vegie

hey man, i think my setup is a fair bit different to yours. my rear swing arms are exactly the same as a z31, so spindles swap over no dramas at all. i didn't use rear 2 pot calipers either. mine have an integrated handbrake, whereas yours will have a rear drum setup for the handbrake. there is a way to modify 2 pots to fit mine, but it widens the rear about 15 mm a side. i don't have the guard clearance for that. what discs and calipers are you using? i'm guessing r32 rear 2 pots and r31 turbo rear vented discs? i see an old post of your's regarding the spindle splines being different too? i find that odd. they "should" be the same if they are original r31 turbo ones. its been a while since ive seen a set of r31 rear spindles, so i cant recall what they look like exactly, but is there any option of redrilling them to 5 X 114.3? may help your spacing problem.

at my age, any head is good head.

pulled the engine down, and the news wasn't all good... some nasty watermarks/rust on #2 and 3 cylinders. it appears that it was caused by a retard. they have had the head off in the past and left the rear head locating dowel out, so the rear of the head was located only on the headstuds, but the gasket was about 3mm off to one side, screwing up the waterjacket hole alignment. the only plus side to this is it's still on the original pistons, so .020" oversize pistons should take care of that. but overall, the rest looks good, and looks to have brand new timing gear throughout. i did a bit of research on what block/head/piston combo's work best from the L14/16/18/20/24/26/28 motors, and basically it looks like an L20B block like i have with a closed chamber L18T head and flat topL20B pistons is the best combo for a 2 litre NA motor. well i have the block, and i need to buy pistons anyway, so i had to find a L18T SSS head. no small feat... long story short, L18 head on trade me for $100 bucks, ask casting numbers for head and click buy now! turns out the head is a V912 head, which is pretty much the holy grail of L series heads. it was never sold new on a car, and was a datsun sport (and later nismo) only part. sweet! they are a closed chamber or "peanut" head as they are sometimes called, with the biggest Lseries valves and seats already fitted, and high compression chamber. top head is the V912, which has slightly smaller intake (round) ports. apparently they are made with heaps of meat to port them for race use, or leave them as they are for a better mid range RPM motor. bottom head is the standard U67 L20B "U67" head, low comp chamber big valves, big ports. standard U67 head chamber. V912 higher compression chamber. it also turns out that the head has never been skimmed in its life, which is pretty unusual as i think Lseries nissan blown headgaskets are as common as M series toyota ones! and judging by the casting of the "nissan" logo, id say this is a fairly "new" head. . so all in all, im pretty stoked to have stumbled on the exact part which would normally be rocking horse shit to find. and i think i'll leave the ports alone as these heads are to valuable to mess with unless your going full race spec.

haha oh yeah forgot!

started the tear down of the old 2.0L. stored parts in an orderly fashion... a lot of it i had better/tidier bits, or im not using again. looks like it could use a service too, i drained the oil, both litres of it... i guess i'll wait and see what it really like once i get the head off.

Yeah i had a look at your build thread. you've made a nice job of the kit for the rear crossmember. i have seen it before, but assumed you bought a datsport setup. It will be interesting to see what range of adjustment it gives, once on an alignment machine. I'm happy with how the dash came up clean. it is a NZ new but JDM assembled car so, yes different to most kiwi ones. you could use the earlier round gauge SSS cluster in yours couldn't you? i think i have one floating around here somewhere...

some of the bits i've been up to... i stripped th old, worn "woodgrain" off the dash and replaced it. i have also stipped and etch primed the side mouldings around the side windows... . the guard mirrors i imported from japan. the black front left guard is one i sourced from a guy who had it hanging in his shed for nearly 20 years, a genuine datsun part! a . and, the L20B motor i'm rebuilding for it now.

good to know! did you guys make all the adjusters and bolts too? seems like a lot of work unless you can sell a few at the same time. keep me posted on your progress...

