1984 Datsun Maxima Wagooooooon! HRH's new summer daily. (Wynona)

[HRH]

Well I just went out and replaced the cap and rotor on Wynona.  No shit, original cap, original rotor.  Nissan part number stamped on the underside of both.  It wasn't idling as smooth as I would like it, found a very small crack off on of the towers in the cap.  Also put on the '79 matchbox which doesn't have the extra idle correction plug.  Should have more balls now, though I also may have hot start issue.  I almost think that was the reason for the idle control was to retard the crap out of the timing on hot start up.  Not entirely sure.  Either way, this one won't get a hood vent.  If I need to vent stuff I'll space the hinges to raise the rear edge slightly.

 

She idles nice and smoothly now.  We'll see how the trip to work goes tomorrow.  I brought all the old parts and tools with me, just in case.  This is a KEM module (USA manuf.) I bought off Rockauto, don't have a spare from the wrecking yard at the moment.  This was the spare from the race car.

[HRH]

Yep, figured out that little extra idle circuit on the ignition module on 82-83 ZXs and 81-84 Maximas was their fix for the hot start issue.  I'm thinking it was to enrich the mixture that was heat-soaked to allow it to run without stumbling until the temperature went down and some more fuel went through the rail.  Had a hot start issue today at 64 degrees.  Not much, but it's sure to be apparent just like the race Maxima.

 

Instead of the hood vent though, I'll be raising the back edge of the hood via spacers to let the heat out.  Don't want to cut the nice body panels on the wagon!  Think I might try some heat sleeves on the fuel rail also.  Like the ones used for spark plug wires next to the block.  Or I might just wrap the fuel line in header tape.  I'm not so sure it's the rail as it may be the injectors from where they're mounted.

[captaingamez]

The dash on these cars is not too bad to remove. to get to the instruments you only need to remove the driver side pad, its like 6 screws. 4 on top under the pad, infront of the cluster, and two on the bottom of the sides above the ledge where the hazard and mirror switches sit. take those off and you can pull the pad carefully. then the cluster is easy. The speedo cable is virtually held on by nothing but this little clip so it should com off really easy.

[HRH]

Thanks Gamez.  I may try that a little later when I'm feeling more adventurous.  For now I'm just watching the standard odometer to figure mileage.  Haven't filled up yet, hoping to get 24ish.  I've been going pretty fast to work though. ;)  Actually, more like coming home from work.  I have found that even with over drive engaged it will pull third gear all the way to 6k rpm.  Didn't push it past that, just let off to make her shift.

[HRH]

Well, the temperature was climbing to a rather annoying height at idle the last couple days.  Seeing as I have replaced the radiator, water pump, fan clutch, hoses and there was no oil in the coolant or bubbles and the radiator level was going down, the only thing left was the thermostat I put in last winter.  Interestingly, 180 is stock.  190 is optional.  Somehow I pulled out a 195 thermostat tonight.  I'm thinking I either grabbed the wrong box or decided to go 5 degrees hotter being it was winter.  Anyway, 195 is TOO HOT.  She's running where she should now, and even at idle the temp rises but not excessively like it was.  So that is good.

 

And I found where the mouse made his nest when I removed the underhood cover tonight.  Nice little cozy house hanging inside with a bunch of mouse shit and chewed up fuzz.  No mouse though.  

[HRH]

Well I put the lowering springs on today.  Worked great, but I do have a rub on full compression.  Lowered it a bit more than I thought.  It's not bad though, I may just leave it if it's only hitting the inner fender liner.  I'll do some checking in a bit.  In the meantime I'm now having to steal the front calipers off the race car and do the front brakes.  Original pads, no shit.  They have about 1/32" left of material before the backing plate.  Nissan stamped on them.  Put them back on the rotor after swapping the springs and they make noise now.  I have everything to replace them except the calipers, which I had to order from the east coast.  So I'll put the new calipers I have coming on the race car and use those for the wagon.  Got some wheel seals, just going to re-pack the bearings and re-install with new rotors/pads/year old calipers.  Should be awesome.

[HRH]

Alright, here's the efforts from today.  I might need to roll the fender slightly.  It's really close.  I cut a little off the inner fender liner and it's doesn't hit unless hard compression all the way, and even then it's just a little plastic noise, nothing worrisome.  I have more pics, but this is all I feel like uploading.  Hopefully the rear will lower tomorrow.

