554 on ebay for $40. Hopefully it arrives before the next autocross, and hopefully it fixes my problem! I am guessing the first ignition control module I ordered was another variation of the one I currently have (this one is branded Borg Warner, and I don't remember what the other one was). Neither was a cross-referenced with the LX554. We'll see. Keep your fingers crossed for me.
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Jul 31, 2012 04:48
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extreme_accordion posted:Your 280ZX 2+2 - what exact model and year is it? It is a 1982 280zx 2+2 non-turbo. I purchased this through partsgeek back in April: http://www.amazon.com/Forecast-W013...e&vehicleType=5 Then ordered this through Rock Auto after the partsgeek module did not work (the picture is wrong, but the part number is correct): http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/co...C1982&carId=002 Both of those are listed as working with my car, but both did not. The first would not allow the car to run above about 3k RPM, the second allows the car to run, but it is WAY down on power and seems to misfire. Now I just ordered a Standard Motor Products LX554 (which seems to be the unit that other manufacturers rebrand): http://www.ebay.com/itm/200771151096 Who knows if the ebay module is actually a Standard Motor Products unit, but it definitely says in the description that it IS. I sure hope so, and I hope this solves my problem. I have checked the part number on my distributor and old ignition control module, and they are correct for a 1982 Datsun 280zx, so it isn't a case where someone swapped in a 1981 distributor at some point (I think 1981 and earlier had a different setup).
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Aug 1, 2012 01:38
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We've been on vacation in Hilton Head, SC, all week, so obviously all I can do is think about the things I should be doing in the garage At the beginning of the month I saw this on Craigslist and wanted it (BMW 2002 done up rally style): http://louisville.craigslist.org/cto/3101109441.html It's overpriced by about $2000, but it's cool. I really like the look. I actually texted the guy, and he said the drivetrain/brakes/suspension were all stock, so it is just a cosmetic mod. Having read up on things, I think I would be much better off with the 2002tii. I've been watching this one in MN for $7k, and it even has a spare engine: http://minneapolis.craigslist.org/hnp/cto/3116959864.html Sadly, my Datsun isn't worth anything, and there is no way I can convince my wife that I need a BMW. My main issues with the Datsun (other than the ignition issue) are: 1) Heavy. ~3k lbs, and no way to cut significant weight (plus I don't want to tear up a fairly nice interior). 2) Gutless. ~145hp from the factory. I could do a turbo swap, but this engine only has 75k miles, and I don't feel like screwing around (even if a swap could cost as little as $600 - http://louisville.craigslist.org/cto/3173628456.html ). 3) Limited suspension options (coilover conversions for the front are weld-in only. BLAH.) 4) Under-braked from the factory. It has four wheel discs, but they are apparently too small and fade very quickly. This can be resolved, but again, that takes time, effort, and money that I don't want to sink into the car. 5) HUGE. There is a mile of car in front of the front wheels, and behind the back wheels. Why did they do this!? The 2+2 turns that flaw into a school bus situation. 6) Cheap. Any money I put into the car is wasted. I paid $500, and I have put about $3k more into it, and that puts me seriously in the red on this car. It mysteriously has a salvage title (the previous owner said it was a re-issue due to the previous-previous owner's wife having the title after a divorce), which basically cuts the value to zero. Without the salvage title, it is probably a $2500 car. I bought it because it was too cheap to pass up. I started autocrossing it to make use of it, and now I wish I had a better platform. Anyway, we've all been there with the "grass is greener" mindset. I'm sure I would regret selling it down the road, especially since it has a bulletproof drivetrain and is a comfortable, OK looking car. My time is ridiculously stretched thin right now, and I need to just stick with this car as a reliable (seventh) vehicle and focus on getting the Scout II reassembled. Maybe I'll feel better about the Datsun if this ignition issue gets resolved. That rally-style BMW 2002 does look awesome though 
CatBus fucked around with this message at 02:44 on Aug 3, 2012 |
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Aug 3, 2012 02:42
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Just a quick update: I drove ten hours home today, and the ignition module was here. I was skeptical that it would actually be a legit Standard Motor Products module, since it was only $40 shipped (and every other one was $250). It was wrapped in newspaper in an envelope, and a little scratched up, but it was branded Standard Motor Products, and the connection pins did not have any scratches indicating that it had been installed in another car. After unpacking my wife's CRV from the trip, I swapped in the new ignition module into the Datsun and zipped around the neighborhood. The car didn't stall out on me, and the power seemed good, so I will keep my fingers crossed! Hopefully this ignition problem is FINALLY solved after eight months... Also, I texted about that turbo parts car. If I can talk him down a bit, I am going to snag it and at least sit on the turbo setup until I need it. I have a friend with a few Datsuns who said that if I paid for the car, he would pick it up and pull the parts I need, if he could have the rest of the car. That would actually be a very good deal for me at the moment, because I have zero spare time. Keep your fingers crossed!
