blue72

Here's an example for those that haven't seen one yet. This is an L20 six pulled from a Kenmeri skyline as seen on yahoo auctions japan. This one is unique in that it has the M on both sides of the block. It is cast with an M2, but others I've seen have different notations. Looking through my hard drive I've spotted: Solitary M behind dipstick on an S130 turbo block M1 on LD20 on the intake/exhaust side of the block Solitary M on intake/exhaust side behind engine mount on a L20ET M3 same spot behind mount on an L20A E30 block

I've seen pictures of the big M on many later Nissan inline engines. Everything from L20ET sixes to LD20 four cylinder models. I don't believe any of them came here to the states, but they seem commonplace in other markets, at least from what I've been able to gather from thousands of miles away.

Siamesed means the cylinder walls don't have any gap between them. Unfortunately, people usually think it means the opposite. For example, I just pulled my N42 block out of the parts washer about an hour ago and looking at the water jackets through the holes where the core plugs would fit, the only space I could see the other side of the block through the cylinder walls was between 3&4. When I got my F54 block back from the machinist you could barely see between each cylinder wall. Before cleaning they were blocked with sediment which sort of defeated the purpose of having those extra water passages. Long story short; if its an F54, then it is not siamesed.

I'm a long time POR-15 fanatic too. Just got done coating the new floors in the 510 last week and it's just starting to wear off my hands. I've also sprayed it in the past. Didn't have any difficulties at all using a normal HVLP gun. We sprayed the entire 18' frame of my Suburban with it, two coats. I did make sure to order some of their proprietary thinner beforehand which helped with the cleanup, but we sprayed the POR-15 itself without dilluting it one bit and it went on perfectly.

Congratulations on figuring it out. Restores my confidence in the AZC big brake setup.

Ha ha, Tony and his mysterious E32. The more I've dug into this motor the more it looks like this was a complete JDM engine swap. The N42 head doesn't have a spray bar, but instead its internally oiled. The cam is stamped "B" on the rear and what I can see of the valve seats lead me to believe they're the hardened kind and not bronze. I suspect the head is probably one of the home market N42s without injector notches. The remaining piece, the block I retrieved today looks to be the "early style" with no provisions for an oil filter adapter. Kind of an odd combo to come across at a junkyard on the outskirts of a city where reside 817 people in rural Southern Utah.

I spent all day today at a local junkyard. They've got a couple of ZX's, and I had previously spotted a 1977 280Z with a single carb on it. I returned to grab the early N42 block from the 280 and some other miscellaneous parts both for my L31 project and my 510 project, but when I started to disassemble the the '77 I spotted some odd quirks. I was expecting a Clifford or Edelbrock manifold and a Holley 4bbl, but the single carb wasn't an aftermarket piece. Every piece in the conversion was official Nissan, from the carb and intake to the exhaust manifold to the special fuel rail and heat shields. Unfortunately I haven't had enough time to separate the intake and exhaust manifolds from the N42 head. They are sealed together really well, as in me jumping up and down on the carb throat and nothing budging. The intake manifold is cast with a Y41 and looks like a P53, but without any provision for a water pass-through. The A.I.R. exhaust manifold is a Y40. The carb itself has Nissan cast into it, but it'll be a day or two before get around to inspecting the 2bbl and measuring the runners on the intake. I'm off to the yard again tomorrow to hoist that block out. I haven't heard of any of these pieces in all of my research, but I was hoping someone like TonyD or one of the Aussies or New Zealanders who've seen more of this oddball JDM stuff might be able to help identify what vehicle these pieces came from. The only clue so far was a sticker found on the rad support that read: Z Experty Datsun/Nissan Specialists HUNTINGTON BEACH, CA followed by a phone number I figure they must have been the ones who did this conversion back in the day. The did a good job too, because each of the fittings that you'd normally dread removing screwed out easily like they had once been coated in anti-sieze. A quick Google search shows that there is a place 40 miles away in Venice called Z Expert Automotive, so maybe I'll call them and see if they're related at all. Here are some more pictures to satiate curiosity until later:

I had to try out the "Quick reply to this message" button that has now appeared between the Quote and Blog buttons. Yep, activates the quick reply box and i can still see all of the posts in the whole thread. There is that whole deal with having to make one extra click though...

Just read through this thread with my dad by my side. He agrees with Jasper and thinks the clutch disk had a come apart.

Is the picture on the internet? Can you post a link to it?

