Yay Got My Pics Back!

[Silent Shadow]

pics have been on my bro's laptop all this time but it's had a virus (that i really didnt want on mine) untill now.

here she is.. a '78 coupe called 'Mandie'

the lovely chaps who sold it to me... (the wife said 'it had to go')

..with a boot and car full of parts!

first trip to Maleny QLD (my old home town)

was resprayed by 'old mate' 6 years ago and badges were replaced with stickers

has the ability to drift on grass, dirt, and greasy wet roads only please thank the 80hp (feels like) L24 and boring auto.

so there she is! will put up pics of things as i change them.

i'm currently organising to get a 5-speed to me at the moment so that should bring some new life,fun, and fuel economy to the car.

things i've done to it:

-wood grain steering wheel and boss kit form super cheap auto. suits the car well!

-aluminium pedals

-800w monoblock amp with 12" kenwood sub

-MTX 6" 2-ways in the front

-JVC head unit

-new air filter, leads, and sparks

-205/50/R14 uni-directionals

-new alternator

that's pretty much it!

Edited January 5, 2009 by Silent Shadow

[DOHC210]

Great pick-up Shadow. You must be pleased.

Look forward to seeing more piccies and progress reports over the coming months.

Do you happen have a spare "Door return spring assembly" in the boot perchance?? If you do or know where I could get one from I would be gratefull and also part with a dollar or two for your efforts of course!!

[Silent Shadow]

im not sure mate but ill have a look. has ya door gone a bit floppy on ya??

the parts are mostly electronic bits and bobs and random things like a spare glove box. the guy had a whole other car and more parts but the wife made him ditch them luckily i wont have this problem with my girlfriend since she loves my car almost as much as i do lol!

[racsov500]

holy mother of god thats beautiful.

[DOHC210]

LOL Shadow you get floppy doors at my age mate! You"ll see sooner or later. Great to see your girlfriend enjoys your car as much as you do. Will be interesting to see if that continues if she becomes your wife !!! LOL

[Ravenoak]

That is just like my old C210 coupe except mine was affectionately known as Jaffa...

[Silent Shadow]

LOL Shadow you get floppy doors at my age mate! You"ll see sooner or later. Great to see your girlfriend enjoys your car as much as you do. Will be interesting to see if that continues if she becomes your wife !!! LOL

haha classic!! fortunately we have a very good understanding of each others needs. she lets me drift and i let her go in destruction derbys haha... oh and i had a look through all my parts and no luck with your door return spring sorry mate!

figured i might as well keep things neat and make this a progress thread for my car.

STOP PRESS!!!

this arrived today. a sexy 5-speed in all it's glory. thank-you very much drew! awesome stuff

this kit is from a DR30 and is in great nick. it's about 99.9% compatible, therefore i cannot complete the conversion JUST yet. here's why:

this is where the slave cylinder goes for the clutch. please note the angle of the bolts.

this is the slave cylinder from the R30.

and subsequently i found the pedal box had the same issue. but other than the bolts for the cylinder, they are identical!!

mandie -

R30-

"should i cut holes in the firewall??" i asked myself.

i think there's no need. i can just buy a new slave for around $55 im pretty sure from melbourne somewhere. just gotta find it again! and the added bunus of doing this also, is that i wont have the change the pedal boxes over (which i really wasnt looking foward to doing) as there looks like there is enough room to pull out the shaft that goes throught the top of the pedals and swap the pedals over that way.

though PLEASE correct me if im wrong. i havent read anything about this. i was just gunna 'wing-it'.

pedal box

i'll let you know more as it unfolds. any info or advise would be fantastic!

cam

[coupe72001]

DONT DRILL!!! I had no idea the bolt hole pattern was different - I'll post you up the correct clutch master cylinder pronto.

If you need to, you can probably retain your original pedal box and just swap the brake and clutch pedals. Getting them on and off is actually a real bastardo of a job, but the last thing you want is to be drilling holes in the fire wall or anywhere else in your exceptionally pretty car.

Search the classic skyline forum for a 240k manual gearbox conversion how-to from Alfadog, it'll tell you almost all you need to know. Most important is to take the spacer off the end of your crank and throw it away! Your flywheel won't bolt onto the crank otherwise.

All the bits you got are actually from an Mr30 from memory.

Good luck,

D

[Silent Shadow]

DONT DRILL!!! I had no idea the bolt hole pattern was different - I'll post you up the correct clutch master cylinder pronto.

