gramercyjam

Hey, the N36 performance intake isn't a rumor. It's a fact. I know a guy who met a guy that had a friend who's brother read it on the Internet!

Thats the SP135T. The SP135Pro has infinite settings.

Roger that. Most of the time, when I'm welding on the car, there isn't even room to flip the helmet down, or even wear a helmet in some cases. My vision is pretty bad (nearsighted, astigmatic, old eyes), so I need to be a certain distance see the pool to see it. Not too far, not to close. What I'd really like to have is a leather facemask with flip up goggles that are autodarkening and with adjustable shade for working in close quarters. 8)

Grumpy, why do you say a $200 automatic helmet is necessary? Sure, nice to have, but necessary? Did welders all go blind before the advent of electronic helmets?

You have convinced me. Pop rivters rule.

Well, I wouldn't say the floor is a big of a structural member as the rockers and trany tunnel. Yes Datsun put 'frame rails' of a sort... but they were very thin and would really only prevent the floor pan from flexing along the long flat areas. Guess what the frame rails ahead of the firewall attach to at the firewall. No, not the tranny tunnel or the rockers. Yes, it is the firewall, the floor and the floor frame rails.

I think the post is WAY preachy. Bumpers aren't a safety item. Power to weight ratio is not a crash worthyness issue.

Get the most expensive welder you can afford. You get what you pay for in welders. Get one that uses gas shielding if you can afford that too. It makes all the difference. I use one of the Lincoln SP 135 plus with a 122 cu ft bottle with Argon gas mix. Anybody can do a good job right away on 18 gauge up to about 1/8", and with some practice, you can go thinner or thicker with good results too. It seems to have a pretty good power supply that isn't real sensitive to line voltage variations. Before I got this unit, I was using a Century 155 flux core welder, and that thing just aggravated me to no end. Slight dips in the line voltage made it all but unusable and welds have a very poor appearance with a lot of inclusions. Of course, if you can find a TIG unit, all the better, they weld the best. If I could ever find a decent used TIG setup for about the same price as a MIG, I'd go for it. You get much better control on the thin stuff with TIG.

I'm pretty sure the floor is a structural member of the car because of the unibody construction. Pop rivits may attach the floor to the rest of the car, but you will have lost some rigidity. If the floor wasn't an important part of the structure, Datsun wouldn't have bothered with adding the frame rail from the firewall back to the seat support. I am not aware of any bodyshops that will do the kind of quality work that I would want on my car. To have that kind of work done, you should really see a restoration specialist who has the skills and will take the time to do it right. Of course for that kind of money, you may be able to equip your own shop properly and DIY. If the car is just transportation for you, yea, go ahead and have somebody weld in some patch panels and tar them over.

I was thinking maybe austempering, but it has been years since I took materials.

Ok. I ordered some springs. Now I guess I'll need a tach too (LOL)! I didn't need one before, valve float was my rev limiter. This one looks like it will do ... http://cgi.ebay.com/ebaymotors/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&rd=1&category=33679&item=2464660683&sspagename=STRK%3AMEBWN%3AIT

Although I'm not sure what they are supposed to protect you from, one of those $10 plastic marine battery boxes from autozone will pass tech. I ran 1/2 season last year like that.

I have one of these http://www.actron.com/cgi-bin/web_store.cgi?page=cp9135.htm&cart_id= No complaints, no problems. I use it on my '96 Vette, '02 Subirban, some buddies Hondas. It is stupid simple to use and takes up very little space in my tool chest.

I have a spring tester - a digital bathroom scale and a drill press. Just pick out the best of the bunch I guess. New springs are the way to go, of course.

I know about Delta. I was thinking the same thing, but heck, I don't plan on using these cams very long, and I'd really like something along the lines of a Nissan Motorsports L3 so I figure I don't really want to spend any real money fixing them. I see Delta heats up the lobe with induction heating before welding, presumably to minimize any warpage or cracking and for better pentration. I don't think they harden the lobes after welding them though. Supposedly the welding should make the lobe surface harder than new anyway. No laughing please, but I was thinking after welding it up, I'd just file that puppy down and sand/polish it smooth, making frequent measurements with a dial indicator of course. Sand and polish up the rocker arms too. Do you know what they charge for fixing a lobe or a regrind? $$80 - 100 or so? Courtesy lists a new L9 available for $250.