cheers man, I already have the mount sorted. I ended up making my own. I cut and welded together the 180b ends on a r200 bar, where I wanted it to sit, and took that to a spring maker as a template. from that they made this... i had to replace the bushes with urethane, but i was going to do that anyway i am looking at a datsport kit for adjustable rear arms though...

re coilover sleeves. I used some like that on my first set of coilovers too. I found that the real fine pitch threads like those ones, shit their pants really quick. when you go to adjust them the threads are all damaged and galled up some stones getting between them and the spring. I replaced mine with a coarse thread type off some teins, and problem gone. might save you some hassles later on...

yeah guys the plan was NA FJ20. reality struck that it was going to be slow progress to do so. so I bought a 20B... L20b that is. im going to get it up and going on an L series L20B, just so something happen this century. went and picked it up today. with 5 speed too. will probably run some sidies and extractors with an L18 head if I can find one. R200 is going to be and overkill alright, but I do have a standard R160 to put in it if I want.

cheers man, yeah, i looked into leaving the rear brace alone, but the r200 mounting bolts are too long to fit in there. 180B's have a slightly different setup to 510's, and to make it look low, they need to be really low due to the big wheel arches, which results in MAX rear camber. like 5+ degrees... if you run the rear diff mount lower, it also increases the rear camber even more, so i had to mount it like that to get it higher, and keep diff input shaft angle reasonable. up front im going to run DR30 skyline struts, which i'll coilover to allow to wind in some front camber.Its about 2 degrees positive at the moment...eww

leaking diseasel and oil might help with the rust problem.

So i havent been completely idle on working on this... I spent ages underneath it removeing the underseal, and all the old underseal matting from inside the cabin too.. you can see where i had to notch the brace under the boot (still needs tidying up) to clear the R200 skyline diff i've put in. I also stripped the underseal out from the front inner gaurds which is normally a rust trap on these cars. .

ah ok? not sure what i did wrong there. cheers edit. sorted now.

make it a swappa crate and you have a deal!

please direct abuse for not finishing it here...

I managed to source a whole lot of parts for it over the years, A new pair of shoes for starters. .

Ok, so i bought a Datsun 180B SSS coupe as my first car many moons ago, and after that rusted into oblivion, i decided to find another. This is a pic of my first coupe... Move on to about 2002 i found another one. One family owned since new, little old lady couldnt drive anymore, so car had to go, and i had to have it. Sadly all my original photos when i got it were lost when my camera got stolen in a break-in. so i only have soon after i started work on it. soon after i got it, i stripped it down and had some repair work done. the only "real" rust was in the window surrounds, under the chromes. i sent it of to an old boy who did some very neat repairs in the windows and replaced the passenger side sill with a genuine nissan part, as the original had a nasty dent. there's still a few shopping trolley dents to get fixed still. along comes a mortgage and kids, and project goes on hold for a LONG while...

like so?

I do love these quirky '80's nissans. cant remember the last time I saw one. im with snoozing too, leave the vents there, they help make it what it is, awesome!

I need to get the car certed, and one thing i know needed sorting was the slip on front spacers. They dont meet LVVTA requirements, so i had to make a set that would. I ended up using the "face" of a set of old worn toyota front rotors. I had to slightly enlarge the centre bores, and machine off the old rotor. Cleaned them up a bit, and countersink screwed them onto the new rotors i'm using. Hopefully this meets the standard for when i get the cert sorted..

finished sorting out all the fiddly bits today. fitted a smaller battery and clamps. got the speedo working after 2 hours searching the dashboard for the lost piece off the end of the cable. mounted airfilter and plumbing up securely. refitted the last of the dashboard too. I had a bit of an attempt at setting the boost up to around 12 psi, as it should be safe around there, but managed to hit 25 psi by mistake. no detonation thankfully, but fuck it went hard! cool story.....dyno time.

very nice. you still going to black the roof? reckon it's better as is IMHO...

in other news, daily driver is 6 speed, gazelle is not. hooking reverse at 100kph is not ideal... got another fan, so pulling it all apart AGAIN today.