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Aug 4, 2012 03:24
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Here are a few quick updates. I haven’t had much time to get anything significant done, but I have been trying to keep plugging away. Scout Truck: There is a rattling from the transmission area at idle and while driving, when the clutch is OUT. If I push the clutch pedal a little, the noise stops. I think the throwout bearing is rattling against the front of the transmission. Hopefully, that is all that is wrong. I finally sold the hard top and transmission from the parts Scout, so that frees up some space in the back yard. Plus, I met two semi-local Scout guys. Datsun: I finally did replaced the rear suspension bushings. It wasn’t as bad as I expected, but it still sucked. Then I had problems re-bleeding the brake system. Everything is OK now. While I was down there, I sanded, primed, and spray painted the suspension members, diff, oil pan, and other items in the front that needed some paint. Rear suspension arm before (I can’t really fathom how little rust this car has, all things considered):  Arm out, bushing closeup:  The sleeves are torture. I ended up using the same technique as I had used on the front: sawzall through and chisel out. It still SUCKED.  I did an autox in Louisville a couple weeks ago, and after the return trip I noticed that the fuel pump was sounding a little loud again. I wonder if the filter is getting clogged again already (there aren't any chunks, just very fine particulate). I have an extra fuel filter, so I will swap it when I get a chance. In super-moron Datsun news, I arranged to buy the parts “turbo” Datsun sight-unseen, and arranged to have it picked up by a friend’s dad. The deal was, I would pay for the car ($425), and he would pick it up, pull the turbo stuff for me, and he could have the rest of the car. Well, he picked it up, paid for it, and took it home. Then a couple days later I got a call from him that the car had an auto transmission, and he had wanted a spare manual transmission (I hadn’t even considered the car could be an auto – which was dumb in hindsight). Then I got a call a week later that the car isn’t even a turbo car. I’m not sure how the guy who picked it up (a retired helicopter pilot) couldn’t spot that it was an automatic, and not a turbo, when he picked it up, but that is still my fault for not getting better pictures, and not driving the three hours each way to look at it. I assumed no seller could be that dumb (I don’t think he was intentionally dishonest), and I never considered that the guy picking it up wouldn’t take a look at the car. Anyway, I’m not blaming anyone except me. I’m currently out the $425, plus $175 I paid locally for a manual transmission (since that’s what the guy who picked the car up wanted), plus about $150 in transportation fees. The car is a piece of crap (I haven’t actually seen it in person, still), and there isn’t much worth saving. The diff is an R180, all the body panels suck. He may pull the engine as a spare core for himself. He said he will buy the manual transmission off me. I will probably try to sell the auto trans and wheels. Then there is some scrap value to the car. I’ll probably be out about $200 when it’s all said and done. Lesson learned. I’m a moron. Scout II: This is a tough one. I started assembling the front grille section, and noticed the paint seemed WAY off. Then I panicked, sanded it, resprayed the color, and recleared (after having to run to buy more clear). That sucked. Anyway, I checked my pictures from 2007, and the front metal pieces were originally shot in the wrong color AND resprayed the correct color at the time. I’m not sure why they were still so off. Before (I had to pull the hood again to get clearance for the front pieces and their bolts):  After:  I cleaned up and sprayed the headlight trim pieces, since they looked horrible. They really need to be replaced. Before:  After  Assembled:  I also dug out all of the hinges, sliders, latches, etc. for the tailgate and liftgate, to sand/prime/paint, along with painting a bunch of bolts. It sucks putting a car back together with ugly rusty bolts. I haven’t taken a picture of the other pieces, but here is how I painted the bolt heads:  MISC: Also, in big news, there was a HUGE price drop for that BMW “rally” clone in Louisville (pictured earlier in the thread) from the original $7k, to $6k, then on Sunday night $4500. I called and scheduled to see it Monday (after finding a working number in an older ad, since he typed it incorrectly in the revised ad). It was no small feat scrambling to get $4500 cash together on a Sunday night/Monday (Labor Day). My wife and I hopped in the car Monday afternoon, with our two year old son, to meet the seller at a McDonalds about five minutes from his house (~2 hours from mine). We were sitting in a booth, waiting for him to pull up, and my wife said, “he just pulled in, and the police are following him.” Apparently he had been doing 70mph in a 35, and wasn’t wearing a seatbelt. Somehow, he