Dattos are sort of new to me and sort of not new. All of my mates have owned/raced/rallied them over the years but somehow I've missed the boat up until now by being stuck on VW beetles. Anyhow earlier this year I knew I'd had enough of VWs. Some of it was link pin front ends. Some of it was packaging in the back of the car. Some of it was $3.5k for an LSD for motorkhanas and then magically the value of my car had doubled. So it went up for sale and I was left with a dilemma. What to buy?

I was thinking 1970-95, RWD, sporty, local and white or silver. I looked at Miatas, corollas, sylvias, but what I really wanted was a 180B SSS. I would have settled for a really good rust free sedan. I was given one in my early 20s that I wanted to build a rally car with, but it had to go when I lost my job. So I was reliving a few dreams. In the end, I just couldn't find one in NSW. I kept coming across 1600s instead. So this is what I've ended up with.
The car is super straight, country car, all original paint with only small amounts of surface rust and a slight ding in the boot.
What's particularly curious about it is the floor shift auto. I suppose this is a Jap import being an early car and an automatic.
The only serious rot is one spot under the fuse box... which is a complete mystery to me. Some of wiring appears to have been attacked by rodents, so that will need some attention too.
When I bought the car, the previous owner told me the motor was locked up. Wrong. It had been sitting for over a decade and the fan belt had stuck solid to the pulleys. With that removed, it turned over with a spanner on the crank. It's the original L16 so I'll probably try and save it in case a future owner wants to refit it. I dunno if matching numbers dattos are worth any more. Are they?

The front door locks are all gummed up and have to be pulled and cleaned out. Same for the drivers bailey channel. The felt has come out. I was hoping to avoid those sort of things, but oh well. Fuel tanks smells terrible so that will have to come out to. Ouch.

And of course it seems like we're about to move house again, so my wife wants it to drive under it's own power.

So the plan is as follows. Everyone in my car club (CACA) used to own or race one of these and they appear to be supplying me with heaps of parts. It's getting a manual conversion with a 200B dogleg 5 speed, a worked L18, some sort of LSD, some suspension to help me on the skidpan/khanas and a general tidy up. Once regoed I'll fit Megasquirt injection (which I did on the beetle) to the L18... and maybe a small snail down the track. What I want, well it was the plan with the VW too, is around 100-150 reliable hp in a <1000kg car. Then it'll get semi-daily'd and used for khanas. It'll probably stay looking as stock as a rock including tiny wheels, ie. sleeper mode.

Be keen to see how you go with the Megasquirt on the L18 and the power numbers you get mate. Looks like a nice straight little 1600

_________________
Current Garage:

1971 Datsun 1600
2019 Mazda 6 Touring Wagon
2009 Holden SV6 Sedan

With the beetle, I was able to street tune it to 95% of perfect. I reckon I'll be doing the same with the L18. Megasquirt has an autotuned function that adjusts your fuel table while you drive. You just set your ignition numbers to where they should be and hit the button. The big advantage is great torque and drivability. HP figures a small part of the bigger picture.

Nice little 1600 mate and good to see another 1600 getting sorted

Day off today so I had a fair bit of time messing around with thing. Finally managed to pulled the fuse box out and found this...
Mmmm, crunchie and crusty. Still, this is worst of it so I can't complain too much.

Had another squiz around the car and found a few things. Manual pedal box...
And the lug on the chassis rail for the clutch hard-line to attach to the rubber hose.
So, it seems as though my car was converted to a Stanza auto at some stage. This explains, A. why a 69 is an auto, and B. why there's no column shift. That should make the swap to manual a lot easier. Especially as the pedal box I bought off gumtree is more than a little crusty. I'll just pull the pedal off it and put them in instead of the auto brake pedal.

I also spent a lot of time trying to get the driver's door lock to work properly. The big issue is, the locking mechanism doesn't want to work in the car. I pulled it all out and got it to work on the bench ok. Once it was back in the car, it refused to lock again. Love to hear people's thoughts on this. It was pretty frustrating.

Are you trying to lock it by pushing down on the button inside the door (ie the bit you pull up to unlock it when inside the car) with the door open ?

If so, that's how they are designed to work - you can't push it down with the door open, I assume so you can't lock the keys in it. You have to close the door then use the key from the outside to lock it.

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1970 ex Group A Rally P510
1971 P510
1972 180B SSS
1965 SP310 Fairlady
1966 SP311 Fairlady

Right. I'll try it again and see how I go.

Been working on getting the L16 in the car running so I can at least drive it up and down my (steep) driveway. The bad news is, in the 15 or so years the car has been off the road, a few creatures have made nests.





The fuel, similarly was pretty awful. Smell and looks like lacquer.



Thankfully, inside the rocker cover, things look a fair bit different.



In fact, I couldn't believe how clean and tidy everything was up there and neither could my friends.