Installed mine with the blue DB gauge today. Learned the SUs were still at least 1/2 a turn too rich. The gauge worked great but it does jump around constantly between numbers at idle. Off topic, but other things I learned today: Having the right air/fuel mixture cleared the low rpm stumble I was experiencing. Dumping the clutch at 5k rpm leaves a black mark 30' long Slowing down takes a while from 100+ mph I don't have a tire iron or jack handle in my car (guess how I found that out)

That's what I was going to mention. Check over the clutch line, reservoir housing and all fittings for leaks would be my first suggestion.

So that's where he got his motor. I wish deals like that would happen here, then my little 510 project could move under its own power too. Nice job Ron. I can't wait to feel the same power myself. Oh, any pictures from either of you two?

With everything in close approximation to its final location I decided to finish the floors. Here's the driver side almost completely welded in. In that picture a couple of bolts can be seen at the far end of the replacement floor. They were being used both as alignment tools and to make sure the pan stayed in close proximity to the floor support when filling in the spot weld holes. The outer edges of each pan were given a similar treatment, drilling and filling in the original spot weld holes which were spaced about every 6" apart. If you are super observant you'll notice that the driver's side was a little rustier to begin with, so the edges of the replacement pan were left mostly intact while more material was removed from the remains of the old floor instead. Here's yours truly grinding down all of those excess weld beads and trying to make even the unseen underside of the vehicle appear new and tidy. With much perseverance (and lots of tiny little burn marks on my head because I was too engrossed to bother with a hat, but instead donned a shop rag) I finished the two front floors. This is what the finished product looked like before it was cleaned and coated. With all of that out of the way I readied the final straightening of the front end. After double checking the mating surfaces to be sure they were straight and grinding off some overlooked welding beads, I re-positioned the Hi-Lift. With one hand pushing on the handle and the other holding the welding gun, the two pieces of metal were fused to each other again. Much better.

Curious as to what use a Hi-Lift would be? I used it to push the strut tower back to where it was supposed to have been in the first place. The front frame rails that support the engine were straight, so I only had to push the top of the tower over against the support. It popped and groaned but moved smoothly. Looking around for something to re-create the rusted out sections of the fender support I spied a dented valve body pan in the trash from a vehicle we had repaired earlier in the week. It worked great. The lip I wanted was already built in, it was thick steel and there were holes in it that I could fill with weld as I had done with the spot welds inside the vehicle. I spent most of two days just straightening and rebuilding the inner fender and fender support.

Everything seemed to be progressing swimmingly so far, right? Not so fast. I had a big hurdle to overcome when it came to the driver's side of the vehicle. With some sheetmetal from the floorpan out of the way it was quickly becoming evident that things weren't lined up like they should have been. Using a box wrench I proceeded to break off the heads of each bolt that held the driver side fender on (after soaking them for three days in Kroil) and this is what I found underneath it: This vehicle had been in a semi-serious left side collision at some time in its past. It happened back when the car was still pea-green and before it had been repainted burgundy with pin striping. The affected area had been repaired at the time, but by now all of the welds that had held the repair together were rusted through or broken. This left the inner fender and front strut tower unsupported, which led to the weight of the vehicle slowly forcing them inward and upward. Here's a view inside the fender well showing how far apart things had spread, and this is with the vehicle supported on a lift. Everything pushed much farther apart with the 510 supporting its own weight. All this without any drivetrain to press down on it either. The body shop that had executed the questionable repairs simply pop-riveted the inner fender and another support piece back in position. Needless to say, those rivets were no longer intact. This is what the fender support looked like: It had been chopped up and mostly replaced following the accident, but not enough thought was given to the longevity of the repair, and rust quickly lay hold on the exposed metal and welds. The cancer had also spread to the inner fender mounting surface. My solution? Grinding, welding and a Hi-Lift jack.

Before I got too serious with the floors there was some cleanup that needed to take place, so out came the shop-vac. I know this picture is fuzzy because of the built up goop on all the windows, but do you see all of those yellow things at the base of the windshield? I don't know why the yellow jackets decided this would be a great spot to die, but that's the only place in the car where I found them. Another item of note was found in the glovebox. Inside I found a nice inspirational button that got me to wondering what sort of people had once loved the little dime. With everything cleaned up, the first order of business was to lay the new pans into place and see what needed to be trimmed. It was immediately evident that a few areas of the pans themselves would need to be cut away because they didn't yet sit flush. I started with the passenger floorpan, and trimmed a little here and there from the new metal to let it lay flat on top of the old floor. Pulling out the old industrial sharpie I made some quick marks and began slicing up the old floor. The passenger side had remained mostly intact aside from the rust holes where it met the firewall, so finding all of the depressions created by the spot welds was a simple affair. This would not turn out to be the case on the driver's side which was a giant rust ball. Then more cutting, trimming, chopping, beating, drilling, etc... to get the replacement to fit correctly. All of the holes for the spot welds were drilled through the new pans so that I could fill them in with weld later, and with some persuasion everything lined up nicely. Ignore my momentary lapse of attention when trimming the firewall edge. One of the toughest parts for me is having the patience to let the welds cool to prevent warping, but luckily this was a large piece and by the time I came back around to the beginning it was ready to be zapped again. The replacement pans are the prefect thickness as well and made it difficult for even me to burn through them. Here's the passenger pan already installed and ready to rock while the driver's side floor area is getting prepped. I laid out the old floor pieces side by side with one of the new pans so everyone could visualize just how far gone these things were.

