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Enough backstory, now for the car. As mentioned, I picked it up over the Christmas break from the family home up north, being that it has been used sporadically I put aside a few days to go over every nut and bolt to be sure the trip back to Christchurch would be uneventful. First up, a few small jobs... Sort the petrol smell: The original rubber joiner had given up years ago meaning the tank couldn't be filled past halfway, a crowd in the west island have reproduced them so out with old, in with the new Then came a tune of the engine, I had been nervous about this as i've never touched SU style carbs, turns out they're easy, plus my learning was made faster by having a full set spare to look at. The engine also has a mysterious click from about #2 or 3, I have adjusted the valves but it still doesn't change, oddly it comes and goes, is mildly engine temp dependant and there is good compression on all four, for sure something that will need more digging..... The eagle eyed 510 spotters will notice the brake master setup is not correct, having be swapped out for a different style for race duties. for now I will run with these until I get the original rebuilt and cleaned up. With mechanicals looking ready for a drive I moved onto the interior, how about the stolen dashboard you say? well as luck would have it, a history of writing off Datsuns racing had left my father with just enough bits to kit the car out as required, he even produced a full set of badges that I now have tucked away awaiting some modern technology for reproduction. The carpet was very much in fine race spec consisting of two or three coats of red paint, in order to prevent my girlfriend from running off halfway back I needed something to muffle the road noise, once again the family parts warehouse presented a front carpet in the most delightful shade of poo brown, matched with carefully positioned black mats to cover the tears a more suitable environment to conversation was produced. Yup, white interior, far better suited to summer! With everything packed and a torn bit of envelope to suppress the steering wheel vibration we headed south, we both held our breath over the Cook strait as the Datsun met salt air and stumbled on start up leaving the ferry, incidentally some muppet had forgotten to fully set the distributor after resetting the timing and had come loose, sorting that we drove on to Marahau for a bbq with Alex and Hannah. On stern advice we reluctantly drove over the Takaka hill, well actually I have been fizzing to do this for a long time and boy was it fun, even with 50km speed restrictions and road works its gotta be one of the best drives in the country polished off with an epic view. And that dumps us back home nice and safe. So plans from here? I was planning on a full restoration beginning this winter, the paintwork is pretty rough from being done for the track but i'm just enjoying driving it too much to take it off the road for any considerable time, there are a few things to start with: The engine tick, it may just be me but I want to dig further just in case I have a side draft manifold and throttle bodies, efi was also on the plans, but SU's just drive so nice and the fuel economy is pretty reasonable. Replace a broken shaft spring on the rear carb - this is causing the idle to not fully drop occasionally, no biggie, but sometimes irritating. Complete the CAD models of the badges and get some replicas made, this way I don't have to cry if they fall off/get broken. Get around to picking up a 5 speed or fit the 3.5 diff in the shed, 3500rpm cruise is a tad loud for my increasing age! Repair the split dash, irritates me a bunch looking at it Paint up a few potential rust spots. Actually decide what colour the carpets should be and source new front and rear Polish up the chrome Clean up the wheels Source new window rubbers so the window trims can be installed. While the list is long of potential performance upgrades, I'm not keen on going too far from factory with it and any modifications that can't be reverted to factory are off limits. Long term it really does need a repaint, but the BRE colours are growing on me and the aged look is reflective of why I brought it, for driving!

Haha, funny you say that, many years ago my father wanted a 125, turned out they were too expensive for him and he had to settle for a 1600....

Friday update. Dropped car off at certifier the day before Waitangi day. The car only got pulled up on the way the rear brake hoses were run. (I guessed it would fail on this). Everything else was sweet. The certifier was so happy with the way it was done he brought forward the Compliance check which was done last Friday. Compliance guy had a slightly bigger list but nothing major. - Align headlights - RH wheel rubbing (center steering rack) - Bride seat fouling on seatbelt stalk (there is some adjustment to clear this) - Repair gouge on inside of LF wheel So in short nothing major! Seeing as I'm back in full swing at work I gave the guys at the cert place the go ahead to remedy everything but the wheel. I dropped this off to a trusted repairer yesterday and should get it back next week. So depending on how long it takes for the cert plate to arrive the car should be all legal within the next couple of weeks, happy days! Goal of making Toyotafest this year is looking good.

I had the same thought, gasket has been replaced, I'm not quite ready to rule it out though as it is the most likely origin, now with a fresh gasket any leak should be obvious.

Agree on both counts. Had an initially intermittent tick on my Cressida from the gasket/

I really think you need to keep those racing colours Engine tick- exhaust gasket? I had that on the samurai.

