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New to the 521 crew!


DatWifey

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Thanks for the reassurance Ken! I pretty much did the removal of the old one and the install of these by myself since the husband was wrapped up with a project on another car and I was too impatient to wait for him to do it, so I was hoping I had done it right. :unsure:

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Thanks Dave! We were actually just trying to look up what the stock colors were for Datsuns in 1971. There are areas of the bed that have the top layer of paint scratched off, as well as the inside of the doors and it does look like the original color was a slight off-white. She's what many would call a '10-footer', as she looks great from about 10 feet away, but once you get close you can see that the paint is matte and there are many areas of drips. Oh well, someday we'll repaint, but for now we lover her as she is :D

 

We also took a bit off her ass end and got the bumper switched to the split bumpers today!

 

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Next mission: find new tail light lenses!

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LLLLLLLLUUUUUUUUUUUUVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVV the bumberettes was wondering how'd they look on the ass of a 21...i may have a set or tail light lenses stashed i'll go check this weekend when it warms up supposedly going to be 15 above sweet ass heatwave lmao.....as far as the color if you look thru here at most of the 521 rescues ppl find here and save from the crusher and shit they are almost everytime including mine are white:lol:

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  • 4 weeks later...

Here is a write up I did on rebuilding the taillights off my 521 trucks.

 

http://community.ratsun.net/topic/18092-521-taillight-rebuilding/page__p__249780__hl__taillights__fromsearch__1#entry249780

 

One thing I will pull out of the write up is this. The colored lens is the same on either side of the truck. for example, if your right taillight lens is cracked, a lens off a left taillight will work.

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definitely let us know what you need. I'm always happy to see someone keep their 521 stock. Looks like your hood emblem is missing. The ones on ebay are really nice even though I think they're reproduction's. The package/parcel tray that goes under the glove box but may be hard to find. Some may not care to have it but I use mine alot. Are you thinking of A stock radio and speaker? Whatever you decide dont be afraid to ask.

 

do you know a good place i could find a stock radio?

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Dave, I appreciate you making the trek out to check through your stash for me! :)

 

Daniel, I'll take a closer look at your write up, but our biggest problem with the tail lights is that the lenses are cracked way beyond repair, but the rest of the light housing and wiring is fine. I'll cruise through the thread a bit more and use at least some of the advice for removing and cleaning up the housing as well though. And thanks for the note about them being able to swap sides. Thank you for the link!

 

SRSANDS, PM sent.

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  • 1 month later...

It's been a while since posting anything, but we haven't been exactly "busy" working on the truck until lately since the brakes assed out and sort of forced us to start finally tearing shit apart on it. So, I compiled our photos and figured it was picture-book time...... since it's clear how much everyone around here seems to eat that shit up :P

 

To start this off, my husband (Brodster), turned 30 in March. I had to think long and hard what to get him that would be somewhat special. :wub: Here's what I came up with (the 510 has been his long-time love and will be our ultimate Datto project once we've really got the money and time). (It has yet to be hung up yet, but I did my part, now the ball's in his court -_-)

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Over the past while we've upgraded the tail lights (thanks to DatDoug).

We went from these:

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To these:

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We also decided to give the floor pans a little POR15 love. In the grand scheme of things, they really weren't bad at all.

This is what they looked like before:

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And after (it's a little dirty from using the truck since we coated it a while ago):

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I have been holding off using it as my daily driver because we've had some intermittent problems with the brakes being too soft and requiring pumping to work properly, but I needed it in a pinch about two weeks ago and the brakes pretty much took a total shit on me. I got to a stop sign down the road from our house and was able to slow down a bit, but was unable to actually come to a stop. Thankfully it's not a busy intersection and noone was in front of me, or coming through the intersection at the time, but it freaked me out a little, so we finally pulled it into the garage that night and she's been on jackstands since. Brodster has completely torn apart the brakes and suspension in preparation to do Mike Klotz's brake swap, and replace many of the bushing that he purchased a while back. Feeling completely useless in the brake/suspension department, I started my own little projects.

 

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While pulling things apart, Brody had a hell of a time getting the Fulcrum bolt on the driver's side out. It had completely worn through the rubber bushing.

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I decided to start pulling all of the side marker lights off to clean them and get them looking clean and bright again.

I had cleaned one, but the other three were a bit worse with rust.

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I talked Brody into going to the Tacoma Pick'n'Pull to see if a 620 we spotted the week before still had all of it's housings. Sure enough, they were all there, and three out of the four were in great shape. We pulled all of them, I cleaned them all up with a few Dremel tools and sand paper, and now we're onto the rust inhibitor and then chrome paint to get some shine to them again!

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We've also got a stock stereo (thanks to Hastifc), and speaker (thanks to Jefe), so we're working on getting those possibly linked up to an amp to keep the stock-ish look going, but getting some real tunes in there. :cool:

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Last week we picked up a hood from 420n620 while at the Vancouver meet & greet, as ours is stripped at the hinges and is a little worrisome while cruising down the freeway :huh: We'll repaint this, get the supports tacked back on and it'll be a thing of beauty!!

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And, we'll see how it turns out, but I've also decided to pull the door panels and kick panels and re-upholster them all. The PO had them all redone in black vinyl..... which is fine, but sometimes I get a creative hair up my ass and feel like I need to try something, so here I go. I dragged Brody to a few craft stores over the past weekend, and we decided on some nice burgundy vinyl (that we mildly matched to a swatch that was on the original kick panel still under the black) and cream suede. Now for the pattern..... hmmm..... :unsure:

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And I can't forget to mention that I finally got another matching mirror from Wayno, but haven't put it on the truck yet, or even taken photos of any of it because I haven't even put it all together yet. :blush:

 

I have a deadline of Canby for all of this, so hopefully we'll get the kingpin kit from Nissan and Brody will be able to get the brakes all situated by then and we'll debut it there! :D

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Man this is one impressive post my friend. You are doing every thing I want to do to my truck. Those tail lights are off the hook, led? I want to do all my lights led. The old rusty fixtures won't even take a new bulb after cleaning even. All the oics are awesome, I threw this big ugly light on my bumper for fun, it brought to light my electrical problems, and I now have a new alternator and bypassed external voltage regulator.

<a href="http://s1212.photobucket.com/albums/cc458/two14gwo/?action=view&current=IMG_9241.jpg" target="_blank"><img src="http://i1212.photobucket.com/albums/cc458/two14gwo/IMG_9241.jpg" border="0" alt="Photobucket"></a>

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Thanks! The taillights aren't anything different than the stock, just way cleaner and newer looking than that ratty old ones that we had on the truck before. Ours weren't totally shot, but they definitely weren't in great shape by any means. Some of our side marker lights were in even worse shape, but we managed to find some much better condition ones in the junkyard, so that made life much easier.

 

We've got some slight electrical idiosyncrasies coming to light as well, the more that we work on it. Our left turn signal in the tail light doesn't blink on the proper bulb, so it's relatively minor, but something to take care of at some point. Gotta love old trucks and their flaws! :D

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