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Safari Brown... I mean Gold - The NSW Project


gav240z

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I have but I wanted to learn to build a motor. Cheap L28s are few and far between these days.

 

I was going to toss in an old L24 that hasn't run since 2000 but it was a lot of effort to bring it from Melb to Syd and find out it is not in good shape.

 

I'm going to try and keep this engine build very modest at first anyway.

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OK so used a straight edge on the engine head and it appears to be straight I didn't see any evidence of warpage. I measured across cylinders, diagonally, vertically etc.. And couldn't see anywhere that a feeler gauge would fit under it.

 

So that along with head gasket makes me think a hole in cylinder head as opposed to blown gasket.

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E31 is a crap head for an L28 anyway, no big loss. Sell it to someone who wants to have a concourse Series 1 240z or something. Not having the stock block eliminates the L24 guilt and you should be happy. I have my matching numbers L24 under my work bench and I feel obliged to keep the damn thing!

 

 

I wouldn't even bother with the P90 if you are doing a stock rebuild. Stick an N42 on there so you get more compression, I did that on a mate's car and it felt quicker after swapping it for the P90. It was an L28 with a slight overbore, hot street cam and triple 45s and went hard, had about 160hp at the wheels. If i was you that's what i would be doing.

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Silly me decided to whack the oil breather pipe and what do you know? It snapped off the valve cover. Oops! First thing I've broken so far working on the car so I guess not all bad right?

 

 

 

http://www.ebay.com.au/itm/Datsun-240z-260z-280z-x-Valve-Cover-Breather-Vent-Pipe-NOS-/271426998707?pt=Motors_Car_Truck_Parts_Accessories&hash=item3f324f51b3

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Thanks George, I saw it also but that's an extortionate amount of money for a pipe with a bit of thread on it. LOL... I have spares. Just hate breaking stuff because I was working on auto-pilot and not really thinking things through ;).

 

E31 is a crap head for an L28 anyway, no big loss. Sell it to someone who wants to have a concourse Series 1 240z or something. Not having the stock block eliminates the L24 guilt and you should be happy. I have my matching numbers L24 under my work bench and I feel obliged to keep the damn thing!

 

 

I wouldn't even bother with the P90 if you are doing a stock rebuild. Stick an N42 on there so you get more compression, I did that on a mate's car and it felt quicker after swapping it for the P90. It was an L28 with a slight overbore, hot street cam and triple 45s and went hard, had about 160hp at the wheels. If i was you that's what i would be doing.

 

I actually just found some photos of the N42 Lurch gave me here:

http://datsun-240z-blog.viczcar.com/n42-head.html

 

It has the cam-towers, for some reason I thought they were missing, but it's just the intake valves and some of the manifold studs (which will be replaced anyway). Just needs a good clean as you can see :).

 

As for the E31 I'll keep it, just in case I manage to track down the L24 block by some miracle in future. I'll also speak with James Flett about my options on Sunday (if i can make it):

http://www.viczcar.com/forum/index.php/topic,14071.msg148723/topicseen.html

 

Incidentally I read this in the morning.

http://performanceforums.com/forums/showthread.php?67272732-L28-Datto-head-had-to-share!

Anyone know if this TK fellow posted any further updates on this motor - I see a couple of you might have seen this thread already?

 

 

 

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Thanks mate, but my car already has the original wheel. George may want it though for car #19.

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  • 2 weeks later...
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Ok so a quick update for now, I'll take more photos later on when I have got the pistons all out of the block.

 

Last week after my Tafe class I picked up a dashboard off Geoff.

 

It came with a set of gauges (which are the slightly later ones), a fabricated alloy glove box, the cowl piece that sits near the windscreen and some wiring and plastic ducting pieces etc..

IMG_20140327_211204.jpg

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Here is a photo of the early Z speedometer gauge. Note it starts at 20 km/h instead of 0.

IMG_20140118_191758.jpg

 

A bonus was finding a map light also with it, my current one in the gold car has crazed and gone to shyza over the years. Amazingly the map light 'hood' isn't cracked so I'll be careful removing it, but the map light plastic itself has crazed to the point where it can't be repaired as far as I'm aware. So this will make an excellent replacement.

IMG_20140327_211218.jpg

 

The dash has a couple of minor scuff marks from storage over the years and could use a general overall clean up. I'll probably get some vinyl paint and go over it again to re-touch it up and give it a newer fresh look and I'll need to swap the gauges over to retain the early style ones in my car.

 

Here is my current dashboard...as you can see only minor cracks.

IMG_20131219_173733.jpg

 

So why did I bother getting a second dash? Well it was already re-skinned for a start, when you factor in shipping the current dash to Melbourne + Insurance + getting it reskinned I would have been spending maybe close to $700 on the existing dash...

