So today was spent packing the garage (read about that over here). While getting things packed up made it a productive day, the real joy was with the car. I drove it today!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! It has been over 23 months since the car last moved under it’s own power, so getting it out of the driveway (harder than it sounds) and driving it around the circle made for a great day.

The car is still hard to start, but once it starts up the first time it generally starts up easier (as you will see in the video). I then had trouble trying to get into gear, keep the car running, and letting off the brake as the ebrake isn’t strong enough to keep it at the top of our driveway. I finally just let the car roll down the driveway and started it at the bottom before driving it around. If you want to see it running and driving skip ahead in the video to around 6 minutes. Commentary provided by my beautiful wife Natalie.

The video is in HD, so watch it that way ;)

After driving it around I even got more of the front end put together, with a grill and air dam installed, I’ll get a picture of that configuration tomorrow.

Tonight I came home and started putting the suspension back together. Fortunately I hadn’t gotten too far with taking it apart, so I didn’t have too much to put back together. I decided since we only have a couple of weeks left I won’t try getting the other suspension under the car, I’ll just worry about getting it together and secured for the trailer ride to Colorado (http://www.going2colorado.com) later this month.

I got the front suspension bits together, though I didn’t bother to put the sway bar on for now. I then decided to pull the steering column to get the new one put into the car. That was easy, at least the pulling it out process, I stopped for dinner, but it sure looks like the replacement column isn’t going to work :(

I’ll have to try to get that in later this week.

We got back from Colorado on Saturday night. Sunday afternoon I was out in the driveway power washing the extra suspension for the 240z. I got quite a bit done, it looks a lot better than before, and I also managed to get most of the disassembled so that I could get it sand blasted. I did manage to get grease all over the driveway though, which then go on the dogs when Natalie decided to try to wash the dogs in the driveway while I was out there. Whoops! Lesson learned, grease gets everywhere.

I’ll hopefully have some time this weekend to get down to Egypt (my boss, with the sandblaster, lives way down in the sticks of MO) to work on sandblasting some of the parts so they can be painted and then reassembled. I’ll take pictures if any of that happens!

So tonight after work I came home to get the starter out of the car and took it back to Autozone, fortunately the lifetime warranty was honored! Though I did have to run off to the Autozone Hub to get the replacement starter. The guy at the hub was kind of lost, but he eventually got everything worked out and I headed home with the new (remanufactured) starter.

So the last starter started off working, but after a few days just started spinning without engaging the flywheel, no grinding either. This one, once all wired up worked like a champ. I even got the car started up for a minute or so. I did all this without hooking up the computer, so I didn’t want to spend too much time keeping it running.

So now was the time, time to hookup the laptop and get the video camera out and record the car actually running! Well I am proud to say it was successful, here’s the video below.

So tonight I came home from work and decided it was time to work on the Datsun a bit, after over a week of barely even looking at it when walking in and out of the garage to and fro. Terec came over and helped me out for a bit as well.

The first thing I checked was to see what the starter looked like, I was worried based on the noises that I’ve been hearing that the newly installed starter was bad. Well I pulled it out, it looked fine, as did the flywheel itself, so there went that theory. I put the started back on the car and connected the wires. From there I attempted to start the car again. The grinding happened a bit, but I swear it doesn’t last, and even got less frequent as the night wore on.

Terec showed up as i was attempting to start the car. We spent most of the evening trying multiple things, rewiring the VR sensor for the megasquirt was the main thing. I attempted it multiple ways, running some new wires for the sensor, and trying different combinations of connections on the wires. At the end of the night we really didn’t seem to get anywhere. Throwing the timing light on the car it does appear to be close to the correct timing, though I need to find TDC again tomorrow night and check to make sure that the VR sensor is 60 degrees from the missing tooth on the wheel.

The last attempt at starting the car seemed to only get 100rpm from the starter, so we assume that the battery was drained a bit too much. Because of that we threw it on the charger and called it a night.

Another thing that just struck me, I need to check the compression on the motor tomorrow, that hasn’t been done :(

Working on the car today. Rewired the VR sensor and installed the radiator. Worked on front air dam, and put the exhaust on. Tried to start it, need to rewire the VR sensor again :(

No luck getting the car running today, will get some supplies this week and prolly attempt again on Wednesday.

So I spoke with my Megasquirt Guru last week a few times, and again this weekend, and even had him show up in my driveway to help wrench on the car today!

So yesterday I got up and checked to see if the 36-1 wheel for the Megasquirt (using Ford EDIS) was correctly mounted, meaning, should the mounting have changed due to moving from the 1983 motor, to the 1978 motor. I removed the radiator in order to get to the front of the motor, draining it out was probably a good idea. We had put water in last weekend when getting things ready to start, well the water was pretty darn rusty and dirty when I took it out yesterday, probably need to do that a few more times just to make sure everything gets flushed from the radiator (sitting for 2 years) and the block, which has been sitting for 6 or more years (2+ since it last ran, longer since it actually was used much).

