1963 Datsun 320 kingcab

[wayno]

That's the plan.

[wayno]

Both sides have been skinned and the window tracks are in position, before I tack weld them in position if that is what I choose to do I will have the windows in and make sure they slide up and down freely, right now they are screwed in with 4 screws on each side.







I need to pipe the tank now and fill it with some fuel, it has been airing out as I had to fill it with water to cut the neck to the proper length, as I didn't want it blowing up on me, I want to move it out of the garage, as there is a lot of metal dust and scrap pieces that I want to clean up with the air blower, open the garage door and blow that crap outside.
Next is the interior, I need to figure out how I am going to cover the open panels.

[wayno]

I temporarily put used felt in the channels, cut some not so great plexiglas I had around here to fit in the holes and installed them, they do not slide in the channels easily, but for now they stay up and look alright.





Then I took the rear window out of the piece I cut off to make the kingcab, and I installed it in the extension, I believe the seal is backwards, but I put it in the way I pulled it out, it is a decent used seal, and it is set the way it was put in, I didn't want to force it in the other way.



So I installed a small piece of of the door seal behind the rear window channel where I was thinking it might work to check it out, I don't want to chalk the window channels on the outside, I think they look clean the way they are, so installing the seal there would do the same think as it does on the door, eliminate wind noise and keep water from entering while hiding a lot of ugly that would take a shitload of work to change.
Here is that piece of weather stripping on the inside.

Here it is on the outside thru the window.

And here it is with the window half down.

[Taterhead]

Hey if it don't leak, don't change it.

[Laecaon]

what about welding up the gap between the window channel and the body?

[wayno]

what about welding up the gap between the window channel and the body?

That's the thing, it looks alright without touching it, it's clean this way, I have not finished it though, I may change my mind yet.

[wayno]

So I messed around with the driver side rear window this afternoon/evening, I added a piece of shaped metal on the inside to mount the trim piece on the bottom edge of the window, then I mounted weather stripping to that trim piece and fitted it.

The trim piece from farther back, it's just a rough test piece, it needs cleaning up.

From the far side of the cab so that you all can see it is the same height as the door trim piece.

I also fitted a weather strip piece on the outside, from a 720 I believe.

[wayno]

I wired the fuel gauge and put 5 gallons of gas in it, and then started it and pulled it out of the garage so I took a few photos, the box may need adjusted a little, also the box skirts look strange not aligning with the cab, might have to extend them although I think the stepside box would look better.






Oh yea, I also blew out the garage, I hate laying in dust.

I did the passenger side lower piece of metal and trim piece(black), I did the upper trim near the roof also.


When I started it this morning I had a miss, I pulled the spark plug wires off each plug till I found the bad bad one(#1), I pulled the plug, put the wire back on it and started the engine, it wasn't doing squat when I grounded it out to the battery, I put another plug in it and started it up and it ran fine, don't know why I have had so many issues with plugs lately, and this truck in particular.

[wayno]

I worked on the front of the box this afternoon, I took the back lower half of the cab I cut out once the back kingcab piece was welded in, and I put it in where the front of the box is missing, it worked out pretty good except where I cut the right side a little too much, so I will have to add a piece in the gap on the passenger side front box side, you can see the missing piece in the photo below.

Here is the gap between the box and cab, you can see where the cab back is curved forward, you can also see where the front of the box is curved forward also, so the gap stays the same.

Here is another photo of the gap from the other side, it's hard to get a good photo of this.

[Indy510]

that looks really good .. I can't believe how fast you did that ... If NL beds weren't so rare, it would look cool with a stretched frame and NL bed

[wayno]

that looks really good .. I can't believe how fast you did that ... If NL beds weren't so rare, it would look cool with a stretched frame and NL bed

I suppose if I had an NL320 parts rig that would have been the way to go, but I don't have a parts NL320, and I have no intention of trying to make one, it's too much work for something like this.
I already went that route with the 1966 Datsun 520, way too much work, never again.
I do have a LUV Stepside box though, that would be fairly easy to shorten and narrow, I am not going to put a lot of effort into this 320 box right now until I decide if I am going to keep it, it only took a few hours to do to the box what I have done so far.