If you need to, you can probably retain your original pedal box and just swap the brake and clutch pedals. Getting them on and off is actually a real bastardo of a job, but the last thing you want is to be drilling holes in the fire wall or anywhere else in your exceptionally pretty car.

thanx man that would be stella.

i always look at all possible avenues before i pick one. cutting holes was at the very VERY bottom of that list lol!

i actually havent got a workshop manual for her yet. what nuts and bolts am i gunna need? or are most of them already on the car somewhere??

oh and what's the easy way of doing this.. putting the front of the car on car ramps and raising/lowering the boxes in/out with a trolley jack?

cheers,

cam

[mastadd]

also, r31 master for the clutch is the same, if u have access to one of them

[coupe72001]

I've posted you up another master cylinder and a slightly skanky workshop manual. You'll need to dig up two bolts to hold the slave cylinder onto the gearbox, and 5 (6?) bolts to hold the flywheel to the crank. Almost every other bolt should be on the car already and can be recycled.

Raising the car slightly and lowering the gearbox with a trolley jack is probably the way to go. The gearboxes aren't stupidly heavy - you should be able to muscle the gearbox out and back in with some careful manouvering of the jack.

Good luck!

[Silent Shadow]

fantastic!

im sure ill write an epic monologue telling everybody all about it when im done lol.

[Silent Shadow]

EPIC update coming soon....

[Factory 5]

i remember when this was on carpoint/carsales... looks real nice

[Silent Shadow]

well i FINALLY got the gearbox conversion done yesterday.

meet Sammy & Shaun. the 2 boys that have helped me with doing the conversion and changing gearboxes for a second time as well. thank-you lads!! they've been very fun to work with and their mechanical knowledge is superior to mine so i've learnt alot as well.

in our first mission we had to do the whole conversion from auto to manual.

my idea worked for the pedals which was great. which was to undo the rail that the pedals sit on and slide it out. then put the new pedals on it as you slide it back in. very easy! though working upside down for long periods of time is a bitch lol.

Both Drew and I had no idea what sort of shape the gearbox was in. we didnt really know until it was all bolted up and went to drain the oil to put new oil in.

the sump plug pretty much summed it up. SNAP!

and the maiden voyage?... well the clutch was a slipper and wouldn't handle even half an inch of throttle. whenever you backed-off, the gearbox would make an incredible noise infused with whirring and grinding. but at least it made it to the bottle shop!!

some little snags i came across with the conversion:

1. i assumed that the bolts that attach the manual box to the block would be the same lenth as the ones that came out of the auto. they actually need to be 10mm longer than the ones that came from the auto. we figured this out at 4:45pm and couldnt make it to the bolt shop until 3 weeks later when our lives aligned again (we work 68+ hours a week and have plenty on or plate other than the datsun).

2. i think this is the little spacer that Drew mentioned in his conversion thread. throw it away.

3. the linkage to the pedal from the 2nd clutch master that drew sent up must have been damaged in transport. but i was able to pull them both apart and make one good and compatible one out of the two that i had. very easy, took me around 3 minutes to figure out and do it.

4. i got this advice AFTER i got the box in. "get your flywheel machined and get a brand new clutch!"

5. starter motor wouldnt run after the conversion but everything else was fine. i remembered that with the auto, the car wont start unless it's in park or nuetral. i found the 2 wires for this and simply plugged them together. then it worked.

im pretty sure i didnt miss anything there and if i did then ill add it later.

no hard feelings against Drew either btw. he actually felt so bad that he sent back some coin and he gave me the new cylinder and workshop manual for free. thanx mate!

so i was was thinking that id have to get the gearbox rebuilt and get a new clutch and all that jazz but like 2 days later, Tony put up a post saying that his '79 turbo coupe with a shit load of extras including.... a 5-speed! was still for sale the car cost $1500 and it getting it here cost $1100 all up. transport cost significantly higher for a non-running car. Tony had a look around for quotes and we decided to go with 'Lobster Logistics'. they said it would be picked-up from Tony's door and delivered to mine in "no longer than a week". the car took literally a month to get here!!

one sunday, tony waited around all-day for this guy to pick the car up and he didnt show. and he didnt call to say that he was going to wait another week till some race cars came across from perth so he could take them all up together either! what an ass... so anyway, a week later the guy showed and took the car. said it shouldnt take longer than a week.

after a week and a half and still no car i was starting to get worried. called the company and they said they'd get back to me once they'd found out from the driver. they didnt call back that day and i could get in touch with them either. i was starting to poo myself as i had already paid Tony the $1500 for the car! the next day they rung me back (thank-christ!) and just my luck, the truck was half-way up here with the car and sprung an oil leak. he was pulled over by the cops in armadale and defected. he couldnt go anywhere and had to get the truck fixed before he got to brizzy.