This car has been a long time in the making acquiring, but being the descendant of an original Datsun foamer, it could be said it was my destiny..... The car being a 1972 Datsun 1600sss, the back story? well, take a seat..... 20 years ago the car in question was owned by a young man in Palmerston North, being an easy target it was stolen and taken on a joyride, thankfully once they had had their thrills it was abandoned to be recovered by the boys in blue, but the good luck didn't last, while in impound some scrots jumped the fence and stripped her of all the fancy sss interior, with the badges, steering wheel and dash board gone, there was not much left to identify it as the performance upgrade intended by the factory. Being the Datsun man he is, when my father got word of it being up for grabs he beelined for the impound yard for a nosey, even though the interior had been stripped, the body was in fairly good shape and for a price that we'd all love to pay now, he loaded it onto a trailer and tucked it up under a tarp in the back lawn. At this stage he had a standard 1600 set up as a track car for competing in classic classes at Manfield & car club sprints, but with a teenage family, i'm sure restoration of the sss was still a long way off. Here's a younger me in the 1600 race car in the early 2000s during a carclub motorkhana, most likely the first time I drove a 1600 too! Somewhere in the mid 2000s the race car got close and personal with the tyre wall at the end of the back straight at Manfield, coming out very much second best a donor shell was required, with the sss being in pretty good shape it was quickly fitted out with all the bits and went on to serve race duties for a number of years, thankfully my father realised that sss body shells were getting hard to find and so when a standard shell popped up cheap, he brought that to convert to a more modern safety standard and the sss was reunited with standard parts and retired to weekend road duties. As all this unfolded, I left home, traveled the world, invested heavily in Ladas, eventually to settle in the Datsun capital of NZ, Christchurch. Two years ago the stars aligned on a SAR training exercise and while stocking up on pies in Fairlie, I spotted this wee beaut Sparking a deep down affection I followed it around the corner to where it stopped and of course I started chatting with the owner, turned out its been in their family for quite some time, and the lovely lady informed me that there was a Datsun club and that they had nationals on in Ohakune, even better was that year's theme, 50 years of the 510! Looking at dates they lined up and before I knew it I was hitching a ride north with our very own Datsun barry Runamuck to meet my father and other 510 foamers from around NZ. After a weekend driving around the central plateau I was convinced I needed a 1600 in my life and a plan was struck to purchase a dereg but complete vehicle that was tucked away, sadly after discussion with panelbeaters over the required rust work for re-vin the costs looked a bit daunting for my current plans. A few months later my father slipped up and offered the road legal sss to me, I rapidly agreed before he could back down, only downside was I had no leave left and a work schedule needing much attention, this meant I had to wait until Christmas break to pick up the car! For now it's late, but I shall dig out some more pics and tell more about the car itself and the mini and major plans ahead. Discussion thread here:

Basically an Italian FJ.

