HomeBuiltByJeff

This week I get into the assembly of my L28's head for my Datsun 240z

This week I finally get to rebuild the bottom end of my L28 for my Z. https://youtu.be/zDvr8CMj3hM

This week I am getting stuck into the L28 engine for my Datsun 240z. That includes balancing the pistons and rods.

It is definitely better to balance the piston and rod separately, you are spot on there. The issue is, as Stewart Wilkins suggested, if you are going to re-use the pistons and rods, it is better not to try to press out the gudgeon pins, as you are quite likely to brake something. It is not the best way to balance them, but it is better than not doing it at all, at least I hope so.

That looks good, but I had my intense, hands on, engine building academy a couple of weeks ago in the US building my 911 engine. You would be hard pressed to find a better mentor in the world than Neil Harvey at Performance Developments. He spent 10+ years in Formula 1, with his engines winning 2 world championships, then working for ANDIAL (Porsche racing in the US), and TRD. I balanced my 911 pistons, so I have a bit of an idea of what to do.

Ok, time for another update on this front. As I mentioned previously, I got my head machined, and had the corrosion around some of the water galleries welded up. I also had the injector grooves in the inlet ports welded up. As some may have seen I had the head shaved originally .8mm and when I CC's the head and the compression was not where I wanted it. I took it back up to Rams and had them take off another 1mm making it a total of 1.8mm (2mm is common). I CC'd the head again and the compression ration was much better (I can't remember the exact figure, off the top of my head, but it is in one of my videos). I have port matched the inlet and outlet ports, but I didn't really touch them internally, as I didn't want to mess things up too much. I found a couple of dodgy valves (one was bent and a couple were badly pitted). Stewart gave me a couple of used ones to replace those and I have lapped them all. It is getting closer to assembly time, just going through now and checking that everything is still within spec. Well I am quite happy, I just went through and measured the clearances of my pistons and the bores including the taper and it is all well within spec which is a relief. I actually thought the bores would have more taper than they do, but the largest taper is 0.05mm. As for the piston to bore clearance they area all around 0.11mm where standard is 0.05 and max is 0.22. The crank is also well within spec, so I can still use standard bearings. Hopefully this should all go together nicely. I have got myself new rod bolts, and I have to have a look at getting some new head studs (I was considering reusing them, but it sounds like it is not worth the risk). The rest I am planning on reusing.

This week I fit the mirrors to the front guards and then start cleaning up the pistons to get them ready to re-assemble the L28 engine for my Z.

If only rotors didn't sound and drive like crap I would love it

Haha, back in my airbrushing days I airbrushed a bunch of Pink rotors. I did all of the Queen St, 2Sus, etc cars, so I was well ingrained in the Leb community

This week it was a matter of doing a bunch of stuff that I had to get done on the Z before I can start throwing colours around.

Yes. They have had some of the videos I made for them on their site for almost 12 months now, but I didn't know that they were specifically linking my regular videos as well, so that is cool. The guys at Supercheap have really been awesome helping me out, as keeping up the pace of these videos is difficult to do. They will be playing a promo for my channel in all of the stores any day now as well.

I am back from my hectic week building my engine in the US and I am getting back into working on the Z. This week I got into primer and cleaning.

This week I get a quick coat of Epoxy Primer on the shell.

Any more details of this set up? Where did you mount the pump?

This week it is time to prep the body of the Z for primer.

Yep

The primer gun was great, you can see all the parts of the gun are nice and precise, compared to the copy ones I have used for years. You can see it is much better quality. As for how it works, to be honest, it worked great, but you don't really need anything fancy for primer. The real test will be the other gun they gave me for the colour and clear. That is where the gun is much more important.

It took a lot longer than I had hoped, but I finally get the body work finished and get into painting some high fill.

I wasn't happy with the results of my compression calculations previously, so I have had the head shaved again and it is time to recalculate.

I did think about heating it up, but the can said that if you heat it you get bigger wrinkles, and I wanted them tighter. I may try something like that next time, although not in the oven. Mrs Jeff would not be too happy about that

This week I continued the body work on my Z and painted the valve cover.

This week it was time to start cleaning up the engine block and paint it up ready for the rebuild.

I have MT on demand, but I think they just link to Velocity as we still can't watch it here. I am quite annoyed actually, as most of the stuff on MT we can't watch here like Fast N Loud, Street Outlaws, etc, etc. The only things that we can actually watch on there is their own stuff like Roadkill, Head to Head, etc.

Did you just use that on paint, or on the thick stone guard coating as well?

Best way I have found (which I think I stole from one of the Jeff's on here) is to use one of those renovator tools with a flat, flexible scraper blade on it. Peels it off beautifully in strips. I have tried a whole heap of different ways and that is the best yet.