 

[q-tip]

Its looking good Matt!

[ArchetypeDatsun]

Looks great very clean!

[HRH]

Thanks!  Just need to get the rear down a smidgen.

[HRH]

Alright, so I ordered up some Eibach 225 11x5" springs and tried them just like that.  They were too high.  Not by much, but a little bit.  So I cut off some and heated and bent them and got them to 10" high with the right angle.  And it was too low.  So I heated the top coil again and bent it to 10.5" high.  Which was great except if I put any weight in the back, I'll be squatting more in the rear than in the front, and I fucking hate that.

 

So I ordered some 10.5" 225 lb 5" springs which came today.  Hopefully (knock on wood) they'll be the happy medium for a slight bit higher in back which will allow me to be a-ok when loaded up.  Plus the springs will settle a little after break in.  We shall see tomorrow.

 

Tonight I worked on vacuum.  Recently there's been a squeak at certain vacuum in the engine compartment.  Sounds like someone hid a squeaky ball in my intake.  Sounded like it was coming near the air box.  Anyway, it annoyed me.  More prevalent during cold temps, doesn't do it all the time, and only under a decent amount of load.  So I took off the intake boot tonight, and it was fine, as I suspected.  Those early boots didn't really crack much fortunately.  Mine is in quite good condition.  So next I looked at all the vacuum lines I plan on replacing, but didn't find any bad ones.

 

However, on the race Maxima, on of the first things I did find was the distributor had spit a ball bearing in the advance plate and the vacuum advance was dead.  So I hooked up the vacuum gauge to the wagon distributor vacuum advance, and what do you know.  Slight vacuum leak.  Almost held at 5 lbs, dropped rapidly at 10-15 lbs.  Looked for a vacuum advance online.  Yeah, those are drying up.  Rather annoying.  So I went back out to my pile of old distributors in the garage and I managed to find one that was the same length and same style, except the outlet was 180 degrees off.  Fortunately I had some brake line to make a little 180 turn and connected it up.  I also modified a cheap 90 degree pick tool into a sliver-thin screwdriver to separate the magnetic pickup ring from the steel housing that the red and green wires wrap around.  As anyone who has taken a Datsun distributor apart knows, those damn magnetic rings are VERY fragile and usually crack.  Well, ladies and gents, I got mine out with dicking it up or cracking it!!!!  Woo hoo! :D

 

I was pretty proud of that.  So I threw in the other vacuum advance, it's still holding vacuum.  I'll order another distributor from back east, which seems to be the only way I can get a new vacuum advance these days.  Factory had 27 apparently, so that's good.  Now to drive to work tomorrow and see if that makes any noticeable difference in pickup and whether my squeak remains gone or pops up again.

[HRH]

Confirmed thus far.  No more squeak.  Better pickup from idle.  Also did a mileage check today, finally started writing down the mileage to get an accurate number. Keeping Wynona at 75 ish on the freeway and light loads around town seems to have rewarded me with 26.7 mpg.  For a slushbox, I'm pretty stoked with that.  The trip meter isn't accurate, but the odo is.  Kept not remembering what the previous mileage was, worried I was getting 17 mpg, which didn't seem right because I've definitely been filling up less in the wagon.  26.7 seems a bit high actually.  I managed to squeeze another .6 into the tank after it took only 2 gallons.  71 miles.  Even if it was 3 gallons, that would still be 23 mpg.  All of which I would accept.

 

So tonight I'm going to eat dinner, then go out and screw with the rear springs and see if I can't get the ride height where I want it, and then actually throw in the spare tire.  Bought one new one from Schwabs the other day.  (One of my accounts)  Just a cheap version for a full-size spare.  I could use the original and I do mean original, but the heat checking and fact that it's 30 years old make me a little hesitant.  It never hit the road though.  Still had little nubbies on it.

[HRH]

Having a great Easter!  Hope you all are too.  Unfortunately, my squeak is back.  Going to try to replicate the vacuum in the intake by attaching the shop vac to the exhaust and then working the throttle plate, maybe I can get it to do it.  Right around 2000 rpm, my car has a squeak that is related to vacuum, so should be a leak, right?  But can't find.  The other suspect thing is the pressure valve on the bottom of the intake possibly failing.  That can be by-passed without issue, it's a blow-off valve for manifold vacuum to limit oil sucking in from the pcv system on deceleration.  May also be the source of the squeak.  I don't know, I'll delve into it here in a bit.