 

I also thought hard about the pro's and con's of dashboard repair vs reskin. My plan is to attempt the D.I.Y dashboard repair method.

http://www.viczcar.com/forum/index.php/topic,1618.0.html

 

Then I'll post photos to compare the 2 methods side by side. The advantage of the D.I.Y method is that it's cheap, but also you're not adding material to the dash, so the gauge hood's have the original contours and things like the glove box fit properly. The re-skin dash has a slightly mis-alignment on the glove box caused by the extra padding - although I may be able to adjust this.

 

I also tried to win this parts lot on the weekend (as I really wanted the center console facia piece) and the rear light for the licence plate.

http://www.ebay.com.au/itm/171274166873

 

But I didn't want to spend that much, so whoever won it (Probably George *shakes fist*). Well done. The sum of all those parts is worth more than the total sale price.

 

The next update is related to the engine, I decided I'd pull the finger out and go strip down the block and get the pistons out. I removed the timing chain guides and tensioner, removed the timing chain and the distributor drive piece from the crank snout (use a block of wood and mallet to do this - so you don't damage the drive), then I removed the caked on sump. I tried not to make a mess, but what do you know it's oily and it's a sump and I think it's the 1 job I hate most on cars. Anything to do with the sump means you get oil on you, the ground and anywhere else - even if you try not to! I was wearing rubber gloves to avoid having to scrub under my finger nails for hours to get all the oil off them, but then the Dog ("Datsun" - yes that's his name) decided to try biting my hands and tore them....and he was trying to taste all these old oily parts (the fun of having a small pet around). But how can I stay mad at that face?

 

IMG_20140324_224928.jpg

 

I figure if I post some intermittent photos of "Datsun" you'll see how as the project progresses, he's getting bigger and bigger.

 

The next step was to have an L-series BBQ.

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Using a mixture of kerosene and Automatic Transmission Fluid (ATF) I poured them into the #4 cylinder bore and using a piece of old clothing as a wick I lit the thing on fire and let it burn for a while. The theory is that the kerosene fire causes the expansion of the bore and the ATF fluid can seep down between the bore and the piston rings breaking the rusted seal and freeing up the frozen piston.

 

I managed to get the #2 piston out last night, before packing up for the night. I'll continue working on the rest tonight and let you know if my 'red neck' method of piston removal for #4 works.

 

I'm actually looking forward to re-assembly when everything is clean, the tear down stage only sucks before it's such filthy work.

 

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Great to see an update, and it is a good read.

I don't recall having seen "BBQ" approach used before  :o very curious to see how that works out.

 

 

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Good work Gav,

 

Was watching that parts lot too but went WAAY over what I was prepared to pay for it. fascia looked like it had some minor damage too. Was thinking about the piston problem and reckon the best way would be to punch it out the bottom once crank is removed (don't know if piston can come out the bottom on L series as never pulled one apart, but had VW engine with seized piston that had this method applied to it, going by dents on top of piston and corroded bore. 2 reasons I would do this are it would be much easier to apply force to the top of piston using 50mm round block of wood or similar, and if you pushed it out top you would have to get it past all the corrosion which would be very difficult. Assume engine will need to go at least one oversize piston. Someone may be able to tell us whether pistons can be forced out bottom of block.

 

Cheers

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Pistons out, no sweat really. #4 came out just as easy as all the others to be honest.

IMG_20140331_215145.jpg

 

A cup of tea inspired by project blinky.

IMG_20140331_215121.jpg

 

The end caps were even harder to remove than the pistons. I struggled with the second cap for ages, then there is the center and rear main cap.

 

IMG_20140331_215128.jpg

 

I got the center cap off using the technique outlined in the how to rebuild your L-series book. Stuck a timing cover bolt in the thread in the cap and used a piece of wood as the fulcrum and leveraged it out.

 

IMG_20140331_225703.jpg

 

But I couldn't for the life of me get the rear main cap off. Just in case you didn't realise it, that's a hammer I bent trying to get it out!

 

IMG_20140331_225656.jpg

 

They don't make them like they used to.

 

So any tips other than a whole heap of swearing and yelling? I'm thinking a longer crow bar - hammer was all I had. Now I have none lol...

 

 

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Hey George - you can do that with the other caps but not the center and rear caps. They are different.

 

The other caps you can wiggle and tap with a mallet and loosen them up, then you insert 2 of the cap bolts (but don't thread them in) and pull them in opposite directions so 1 left and 1 right with each hand as then lift on the bolts to get the caps off. It's a bit fiddly, but with the rear and center caps you can't do it because of the way the crank counterweights sit there is no gap.

