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A few years back I purchased a 260z and instantly fell in love with Datsuns. I started this year by picking up a 280z on January 1st with the goal of building a fun track car. After some back and forth between engines and after having to put the project on hold to finish my Masters, I finally have the time to work on it. Ultimately, I settled on a 32v 4.6l build. The reasoning behind this was I was after an easily accessible engine that could put down reliable power and had no interest in the ls swap. One of my best friends is a huge mustang guy and his knowledge on the matter was another selling point for the Ford engine. If nothing else, the goal here is to have somewhere where I can lay out my thoughts and see the progress. For anyone interested in following along, you're more than welcome to check in every once in a while, check my instagram (projectdatstang), or find me on youtube (Eddie Huerta) as we will be doing our best to record and upload everything we do for anyone interested in replicating something we do, or for anyone who just wants to get a laugh from watching a couple clueless guys try their best at building a race car from scratch.

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Edited by 4.6lz
corrected instagram account
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The first post shows the car as it was the day we brought it home. All in all the body is in good shape and the only thing we need to replace is the floorplans. As stated in the intro post, the car sat like this for almost 8 months in my garage, but I'm proud to say we are finally attacking it and making progress. We ended up pulling the engine from a Lincoln at the junkyard and it is currently at the shop being bored and prepped for its new life. In the meantime, we decided to prep the body and decided on a slight tubular front end as the turbo I got will require a lot of room. Picked up a jd2 bender and we will be attempting the bends this weekend. Hopefully, I'll have pictures for yall on Monday.

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So, yesterday we started bending tube. I was surprised at how quickly we picked it up. We watched a youtube video on how to build cheater bars to figure out cost of material per bend and then bent the main hoop on the first try. We then bend the two side hoops. Called it a day there as I'm still waiting for the tube notcher to come in. Hopefully the tube notcher comes in this week and I can make more progress and get more pictures up for you guys. Also, I'm hoping to start uploading videos on youtube soon.

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Edited by 4.6lz
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Awesome It's always nice to see a refresh new project underway.

 

One thing I may suggest is, those 4.6 engines are tall depending on the intake manifold and throttle body your using.

If you want your hood to close without cutting it. The oil pan will sit quite a bit lower then the Datsun sub frame. I cut the a sub frame out of a mustang to protect my oil pan.

If I were to do it again I would cut the pan to be less deep or buy a shallow aftermarket one.

 

Cheers

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13 hours ago, bimmota said:

Awesome It's always nice to see a refresh new project underway.

 

One thing I may suggest is, those 4.6 engines are tall depending on the intake manifold and throttle body your using.

If you want your hood to close without cutting it. The oil pan will sit quite a bit lower then the Datsun sub frame. I cut the a sub frame out of a mustang to protect my oil pan.

If I were to do it again I would cut the pan to be less deep or buy a shallow aftermarket one.

 

Cheers

It is a b head cobra intake manifold. As of now it clears, when i start looking into the charge pipe it might be an issue. If it becomes an issue I'm considering a custom made forward facing intake. I failed to mention it in the other post but I'm going tubular because it's going to have a 91mm turbo so cutting into the hood, or no hood are both under consideration.

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Been gone for a while. Sorry about that guys. Between work and finding out I would be having a kid, I've kept myself busy. Anywho, finally got back to it and I'm excited to say that this thing has spiraled out of control. Originally we were going to tube the front end and call it a day. During the downtime, we decided to go with an 8.8 rear end. After going to the junkyard and pulling one we realized it would be more work to try and make the 8.8. fit than if we just tubbed the rear. So we cut out the rear as well and will be tubbing the entire car.

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During the downtime on the car, we did make progress on the block. Had it bored and honed to start with clean new cylinder surfaces, had the crank turned, and heads resurfaced. Threw a ton of money at it in the hopes to get this thing to make 12-1400 horsepower when it is finally up and running.

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  • 2 weeks later...

Made a little more progress this past weekend. We branched off of the first tube that we had installed the last week and made the front two rails as well as the main hoop. We also ended up test fitting the trans tunnel to get an idea of how it would sit in the car. I'm pretty happy with the way things are turning out. Slowly but surely we are making progress. The goal is to finish the cage and triangulating the front rails before we move on to the back half of the car.

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Edited by 4.6lz
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  • 2 weeks later...

The cage is coming together and it is all slowly starting to take shape. Those down bars were the death of us. We scrapped about 12 ft of tube figuring out the angles for the bends, offset and notches. 

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  • 1 year later...

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