Lil' Blue. The little (And blue,) daily driver.

So I've been saying for a while that I need to update the 'ole blog. So here we go.

This little blue thing is a '74 Datsun 620. Short bed, single cab. L18 motor with a four speed transmission. It's lowered... Maybe too much... And was badly painted by one of the previous owners.

The back history on this car is, simply put. I got a job and needed something that would get me to and from and get really good gas mileage. And of course me being me, it couldn't be some random Geo Metro, or Honda Accord. So I looked around and fell in love with the 1970's Datsun Pick-ups, or 620's as it were. I found this little blue thing locally and have been driving it as a daily ever since. 

As a project car, this truck has no real aim. It's just whatever I feel like and still getting me back and forth to work vehicle.

ANYWAY! No one wants to listen to me ramble, so on to the visually engaging part about this truck.

The very first day I bought it, discovered the shifter rattles a whole bunch... Turns out it's just a bushing that's really easy to replace. Fix'd. The guy I bought it from also gave me a bed full of goodies to go with the truck. I was a very happy first-time buyer. (As the photo with the doofus may clue you in to.)

Got her home and immediately decided that the mirrors needed to be mounting on the fenders in true JDM style. Also for some bizarre reason I threw an american flag on the front of it. (Which has now been transferred to my work truck which is a Chevy.)

My first attempt at fender mirrors sucked. And the holes I left were a pain to patch.

Honestly, I though it was a classy looking little truck. Even if it was smaller than a quart of oil.

I am now realizing these photos are totally not in order and I apologize for the fact I'm too lazy and my computer is too slow to reorganize them. That aside, this is some of the repairs to the holes left from the original mirrors and then the little cheap plastic ones it had on it when I bought it.

Again, patch work to the door. You can see the front fender has been patched and primered already from my first attempt at cool fender mirrors.

Work related stuff. I was admiring this trucks size compared to others.

Yes the X's serve a function. But only when I'm auto-crossing. Otherwise I'm just being stupid 'cause I think they look cool.

LET THERE BE LIGHT!

My brother is an excellent photographer by the way. Go check out his stuff at: https://www.facebook.com/ClanArmstrongStudios ...Heck go buy his stuff if he has anything for sale. He's a good guy.

Again. More photo's of the tiny blue thing.

The first ugly fender mirrors.

This is when I went to replace the valve seals. While the Jame's Bond style smoke screen's were comical, they were not kind to my wallet in oil prices.

Changed my front license plate to something more appropriate.

I didn't like the stock steering wheel but I've yet to get a photo of the one that replaced it. What has been done in this photo is that totally awesome temporary tachometer that'll stay until I get an original one for the truck.

Check out our totally professional garage work area.

Does anyone have problems with these things tracking mud all over your freshly washed car?

Did me some handpainting on the side of the truck... Any Initial D fans out there?

Again, the painting. Also those are the REAL fender mirrors. Not accurate to the year model truck, but the ones that came stock in Japan were ugly... In my opinion anyway.

Also painted up the tailgate letters... And acquired a Yellow Datsun... But more on that later.

Insert old grille here.

And suddenly it's new and shiny black!

Makes the truck look so much more sporty.

Cool truck? Why thank you.

Aaand lastly. I did this. Yes. I autocrossed a '74 Datsun pick-up.

I know it's wrong...

But it was fun.

Shoulda put more pressure in those tires though.

That's all I got on the little blue. More to come soon!

...Well maybe...

If I can get off my lazy butt and stop working long enough to post more.

Temporary Reinstatement

Not really any news on the MPV. I'm having to put it back together because my current daily driver doesn't run in the rain. (Working on a section for that vehicle.)

Anyway, I have very few photos currently, I'll update this post with more soon, these are mostly for me trying to purchase back the important stuff I've sold out of her.



Photo quality is currently suffering due to my lack of will to break out the good camera, but! This is he first plug that goes into the distributor!

Aaaand the second. Six pin. Blegh. Hope I don't have to custom fab something.

And the plug for the CPS

Again I apologize for the lack of content in this post, I'll update it soon with some photos of the actual MPV herself, but right now this is out of necessity.

Day 5: Slow Progress

I am currently writing this with multiple bandages on my hands. I was going to get as much of the engine harness and whatever other connecting bits in the engine bay I could remove done today, but fate thought it would be funny to try to remove my fingers, so I got very little done. Since my last post I don't have a lot to show for the work I've done on the MPV, I've mostly been working on the Bradley and a motorbike, so progress is slow.

Anyway, that's about all I have to say right now, so onward to the photos and their descriptions!

I took the front bumper off. Best thing I ever decided to do, it saves your knees while you're bent over in the engine bay. I also covered one side of the van because I got over-spray from another project on the door. Not happy about that.

 Also got the oil drained. You can see how greasy the underside of my van is in this shot, proof of the massive oil spill the quicky lube created.