 

The rebuild book says to use the bolt in the cap (it has a thread) and pull them out this way. Nissan apparently has a tool for this job.

 

The hammer was a cheapy but still surprised I used that much force (Arnie would be proud), will give Dimitri's suggestion a go, gotta get a gasket scraper from Bunnings anyway.

 

It's the only cap that needs to come off before I can remove the crank and have the block fully disassembled. I actually found this step harder than removing the pistons - as mentioned #4 slid out with no fuss.

 

The good news is that the crank span freely, but the end cap bearings and rod bearings have some scratch marks in them, which suggests crap got into the oil.

 

I'm not too worried about that though as the plan is to use the LD28 crank I have with the L14 or L24 rods :).

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No progress on motor tonight because I took the front right fender off the car. I snapped 1 bolt unfortunately but considering how rusty mos of them were I'm happy I didn't snap more of them. Still gonna suck to get it out later.

 

The reason I had to get the fender off is that I'll be hopefully working on it tomorrow during the Tafe class. It is actually a great panel only rust down near the lower rocker area. However the rocker itself hasn't rusted through.

 

I'll try and post some photos to show how it turns out tomorrow. Camera ran out of battery tonight sorry no photos for now.

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Try using a harmonic balancer or bearing puller. Or make something similar with a solid bar mounting on either end with a bolt in the middle to thread in and pull the cap off. Or something to twist it off rather than pull may help.

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No progress on motor tonight because I took the front right fender off the car. I snapped 1 bolt unfortunately but considering how rusty mos of them were I'm happy I didn't snap more of them. Still gonna suck to get it out later.

 

Lurch did a Youtube clip on how to fix this, he reckon's it was easy.

Go on, give it a go.

 

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Lurch did a Youtube clip on how to fix this, he reckon's it was easy.

Go on, give it a go.

 

 

I will but I need a Tig Welder it would seem, only got a Mig.

 

PS: Lurch thinks everything is easy, but this body work thing is the black arts to me. Although I am getting more and more used to it. 

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So my first start on the body work of HS30 00150.

 

I thought I'd start with the front driver side fender, it has rust in the dog leg section - which is fairly common really. The rest of the panel is good except it's originally from a 260z so it has the indicator in it. I'm going to be filling that in since the 240z's didn't have it.

 

But more on that later.

 

Step 1 was to strip the paint.

IMG_20140402_181948.jpg

 

Using a heat gun on the rear and a scraper I got the paint to bubble and then scraped it off.

 

IMG_20140402_181942.jpg

 

After seeing the bog in this section we expected to find more, but were surprised that it was only in that lower left hand side.

 

The decision was made to replicate the lower section rather than just patch it up. So with that we used masking paper to create a template.

IMG_20140402_184159.jpg

 

The dolly seen on right was used to mark or scribe along the edge of the fender / paper and give us the outline. Before that though I also had to square up the lower lip on the fender (where people incorrectly jack up the car) to give us the correct outline of this lower 90 degree bend.

 

We end up with something like this. The black circles are where I'll be cutting out the section for bolt holes etc..

 

IMG_20140402_191842.jpg

 

Note: The extra metal around the edges will be used to bend around the edges of the panel.

 

We put it through the roller to give it the correct shape.

IMG_20140402_194337.jpg

 

IMG_20140402_194342.jpg

 

To get the 45 degree bend at the bottom we used this.

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The Jenny is used to create the bends or at least start the bends that will go where the wheel arch and lip folds over on the opposite side.

IMG_20140402_195341.jpg

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Lurch can call me a hippy now ;).

 

It's kind of like a can opener but it doesn't slice open the metal, rather it leaves a solid line where you can continue to bend at an angle. Good when you have to follow a curve (not just do a straight fold).

 

Using a nibbler tool (1 of the guy's lent me) we sliced along where we are going to cut the rusted section off.

IMG_20140402_201707.jpg

 

You could use a grinder but this is quite good and allows you to go slow and create a very straight line. Although it is hard work and I was sweating ;).

 

I couldn't slice it completely off because there is another piece of metal behind it. Mind you this is probably why moisture gets trapped here also and causes the rust in the first place.

IMG_20140402_201657.jpg

 

But this did allow me to remove the massive bit of bog that was stuck behind it.

IMG_20140402_201811.jpg

 

From this photo you can see why it's called bog, it looks like dogs doo doo alright.

 

Then time ran out, so I'll continue on with it next week.

 

I missed some of the steps here because I was busy with the learnin' but I'll see if I can take more next time.

 

I have to say I really enjoyed tonight's class mainly because the previous classes were more practice and learning technique's but tonight I actually made progress on my own car and that felt great.

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