MONZTER

Welcome back, I think you unfortunately find things have gotten quiet around here. Face book groups, scammers and short attention spans are the new norm. I came back here after a 10 year absence as I missed the old times too. Still lots of great info to be found, just not the level of new content we remember.

Then on to the front fender, Inner and lower. Another KF Fab part fitted in and TIG welded Cleaned up the weld beads and spot welded it back to the lower fender return Same deal on the lower fender. lots of small tack welds to keep it fron warping and small welds. I kept the original lower flange of the fender so the fit would not change. It cleaned up nicely with some blasting, and will keep the original fit and look of the fender For TIG the metal needs to be perfectly clean forpretty welds, but the overlap of the inner fender made this difficult, but they will look fine when ground back. A grinder, a file and a shrinking disk got it straight. A skim coat of filler will probably be needed to make it perfect as I cant get behing the repair to dolly it out perfect. The Hatch slam is up next

Here are pics of the front rocker panel and front fender work. All the same concept of only removing what was necessay and trying to keep it as original as possible with little to no filler. All original paint and never worked. Looks pretty good Whats hidden After blating with crushed glass Cut out the old, you can see the inside of the rocker was perfect and clean. the rust comes from the overlap of the inner fender and the front rocker. The cowl drain dumps back here and it just fills with wet dirt I bought a KF Fab full rocker and only used the small pc to repalce the area. The fit is really good on these parts TIG welded it back in. Carefully only 1/4" at a time jumping around with an air quench. Some quick grinding of the weld bead and it blends in perfect so it doesnt even look repaired.

No, Just ER70S-2, works well with the tig and low amperage, so no distortion from overheating or cracking metal like it MIG. On headers I would use silicone bronze to weld the primaries to the flanges.The heat cycling needs the ductility of the silicon bronze, but on a body panel I dont thinkit is necessary unless you were trying to flame weld and minimize warping.

I miss the old days of the forums. I would not call it a skill, but just some practice over the years and figuring out what works, and what not to do, usually the hard way. So dont be afraid to try and practice if you enjoy this sort of thing. Its not great work, but good enough to satify myself. I have a friend who welds, he has talant

I dont want any filler, so I fit each part perfectly with a butt joint, dolly it out where possible, then grind it flat and smooth for an original fit. before any welding I prime all parts on the back side and pinch points with weld-thru primer the arc and inner rocker are new in this picture then the rear of the rocker, putting back the spot welds in the OEM position Some more primer to look super clean and blend in tot he original rocker which was perfect everywhere else Finally fit the outer skin and tig it in small steps so no warping Some more smoothing of the welds and original spotweld locations used Just a small skim coat of filler on the upper weld seem, but making sure to leave all the factory spot welds to show through the paint. Other side is the same, so on to the front fender next

Been busy working on the body of the NA car. Overall in really good original paint condition. But of course the common areas still need to be replaces even in a low mile California car. So I got busy cutting and welding. The KF parts are really nice but I only want to replace as much metal as trulely needed, so instead of just replacing the entire part, I grafted in what I need to keep it as original as possible. Here are some pics of the first dogleg What is hiding inside you ask Surprise cut it all out start fitting rebuilding from the inside out as how it was originally done Blast it all clean and start TIG welding

Even if 100 people commited to purchase, its still tiny small numbers vs an OEM production. Its got to be done out of passion and at least not to lose money. This is why this is such a huge acomplisment for someone like Derek, We are fortunate the passion runs deep. I cant imagine the hours of "un-billed" time

No English version I could find, but they show some pictures of the concepts they are working on

Has anybody else seen this video yet? It's JMC announcing more new cylinder heads for the L series. The FIA/Safari head a twin cam head, s20 head and another L series head. what do you guys think? I wish they did a LY head, with modern chambers and ports

You’ll lose nothing in my opinion, Fuel injection has a tunable acceleration feature just like a pump on the Webbers. I ditched mine for fuel injection and it was way better everywhere and no hundreds of dollars to make a jetting change, just a few click on the keyboard to make changes and tune it. I would never go back.

In the past when I would bench and smooth out casting lines in parts you would always see the smooth ground areas in contrast to the original casting finish. What I would do is blast it with a heavy 36 grit aluminum oxide to add even texture on the entire part, then Vapor hone it to brighten it up. It looks great, almost as if it were originally cast like that. So something to consider vs just glass bead if you decide to smooth out any of the maching marks and go with a more classic cast look.

Looking good to me, lets see some detail shots of the machining that you are not happy with. Are you going to bench it down? Whats your plan for filters?

The quality looks great, so good way to do it. The cost of materials in the USA, particularly in California, makes it uncompetitive even compared to other parts of the country. It's likely that the material costs alone here are as high as what you paid for the finished part. Its why I just make parts for myself anymore. I have to justify the time and cost with love of doing it as a hobby

I still check in once in a while and still work on my cars all the time, but it bumms me out that its so quiet around here anymore. Im not a social media guy or have time to produce youtube videos for self promothion, so I just quietly enjoy my projects and keep busy. Seems all the forums for cars and motorcycles I use to participate in are pretty quiet. Times change, but not all of us follow along. Thanks for all the help along the way

Ahhh, I thought you were programming and maching it, I was going to say nice work, not an easy part to program. Are you paying them based off 1 part? I assume the time to program and tool is a bigger expense than machine time? I'm in the same boat, I wish I could find a nice set-up for my NA car but nothing makes me happy. I might have to make one myself as well.