After getting the radiator out of the way I was able to confirm that TDC on the 78 motor is the same as the 83 motor, which makes things easier, I don’t have to have the pulley and 36-1 wheel modified, but it didn’t get me any closer to figuring out why I can’t get the car started.

I ended up bring in the Megasquirt inside so I could hook it up to my Stim and the laptop to figure out if I could see why I was getting a weird RPM signal from it when the computer was hooked up. I wasn’t able to do much there either, but Andy Whittle told me to bring the squirt and the Laptop over to his house on Sunday and he would help me out. Natalie and I went to the gun range, and afterward I had a voicemail from Andy, he was on the way up to my house, talk about service! Andy and I spent a few hours in the garage working on things.

We ended up figuring out that the squirt/stim worked fine on his laptop, which meant that it was a software or hardware issue on my laptop, not the megasquirt. From there he adjusted the fuel map quite a bit, we seemed to be flooding the motor so we dropped a lot of fuel, took all the plugs out and cranked it, trying to get fuel out if it was truly flooded, not much came out.

All in all we weren’t too successful, but we did get it to almost fire up a few times. A few times we got some nice big backfires, once enough that pressure came up through one of the cutouts in the driver’s side floorboard, enough to make my foot jump off the floor. I ended up removing the VR sensor from the 36-1 wheel at Andy’s suggestion and installed a new one, though the plug is backwards on it, so later this week I’ll try it out again, as well as try rewiring the sensor. These sensors are very picky, so we’re not sure if that’s the problem, or something else, but hopefully rewiring it will correct it and the car will start up! Hopefully right? :D

Huge thanks to Whittle for the help today.

I can’t say I’ve really put any effort into the Datsun on a weeknight in probably the past 20-22 months, tonight I spent a couple of hours in the garage working on a few things to get the motor ready to attempt to start it this weekend. I didn’t get a lot done, but the things I did will save the time I would have had to spend on Saturday doing them. I’ve mostly got the fan in place now, with 4 more bolts to put it onto the clutch. I put the single belt in place, and also hooked up the EDIS trigger on the 36-1 wheel for the megasquirt setup.

I also put the throttlebody and the intake to the turbo back on the car. I put the battery onto the charger so that it’ll be ready to go Saturday. The more I mess with that thing the more I realize I need to get that moved to the back of the car soon after the car runs again, rather than having it sitting up in the engine bay taking up valuable room.

I’ll probably do a few more of these minor buttoning up items tomorrow and Thursday night, leaving for tasks like the radiator and coolant, along with other minor things, for Saturday when Dave and possibly Terec are over to assist.

So I had hoped to get the engine installed into the car today but got sidetracked trying to get a final few items finished up before doing so.

First things first I wanted to try and get some of the new bushings I purchased off Ebay back in December into the car, so I attempted to get the old bushings out of the rear motor mount, not having much luck I went to Carquest. They also didn’t have any luck but sent me on to Terry’s Machine Shop in Bridgeton. 25 minutes or so later (which was 20 minutes after they closed) the old bushings were free and room for the new urethane bushings available. I then ran back to Carquest and picked up some lithium grease and headed home.

I painted the rear motor mount one last time, as playing around with the bushings had removed some paint, and then I started on other items. I changed the bushing in the steering coupler to use the new urethane bushing, I also spent some time cleaning up some of the dust, and crap in the engine back from 2yrs ago when the car last ran. After doing this I drained the transmission and checked to see if I had any fluid to put back in it before installing it in the car tomorrow, I didn’t so I picked some up tonight.

I assembled the new bushings in the rear mount and then test fitted it under the car to make sure it would work, success, so hopefully it goes in smoothly tomorrow.

So I didn’t get a whole lot of progress made today, but I hope to tomorrow as Terec will be coming over in the morning and helping me with the big task, getting the motor up and into the car, 6 bolts should be all it takes! Then it’ll probably take me all week to hook up all the wires and lines to it, hopefully I’ll be able to try and crank it over next week.

Here’s the video from today, not much

So I spent most of the day today in the garage, the first time I've done that in probably 20 months, it was nice! Thanks to Dave for coming over and helping me out for a bit, if he hadn't come over I wouldn't have gotten all that I did, done.

Here's what all was accomplished today.

• Alternator completely mounted
• Coolant line run and gasket created
• Rear main seal replaced
• Clutch installed
• Transmission installed
• EDIS pulley mounted
• Turbo mounted

The motor is pretty much ready to go into the car now, I just need to finish prepping the transmission cross member by putting in the new bushings, put the motor mounts on, and slide it in the engine bay!

Here's today's video, though we missed the lowering of the motor off the engine stand, the battery died on the camera and I didn't realize.

And a few pictures at the end of the day