New World Datsuns...

Mmmmmmm shiny things!

Good progress man, wish I could say the day for myself :/

Damn life priorities.....

Thanks guys.

Car is for sure going on the ground this weekend. This should be a, bust out as much as possible weekend.

I need it on the ground so I can drive it out again, and clean up the garage a bit. So many projects at the same time left it a mess.

lol i noticed in one of your pics it looked like teh garage was a bit clusterfucked lol

ITS COMPLETELY CLUSTERFUCKED. I hate it. Its annoying me.

Basically my car happened last summer. Then I agreed to help Derek with his motor. And I agreed to do another project. Then the house project hit. Add in a motor swap with my friends truck, and lazyness, and just life happening... Its too hard to navigate the garage with a car in it, so any meaningful effort of cleaning it just results in a lot of effort trying to avoid the car.

Basically there is a path around my car in the garage, and to the interior door. Garbage, tools, supplies and whatever else is strewn everywhere.

I have a couch in there! I want to sit on it again!

lol! It is nice sitting in a garage... unno why. just cool. specially on a hot afternoon with a cold beer after wrenchins

Laecaon wrote:ITS COMPLETELY CLUSTERFUCKED. I hate it. Its annoying me.

Basically my car happened last summer. Then I agreed to help Derek with his motor. And I agreed to do another project. Then the house project hit. Add in a motor swap with my friends truck, and lazyness, and just life happening... Its too hard to navigate the garage with a car in it, so any meaningful effort of cleaning it just results in a lot of effort trying to avoid the car.

Basically there is a path around my car in the garage, and to the interior door. Garbage, tools, supplies and whatever else is strewn everywhere.

I have a couch in there! I want to sit on it again!

Call in a favor on all the people you are assisting with their projects. Make a list you want to accomplish with said company and know only 2/3 of it might get completed. Some time we spread ourselves far too thin with good intentions. Make a pot luck of it and I would even come help organize.

Our patience also makes things more cumbersome than it should be.

When I had my 510 parked during my last year of a failed marriage the poor car was buried by garage garbage and neglect. It was so frustrating not being able to use my MAN space. So I regrouped cleaned up sold my car retained a lawyer and divorced the **nt who buried my car.

DO NOT SELL THE CAR!

Matt D.

Alrighty, did some work yesterday. Car is on the ground, and it did drive out of the garage again.

Wheel studs! These are 280ZX Rear studs, about 9.5mm longer than stock.

Sat in the car again, I miss it lots. Its so nice to rev the motor. It just purrs!

Also bought some goodies, which will be here monday!

Shiny!


Wheel with 5mm spacer, tire rubbed sleeve.


8mm spacer, tire clears sleeve!


Comparison of studs.


Hammer blow to knock the old studs out.


New tie rod link. I ended up ordering 2 of these just so I could get one with flat spots for a wrench.


Nut and washer to pull the studs in. Damn electric impact for the win! Rotor bolts came out fast, a lot faster than when I installed them by hand before.


And done!


Car out on the driveway! Parking insurance only right now so I try to keep it off the street.


Corner still needs paint. Still need to weld the T/C pocket in the engine bay. But the rod is on. Sway bar is off.


Sleeve adjusted high just to make it easier to jack the car up while I am working on it.


Camber plates! Going to swap the bolts out for rounded heads so it can slide under easier.


And another just because.

Loving it man

Glad to see you still plugging away at this.. I had a serious sad when I saw it for the first time... looks like shes pretty close to being back together eh?

New wheel studs always look so nice!

Yea its coming together.

Need to finish up the suspension (weld pocket). Get an alignment again. Gonna call my alignment guy when its closet to being done.

Paint the damaged area. That is going to be annoying as lots is flaking. So Ill have to sand it back to where its not flaking anymore.

Body work: need to tweak the Valence a little more. Probably going to buy a FutoFab one down the road as this one is dented anyways. Hood needs some serious attention. The frame is tweaked at the latch. Replacement fender is a bit rustier than my old one(ie my old one had no rust...) and its a bit dented. Going to have to weld the bottom of my old fender onto the new fender. Paint... Im not sure yet... May just rock Plastidip for a bit til I have time...

Need to finish up my headlight. And my harness. Finish tucking what I want too.

Its close but it still needs some time. It will be at Canby.

I got lucky with the 8mm spacer. The inner bore is just about perfect for the ZX hubs, which are unusually large. They fit over the hub without any wiggle. That said when I can, Im going to make some spacers at work that fit perfect.

Today...

Welded up the TC pocket fully. I can tell my welding is getting better. I have way better heat management, and am getting better at guessing how hot to run my machine at. Filled a few holes in the engine bay. After looking at it. Decided the engine needs to come out for a proper cleaning and repaint.

Decided to look at the drivers fender. Cut off the bad part. Cut off a corresponding part of my old fender. Tacked them together. Its a tad too tall now, and I need to do a hair bit of trimming to allow everything to sit correctly, but its looking pretty good.