I changed the oil and filled the bores up with kerosene as per my diesel mechanic friend's instructions. I let it sit for a few days. Having cleaned up all the connectors to the starter and battery, I could turn the motor over and get oil pressure on the starter. So more good news there.

Then I tried to get spark. The coil, points and plugs were all good, but the leads were all 18Kohms. I think this is actually what put the car off the road. Once I swapped them over with the other set on my L18, I had spark finally. So I poured some petrol down the car and had a go at starting it. It coughed and fired, but wouldn't run without the starter. Still I'm pretty happy with that consider the car has been off the road more than a decade.

I wrote on your post on Ratsun

Car running only in start is most like the Back of the key switch is dirty
or you Black white wire from Key switch back to the fuse box is open.
Ck with Key ON if you have 12volt to the coil or not If yes then ck the other side of the ballst reisitor. that could be bad corrosion or wire off or maybe bad Ballast be never reaaly seen a ballast go bad


also on old car replace all the fuses.Some are cracked inside and you just cant see it.

Thanks Hainz. Back on the car today as I have the week off work. Was away last week. I'll add some more updates tomorrow.

BTW, found out the cam in my L18 is a Waggott 643. It's not listed on their website though, so I don't know what that means exactly.

This week is basically, 'try and get Nanna going' week. I've got the whole week off work and a (sort of) unlimited budget to get the car running. The two big things are...

1/ Make it run.
2/ Make it stop.

I'm sure my wife feels like no.2 about my whole car habit. Anyway, she's stuck with me.

1/ Make it run.
Before I went away I got a good spark and the starting turning well. My issue now is the fuel system. Having put a new filter in and cranked it over, the fuel bowl started leaking.



I put it back together with a little RTV and then, of course, the accelerator pump started leaking as well. So, by some sort of miracle, my local parts shop had a carby kit in stock for the car. Which leaves me in the not so inviting situation of going through the carb. Did I tell you how much I HATE carbs?



My mechanic mate warned me it would be a disaster, but to be honest, the carb was so dry it's almost falling apart. Most of the screws aren't much more than finger tight. But the fact that I'm inside updating you instead of working on it tells you how much I love it. Not a lot.

2. Making it stop.
This has been a more serious situation. Seems like every brake part I pull off the car is pretty knackered, dried out or full of junk. The master cyl and calipers are off at the brake shop being rebuilt as I type. Just well. The master cyl was so nasty, that when I tried to top it up, it wouldn't even go through the filter baskets in the fluid pots. Ouch. The front calipers on the car were bone dry, so I'm installing the Girlock units I got with the bigger struts. By some miracle, the brake booster is fine, aside of some perished rubber and surface rust.



Onto the back brakes, this has been a bigger debacle thanks to these things...



Shoe adjustment screws. Please tell Nissan never did this to any of their other cars. Why would you put such a small head on such an important screw? Anyhow. I had penetrant, freeze and release, then finally a gas torch on it before it finally freed up. In terms of not ruining the head, I did this with my small socket set...



That's an allen adapter to an allen bit, into the same sized socket. Then you use the 1/4" driver as the square socket for the adjustment screw. The driver side let go with a little penetrant and some time thankfully. Inside, the drums look pretty good. They'll get some new slave cyls, rubber hoses and shoes and that should do it.





3. Unrelated rubbish
You'll note in the pic above, there are bright red rear coils. I'm assuming they're not stock. They are the same colour as the front ones I got with the 200B/810 struts. I also found the car has these shocks on the back.



I assume it's been used for a bit of towing from time to time and was probably a farm car. because there's dirt everywhere, but it's pretty dry and straight. It would also explain the 'Travelling Wilburys' tape in the glovebox. No kidding. I'll install the Bilstein's but it's nice to know there's some decent if I have to have them rebuilt. The heavy duty rear springs will stay for now.

Found some speed holes in the exhaust...



Dunno what to do about that. I'm tempted to throw a cheap exhaust wrap over it to get through inspection, because it's getting a full 2" system down the track.

As I mentioned before, I've had the head off the L18 I bought. It looks as tidy as the L16 in the car, which is pretty great.



Here's the cam profile I mentioned before...



So far, I've called a few Cam grinders and it's none of there's. It says 'made in japan' on it. But I don't know if that's the billet that's jap made, or the whole thing was ground there. The mystery continues. Apparently it's got plenty of lift.

Now I'll go back to my favourite job. Carbs...

Bought a 200B/810 dogleg 5 speed last night from a mate. Spent the night wondering about what to do about the 'fabricated crossmember' rule for NSW rego. Apparently it requires engineering. Completely stupid really. Having climbed under the car for a squiz, I found this.





There's some creative engineering going on down here. Had to laugh really. The good news is my new gearbox appears to fit with the cross member in the stock position.