Oh I forgot to mention a while back that I managed to get my Mum to do a spot of sanding to when she visited. I doubt she would have lasted log though but I think she did like the fact she had a trapped audience to waffle on to while she did sand... However- that was obviously before paint. Now we are right into the fun jobs of piecing back together the big kitset. The trickiest thing is trying not to get too carried away with cleaning things but it always does seem such a shame to put messy, rusty or dirty items onto a clean shell. I think in the future I'll try to stick to ratty cars like the Viva wagon. Saves time when things can be messy So yeah.. cleaning things. First the bumpers. I straightened both as best I could and Hannah then cleaned the backs and painted the surface rust in Por15... I then trial fitted the front but once bolted up it was slightly wonky. I ended up having to whip up a bending tool to straighten out the slightly bent mounting points... All straightened I mounted the bumper and stood back to admire the first bit of bling... We then hauled in the other two Imps and went over them like a team of car stripping Piranhas and removed all the last morsels of useful bits... With bits removed they then needed cleaning. Hannah quite enjoys these jobs and did a stirling job of making things all shiny again... I filled the roofline and inner wings over the rear arches with cavity wax. Much more enjoyable this time round then the first time I ever used some back in Blighty on my Rx3, in winter on a very cold day. This time round it flowed perfectly... Together we fitted the head lining we removed from Imp 3- the one rescued from Christchurch. Its a bit discoloured around the edges where the contact adhesive that the original factory worker had brushed in place has stained it right through. Not much we could do with that. But its rip free, pulled up nice and tight and looks better then nothing. Its in keeping with a 54 year old car... I then made a engine cover stay. Because the cover is fiberglass and had no mounting points for a stay I had added some before painting along with a suitable point on the car with them further apart then the standard imp placement to take away extra leverage over a flexible f/glass lid. Now to connect the dots. I had a rough Idea of what I was going to make when I added the mounts and just went with it. I had a piece of stainless the right size and used a plastic knob from an old broken cafetiere I had stashed in my bin of 'might be useful one day' bits. I bent the stainless rod in such a way that when the lid is opened it slides up and drops over a stainless bolt then cant go further. To drop the lid you have to lift the knob slightly- this way a gust of wind cant lift it and make it drop. It works sweet as!... Next big job was to get the wee car back on its wheels because I had some work coming in that required the hoist. I refitted all the suspension and luckily had collected 4 decent shock absorbers with good shafts. However the springs were going to be too long. I'd happily pay the $200 for some Montie Carlo springs. For those not aware they are the popular lowering spring set for Imps that most people fit. However the freight costs for a set to NZ is too much for me to cope with and anyway- I have 3 full sets of springs I can play with for free. I like free. So out with the Makita... After doing a heck of a lot of web browsing I deduced that one coil off the front and half off the back would be a good starting point. Totally aware that I'd be raising the effective spring rate I reckoned this would still be OK. The car is going to be a touch heavier all round anyway but too much extra stiffness to the coils without adding extra damping would be no good. I definitely cant afford new posh dampers at this point so I played it safe... I then heated the cut ends up with the Tig in several zones, flattening the coil as I did. This worked well- the heat didn't travel very far. Its not optimum. Optimum was what I used to do back in the day when I spent 3 months of my apprenticeship working for a Blacksmith resetting leaf springs and shortening coils etc. But I dont have big furnace at my disposal nowadays so Makita it is Then cut the ends flat and they came up sweet. It will be really interesting to see how it sits on these and this I wont know until the car is fully built up to full weight. I reassembled the struts and finally I was able to fit the minilight wheels from the racecar on and lower the Imp to the ground. Ooooooohhhhh. I dont know when this car was last rolling but I suspect it was a very long time ago! It felt so good to roll it away from the hoist, stand back and admire it. Plenty of premium positive camber to come out as the weight piles on. I'll soon be ordering some better sized new tyres and getting them onto the rims. While the car is off the hoist Hannah can continue assembling interior bits and I'll be attending to some work on other peoples cars.

Had a blast in this so far, travelled many miles. Huntly Burnouts, WRCC Spring fling, Rocket open day, Tokoroa drags. Heading to Rebel Roundup this weekend Accuair is the business, Highly recommend. Get into it. I like the stock hubcaps but wanted options. A mate of mine had some Detroit's on an earlier Buick Super, but he didn't like them. So I chucked them on to see if they would suit. I think they look pretty cool, so deal was struck.

Soooooo for a while now I've had an obsession with getting a "proper" bellmouth geometry on something. I successfully made a big one for the big single throttle but I really need a different radiator arrangement to make it work so its been on the back burner. But the geometry to give completely straight flow is massively massive compared to what is usually used, so its a problem when you have 4x throttles close together. With the space that is available, you have to trim down the sides of each trumpet by this much to fit 4 alongside each other. (Obviously dont need to trim front or rear but lazy modelling) So it looks like you lose most of the useful area of the bell... And looks like it would be prone to "stealing" air and maybe fuel from adjacent cylinders? Not so good. Probably better just having a smaller radius on each. Either way, I printed out a full sized bellmouth (without trimmed sides) so I can size it up in the engine bay. As it turns out that thanks to having a brake booster I've got zero room for a trumpet this big anyway on the rear and hitting the bonnet on the front will be a problem too. I've seen those cool kits where people have all of those parts you can clip together to help build an exhaust manifold. So I thought I'd try the same thing here but for an intake. So printed some parts so I can try some combos for a single runner. Base piece, a bell, 3 x straight 20mm sections and 3 x 10 degree sections. Also pictured is the bellmouth provided with the ITB kit, for an indication on how rediculous the bigger one is haha. Unlike those fancy exhaust kits though mine doesnt actually clip together because aint nobody got time for that. Also, turns out printing the straight ones was a waste of time as there's not even enough room for just the bends. Neither front or rear really fits. pooz. So I'm reprinting the bend parts with 15 degrees per segment and a bit tighter radius to see how much that helps. Based on what looks like will fit though, tipping the trumpets slightly towards the front of the engine bay is actually pretty cool because it allows more useful bellmouth area per runner. A lot more! Most of the air comes from around the sides rather than straight ahead so will be interesting to see how this goes. The question is, is the efficiency gain of the big bell worth the efficiency loss from the bend. And is the bend worth the extra runner length gained. And does any of this make a difference when you're trying to wheeze through a 45mm throttle. And the biggest question of all, will I actually finish making any of this? Some preliminary nerding seems to look like the bellmouth partially shrouding the entrance shouldnt be an issue so long as there's a bit of gap. The colour scale on this, red is 101.3kpa and green is 101.0kpa so pretty minimal loss hopefully EDIT: Just found what the factory BMW S14 engine runners look like, makes me feel like I might be on the right track. Even if the big bellmouth isnt necessary, perhaps there is a real life benefit to having them staggered to allow more clear air around each runner than you can get with straight pipes that are butted up to each other.