Here are some final assembly pics of the NA car Rear brakes. I had to take the OEM Z31 backing plate and cut the spot rivets holding this parking brake cable guide on. I then had to shorten it and weld on a new front mounting point. I ground the welds all nice so it looked OEM and then replated it in Yellow Zink. In the second picture you can see where I press fit in some stainless steel rivots, just sitting proud of the surface. This is where the "feet" on the parking brake shoes hit, and a little dab of grease should keep them smooth and quiet without worry of wear on the aliminum I next had to make a custom boss that will screw in to the new backing plate. This is the pivot and load point for the parking brake shoes. So I turned it out of 4140 steel, Yellow Zink plated it and threaded it into the backing plate with Red Loctite. Then I could re-assemble the stub axle and companion flange. These parts came out nice with a Zink plating on all the mating surfaces and powder-coating everywhere else. They should stay nice for a while. You can see the mounting bolts for the new backing pates. This is what the caliper looks like mounted with the Z-31 rotor Installed the parking brake shoes, springs, adjusters, ect. All fit up just like OEM Some final shots of the plates all assembled. I think they came out looking cool, kinda morphing from the struts hub shape to the mounting ears of the calipers. The look will be very clean IMO

Those look nice, whats you plan for MAP sensor, Brake booster, ect. Are you going to build a "log" to tie all the cylinders together?

Finally finished both L&R of the new rear Backing plates for the NA car. These are adapters that allow me to use a Z31 parking brake system and z31 rotor with Z32 aluminum 2 piston calipers and bolt it all on to a stock 240z strut. Yep it all works. For fun I took some pics of the machining steps to show what it took to make them from billet and finish them up. This is the first operation that mills the side to mount all the parking brake shoes and hardware. Comes out of a 8"x8.5"x2" thick piece of billet. Some detail of the surface machining and stepover of the cutting tool to make for a smooth finish After the first operation is complete the part needs to be flipped and held to machine the backside. I made a simple fixture plate that held the part by registered with 3 mounting holes and a single center screw to hold it down. This is the fixture plate. And this is the part after the first OP held tot he fixture plate ready to machine the second OP This is the part after the second aoperation is complete. About 2 hours of run time. You could go faster, but I wanted small step-over lines so it would not need any hand finishing After washing it and prepping it for a Alodine finish, here is the part as machined Final finish is a 5 second dip in the Alodine which gives it a goldish iridescent finish, then I sprayed it with a clear Cerakote to keep it looking good and easy cleaning And this is the final part. Next need to make a few small parts and the parking brake cable

I agree, I like looking at a chunk of billet and thinking anything I can imagine is in there, I just need to figure out how to get to it.

And some final shots of the assembly, along with a comparison to the Turbo car set-up shown previously

Here are some pics of the calipers I got from Ebay Japan. I ended up doing a complete rebuild with a nice Tungsten grey Cerakote finish and post machined Nissan logo. New pistons, seals and all freshly replated hardware with Stop-Tech pads

For the NA car I decided to go with Z-32 calipers, the nice aluminum ones for 30mm rotors with the Nissan Logo on them. I did some research and saw many people were using a Honda rotor with a caliper adapter, so this was my initial direction. Since I’m making everything myself I figured I would make these as well and started modeling it up in Solidworks. I started to notice some issues given the size of the Honda rotor. It looked as if the pads would interfere with the original caliper mounting point on the strut, possible causing the pad to bind. So I went a different direction and after scouring for drawings and modeling up different rotors I found a rotor from a Jeep Rubicon to be perfect. It was a little bigger at 302mm vs 296 for the Honda part. This offset he caliper just enough to keep the inner pad away from the strut/caliper mounting point. So I designed it in Solidworks and 3D printed a rotor and caliper adapter bracket to test fit the Z-32 caliper. After dialing it in for a perfect fit I went and CNC machined them. Finishing the adapter brackets in a Alodine finish with a clear Cerakote to keep them looking nice. The Rubicon rotors were available in Brembos premium line of OEM rotors with a nice anti-corrosion coating and big open venting. Because they had to be re-drilled for the Datsun bolt circle and the ID opened up, tooling was needed to get them all perfect. I even went as far as designing an adapter plate for the inside of the rotor to fill in the original holes and provide a nice clamping surface for the hardware Pics below of the adapter bracket and some steps of machining it on the CNC, also the 3d part vs the machined part

Some of the CAD models I built to make sure all fits as well as the models needed for the CNC work

Again going with AP, the front rotors are 325mm vented and drilled with custom 7075 hats I designed and build to make it all line up. Im super happy with the way it all came out but a little over the top for a 2200lb car