Having run a few errands I got back into it tonight. With the carb back on the motor, it fired up almost straight away.

http://www.instagram.com/p/B0VsmCBHqNG/

It smoked pretty badly, but I think it's mostly kero and old oil burning off. Trans works too, so that's good. I'll get some brakes on it and then it's drivable.

In another odd twist, the oil filter seems to be vibrating on the engine mount. Have to look into that. But that's not the weirdest thing I discovered to night.



This is the motor IN the car. The seller told me it was a L16. Guess not, right? Pretty happy about this.

K, will try that. Put 100psi into the fuel like today. Seems like the outlet of the tank is uber blocked.

However, I did discover something rolled up tight next to the fuel tank...



It's only the outside cover of the booklet. But interesting none the less. However, when I unrolled it, I found this!



And that's when I got excited. It tells me a few things I suspected already. It's definitely a 69' model. It's lived most of it's life in Tamworth, deep in the country. That's why it's so straight and rust free. Awesome, awesome stuff.

I've covered up the key number, but it's there too, which is great for me and other future owners. I might try and laminate this thing.

I would like to contact the original owner, but I suspect he's no longer alive. I am really curious to know when it was converted over to an auto. I'm beginning to think all the parts were harvested from a 180B/610 at some stage. The brake booster/master cyl, motor and trans all come from the same car I reckon. Anyway, the bad news is, I'll have to empty all the good fuel from the tank and then pull it out and clear it out.

Yay... might be easier just to get another tank off a mate, except this tank is really clean.

Feel like I'm getting nowhere with this thing, but that's not reality. So trying to document little, but important things that are getting done. As I mentioned last time, I had to pull the tank out. It was pretty grubby in there, but that wasn't the worst of it. The outlet pipe inside the tank, 6mm OD, was completely clogged with rust and who knows what else. I tried 100psi of compressed air, wire and various chemicals but in the end, I just gave up. I've blocked off the outlet and used the larger return as the fuel supply. I know it's not ideal, but for now, it'll have to do.



Under the car, I've put a T-piece (and another filter) in to allow me to run the supply and return lines effectively. Once I'm happy it works well, I'll zip tie it up in position.



Getting the tank back in created a few dramas. My local parts store had no O rings for the fuel gauge sender and the plastic breather fitting disintegrated whenever I touched it.



I managed to dodge up a solution using brass fittings and RTV and the tank is finally back in.



Gotta say though, it was nice to see all that original paint in such good condition under the tank and under the back seat. Such an honest car.



I just wish they hadn't emptied a bean bag under the seat.



All the master cylinders went back in the car today.



I also pulled the pedals off the manual pedal box I bought, wirebrushed them and painted them. This was the darkest colour I could find in my box of spraycans.



I bought a Subaru STi R180 plate LSD last week (much to the horror of my wife) and went out to SW Motorsport to speak to Stewart about it. Gotta start by saying how much of a gentleman he is. Tremendously helpful and obviously an expert on Datsuns of every type. As soon as I opened the boot of my car, he saw the HD front spring and correctly told me, 'That's a stanza spring, not a 200B spring'. Violet/stanza struts are too long for a 510 front end. This is a bit of a blow as I just spend $200 having the callipers rebuilt. Additionally, it also means the Bilstein inserts in them are probably useless to me. So I need to find some 200B struts and hope the calipers fit, then worry about springs and inserts. Once again, Stewart offered to help me out there to with some sort of swap.

Anyway, the good news is, my LSD is the right sort and I'll be swapping my 4.44 ratio for a 3.9 he has that suits me better. Then the diff will get new flanges and whatever else it needs to go in the 510. He also supplied me with the bits I need for my shifter. I was able to test it and works well, shifting nicely into each gear and spinning appropriately.



Of course, like the bonehead I am, I forgot to take my clutch parts out so he could tell me which throw out bearing and clutch I need. Oh well.

In other news, my front driver's door now locks by button and key. This seems like a little thing, but it's taken a lot of work to get it to do so.



Of course I hoped to have the car on it's wheels this evening and able to drive in and out of the garage. I guess I just need to be patient and more careful about buying parts.

More work today. Another visit to SW Motorsport. Big props to Stewart. Seems we've found a compromise to the stanza strut issue. Back at home I was pulling struts apart and de-rusting my lightened flywheel. Yes, it was as bad the rusty one to begin with.



The hubs got similar treatment before I pulled them off the struts. Bearings look good so they'll get a light regrease before going on 200B struts.



All the pedals are now in and appropriately set up.



Real evidence the brake lights work. Yay!



In other news, the water pump leaks and I'm struggling with the Bilstein shocks I have for the back of the car.

Nice Build mate. couldn't quite work out your fuel lines but if you are using the return as a fuel supply it won’t work unless you have a full tank. The return drops fuel off near the top of the tank.