Runamucks Datsun 620 ute

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A few people have asked why theres no thread for this vehicle. (Because the owner is so useless tbh) i showed some pictures on my phone to some people at Garlic nats. And one of them convinced me i should post them up. (Thanks @Sungai Sungai)

The story begins quite some years ago when i bought a datsun 620 ute of @Mr.Mk1. He'd rescued it from scrap. He also found a pretty fucked wellside tray for it. (Which is also rockinghorse shit 8n terms of rarity) it would seem i only have one picture of that truck.

It needed plenty of work, but the rego was on hold, and it was (mostly) complete. 

When josh and i did the mission down to Alexandra to collect it,  he showed me another 620 ute. It belonged to the landlord from whom his brother rented his business premesis from. Daily driven, and a real sweet honey. Because Alexandra is as dry as fuck with no foreplay, it was completely rust free too. (For what its worth, 620 are without a doubt the most rust prone vehicles on planet earth) 

Some time later, i learned that the elderly gentleman who owned that truck stacked it. And some time later it popped up as wrecking in Christchurch.  Hoping to get some parts, i shot around there. Where i met @Agent75.  The truck was still pretty rust feee. But unfortunately Shane had cut the radiator support panel off to make removing the engine easier. The inner gaurds were a little bit puckered, but it could have been straightened out.  

A deal was struck, and i dragged it home. 

Another mate had another 620 he wanted ro move on.  ( @I'm new here) it had been completely dismantled. And had some prettt cunty rust. So i bought that, and had a coachbuilder mate graft the inner gaurds and rad support panel off that cab onto this one. Unfortunately i have no pictures of this. I also picked up a pair of front guards off another mate. 

As i didnt get the nasty, underpowered, leaky, J15 with the truck, i opted for an S14 SR20 that i bought off @mint16.  With the gearbox attached, i had to make the centre of the rad support panel removeable. 

After id painted the engine bay, @fletch have me a hand to do the final engine installation. 

Because id slung the engine so low, and so far back, the sump had to be notched to clear the drag link.

Seeing as this chassis is the later model/last iteration of the 620, it was fitted with ball joints, rather than king pins. This is a wicked bonus, because i learned that if the top ball joint is swapped over, that D21 navara hubs and stubs are a bolt in affair. No more gawdaful drum brakes.  Best of all, a mate gave me a set for free. (Less calipers, which i then sourced of marketplace)  because im not a total broken arse any more, i threw on a pair of new rotors too. 

 

Discussion,

 

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Then theres the body work,

So it began pretty rust free. But sitting around outside in Christchurch, a bit of cancer began to show.  My coarch builder mate fabricated me a new drivers side sill, and @governorsam grafted it in for me. (As well a couple of other small bits) i dont have any pictures of this either. 

And one of the gaurds needed a patch too.

Again no pics, but i got a panel smasher to come weave his magic. Id fitted the front guards, and they did not match the shape of the doors at all. Also i found that old repairs  etc meant that the drivers door was beyond economic repair. And needed to be replaced too.

So mister panel smasher had the guards fiting beautifully afternonly a couple of hours. I removed rhe back window, and dropped the headlining down so he could pop some dents out of the roof. (It had been a working truck in its former life)  he did a bloody good job all told too.  I told him, im not some file finish fuckwit. Its a datsun, and its a ute. You can use as much filler as you need to. Because i knew he wont use more than is necessary. I also said, u donr expect a show car result. If its good enough fo you, its good enough for me too. But as a tradesman, i also knew he would do a good job. The last car he did for me came out really really nice.

After the panel smashing was done, a mate brought over one of those paint spectro camera thingos. We took a picture of the paint on the underside of the roof skin. This gave me the colour the trauck was when new.  Most of the rest of it had suffeeed 40+ years of central otago UV degradation.

Some paint was procured, and it was sent into @I'm new here work on a long weekend. 

Hamish really pushed the boat out with stopping all the repairs, before paint

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Bit of colour went on too.

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This is a picture of when i beought it home. Its a good pic because its in the sun. But the doors had just been thrown on to bring it home, and it grates me how poorly hung the door is.

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You can see the grill just didnt look nice enough with the rest of the truck painted. So once again i called on Hamish to give it a birthday for me.

And the grill badge likewise looked pretty used.  I enlisted the help of @filthy one mrs (Gemma from twisted sister customs) to give it a birthday for me. 

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[SHARN]

The NZDM 620s all came with the quarter windows. And im not a fan. Im sure in the days when everybody smoked they were great for drawing away the smoke. But they leak, they whistle, and they offer another place for someone to try break in. The USDM trucks all had one piece door glass. 

