Popular Post NickTheFox Posted August 4, 2015 Popular Post Share Posted August 4, 2015 After 3 years of searching for a nice Datsun 1200 project I found this coupe that came up for sale down in chch. After seeing it on TM I quickly got hold of the owner through Facebook. Thankfully he didn't realise that he had set the listing as an auction, everyone interested in it had to email him, which he didn't realise until the morning after I contacted him when he saw the 40 odd emails from people wanting to buy it . After putting a deposit into the guys account, I brought some flights for 2 weeks time to chch. The car had been sitting for at-least 10 years and had no current WOF so I figured the owner would need a few weeks to sort out any issues. My friend and I flew down on a Saturday morning and meet the owner at the Airport with the coupe on his trailer. The car was better than what I expected, at this stage I had no idea that it had an A12 GX motor and a H165 ute diff so I was beyond stoked to find this out. Anyway here's some pics! \ \ \ \ \ Overall I'm pretty happy with it, the body has hardly any rust and is reasonably straight. It currently has an a12 GX motor with twin dellortos, 5 speed and a h165 ute diff. Discussion Thread 20 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
NickTheFox Posted August 5, 2015 Author Share Posted August 5, 2015 The ride back from chch was interesting to say the least. The first incident happened right after I payed the owner and tried to start it. Somehow the fuel pump wiring had come disconnected on both the earth and positive, thankfully it didn't take us long to figure out what was wrong. We hooked the pump straight to the battery and drove to Supercheap to grab a few tools for a more permanent fix. We soon realised that something wasn't quite right as the rear water outlet was touching the firewall. There was also massive vibration coming from the driveline when we were going 50kph. We decided to carry on with the trip home and just avoided going 50kph, which is easier said than done. The rest of the trip home went without any issues. However, our 6pm ferry was delayed by 4 and a half hours. Thankfully they let us know about this while we were still in chch, so we spent a few hours cruising around looking at the city. 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
NickTheFox Posted June 9, 2016 Author Share Posted June 9, 2016 I think it's well past time I updated this thread. A lot has changed since so I'll try update this thread with the progress. One of the first things I did when I got my hands on this was to pop of the rocker cover. It was a nice surprise to see Nissan Japan on the head. This shows that it is a gx head which have bigger intake ports than a15 heads and they're pretty rare. From now on the upgrades began, the first being a 5 speed swap. Luckily I had brought a sunny with a 5 speed a few months before buying this so I switched the 4 speed that was in this with the sunny 5 speed. As this was originally an auto it has a bigger tunnel than the manual 1200s. The main benefit of this apart from the extra room is that you don't have any issues with the 5 speed reverse switch hitting the tunnel. Here you can see just how different they are, manual on the left auto on the right. 4 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
NickTheFox Posted June 9, 2016 Author Share Posted June 9, 2016 Once I had both boxes out I had to have them a quick clean as they were both pretty filthy. Next step was to make a new crossmember for the new 5 speed. After a few measurements I drew this up in auto as and got my mate to laser cut it out of 10mm steel. I drilled the holes myself as I wasn't sure how clean it would laser cut out. Here's what it looks like mounted up without round spacers that I had machine up to space the bracket from the body. Finding a new 5 speed rubber mount to use on this without paying a fortune was a pain in the ass. In the end I got one from a ceff, I can't recall which model but it did have two studs hanging from the side which I had to cut off 2 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
NickTheFox Posted June 13, 2016 Author Share Posted June 13, 2016 Before I got the box all bolted up I gave the tunnel a quick clean up as there was 40 odd years of oil and dirt layered on it. Not that I'm composing as it certainly has held any rust off. I had a few issues with the clutch not disengaging which turn out to be that I needed a longer release bearing. Thankfully I was able to get another one fairly easy which did the trick. Here's the difference between the two Once the gearbox and motor was all bolted up and I was happy with how it was sitting I went to go put in my driveshaft. It turns out that it was over 20mm too long even though the 5 speed boxes are the same length as the 4 speeds. The previous gearbox mount had the gearbox hanging much lower, so low that the heater outlet on the back of the head was smashing into the firewall. As the engine and gearbox were on such an angle the driveshaft just fitted with the old setup. Luckily my old man is a fitter so I got him to shorten up the driveshaft by 25mm. One interesting thing was that this driveshaft had already been shortened. This picture below shows what my old man found when he parted of the old weld and yoke from the driveshaft. It turns out insulation tape can be used for spacing the difference between two different pipe sizes. This would probably explain the terrible vibrations I was getting a 50kph 9 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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