1971 Nissan Skyline 2000GT (Hakosuka)

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OK this is copied from other forum, so if some things don't make sense just run with it.

So I've been looking for a hako for about 4 years now, keeping an eye on the prices and how quickly they seem to be appreciating in price as the world notices them (thanks RM Sotheby's) and with some hard saving I've been able to finally make a purchase. 

The car is a 1971 2000GT with L20 engine and 5 speed. Unknown ks, bit of rust around the place (wouldn't be one without it) but overall a fairly solid start. I purchased this from Restored.jp who some may be familiar with, they make aftermarket FRP and carbon parts for old cars like that Hako. This was the owners personal car.. whether that's good or not is yet to be known but it's a nice story anyway.

As mentioned in my intro post I'd be interested to have contact with other owners of Hakos in NZ as it would be handy for parts and general networking. I'll be working on this in stages (as I'm now broke) to get this up to road legal spec.. 

More to come but I've already figured a couple things I need to do before it's even here !

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Depot has picked up the car today from Tottori Nice to get a couple of photos of it not from the seller.

Cool shot Shane got of the car with the seaside

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OK sorry for more spam but Shane just sent over some more close up images with various repair stuff which is good and thorough. Engine had a strange miss which turned out to be a bung plug, replaced that with some random one and it worked. Compression appears to be a little low on one cylinder but the car still seems to run relatively well so when I get it I'll do plugs/leads/dizzy cap etc anyway as a precaution. Shane also has some MDI spark booster thing (you know those boxes you always see on old Jap cars to boost the spark) so he'll throw that in too.

A few more pics..

Powerhouse! I'm actually happy that the numbers match on this and the body.. otherwise that could be a bit of a problem come time for VIN etc.

Angry face!

Interior is overall very clean, will need new centre console as that one looks banged up and not correct for the car (more holes for buttons and switches than my povo one has). Plus side, less things to go wrong in mine right?

But this really got me excited.. https://vid.me/fhmd" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

Annd they reckon we should have a booking for shipping next week so that's pretty exciting.

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She's here! I was able to drive it from the port to storage which was sweet! Smelly, rusty, hot, no power steering, no power windows, average brakes, overall very awesome. Makes all the right noises, especially driving it through the city.

She's a big job so I won't be starting repair until next year when I'm back from overseas in February, for now, stoked! Oh, and bonus the front under lip turned out to be carbon, thought it was just FRP!

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With a sunny day like today I thought it high time I got cracking on with some easy stuff. Plugs and leads is something even I can do.. of course needed a bit of coffee to get the brain working.

Yipes, this coil's seen some shit. Lucky I have another on the way.

In typical Japanese fashion the engine bay is super dirty. I forgot to take an after but the bonnet is now significantly less lubricated.

Installed new NGK leads and plugs. The lead to the coil was a bit long as you can see, just cable tied it out of the way of the radiator fan more than anything.

I love how the leads are numbered for idiots like me!

One of these things is not like the other haha. Who's good at reading plugs? How does it look?

After I changed the plugs/leads it was running like a bag of dicks missing and shit so I took off the dizzy cap and the points were super corroded. Bit of sandpaper and it runs mean now but I've got another cap due to arrive any day now anyway.

Also took a quick vid on Instagram, so much excitement and noise to get to speed limit. It's a real event!
https://instagram.com/p/9uxtRrmbK4/?taken-by=mlracing_alex" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

Tbh I'm just beaming cause I did a thing and it made a difference

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Arts and crafts time! 

The black paint on these light surrounds was peeling off and looking a bit average so I decided to fix that. 

While I was there I painted the front grille as well, slightly differently to the OEM just to see how it would turn out. The reason I didn't just take out the honeycombs and the middle emblem is because everything was seized in. Being a Friday afternoon I didn't feel like fighting it so.. in it stayed. 

Finished! I didn't leave out the 2000GT badge on purpose, just forgot to put it back on haha. Probably leave it off though. I'd like to get in and polish the metal at some stage as it's quite cloudy and average but overall it's pretty average. Probably needs to go to some fancy metal guy to make it nice again. Oh, and need to paint the N in the middle of the badge red again as that's fully faded out.

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PARTS PARTS PARTS PARTS! 

Old filter out, new filter in. Just as well Nissan still make parts for old Datsun trucks!