A good while back, my dad gave me a heads up. " one of my mates is imporring a couple of boats from the states. Theyre being shipped out of seattle. If you want to get anything shipped diwn here for free, get them sent to qhere the boats are, and they can be put in one"

So i jumped on SeattleTacoma craigslist.  I found a guy wrecking a 620 KC in Seattle. And although i was fairly sure that the doors were the same between KC and regular trucks, i wanted to be sure. 

I jumped onto ratsun.net, and explained my situation/asked the question. Yeah theyre the same was the response. Sweet! But then i get a PM from a user on there named @bananahamuck saying his mate has heaps of that stuff, heres his number. (Turns out its the same Bananahamuck as the one on OS!   So i ring this fella up, and he says yeah i got heaps of rusty doors etc. I tell him, ill need him to freight them up the Seattle. (This guy is actually in Portland) he says, oh, our shipping is really slow, and expensive. Ill drive them up there on Saturday. Im like how far is that?  About an ahour and half drive!  Fucking hell. I offer to pay for his gas etc.  

So i ring my Dad and get the address of where these boats are in the container. Turns out its not Seattle, its a place called Yelm. (Its actually closer to Portland) i email Ted with the address.  He replys, oh i work in Yelm. Ill drop them off before work one morning. So a couple of months later i get the call that my glass is here. And after having them tinted, they went it beautifully.

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How about that wellside tray i hear you ask?

Well, thats an ongoing saga. 

To start with, i had is sandblasted.  Yep, she was a "bit" rusty.

it must have been left sitting full of geass or the like i think. Anyway, i was somewhat worse for wear. Dropped it off to a mates shop, and he sid this with it.

fast forward to lockdown, and i removed the floor. (It was fuuuuucked)

I disovered this was a new Zealand made tray. (Possibly made in Timaru) they had a different profile on the floor, different wheel tubs, no swage around the whel arches to match the front. I replaced the floor with like for like. And a sheet metal mate halped me make new wheel tubs too. ( @JustHarry grafted these in)  the same mate helped me reproduce the top edges which were also different. (Harry grafted those on too) 

Harry also grafted in wheel arches out of some fucked front guards to mimic what a proper datsun tray would have had.

The tail gate is actually off a proper datsun tray, and its needed quite a bit of fettling to fit. (The NZ tray is a bit deeper)

The tray is still a work in progress. Harry has opted to make new lower sections from scratch, rather than attempting to strighten the mangled mess that was there before.

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The donor front/radiator support panel came from a farm ute, which had had an L16 repower. Some butcher had gas cut the radiator supporr panel out so they could fit the larger L16 radiator. I tidied this up as best i could (not very well) and got a mate to make me a custom Aluminum radiator to fit in the space i had. 

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Id made a bet with @Luke that id have this thing drivable in time for an event aaages ago. I lost miserably. Id been sending him pictures of my progress at the time. (Before i had messenger, so by txt at fantastic cost) talking to him the other day, he still had them, and sent a few back to me. 

I manages to squeeze an Ebay special fan between the custom radiator and the front panel.

And i got some pics of the diff too.

620s run an H190 diff, with an aluminium centre housing. However because they were an underpowered light comercial vehicle, they run a 4.6:1 ratio. Great for rally driving, or farm duties. But and absolute fucking nightmare for open road driving. I found a 3.9:1 head somewhere in Hamilton. @mark105 kindly delivered it to camp Rangiwoods for Old school nats 2013. (I might have had the yellow truck that far back) since we were only rolling in a dastun 1200, @Gomaxgo kindly dragged it back down to Christchurch for me in his 6cyl KE70 ' goon.  Because reasons, i finished up using the axle out of the one i parted out for the front cut. As i mixed and matched a few bits, (my handbrake cables were fucked) i discovered this axle was ~15-20mm narrower each side. I had the housing blasted by Blain at FastBlast. And @LowTech powder coated the housing back when he had a powedercoating booth. I swapped the pinion flange over. This also required a hefty sleeve be fitted. Both because the seal journal was bady cut/worn, and because the seal journal was considerably bigger on the 3.9 diff. A lick of paint on the head, and it was glued in. 

Absolutely nobody had a listing for new brake drums. And all of mine were worn out of spec. ROCK AUTO to the rescue. (For all the parts your car will ever need) they were something stupid like $20 each. I gave the backing plates a brush up and paint. And rebuilt the brakes/ew cylinders and shoes. 

