SUNNY TRUCK IN USE

Sometimes I forget I even owned this car but thankfully the new owner Mark has kept in touch. The above photo of the Sunny is from the Hutt Valley Motorsport autocross held on the weekend. Apparently the Sunny went great and finally turned a few tires into smoke in the dry. I can’t say just how happy I am that this car went to someone who is taking care of it and is shredding some tires, it makes all that hard work worth it even if it’s not me driving! Mark placed 19/43 entrants, between a silvia and a skyline, nice one Mark.

I believe it is currently in the process of being certified for road use although it was already certified for the suspension and wheels. Will keep posting on it where possible.

Credit to simply vanilla for the photos, thanks!

FCR SR Video 1

So it runs and the bowls don’t leak! I’m having a little issue with the throttle returning to idle even after a new auxiliary spring was added. Soon I will pull the carbs down and service the main return spring assembly.

I plumbed in a new low pressure (2-3.5psi) fuel pump and a Holley fuel pressure regulator. There is also a splitter block in there to feed the excess back to the tank. Remember that these carbs are built to run on gravity feed and hence really dislike pressure into the bowls.

I make many apologies for the visual and auditory experience of this video:
1) Damn that engine bay is ugly! It’s a work in progress and the carbs have been set up for initial testing and tuning without to much thought towards cleanliness and presentation. This will come as soon as it runs nicely.
2) Canon 7D microphones and controllers suck and I wish I had a better way of getting crisp sound.

I drove it up and down the drive way a bit bit and it definitely needs a tune but it runs fairly nicely and sounds great!

CORRECTING THE PROBLEM

Lowering a 1200 a lot and keeping the stock length castor arms is like a rough night out with your mates on the booze. You have fun and everything is going great but it gets to a point and you bail/miss judge the fence jump/walk into something you shouldn’t and now you can’t self centre when you’re walking. The problem I found in the past when drifting my truck is that the front edge of the wheel sits really close to the front edge of the wheel arch so instead of just shortening the castor arms to solve my loss of castor, I’m left with the options of either cutting the gaurds and loosing the smooth factor curve or running skinnier wheels (which wasn’t about to happen).

Instead of either of those options I’ve re-drilled the holes in the top of the strut tower by 30 degrees and effectively shifted the top of the shock towards the firewall by about 20mm. I’ve also filed out the camber plates a bit more to gain back the camber you loose when rotating the camber plate. Using our pal Pythagoras’ theorem, I can estimate an increase of about 2 degrees of castor. With other variables no doubt having an impact on the result – more mass up front, stiffer front springs and a wet track – it’s helped a lot, well obviously, but enough for me to notice a pick up in the amount the steering will self centre and rotate the wheels when switching. A pleasant change from normally having to fight the steering wheel into each switch. I definitely recommend the aforementioned modification if shortening the castor arms is posing similar problems as what I face. My sunny truck isn’t very pretty (is mustard with rust proofing surrounding it ever pretty?) but it now drifts and drives a lot nicer!

MEREMERE MEDIA

Sunday was without a doubt the happiest I’ve been since I left Australia in March. This Datsun of mine has been off the road for an eternity due to a number of distractions and money guzling activities so to have it driving and to drift with my friends again after so long, made me grin from ear to ear. Note to self: don’t start projects that are outside your current financial and time means. I only entered for a half day as I was yet to give it a real beating and didn’t know how it would handle it all. It worked out for the best however as on my last run before lunch I did a particularly heavy footed run and put a hole in the radiator! It looks like the factory plastic fan flexed enough to catch the bottom tank which is placed (foolishly) close to the fan. The blade slid off and put a hole in one of the core lines. I haven’t had it out yet but it should be fixable. The biggest entry contest that went down in the afternoon was what I was really looking forward too and I’m super gutted I didn’t get to compete… next time.

Massive thanks to my homies Joel and Mike for organizing a killer day and to the photographers who where out in the rain (I know how it feels haha) Mr. Roo Wills shot these photos and there are more on his blog stay classy that you should go look at, thanks Roo!