didn’t get a ticket. The seller was a high school kid who had “restored” the car with his dad. In the pictures, the car looks awesome. When I walked up to it, I noticed the body work was a bit rough, but maybe OK. I checked some of the usual rust areas, and there was some patching, but things looked mostly OK. They had told me the original car was totally rust free. Then I looked under the car, and it was like a scene out of a horror movie. Thousands of screws holding in patch panels covering everything from the firewall back. EVERY suspension component was horribly rusted, and the front frame sections were gone in places. We took a quick ride around the parking lot, and the transmission rattled so loudly that I felt sorry for it. I think it may have been a bad guibo, since it supposedly shifted and drove fine. It just made tons of noise idling and in every gear. Needless to say, I passed on the car. It’s too bad, because if it was as good as I had been told, it would have been an absolute steal on an awesome car. Sadly, it was a piece of junk. At least it saves me the trouble of trying to sell the Datsun, and being depressed that it isn’t worth anything. I think I just need to start saving up for an LS1 swap in the Datsun. As if I need another project. What I need right now is an extra set of hands to help get the hood back on my Scout II, along with the tailgate, liftgate, and hard top windows. Then it’s just interior assembly and it is “done.” Hm. IH Scout Nationals are this weekend, and I’m going to drive up. It’s about three hours away, and I’m going to have to take my son, since my wife has to work. That means I won’t be driving the Scout Truck, since I can’t risk breaking down (or killing us both in a fiery collision). I feel like finding the guys who sold me a mislabeled door jamb for $75 last year, and punching them in the face. I’ll probably just buy more of their repair panels. Baby #2 is due in January (another boy). That will be a transition from being able to lie to myself and say I can sometimes do the things I want to do, to just plain never having any time to do anything I want to do. Such is life. I know I’m pathetic. CatBus fucked around with this message at 03:37 on Sep 5, 2012 |
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Sep 5, 2012 03:29
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I actually have some progress to report, but here is some random crap first: 1) One of my former students is a mechanic, and a guy he works with has a 400+ whp Scion FR-S (along with a tuning company out of Louisvilly, KY – Dynostay). I was over at the shop, and the car was out back, so I took a picture. I am pretty impressed it has held up so well to 16psi of boost on stock internals and a stock head gasket (2000+ miles so far).  2) I pulled out my welder the other day, and my welding cart made me think of the hellaflush thread. It’s unintentional, but uncanny.  3) I was shuffling cars over the weekend, and my son pushed his “truck” into the garage to take a look at it. He said it was “broken.” 
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Oct 18, 2012 02:15
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From least to most interesting, here I go: I ordered a repop battery tray for the Scout Truck, and of course it was WAY too small for my battery (this is the fourth repop item I have bought from the same outfit in Ohio, and the fourth thing that required modification to fit in any reasonable way). I have no clue why. I finally got around to cutting off the front edge and welding on an extension.  I also cleaned up the area where it goes, because there is quite a bit of surface rust. Of course, once I got everything back in place I found out it was still too narrow in the other direction. That means it will be back out for another round of welding at a later date. It was a hectic day, and I wouldn’t have had time to do it anyway.  I have been making some slow progress on the Scout. The hood is back on, the front clip is assembled, and I wanted to empty off my parts rack. This meant assembling the rear liftgate and tailgate, and installing the windows in the hard top. The windows went surprisingly painlessly using the rope trick. I had my wife hold/push the window into the opening while I pulled out the rope, and they went in with minimal effort:  When I went to assemble the tailgate, I noticed that the retaining clip for the release button was missing. It took a couple tries to make a new one, but the final product turned out OK:  With everything assembled, it wasn’t too bad throwing the parts back into place. I had to recruit my wife to help, because it just wasn’t possible to install the lifgate or tailgate alone. So, here is the current state of things:      So, that doesn’t leave too much for the exterior. All that remains is: 1) Install bumpers 2) Install mirrors 3) Install roof rack 4) Refinish/install license plate rack 5) Install tail lights 6) Buff the crap out of everything. Then it’s on to the interior! That’s progress. It is starting to look like a Scout again.