(My bench hasnt been that clear for a looooong ass time)

 

I dont have any pictures, but these diffs use a turbo gay cup and cone arrangement on the axle bearings. You have to set the axle bearing preload by changing shims. (Theres a thrust block in the centre of the side gears that the tip of the axle runs in permanent contact) i fucked these off, and replaced them with deep groove bearings. The deep groove bearing was a few mm narrower than the Cup of the cup and cone. So i had to make a spacer ring as insurance that the bearings could never migrate in and out within that pocket.

The other picture i found was of the gearbox X member i made. Its nothing fancy. The material was kindly donated by @Chris.QCR

 

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PNot an update as such, more a musing/potential future upgrade. 

Upon procuring the engine, id noted the front crank seal had been leaking. I whipped the crank pulley off, and much like the pinion seal on the diff, the seal journal was quite rutted/cut into. A speedy sleeve put this back to new. While i had the crank pulley off, i noticed an interesting shape was present.

So i figured  while it was off, it would be a travesty not to machine off the power steering pump pulley, (these are attached to the main hub, not the dampered pulleys that drive the water pump/alternator/AC) 

A nice spigot was machined on, and some holes drilled and tapped to correspond with those nice bosses. This is very hard to photograph in the car.

Quite a while ago, the old boy picked up an Eaton M62 supercharger off Ebay. It came off a USDM nissan frontier truck, with the nissan VG33ER. (The larger version of the single can VG30 which were once common here) i basically told him, i was commandeering it. 

And back when @Vintage Grumblewas a cool kid, he had some SR20det injectors which he kindly gifted to me. 

So in the unlikely event 5his wreck ever sees the road, it wont be too big of a stretch to turn the wick up.

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I couldn't get any decent pictures due to how tight it is behind the motor. But I managed to connect the SR20 heater pipes on the motor to the heater on the car. While the motor was out, I'd had reducer tails easyflo'd into the pipes. (Due to the silvia heater hoses being one size up from the datsun ones) the angles and shapes involved in getting from A to B so impossible, that everyone well meaning advise of "just go to repco and find something off the shelf that fits" was not an option.  I ended up using a bunch of shorts, with elbows where it changed direction.  It's ugly as fuck, and 100% not the right way/best practise to do it.  But I ran out of fucks. And it's done now. 

Once that ordeal was put to bed, I was finally able to install the booster, and brake and clutch masters. 

The clutch is all bled up, and (with a bit of help from miss 12) I've seen the fork move as intended.  

I had a crack at bleeding the brakes too. There's a pedal, but I'm not 100% satisfied if feels right. (No matter how much brake fluid I've bled through it) 

I intend to revisit this once the engine is running, and it's getting some vacuum assist from the booster. 

Pic of refitted parts. 

 

I've also engaged an auto sparky about coming to lend a hand to knock over the last 10% of the ecu wiring too.  (He's penciled in for next weekend)

 

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Yesterday I filled the gearbox with oil, and installed the shifter. 

It didn't work out the first time, so I threw out an SOS to @DJZ to find out wtf I was doing wrong. 

all sorted now.

 

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Because you can get brand new parts for "drift chassis" nissans really easy, I opted to use silvia gearshift grommets etc. However the removable panel on the floor didn't have a big enough footprint to bolt the hold down plate to. 

I sourced some 3mm plate off a mate, and made a rough (emphasis on ROUGH here) facsimile of the hold down plate to weld to the cover plate. It's good from afar. But up close far from good. The knee-sans use bolts into captive nuts to hold the plate down. I would have used rivnuts, but again the floor cover didn't suit  that. So I grabbed some m6 threaded rod, and fizzed the zinc off with some pretty nasty acid. Then being 3mm, I tapped the holes M6, and would them most of the way in. 

The hardest part was making the big holes. My only holesaws are ones that @peteretep left at my house.  They're fine for wet cardboard. But they really baulk at steel. Buy the time I'd bashed my way through the 1mm floor cover plate, the saw was almost done. (It may have also been the one Peter and I munched a hole in the floor of his transit camper with)  after bashing away untill the saw just made smoke and noise. Then I finished the hole by drilling eleventy billion holes around the outside and making the hole round with a carbide burr. 

A mate then tig'd the two pieces together, and welded the back of the studs 

I gave it a splash of black zinc, and slapped her together.

Mr datsun used self tappers to hold the floor plate on. I elected to use rivnuts with caps crews. 

Pics for Fred.

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Fingers crossed its 100% dust, draft, noise, and fume free.