so another 5 days later and he finally gets to brisbane on a sunday with my car and my phone decides to shit itself and i miss his call from him saying "where are you? i got your car!". by the time i got back to him on monday he was half-way to sydney again and i had to wait till thursday for him to get here again. i didnt know he was going to be bringing a 19-metre car trailer with him and there is no way you would get one of them in and back out of my suburb so i had to organise him to drop it a bit further out of town, then get a tilt-tray to bring it back to mine. which was another $100!! but it finally arrived

the car is built like a drift pig. it's hilarious! but the parts on it are gunna get my car to where i want it so im happy as i got a welcome suprise when i opened up the boot and there was a surge tank and fuel pumps where the groceries are supposed to go. the racing seat fits very snug! there was this strange lever dangling free in the cockpit and i followed it to a vorex butterfly exhaust silencer fan-dangle thingama-bob (you can tell i dont know the exact name lol). it's got a straight through exhaust going from the turbo that hits 2 trumpeting pipes after the diff. the 5-stud conversion has been done by 4to5-stud adapter plates the go between the brakes and the wheels. there's only 4 out of the 5 bolts you can actually bolt the wheel up to though (eep!). the coilovers on the rear were fitted by drilling holes in the body to suit the 2-bolt configuration of the strut tops. also eep.

but otherwise it rocks!

ok so mission 2... using the gearbox from the yellow car to put into mandie! with help from the lads again.

establishment shot....

we pulled the yellow box's sump plug out before we did anything and the plug was clean as a whistle with only near new oil pouring out so we were pretty confident with it.

this time i wanted to go a little better on the flywheel and clutch side of things and ordered an Exedy "sports tuff" heavy duty clutch. which arrived at lunch time to my nearest repco for $220. once we got the flywheels out of both cars we did a comparison and the yellow car's one had heaps more meat than the other so we decided on getting that one machined. got it done within 2 hours of making the phone call to United Brake & Clutch across the river and cost a sweet $44.

even though we didnt have anything to line-up the clutch and crank with, i just did it by eye and got the box in first go!

the pink's pretty aint it? lol...

got the box bolted in. and got the oil in at 8:20pm. went for the maiden voyage and the box is 100% perfect. clutch is perfect. life's good!!!

so that's pretty much my auto to manual conversion story....

another cool little upgrade i did was convert the sealed beams up front to H4 halogen headlamps. the kit cost me $315 (from memory) and although it came with white bulbs, i wanted blue ones. they cost $150 for all 4 (also from memory). i got the kit in with very little modification. on the high beams, 1 of 3 guiding knobs on the back of the beam was backwards. i just pried it off with a screwdriver and it fit fine. there was more than enough play in the headlight adjustment knobs to compensate for the missing knob.

ill show here what i mean

it looks awesome now that it's done. exactly what i had visioned it would be. and i can even see the road now! big thank-you to Simon for the speedy hook-up from sydney.

call 0416099111 and he'll sort you out.

and finally..

in amongst all that nonsense, i found a set of stove tops on ebay from thailand with 5 days left and no bids. so you bet i jumped on them and bid $350 to start with. and i ended up winning them! the guy got my address and said he'd sent them blah blah blah.. 6 weeks later and they still hadnt arrived. i went on ebay to see wtf was going on and he had closed his account and done a runner!!! now luckily i paid with PayPal, cause 6 weeks after that i was able to get my money back through buyer protection. but seriously, i was SO much more pissed off about not getting the lights than i was about the money. broke poor cammy's little heart

and that's it!! im finally getting somewhere so im pretty happy now... just gotta get those stovetops!!

and next is to do a full diagnostic on the turbo engine to find out what's good and what's not. and get it ready for a possible swap. also gunna get the rust done on mandie and swap the sparco seat over.

cheers, cam

[Silent Shadow]

half way through a thermo-fan conversion but ran out of light. should be done in the morning.

[CsaEvents]

WOW mate that is a top effort, coming together nicely!

[racsov500]

nicely done. whats the plans for the yellow one now?

[Silent Shadow]

well my girlfriend wants to sand the whole thing back to metal and do the rust (there's alot) then respray it and make a RB25det drag car out of it.

whether that is the actual fate of the car i dont know for sure but only time will tell. if not, then ill probably just get what i need off it and pass it on.

[Factory 5]

you must have the coolest girlfriend in the world....

and with all the turbo gear on the old yella, make sure you get an aftermarket ecu to run it (it most definitly needs it)

as i have been in contact with the old owner for a few years etc to get ideas for my own future setup, he mentioned mad pinging etc...

i woudl reccomend an Adaptronic, as they have heaps of features, and also good support and installation help.

I know where some hotplates are too, im not too familiar with the datto skylines, but it says 240k on the back