Wow.. reasonable chance this is the OEM coil that came in the car when new. Could just be placebo but car feels easier to rev up to redline, still gutless but sounds sweet. Also at about 6k vibrations start to happen so that's as far as I went.

Car did a shart. I was feeling all awesome about having installed the coil so went to crank it over.. after cranking over longer than probably should have the car didn't start. Hm.. quick glance out saw the coil lead sitting on top of the radiator, derp! After the engine got over the fact that it was now flooded it cranked up to life and business as usual.

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Arts and crafts time again! Something that was bothering me for ages is the N emblem on the front was all faded out. Picked up some basic model/craft paint during the week and thought I'd have a poke about and get it looking nicer.

Turns out it looked way nicer just with a bit of a clean with some solvent.. but still not vivid enough for me.

It took me ages to work out how I was going to do it with masking off so I could minimise the paint on the chrome. Ended up making a hash of it anyway but this is the first lot I did, and that turned out all good.

Then this is the second lot and I couldn't figure out how to mask the inner bits so just gave up and made a mess. Quite a bit of the paint seemed to bleed through that paint tape but I managed to clean up the majority of it afterwards with some ear bud things and solvent.

Finished product.. it's not super sharp around the edges but stand a few feet away and she's magic.

Just brings that bit of something to the front where it was all silver/black before. Next I have to figure out the best way to refurbish the 2000GT badge on the front.. or maybe just leave it off for a while because I realised painting is quite hard.

Also the front lip bugs me. I'm pretty sure it's warped somehow but it is flat on the bottom so hard to tell. Oh well, problem for another day.

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Picked up this Nardi woodgrain wheel for a price I couldn't resist as was looking for something larger than the Momo that was on there in order to see the gauges properly (couldn't see water temp, somewhat important). 

With a bit of fettling it's on, and looks perfect. Feels really nice to hold, I've never had a woodgrain wheel before. Also took this opportunity to straighten the boss as the previous owner for whatever reason had the wheel on a slight angle which bugged me to no end. Now I need to get some repair parts for the centre console to get it back to it's former glory.

When I took that photo from the driver's seat it reminded me of this one I took a little over 3 years ago at Rocky Auto:

It was never a matter of IF I would own one.. but a matter of when!

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I had some tyres that needed to be removed from the car because they had cracks all through them, surprised they hadn't blown out! Luckily I had some already from other wheels. All different brands/models because I like to live dangerously. Also the sizes slightly different (two 175, two 185) so put the 185's on the rear, naturally. While I was under the car I had a look at the rust and repair places that will need to be fixed up. Some really awesome Japanese typical body panel repair jobs involving urethane, silicone, cardboard (or plastic) and metal tape. Just the usual. 

The good thing (but maybe expensive) is that inner/outer sills are available as well as a couple other common failure points as repair parts. Not genuine Nissan of course but a couple restore companies are reproducing them which is excellent.

They were all like this, and also had cracking inside the tread too.

New (old) tyres on.. I think there are some from China and some from Korea, quality.

So much room for activities.

Bit of a shitty look at the stainless exhaust. It's loud.

Hmm those could be a problem. I had a feeling it was on cut springs after driving it. The rear actually is captive so that should be OK, but the front is no bueno, will look at upgrade options because the shocks look pretty average too. 

Looks like a bolt missing from there... and interesting exhaust hanger situation.

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Took the Skyline around the block to make sure all still working as it should be, rides a bit nicer on the new tyres compared to the cracked other ones so that's cool. Also did an Instagram walk around as hadn't done that yet. Got several puzzled looks in my short around the block journey haha, people can't work out what it is. 

https://www.instagram.com/p/BAEEuXSGbEx/?taken-by=mlracing_alex

When I parked it up to open the garage it was in the right spot..

Squad.. with myself? haha

I had a really good time just driving it around the block, it's made me excited for this year! Also the new woodgrain Nardi is so much nicer to use, perfect for the car.

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I'm still out of country not getting back until next week but I had these come through from depot during the packing of the container (which will be here shortly as well)..

It's got a busted bottom end apparently, but block should still be OK. The boys also tell me it has a big cam but not sure spec on anything.

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So previous owner debadged the lot and removed a bunch of trim. This is common as GT-R doesn't have the same kind of trim as the lower models and people try to go for this look. Being that mine is not a GT-R and not trying to be, I want to put the trim and badges back.

Only problem is the previous owner covered over the holes which are typically used to hold on the badges etc Deciding what to do but I may just use tape to hold most of them on as a few of the mounting prongs are damaged anyway. Still deciding..