[DRIVEN]

The complimenting curved panels are a nice touch.

[wayno]

The complimenting curved panels are a nice touch.

I am actually just using whatever is available without having to go buy metal, I thought of using that piece for that afterwards, otherwise I would have cut the metal differently and then would not have to add a piece the next time I remove or move the box, even moving the box back 4/6 inches would help me a lot.

[wayno]

So I did small stuff today, I finished the interior floor connection, I cut the part that was sticking up off, and welded the hole where the big part of the rear tunnel connected to the small part.
This is looking towards the back.

This is from the back looking at where the hole was because of the 2 different tunnel sizes.

I filled the hole in the box front, it's only tacked in, the whole front piece is tacked in, I have to remove the box to do any better.

These are the hooks I removed from the part of the box I cut off, I will likely need to install them on the front to use for the box cover if I decide to use this box instead of the stepside.

And these are the front top rail bed corners, I have not prepped them like I did the hooks, but I am going to save them in case I use this bed/box.

I did some other stuff earlier today, I cleaned all the scrap metal out of the garage, moved the stands to the side of the house, I just needed more room to move around in there.
Oh I also ground off all the tack welds so they don't stick up anymore, if I wanted I could start the bondo hair on the top and sides to smooth it out, but I am not in that mode yet, I will likely get it derivable again, put the drop arms/disc brakes on the front, and drop blocks in the rear, not really low, but lower than it is now, although I just remembered that I was unable to get the right side lower control arm bolt out last time I tried.

[wayno]

I forgot, I also removed the stainless steel trim on the drip rail of the 411 top I used in this build before I cut it up to get it out of the way, I thought it would be cool to have that trim on the drip rail of this truck, but the 411 top has a lip on the bottom of the drip rail that holds the trim piece on, well the 320 doesn't have that lip, it turned out that one of the pieces is missing also.



I also have side trim pieces of the same type I bought a long time ago in case I did a 320 kingcab, enough to go all the way to the end of the box in case I use the box that is, I believe these are Roadster trim pieces, but a few are early 320 pieces.

[wayno]

I put a Weber carb on this truck today, it runs so much better with this carb than it did with the stock one.

I had to make some mount bolts for the adapter plate as the these bolts were SAE, and all the bolts I had were metric, but it worked out fine.

[wayno]

I didn't do much today to the truck other than removing the Jacobs Energy-Pak from the system, waiting till tomorrow to make a call to see if the Crane XR3000 module can be wired positive ground, if it cannot I will likely put an internally regulated alternator on it and bypass the externally regulated part of the wiring harness for now.

[wayno]

For now I put the stock 320 distributor back on the engine so I could start it with the key.
I made the call to Crane Cams and they told me that they had sold that division to FAST and they gave me the number to them, I called them and finally got thru, I asked the guy if the XR300 EI Module could be wired positive ground, and the guy said "what", I repeated myself and he told me that no one had ever asked that question before, he put me on hold for a while, came back and told me the guy to ask was busy and that he would take my number and get back to me when he knew the answer, I have not heard back and now they likely are closed, maybe they will call me back tomorrow.

So I did one of the front skirts to see what it looked like, I need to do the rear skirt also before I get it out of the garage to take a photo from a distance to see what it really looks like.

[wayno]

Today I put one of the Neon bucket seats out of the 720 in the 320 kingcab.
In the 720

In the 320



Tomorrow morning I am supposed to go look at a guys SD22 diesel engine that isn't running properly to see if I can figure out what is wrong with it, then I will come back home and put the other 720 seat in the 320, then I will put the other one in the attic in the 720, then I will only have a set of Honda Del Sol seats up there.

[wayno]

Well the seats are out of the 720 and in the 320 kingcab now.

I am way farther back than I was with the bench seat all the way back, I actually had to move the bucket seat forward because it felt I was stretching to get to the shift lever.
I am going to have to come up with some metal for the rear skirts, everything I have in scrap is curved, I also figured out that the stepside fenders are too big to fit if I were to try and mount the stepside box, the center of the fender to the front of the fender is 26 inches, I only have 22 inches, so that will not work unless I stretch the frame, I really have no interest in doing that at this time, so I am going to be using the stock shortened box, at least for now.