Then I threw the passenger fender on. And then I thought about the hood. The frame is super tweaked, like the hinge mounts still looked aligned. So I mounted it. Well driver side front corner is pushed way down, which in turn rotates the front edge and pushed the passenger over the fender a hair. If I manually make the hood straight, It clears the fenders fine. So I twisted it the other way and its pretty good now. But its also super Sloppy. I need to reinforce the hood a bit. A new hood is needed for sure, but thats ok as this hood was always a bit bent anyways. Still need to do some tweaking to get everything lined up as good as possible.

Threw some primer on the Core support. Looks way better.

Probably going to grab some bolts at Ace tomorrow. Need a hole mess of 6mm for the fenders and headlights and stuff.

It looked good having some skin on the car. More work ahead! Too bad during the week I cant work too much, else Im way too tired for work the next day.

Mail man brought more gifts!

ooh fucking preetty!!

Just a little bit of magic...

Epic awesomeness!!!

Laecaon wrote:Just a little bit of magic...

How can I +1 this post more?

Nice mod!!!!!! I'm adding actuators to the wing windows of the 1200... Auto wings.


Keep those updates coming.

What, no write up?........LAME!!


What motors/setup did you use? I really want power windows in my truck.

Dont worry, Ill put more info up as I actually complete this stuff. I bought the motors January of 2013. So yea, been a while...

I cant keep focused on what to do with the wagon, but progress anywhere is progress.

I have basically welded my patch panel on the fender, I got my driver side projector headlight assembled (still need to put in the headlight assembly), Lights tested and working (phew maybe I did my wiring wrong... lol), Did some wiring for the Power windows... yea... Removed the Passenger rear doors window divider thing... Some pics...

So I had a Saturn center console in the car, fits well, has some nice cup holders... Well another benefit are the power window switches are in the console as well...


12 wires that need homes...


Medusa... (actually its a magic box that makes my front windows be 1 touch up/down... I may add it to the rear windows too...)


Ah yes, the window motor, one of those universal window crank things, got a set of 4 on Amazon awhile back... Notice the vicegrips...


Close up of how it attaches to the crank... If it ever strips out, Ill make a new piece! (But I assume the whole setup will just die...)


Oh hey, look at that thing hanging out in there! (It has been installed for a long time)


See window switches in center console! I managed to leave out the other part I wanted to show... Maybe I have another older picture...


Ah found it! I put the rear window switches in the back of the center console, this meant less wire to run to the doors, and I didnt have to figure out mounting switches to the doors...


Desoldered the wiring on those switches, they used super thick shielded 18ga wire... Um no... 14ga for me please!


Thats better! More on the wire colors, or lack there of below...


Hey look! Lights!


Under side of the center console, there are a ton of wires! Break down later as well...


Mounting location of Medusa...


Terrible picture of the wires going to the rear switches.


Solder and heatshrink job. I hate but connectors, even if I have like 200 uninsulated ones...


Wires I need to leave the console (front door window wires and ACC and GND )


Another shot of the center console...


Hand made wiring diagram! Exclude the stuff on the left, that is changing...

Wire colors. It bothers me I am wiring everything in white. It really bothers me, but at least its not black... or red.... But it bothers me.
I decided for now to just run tracers on the wires, and that its not that hard for me to figure out. should anything arise. But my goal still is to completely rewire the car, and its kinda hard to rewire a car when you still need to add circuits. So for now, Ill just do what I can to make it nice ish, and down the road it will be done up right.

Ok so whats going on under that console? Lets understand how windows (and door locks) basically work (there are exceptions of course). Essentially, the switch sends ground signal to both sides of the motor. When you select a direction, it will send 12V power down one wire to the motor, while keeping the other grounded. Hit the switch the other way, and it changes which wire gets what.

Now onto my wiring. So Power will be entering into the Saturn window switch panel as well as GND. 2 wires for each front door. 3 wires for each rear door. It would be simple to have the wires from the switch run straight to the motors, but I wanted 1 touch up/down opperation. So these 4 wires for the front doors head on over to Medusa. There are 3 wires on Medusa that I will not be using currently. Then from Medusa we have 4 wires out to the door motors, we also had 3 GNDs for some odd reason, and 1 Power source. Simple enough really, just comes down to making the connections and routing everything.

The rear doors are a little tougher conceptually, but still pretty easy circuit wise. The rear doors need there own switches! So one way to accomplish this is to do what GM likes to do. The switches are 5 pin ones, and in neutral position each out set of pins are connected to each other. So this allows the front control panel to send a constant GND signal to two of those pins (in my picture they have the RED and ORANGE tracers), and then the other 2 pins go out to the motors, thus they see GND in neutral position of both switches. If you select up or down on the front panel, it sends 12V power down one of the wires, GND on the other, to the rear switch, and then the rear switch passively sends to the motor. The middle pin on the rear switch receives 12v power. When you push a direction on the rear switch, it acts like all the other switchs.

And now my contacts want out of my eyes...