Also my bonnet cable is missing the handle so picked up another one of those to fit! The badges will need some restoration anyway so will need to research the best way to go about doing that.

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Did a couple of small bits the other day, decided to see why my wiper motor was not really doing a good job and install the rear emblem as well as finally put on the hood latch handle thing. 

So basically when I got the car it didn't have a proper handle connected to the wire to pull the bonnet latch so what I ended up doing is getting this washed and knob setup there which was ok but still difficult.

Most excellently I found a whole wire on Yahoo but as it turned out I could just unscrew the handle bit and screw it onto my current wire which was great because it looked quite difficult to get the other one out.

Next up I attached the emblem that I sort of reburbished just using some double sided tape (the kind used to attach wings and such) so that isn't going anywhere. Looks sweet! Also mocked up the black bit there but I still need the trims that go along the top and bottom then I can attach it on there properly. Still debating whether or not to get a badge for it, probably will. 

Next step rip into the wiper motor.. so what happens is when the wipers are on the windscreen it has one speed, slow. Despite having multiple actual speeds available (slow and slightly less slow). My first port of call, the switch. Sometimes people jump the switch if there's a problem or do some different wiring or wahtever. Definately some.. typical wiring jobs under here.. 

This one, twist and taped (and a gear boot which is broken that I have another one on the way).

This one, casual wire just hanging around. 

This one, some kind of twist and tape splice method, appears regularly. 

Old mate twist (no tape even on this one).

This is what I mean about the twist and tape splice method.. sans tape. 

Anyway after all that I did another test with the wipers not on the windscreen and it does change speed so I think the motor is just old and worn out and can't put through the power it needs. So I've got a couple of choices here.. I can take it out and see if it can be revamped somewhere or get a different one. I've been told that S13 ones may be able to work so I'll investigate both options. Also I got rid of a bunch of redundant wiring that I suspect was for the head unit/navi that was probably there before.

Also I thought the car may have been red before and repainted to silver.. now I wonder if it's always silver and the floor was just red? No idea really.. probably had some shitty rust repair done on the floor before and maybe it's a coating or something.

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Latest parts container has arrived so I went down for a nosey before the stuff gets delivered to our dispatch facility. Picked up a few things (Heaps of Boss coffee in stock now for anyone that's interested). There was a nice box that said my name on it and look what's inside!

Ohhh, ahhh. Mikuni Solex 40s. Come off the L28 that is also in the container. I'm told explicitly not to open them up as they're setup and run perfectly for L28 with big cam on stock bottom end. Super happy the throttle linkage has the adapter on it for cable too, makes life so much easier as mine uses cable not linkages like the twin carb ones.

Also these came in the box, some ancient MSD system. Looks pretty full on, not exactly sure how this would be set up or if I'll use it but will investigate that further down the line. 

Also these old as electric fuel pumps, neat! They look well used that's for sure.

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Parts parts parts parts

Slowly I pick away and find things to buy to fix up the car, this morning a package arrived with Nissan OEM brake lines (seems like clutch lines are the same), Nissan OEM shift boot and also a rubber boot to go under it all as mine didn't really have one.

Immediately run into an interesting problem. There are two types of these rubber boots listed for Hakosuka depending on the year, I picked up the one which was suitable to my year but it seems like the shifter itself is in the wrong place. So that makes me wonder if the gearbox is not a Hako gearbox, could be from any number of Datsuns of similar vintage. Regardless I put the boot there and it's kind of just sitting as it is better than nothing.

This waas what was there before.. 

The shift boot looks cool! I just need to get a new chrome trim ring around the plastic where the shifter goes through. It looks like to get the boot to stay up it folds around that trim ring then the trim ring is screwed from below. I'm actually looking for a full new console as this one has cracks and various repairs etc out of it so not that great.

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Ever since I've had the car the wipers have not been great/hardy work at all so my mission today was to remove the wiper motor because I've been told that S13 ones can fit with some small adjustments. 

I was a bit worried that when I pulled off this cowling there would be epic rust underneath but actually it's very tidy. The cover has a little surface rust under it and on the car side the rust looking marks are just dirt from the seal being damaged and letting muck in. I've ordered a new seal to replace it. Also, an enterprising fellow the previous owner must have been as the rubber cover you see there above the access hole is actually the sole of a shoe. It worked well so can't complain. I had to cut it up to get in there though so I've also ordered the correct replacement rubber part for when it goes back together.