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Oct 18, 2012 02:26
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Seat Safety Switch posted:Did you fix it? I actually did have to fix it a few weeks ago, because of a horrible design flaw. The front wheel posts slide into a plastic bushing, and the only thing preventing them from pushing through is two pinches in the steel rod. Of course, any pressure on the front of the truck pushes them right through, and chews up the bushing. I welded some washers on there to keep them from going through again. This thing is really too big. The smaller red and yellow cars are a much better size. This was a gift, though. Live and learn. leica posted:Don't worry, you'll just have to put stuff on hold for a few years until they're ready to help you, then before you know it you'll have their projects in your garage He wants to help now, but rubbing sticks on the car, and filling the exhaust with rocks isn't helping too mugh trouser chili posted:Do yourself a favor, if you are thinking about a carpet kit, don't do it. I have actually been kicking myself a little for building the floor and wheel wells, because I know an aftermarket carpet kit won't fit. If the aftermarket kits suck, maybe I shouldn't feel too bad? What have you seen/heard? Is there a good way to DIY carpet in a vehicle?
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Oct 19, 2012 00:27
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leica posted:What I did on my last Suzuki Samurai (and what lots of Wrangler owners do) is rhino line the floors, and in the back all the way up the sides and over the wheel wells like a truck bed. I always left the drain plugs out and used all weather floor mats to keep the dirt in one place and would shake them out when full, then just hose out the rest like chili said. Once you rhino line a truck/jeep you'll never go back to carpet, I would do both your trucks. I herculined my Wrangler in 2004 or so, and drove it like that until I sold it last year. While the durability was good, it provided no sound and no heat barrier. My feet would roast on longer trips. That water thing is a likely issue, so carpet may not be a good idea. Wet carpet was the driving force motivating me to herculine the Jeep. I may look into some of the spray on heat/sound deadener products like Lizard Skin. They are pretty expensive, though.
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Oct 19, 2012 12:30
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I was going to let this slip into archives, but there is going to be an important development on Saturday (hopefully). I may have another car arriving, and it is a project! In the mean time, here is a mini-update on the Scout. In late November I continued assembly, and I swapped over the tires/wheels from the Scout Truck. It looks pretty awesome, but runs like crap. I decided that I either need to buy a new carb, or rebuild the existing carb, a pandora's box known as the Carter Thermoquad. From what I've read, the standard operating procedure for the Thermoquad was to remove them from new vehicles and throw them out, because they suck, and parts didn't exist (they have a plastic body). Recently, many people in the Scout community have decided it is the best carb for the job, and rebuild info has become more available. I bought all the rebuild parts and tore it apart, and it's still in pieces because I've been crazy busy. Then child #2 arrive on 12/24/2012, three weeks early. He is luckily doing well, but everyone has been sick with various illness, and total lack of sleep since then. I didn't really want another project, and the now-reliable-if-fat-and-slow Datsun would have been the smart choice for autox this year. However, something came up. That's AI. I will hopefully update this weekend. Until then, here is a picture of the Scout II with my wheels/tires from the Scout Truck.
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Jan 17, 2013 13:06
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You Am I posted:I saw one of those Scout Rallye 4WDs the other day on my road. However it seemed to be on a longer wheelbase than yours, but still a three door. It was baby blue, and looked as good as your Scout. There is an IH Travelall, which shared all of the front sheetmetal, but had a longer wheelbase. They were kind of an IH version of the Suburban. I'm guessing that is what you saw. Boaz MacPhereson posted:That looks drat fine. How much work outside of a carb rebuild is left on this? That is a tricky question. Once the carb is done, I still need to do something with the interior for sound/heat. I am still thinking about spray-in products. So really, make some brackets for the rear bumper, attach the side-view mirrors, and sort out what to do with the interior. It doesn't sound like much, and it probably isn't, but I can't really wrap my mind around the idea of it being back on the road. It's weird. I guess I need to get some decent tires, since the other ones I have (not the ones in the picture) are probably 25 years old.