This is a photo for a customer of the main crankshaft pulley. These old JEV6's have an interesting phenomena where the pulleys that make up the main crank pulley start to come apart. You can see where mine has about a half a millimeter of clearance between the alternator and power steering pulleys.

The arrows were for fun, kind of envisioning something here. Of maybe I was afraid I'd forget which side of the car was the front.

Another photo for a customer of the connector for the MAF sensor. Hopefully this unit worked out for him.

The Bradley GT-I: Unexpected Problems

So, when I last left off with the Bradley, remember how I said I only needed to fix the carb and get a vacuum advance distributor? Well I fixed both of those and found my next problem. The aluminum/magnesium alloy that the crankcase is made out of is extremely soft, and because of this the cylinders were loosening themselves and leaking all my compression and gasoline all over the road. So I was pretty much back at square-one. Took the entire engine out... again. And this time I stripped it down to the crankshaft. (Which looks to be in fantastic condition by the way.) 

So how does one keep a soft case from letting go of the cylinders? (Techically it's letting go of the heads since the cylinders are more like the meat and cheese in this mechanical sandwich, but whatever.) Case-savers. These cool little steel inserts that you stick into the block so you have steel on steel contact for the threads instead of steel on aluminum/magnesium al-yeah whatever. That stuff. They're about $30 including shipping. So that on top of another gasket set, (Paper gaskets tend to tear with removal and installation whether they're new or not.) as well as a few nitty-gritty stuff will leave us short some cash. Nothing too bad, but blegh. I just can't wait to actually have everything fixed on this car. 

Anyway I'm sure you're all quite bored with the preamble; so onward to the photos! 

I bought a pair of broken 205T distributors and out of the three I had I was able to make one serviceable unit. I love that orange distributor cap.

I dunno what was going on here... Have a photo of the half disassembled engine.

This is what had broken on the carburetor. It's a little pin that limits the throttle-plates range of movement. They're known to just fall out. I had some brass wire laying around that fit, so I'm using that until it falls out, then I'll invest the whopping thirty cents for a steel one glued in place. In the meantime, this works.

The crankcase came apart with much work for me. (My back! My baaack!) But inside it looks pretty clean.

Closer view of the inside. Ever wonders what the inside of your air-cooled VW's crankcase looks like? Well now you know.

Aaand the outside. This thing needs some googly eyes at the moment.

Crankshaft. Work of beauty this is. Looks nearly new. Except for the oil finger prints.

Aand here's one of the two pile of parts for the engine. Everything is coated generously in motor oil (Except the aluminum.) to keep it from rusting in this humidity. But I still worry.

Anyway, yeah. There's the Bradley thus far. Next post I'll have the case-savers in and put the whole thing back together. I'll also paint the engine shroud sometime between then and now. Until next time. Peace out!

Day 4: Retirement

Well, day four was exciting, sad and happy all in one. I got a buyer for some essential engine parts so I cranked the girl up and took her for one last ride to say goodbye for now. A good hour or so was spent zooming around on our local streets here taking some of my family members for one last ride in the old family car before I put her out of commission for an unknown amount of time. Now, there is something worth stating here. With the removal of the intake, (Excluding the MAF I had to temporarily put it back on to start the car.) exhaust and all that weight the MPV already acts like a sports sedan, and pulled 0-60 in a little under seven seconds with the overdrive on of course. It was a lot of fun to put the car through her paces one last time.
But then I had to move on and remove the distributor rendering the car undriveable for obvious reasons. Pretty straight forward and easy, but this marks a turning point, I'm actually doing this, I don't have the money yet, but hopefully something with come through and I can get started in earnest. Whether I sell enough parts to fund this or I get a part-time job I don't know but I certainly hope for either, but with the removal of a key part of the engine this signifies no going back to the old JEV6 now. The family car has been laid to rest and a workhorse for our family shall never be the same again...
Now the real adventure starts, turning a minivan/SUV crossover into a SCCA worthy race car.


Drove down the road to a gravel parking lot to get some final pictures of her before I retire the old JEV6.

The stickers shall be coming off when I repaint her.

Drove back home and popped the hood to get to work.
The distributor all hooked up like it's supposed to be.

After you pull the spark plug wires and remove the connectors from the distributor this is the only bolt holding it down. This is mostly a reference picture so we can get a good idea of where to set the distributor to get started with ignition timing. (Hopefully I won't be doing this again on this engine, but you never know.)

Removed. Noooo! There's a hole in my engine now! Plugged it with a red mechanics rag.

Also pulled the fan, fan shroud, and fan clutch off. Whee. Makes the engine compartment start to look really empty.

 Here's the fan clutch. This is not an original clutch, the original is in a box somewhere on one of my workbenches needing to be fixed.

Distributor after it was pulled off. Nothing special really, it's the original and it's in really good condition, my buyer is getting a steal of a price for it because I'm so desperate for the money. Anyway I'll get the gunk cleaned off of it and packed away in a box for shipping later.

And that's it for day four. Didn't do much aside from those joyrides. Heh, Imma miss being able to drive this girl up and down the driveway occasionally.