My girlfriend is the best!! This was my birthday present (Dec 5th) from her! I know, it’s cheesy. But I like them and I think it’s frikk’n sweet!! Now I gotta figure how to mount them on the truck!

**Read the bottom of this post to see why I’ve been absent for so long.**

We got the front subframe mounted with little effort. I was quite suprised with how easy it was to get it on there. I cut off the “ears” of the subframe to clean it up some. I also added bracing in front of it so that I can move the motor closer to the front. The subframe had to be mounted in this location so that hubs would line up with the factory wheel alignment in relation to the fenders. When I measured the motor in its current location to the where it sits on the subframe it will put the motor in the firewall by 3 inches. Thats the point of adding the motor mounts in front of the factory mounting points.

After a little clean up and paint.

The frame on the truck is considerably narrower than the 240. I gotta figure out what I’m gonna do about the tie rods. They won’t fit for the truck. And I don’t think I can weld anything to the ends to get them to reach the front mountig points without being to flimsy. I think I can use the factory datsun tie rods and just redrill the holes on the ends.

Looks like I’m gonna have some issues with the rack too. The sway bars are going to need tabs welded for the mounting points as well.

Here’s the obvious issue with the rack and a closer look at the welds. I’m going to go over the welds again when I get a better welder.

Since the bolts on the gear box are “A-Symmetrical” I just removed the bolts and turned the gearbox cap two positions and reinserted the bolts. Hopefully this will work without any henderance to performance of the gearbox. Now all ports face away from the frame and subframe.

This is a look at the passenger side sway bar mount. It’s obviously gonna get a mounting tab.

Ok, next issue is the turbo elbow. It’s pointing right at the frame. We ordered a V-mount setup with braided flex pipe from ATPturbo.com so we can fab up our own turbo elbow. Everything needed was just under $300. Quite expensive for just a custom Turbo Elbow.

I’m also gonna need to make a tranny mount too.

I didn’t take pictures, but with the motor mounted forward on the new mounts it was hitting the steering rack along with the turbo elbow completely covering the path for the steering shaft to the gearbox. The swaybar was hitting to oil pan too. So I had to move the motor back to its original mounting point on the subframe.

Ok, after some cleanup and trimming the fairewall for the motor fitment. This is the color I’m thinking of going with.

I had to remove the dash to make room for the new pedal assembly, wiring and gauges.

All of this stuff even though it says December 30th, 2007. It was all done over this past summer. I’ve been on the road working for AT&T and haven’t been working on the truck much because I haven’t been home.

I was able to order most of the parts needed to finish the project. I’m still going to be on the road for a few more months but will be updating as much as possible and building as often as possible.

July 13th, 2008

Scott got lost and didn’t show until late today so we weren’t able to get very much done but we did start tipping the iceberg today. :):):) Scott brought over the intercooler. It’s a little thick but I think we can make it work.

Now it’s time to see if we can get this front subframe in place and welded there.

First, we have to grind everything off and get all the rust off and have a clean surface to work with.

Holy Crap!!

After some fitting we were able to get it to fit with no problems!!

We were going to tack it into place but for some reason the welder wouldn’t work. So we have to settle with a jack holding it into place for the moment until I can figure out what is wrong with it.

This is all I have until next week. Oh Wait, I’m suppose to be in Pensacola next weekend. So I won’t be posting anything new for that weekend that is truck related.

The Sunday after the Turner Field event (June 29th) Chris and I started working on the truck and made some progress before our fatigue from the previous day kicked in. We were able to remove the rear axle and springs and place the 240 rear subframe on the jack to see where it would sit in the rear. I didn’t get any pictures of that as I was stupid tired.

Check out my handy car dollies that I made one day! It still cost $200 to make myself! But it will hold a 3200 lbs car damn it!

This is what we were left with once we left with for that day. I think we went in a watched NASCAR for the rest of the day. Ghey Amanda, Ghey..

July 5th, 2008

I made it out to the garage for a little while and was able to make some progress pulling all wiring and tubing from the frame. I was also able to remove the front subframe and torsion bars. And that was actually a pain in the ass. I didn’t get any pictures of it being removed.

July 6th, 2008

Scott came over and we were able to make a decent amount of headway. Today was removing all extra brackets, tabs and braces that weren’t gonna be used again. I wanted to pressure wash everything too.

Here’s Scott showing us his bald spot.

We slid the 240 front subframe under the frame to get it ready for fitment.

After sliding that into place we called it a day and I grabbed these pictures of what we did.

So this concludes July 6th.

I needed to start breaking the truck down into sections and working it down to the frame. I decided that starting with the bed would be a good start seeing that it’s relatively easy and has the appearance of a lot of work being done without completely killing myself in the beginning.

Once I removed the bed I saw that there was a lot more room to work with than I was expecting and that the frame was tubular from the factory. So that saves a lot of work from the get-go.

Now it was time to start with getting to truck prepped for removing the cab. This was going to be more time consuming. This required removing all lines, hoses and wiring that went from the frame and engine to the cab. I also had to remove the steering (which was a complete pain in the ass!) and auto shifter in the floorboard.

I don’t have any pictures of this except for the shifter being gone. I was in the zone with removing and getting prepped that I completely forgot.

We ended up having to cut the steering column. We couldn’t get the pitman arm to free up and let go of the gear arm.

Pulling the cabin was kind of scary to me because if we damaged anything I’d be up the creek without a paddle. Because having to replace the windshield or doors would be an almost impossible task seeing that no one could even give me a quote on the windshield because most people won’t deal with anything earlier than 1980. :/ And the problem that I was worried about was if the roof was to give way to some of the stress being put on it by crimping in the middle causing the windshield to break.

So what we did was got a 2×4 cut at 50″ and placed that across the cabin so that it took all the stress of picking up the cabin.

And then I was going to need something to pick up the front. So we did this and attached them above the roof to the engine hoist and lifted.

This a little better picture of how the lift was done.

You can see where we had to cut the steering rod.

Next was the gas tank.

You can see a little bit of rust damage where the gas tank was mounted. This will soon be removed.

Drive shaft was next.

Enough posting for another day. Gotta go find something to eat. AGAIN!!

I bought the truck on April 26, 2008.

The Interior was great too!!

A couple of shots of the stock motor. L16

I will post up more when I get a chance.. Pizza is burning right now.. Gotta go!!

Time to size things up:

After getting the truck home it was time to size up the project to see what I was up against. Here’s a few pictures of what I was looking at:

I’m looking at the motor mount points here to see what they look like and measuring distances from side to side front to back and top to bottom. Gotta see if a SR20det will fit in here.

This is old school technology. Torsion bars instead of springs!

Solid rear axle and plenty of room. No wonder this truck is so light!

General Prep and Repair:

Since I traded the M30 without the seats, GeForce Harness and Steering wheel I had some things to go ahead and get installed. The wheel wouldn’t bolt up to the Datsun, plus we weren’t gonna be able to use the stock steering column anyway.

I went to the junk yard and found a 1977 620 truck and was able to scavenge some parts. And seeing that my truck is an automatic I needed the clutch supplies from the parts truck to convert mine. My truck was also missing 3 point seat belts. It only had 2 point. So I was able to use the ones from the parts truck as well. I got home and installed these new parts as soon as I cleaned them up.

Ok thats it for now. Next is the disassemble.