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Jan 18, 2013 01:00
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Well, it arrived today. "It" is a 1976 BMW 2002.  The good: -5 speed conversion already done -Complete tii swap (trailing arms, fuel system, struts, bigger vented brakes, engine, etc.) -Supposedly rebuilt engine with cam upgrade, etc. -Rot free. NO rust holes. -Upgraded sway bars -Cheap ($2500) + $700 shipping -Round tail light panel swap (from 1973 and earlier cars) The bad: -Does not currently run ("ran when parked") -Needs some paint and body work Here are a few more pictures:      It was a deal I couldn't pass up. I wanted a 2002tii, but the funds simply weren't there (an OK example with a bit of rust is $10k+). I decided I would have to find a bad-paint, rust free, non-runner. This came up. I normally ignore the 1974+ cars because I don't like the square tail lights. This solved all of my problems at once. This means that the Datsun has to go. The Datsun stressed me out because any money I put into it was wasted (no resale), and I really don't like the body style that much. Plus, a 3000lb car with 145hp just doesn't cut it for me. The 2002 isn't a powerhouse, but it should have similar power, while weighing in about 800-1000lbs lighter. Plus, I love the body style. The bumpers have to go, obviously. Now I just need to find some time to get this project moving. So that's my update. CatBus fucked around with this message at 23:41 on Jan 19, 2013 |
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Jan 19, 2013 23:38
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The S14 swap is pretty much impossible, even if I wanted to. Questionable engines are going for like $5k, and it is supposedly like $10k to rebuild one. I was shooting for a tii because of the extra hp, so if this runs, I'm planning to stick with it. Earlier in the thread I linked to a M20 swapped car in CO. I think that was a really good deal, but the timing was bad. On the one hand, I will miss the Datsun. On the other hand, this is a more viable platform, and I like the body style much more. I just don't like pointy cars. The Datsun was just too good a deal to pass up (though I ended up dumping a bunch of cash in upgrades that I needed). I am hoping I can get about $3k out of it (I have about $4k in it at this point). I wish I had some updates, but I have been sick since Thursday. I haven't even had the energy to go out and look at the car since it was delivered on Saturday. That is how sick I am. BLAH. In terms of priorities, I guess I will pressure wash the engine bay/engine, then see about getting it started. If/when I can get it running, then I will decide what to do next.
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Jan 21, 2013 15:39
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| # ¿ Apr 27, 2024 06:54 |
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Well, here's an update: It actually runs. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M0FZRj8znAI The car has been sitting in my driveway for ten days or so, and due to the new baby and the plague of illness that devoured my house, I haven't even had five seconds to go outside and look at it. Today after work I went out in the rain and hooked up a battery, knowing I only had about an hour to do some investigation. After quite a bit of poking around and cranking, it actually started and ran (even on 6+ year old gas, somehow). I even put it in gear and pulled it forward a little. When the previous owner says, "It should run with some work." He never had it running, but said the guy before him did. Usually that pans out as a rod through the block or something. There was serious engine movement when it first started, so I have a feeling there is a broken engine mount. There is an aftermarket HEI module, but the stock pickup coil is just grounded to the body through a giant resistor (???). There was a panic moment where there was a continual electrical-arc noise, even with the key out. Some animal had chewed the wire from the HEI module to the distributor, and it was arcing to the HEI module continuously (I need to check that, because maybe it is wired always-hot if the key didn't turn it off...). The wiring is a mess overall. The fuel pump sounded pretty sick, but seemed to work. The oil looked and smelled horrible, so I need to change that asap. Overall, I am pretty psyched about getting it running. Anyway, hooray! Once I have more time I would like to try to drive it around the block. Then I will pull the front struts and ship them off to Ground Control for a coilover conversion: http://www.ground-control-store.com/products/description.php/II=690/CA=281 The price is steep, but I just don't have the time to screw around with a DIY conversion and cobbled together setup at this point. I am planning to paint it during the first week in April (Spring Break). Hopefully things progress in a smooth manner! In Datsun news, I am hoping one of the guys who I let co-drive it at autox will buy it.
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Jan 29, 2013 01:32
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