The wiper motor is actually inside the car behind the glove box. Initially I couldn't work out how I would get to it but ended up quite easy once I actually had a proper look at it. That's the thing with these cars, once you slow down and have a bit of a snoop around it's pretty straight forward how things go together. Because of this you can get quite a bit of satisfaction from just doing simple tasks because you can actually do them! Also fun note, the glove box is made of cardboard material. As you can see it's pretty weathered and you can get new ones but at this stage it's not super high on the priorities. I could unstaple it and even make my own one using the original as a template if I really wanted. 

Got em! The S13 one should be here sometime earlyish next week so it will be interesting to compare the parts and see what I need to change. I've read that the shaft that connects the linkage to the motor needs to be swapped and maybe some wiring needs to be tickled but as I've not actually seen a proper write up on the process (in English anyway) I figured I'd give it a shot and see what happens. Can't get any worse..

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OK so the 180SX wiper motor arrived and after closely inspecting it I can't see any easy way to make it work. None of the brackets line up (could make custom though) and the size is a bit different. So it's definitely not quite anywhere near bolt on. Even once I remove the mounting plate on the original one there's not really any way to easily attach it to the new one. Will have to think a bit more about the strategy.

I'm not sure if this will be the same for other countries or models but this one is from a 180SX Type X, so later model. Perhaps early model ones are more suitable. I'll continue to look out for something a bit older and around the same period before destroying this one.

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So after my bust on the 180sx wiper motor I did a bit more research and found that majority of Datsuns of similar vintage shared (or 95%) the same wiper motor. There are some Honda ones you can use and various other things but mint16 on here had some 510 motors for sale so I contacted him and picked up two of those. 

You can see they're almost identical except the centre linkage shaft is longer on the Hakosuka one.

I took apart/cut the plugs off and ran some quick bench testing. With old cars it's always better to have more spares than less and it's a good thing too as one of the motors was not as good as the other. One was better than my current one though so I used the not so good one as a sacrifice so I could take it apart without concern and learn about how it all works. 

What I learnt initially was how much of a huge pain in the ass these bushes can be, and how much of an idiot they make you feel like.. that is until you work out/research how to get them to stay in their sprung houses. Then you feel like an even bigger idiot, albeit an enlightened one. 

This motor (which was the best of the lot) looked like it had some moisture inside it sometime in the past. Nonetheless it worked OK so after giving it a little clean up I re-used that part.

My main quandry was how to get the linkage shaft out and move it from the hako motor to the 510 one. I tried for ages to remove a washer on the outside to pull it out but then thought I'd see if it were possible to remove it from the inside, jackpot!

Once this cover is removed you're faced with this. Pretty straight forward system. 

Simply remove that nut, couple of washers and the park position thing and a circlip then you can see this. Just lightly knock out the centre shaft and it pops out the other side. Easily enough to reverse the procedure with the hako shaft. 

Better look at the size difference. Bigger is better huehuehuehue

Taking the advice of many, I also tried to lube up this linkage area. I couldn't for the life of me get the washer clip thing off the top but it was quite stiff to move around. I did clean it up and gunked it as best as possible and it definitely made it move more freely.

So after putting it all back together it's not a major improvement but definitely an improvement. Also for some reason the park no longer works despite wiring being the same, the motor just seems to run continually so perhaps something isn't quite exactly the same. Anyway, don't need that so I've not plugged that in for now. 

I think definitely for a proper decent upgrade the Honda motor could be the way to go, but I learnt a bunch from this so I consider it a win win. I also learnt that I need a new battery and a trickle charger.

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It's sometimes the little things that make all the difference so I had a couple of bits I really needed to get fixed up. I purchased a new gear boot a while ago but the silver trim ring was smashed to pieces, the centre console is in poor condition with some pretty agricultural repairs so not entirely surprised. 

I have this one hook underneath which I've since been told isn't meant to be there, so I'm missing a bunch of clips that go underneath here which secure the shift boot onto the trim ring. 

Previously I purchased a replacement rubber boot for the shifter hole but I got the wrong one, now I have the correct one. After a bunch of prodding and poking, got it in there. 

So without all the clips in there the shift boot sits like this. Deciding whether to get some new woodgrain stickers but if I'm going to eventually replace the centre console anyway maybe there are better things to spend the money on.. really want to get a different shift knob though.