MEREMERE JULY12 – 1

I’ll do a quick run down on how the drift day went soon but here’s a prelimary photo from autofocused.co.nz, thanks! And yes, it was wet. That’s Keisuke in the passenger seat, many laughs were had.

READY

I’m all loaded up and ready for the first drift day with the SR20 tomorrow. Here’s hoping nothing big goes wrong! Between driving I’ll definitely be shooting so I’ll post some photos up next week.

ON THE GROUND FOR A SECOND

Before you get too excited, let me just say there’s still a long list of small bullshit things to do on this thing before I can properly drive it. It does however have suspension with heavier springs up front, functioning brakes and a handbrake, radiator mounts (it has cardboard protecting the fins so I don’t leave it on the car outside), a clutch, POR15’d crossmember, new ball joints and suspension bolts, rust and a dented body haha. After fitting the suspension, bleeding the brakes and riveting on the radiator support panel I thought what the hell, time to put it on the ground for some inspiration. My wallet is cowering at the thought of cutting rust, paint and certification so I can drive it on the road. Time to start saving!

WORK HORSE

SUNNY TRUCK WORK

I stopped updating beeoneoneoh on my sunny some time ago because I’m really just making a million small things and piecing together systems which aren’t very interesting. Here’s some progress you can see! I built the inlet and cut up the radiator outlet tube two weekends ago and asked Adam to weld them up for me last week. His TIG work is clean and I haven’t been using ours enough to do a good job. The inlet tube mounts to the cam cover bolts but haven’t been welded on yet. I made sure the inlet was as long as I could make it because I’ve heard they don’t run very well otherwise. Unsure if that’s true but it was easy enough to do so I’m not fussed.

Last weekend I made and welded on the lower radiator mounts to the front cross member. I also TIG’d up the water outlet tube that I modified from the engine, you don’t see it so it’s alright that it’s not beautiful. The radiator is plumbed and awaiting the radiator support panel to be riveted back together so I can make top mounts. I made most of the multi piece joiners for that today but that’s last to be put together so I don’t have to drill out the rivets if I have to remove the engine. The banjo bolt came in for the clutch reservoir during the week so the clutch is complete and just needs bleeding. There really isn’t anything large left to do on this but it’s these small things that seem to take forever.

Edit: clutch works, exhaust is almost done.

Clutch & Throttle

Cough… yeah, I still own this thing. I don’t post much about it because anything I seem to be doing to it isn’t that amazing or blog worthy but here’s an update. Handbrake is mounted, has had a new and longer cable made and works like butter. I had a new throttle cable made with the original B120 firewall mount on the end and that’s also a goer excluding it still needing two washers on the mounting face. A nice new braided clutch line pokes through the firewall and banjos onto the under dash master cylinder. The remote reservoir is mounted in the engine bay and awaits a right angle fitting for the master to complete the system. I ditched the small alloy radiator I had set up for a larger S14 item and have cut up the inlet/outlets to fit the squished arrangement. I’m waiting on a BLACK (why do they even make blue) silicone elbow join so I can build the inlet between the radiator. This allows me to work the radiator inlet around the intake (which passes over to the passenger side) and finalise it’s position.

After the inlet and radiator is sorted and the suspension is back in I may even be able to take her for a maiden drive. I started it up again and made a ruckus the other day for some oral motivation and it has pushed me along quite nicely. I just signed onto a full time graduate job starting in a week so the drive to do as much as I can before work is currently high; whilst knowing funds are on the way is also reassuring that this will get finished. Last two thoughts: I miss driving a Datsun; and driving it to work in a suit is going to be interesting.

EDIT: So I remade the reservoir mount today with a longer piece running along the firewall to cover the hole where the clutch cable used to exit. I also cut some washers to fit the accelerator cable mount which finishes that. Notes: 7/16″ banjo bolts and fittings are impossible, I recommend against