Anybody here ever sucessfully welded a camshaft lobe? I've got an old Racer Brown 325-R performance cam I bought off ebay from a guy in Houston that turned out to have a worn lobe, and I thought I'd give it a shot and use it until I have a new motor built up. Also a brand new .550 lift Crane Cam (broken in half, supposedly in shipping I bought from a guy in Canada). I have bad luck when it comes to buying cams. How about valve springs? Any way to rejuvenate old valve springs? - I've got buckets of them.

At the O'Reilly Autoparts counter: ME: I want 6 of the NGK BP5ES plugs please GUY: What vehicle is that for? ME: It doesn't matter, those are the plugs I want. GUY: I can't locate the plugs unless I know what vehicle they are for. The computer doesn't list them that way. ME: Your computer won't list those plugs for my car. How about you go in the back to where you keep the plugs and look to see if you have any NGK BP5ES? GUY: Unhh .... OK. A few minutes later - GUY: Here they are - the last 6 we had.

Good lowrider candidate though. I'll take the motor.

Sparky, The connectors will be 3"X2"X11 gauge rectangular steel tube. The plan is to attach just under the engine bay rails, just behind the T/C rod attachment point and run them straight back to the rear sub frame. I'll have a better idea once I get them fitted in. There will be more of the rectangle above the floor than below because I have ground clearance issues. I'll have the car up in the air a couple feet and the motor and tranny out for this and the fenders off too since I will be doing some seam welding while I'm at it. I hate welding on my back too since all the sparks fall on you and burn through but it looks like this can be done mostly from above and since I don't want this project to drag out for months, no rotisserie will be used. I'll be removing large sections of the floor and welding new material back after the connectors are in rather than attaching them to the underside of the floor. I have a decent small Lincoln MIG welding setup, sandblaster, large compressor, grinders, sanders, nibblers, shears, cutters, etc and a large garage with attached shop so I'm in good shape for a place to work and tools.

I like it! What size tubes?

I suppose the more suspension travel you have, the more it matters. Perhaps that is one of the reasons why the fast autox Z's run high spring rates.

I'm trying to understand what this means. I'm also a bit curious about the range of adjustment possible with plates. Most of our cars are lowered relative to stock, so the camber gain is wrong. In my car, the primary problem I have is loss of traction - increasing static camber is gonna make that worse. But decreasing it will most likely screw up the cornering. It's a puzzle. What I mean't was after significant lowering, too much camber is a problem. The camber plates were installed to put the camber back to about -1 degree, the correct amount for my tires (the tires looked pretty much like this / , way too much camber after lowering). In order to get back to that amount of camber, the tops of the shocks need to be moved out quite a bit further than the camber plates will allow if installed without modifying the tops of the strut tower to move the camber plates out as well. When you say the camber gain is wrong, do you mean camber gain from compression of the suspension in a corner? That camber is going positive?

Thanks for the compliments guys. All the fab work was done with inexpensive hand tools. The car is not street driven, so it doesn't see a lot of the environmental abuse a street car gets. The battery terminals have dieletric silicone grease to inhibit corrosion as it does rain some times at autox events. The battery is a computer UPS sealed gel cell so it and I haven't seen battery posts on those corrode yet though. It is down low to try and keep the CG of the car as low as possible. No auxiliary battery terminals up top yet, but that is a good idea. I wasn't entirely sure that the battery would hold up, but I ran all last year with it and it definitely seems to hold a charge/take a charge just as well as any regular car battery I've used. Sometime in the future I plan to move the exhaust from the stock location. Possibly closer to the center line of the car (next to the fuel pump), but I have also been thinking about ways to route it out the passenger side somewhere ahead of the rear wheels to further improve weight distribution and reduce the weight of the exhaust system. Though ground clearance is at a premium, it might be do-able with some custom oval or rectangular exhaust pipe. That big loop of fuel line stands a good chance of getting tagged, it is just about level with the bottom of the rear valence. That will get taken care of when I run the new fuel lines, filter regulator and pump. Next fabrication item is subframe connectors to cure the cracking I'm getting of the frame rails at the firewall. Starting work this week so I should have some pics of that at some point. I know about getting robbed Aaron. Thieves made a hole in the wall in the side of my shop just big enough for them to wiggle through in December. The only thing they managed to find in the dark that would fit through the hole was a brand new Milwalkee circular saw which was a replacement for a saw ripped off from the same shop a few months before. That previous time the shop had big windows they used to get lots of stuff out but the windows were since removed. Now they can't get out except for the way they came in.

Playing with new camera. There is actually more chassis fab work here than fuel system or electrical, so I'm posting here. Notice the original 31 year old fuel pump and weight saving rubber fuel lines. Sure to please the purists. Drivers side Pass. side Deck - lid off Deck - lid on