With the 510 defrosting in one of the bays, I removed all the interior bits which had been piled inside the car when it was unceremoniously evicted from the shop back in '06. Here are a couple of views of the still damp front floors. Yep, lots of room for improvement there. Luckily the support rails were still in excellent shape structurally. I don't want to give it all away yet, but 60 hours of labor, eight cutoff wheels, one tank of gas for the MIG and a couple of 4 1/2 inch angle grinder wheels later and all of this has been repaired and more, so stay tuned.

Appearances can be deceiving. From a distance the exterior seems passable, but there are many hidden 'features' under that sheetmetal and pinstriping. This is what it looked like a couple of weeks ago (2-13-09) when I aired up the '79 Civic's crusty tires and shoved it out of the way to access the 510. I'm a big fan of the battery powered car pusher. And here's the Fred Flintstone inspired braking system. You'll notice the original steering wheel is in that last shot. Yes, it is the bare steel hoop. All of the plastic rotted away in the sun. The wheel that's on there now I grabbed from a junkyard 280Z. I got lucky and found a guy back east who makes replacement floorpans. A quick inspection led me to believe that only the fronts would need replaced, so that's all I ordered. They're not the same pattern as the original pans, but they are ribbed for reinforcement then cut, trimmed and bent to the right shape which saves a lot of time (I don't happen to have access to a sheet metal brake). I'm pretty happy with the product that I got.

I'll try not to make the story too long, but here's what I know about the history of this 1970 auto trans PL510. Perhaps six or seven years ago my father spotted a forlorn little two door 510 for sale at a tow yard. He has done a lot of business with the owner/operator of the towing business, and it turns out he had picked the car up years ago as an 'eventual project'. Needing some cash the tow driver drug it out to the street hoping some other enthusiast would give it some attention. For $200 my dad simply couldn't refuse. The seller even delivered the car on his tow rig at no extra charge. To delve even further into history, my father had a friend in high school who drove a hopped up 510, and perhaps dreamt of recreating a little of his adolescence. Unfortunately, as with most of his project vehicles, it sat on the side of his shop mostly untouched. Sometime around 2006 he got ambitious and disassembled the interior then yanked out the motor and trans. As usual, work got in the way of personal projects, and the little 510 was pushed back outside again to it's accustomed resting spot in the gravel. Over time he decided an SR20DET swap would be the best bang for the buck. To this day he's still on the lookout for "the deal" on a good red top. Again, big plans, but very little time or ambition after a hard day wrenching on other people's cars for a living. I've watched all this happen from the sidelines, but recently decided to get involved and jumpstart the project for him. With the recent economic downturn and consequent lack of anything better to do (and an empty bay or two in the shop) I figured I'd do something nice for the old man and have a bit of a gift ready for him at the end of the chemotherapy treatment he has been going through. Plus, I figured it wouldn't hurt to have a vested interest in the car so I could drive the thing when it is eventually completed. On to the pictures:

So Daeron is playing for the other team now? That reminds me, I eventually will have to track down a B18 to swap into the '79 Civic that sits forlornly on the side of the shop. Maybe after I'm done with the 510.

I bought the package deal that comes with the DB gauge. I've got everything assembled, but not installed. I guess I'll have to let you know how I like it this weekend.

Called Courtesy Nissan today, and they told me no 1mm or 2mm metal head gaskets in stock and that they haven't been for quite some time. I'm currently researching copper head gaskets myself.

I have pics of most of them, but they aren't mine, so I'm not sure I should post them. Kennysgreen280zt is right. Cartech system #16-050 was for EFI equipped cars.

I thinks it's fair to say that the majority of us have probably seen Dave's stuff at some point in time and lusted over it. There are members here running the same setup you linked to.