@Raizer dropped me off a couple of gy6 motors from his hoard. I was wondering if the wheel would clear the case and it does which i'mm happy with Chucked the pile of parts roughly together

I just couldn't help myself but take this photo... Having fun stripping remaining bits from the other two Imps, cleaning and painting bits and generally playing about with what is a big model car. Proper update soon.

So, ain't used this much in the last year and a half, infact it's been sat in the shed the last seven months. Thought I better start using it, so I charged the battery, gave it a quick clean, and obtained a WOF. This morning I felt semi motivated, so set about fixing a few things that have annoyed me for ages. Since I got it back on the road about six years ago, the fuel gauge hasn't read correctly/won't show over 2/3rds full. I whipped out the sender (luckily it has an inspection hatch for the sender) and held the float lever against it's full stop, it still wouldn't show over 2/3rds full. I then opened the little box on the sender, and it seemed the wire coil is wearing out, and the little arm that rubs against it wasn't contacting properly, so I gave the little arm a tweak. I teasted it and it now reads darn bloody close to full, not perfect, but much closerer. Next I pissed around with the hatch latch, as the hatch has never sat down on it's stoppers properly, and kinda sits on the latch mechanism. Managed to free the latch and adjust it, and by hoki, it now shuts nice and toight, which has the awesome side effects of not letting exhaust stank in, and has banished about 78% of the rattles in the car, huzzah! The other thing I did a while back was modify my catch can, it used to be empty, so did a shit job at taking oil mist out of the air, so it's now full of steel wool and fancy shapes, and let's no oil mist out at all, rippa. I have some fittings to connect it to the back of the filter plate, so next time the plates out, I'll slap that in. Next on the list, is to give it a rangi tune up, as it runs ridiculously rich, so I'll have to acquire the bro in law, so he can muck round with that. I still haven't sent the rims away to be fixed, fucks sake VG. P.S. I really like driving this car.

Haven't done bugger all on this recently. Had been trying to source some cert happy 14" wheels, but that didn't happen. Wheels held the build up a little bit as I needed them to start working out other things that will happen later. Anyway, some pics of the limited progress since last update. "Built" a frame to straighten out the headlight area of the front. Didn't take too long with a handful of long tek screws, to get it much closer to the right shape. Happy enough with the results, so that will get a primer / paint later on. Amazingly complicated alignment tool: Before, main damage being the panel below hood support bracket. After some tek screwing I didn't think at the time to document it from the same angle, but the difference was quite noticeable IRL. Previous to that I had removed the rusty A pillar section shown earlier. Before, with the two layers removed. After, with one section made up, i'll make the top section when I have this one welded in and epoxy primered up. Then weld that over the top, epoxy, paint. Meanwhile, this turned up, with a friend another day. And unwrapped Wheel specs: SSR XR-4 Longchamps, 15x7-1(x2) and 15x7+11(x2). Lost count of the hours spent browsing Yahoo to find a set or even a pair that matched the offsets I measured I wanted. Well worth the time in the end, but it did drive me half insane, finally finding some, only to be outbid by twice my budget. Nothing super wide or dished, but they will sit well on the car I feel, and I can wrap them in damn good tyres. Similar dish on the rear to my 14x7.5-1, but with 10 times the number of tyres available, an easy choice in the end. I also removed some unnecessary weight from the rear of the car, to help sort the ride height. Shocks and springs, overrated. Before: After: I will be home alone for the whole Xmas break, so will be aiming to get the car completely back together (for now) with all of the rust cut out and replaced with new steel. Epoxied up and some red spray cans to tidy up the repairs. Then I can start the next stage which will get quite expensive, rather quickly. Until then, let me know what i've done wrong here.

Ahhh old faithful, I built this thing, owned her for 10yrs. Good motivation photo lol

Glad it all came through for ya man. You buying this meant I didn't have to. So thanks. Ps: make this happen please.

Some months later. . . Handle bars. Made, finished today. Panther gussets made in 3mm and milled down to 1.8mm because I couldn't buy 1.8mm Chromoly plate. Jigged and welded into place. Mock up picture because I was feeling proud. View from the drivers seat. Also 26x1.75 Gum Wall tyres on their way, Pantha stickers purchased, chrome, paint anodizing, and other 80s spec bling to follow.

Shit vid of me making a cunt of myself at Nats track day.