[HRH]

So I have found the squeak.  It's the flapper air flow meter.  My Datsun guru suggested taking a motorcycle innertube and wrapping it around the AFM to absorb some of the resonant vibration.  Haven't tried that yet.  Still at odds for why I haven't noticed it in the race Maxima.  Could be because the exhaust is louder, but for some reason I don't think that's it.  Only difference between the motors is I have a longer exhaust with cat on the wagon, whereas the sedan is side-piped short with no cat.  Shouldn't affect the AFM though.

 

Tried the other original AFM from Ugly Betty on the wagon, exact same.  Hit it with brake cleaner all over, couldn't find one vacuum leak.  So for the moment, I'm just ignoring the squeak.  And I'll try insulating the AFM and see if that helps.  Also ran into an issue tonight on control arms.  The driver's side lower balljoint doesn't have the range of motion required for full droop.  I had the exact same problem (same parts) on Ugly Betty.  The big problem is the right lower control arm with ball joint and left lower control arm with ball joint are different manufacturers from NAPA chassis, and given I've now bought two sets, I'm thinking I may special order two ball joints and just replace the one side.  It's a press in, which is annoying, hence my ordering the entire lower control arm since it's almost as cheap as the ball joint itself.  I took some pics, had to use the jack to move up the strut to attach the driver's side.  Not that it will make much difference in regular driving, but if I were to become airborne, then I'd have one wheel about an inch farther down, plus instead of the torsion arm and strut being the limiting factor, it would be the balljoint, which isn't great.  Still, driven Ugly Betty like that for a year and nothing bad has happened.  Anyway, going to sleep.  Lots to do tomorrow and it's probably going to be cold and pissy here.

[q-tip]

If you get airborne? How bad are the roads over there!?

[HRH]

It IS eastern Washington.  Spokane roads are some of the worst I've seen.  Idaho, an even poorer state, has great roads.  Ask me how that works.  Oh yeah, no one on the West side hogging all the infrastructure dollars.

[hobospyder]

Dude don't even. We got some pretty shitty roads this side too. My daily is slowly rattling itself apart with the section of i5 u commute on every day

[HRH]

You have freeways?  We have goat trails! :D  And oh boy, today is just faaaaannntastic.  Found a water leak on the spark plug side with the outlet to the lower radiator hose off the timing cover.  Just broke both bolts off.  So lunch first, then torch, then visegrips, then hopefully extracting both without issue, tapping the holes and away we go.  Not what I wanted considering I'm out in the rain.  Snowed all morning, freakin' weird.  Now just cold rain.  And of course I didn't move the racecar out of the garage because there was crap everywhere and I had the calipers off.  So I'm out in the elements today.  At least I have a nice warm jacket and boots.

[HRH]

Alright, back from California.  If you didn't follow the general technical thread, I have found the squeak issue and will divulge tomorrow what that was after pictures are sorted through.  The most important facts are:

 

I traveled 2170 miles in the last week.  Wynona was unfazed and ready to do it again!  In the 2170 miles, I averaged 25.69 mpg, most of the time at 70 mph or better.  Wooot wooot! :)

[q-tip]

Not bad for an auto brick

[HRH]

Yep, and she'll do 105 at 6k in third.  Only had her as fast as 110.  Kinda tricky.  For some reason, if you keep it pinned in 3rd, it won't kick down.  So you have to let off, but to continue accelerating you can't hit the full throttle switch, so you have to hold it at 7/8s to get it to go faster than 105.  I suppose they never figured anyone would want to drive an automatic wagon that fast? ;)

[HRH]

And here are some vacation photos!

 

 

Deschutes Fly Shop in Oregon.

 

 

 

Believe that's Mt. Shasta.  Wrong side of the light to get anything other than a silhouette.

 

 

In Chico.

 

 

My uncle's 1926 Model T Speedster.  A hot rod for back then.  Different head, hi/lo rear end.  Pretty neat.

 

 

 

 

 

Uncle Steve and Uncle Jeff coming back from a ride.

 

 

Stopping at a fruit stand on the way home.

[HRH]

Did I mention how much it sucks to have to drive the backup Z06 Corvette to the track, to go race with the faster foxbody Mustang race car?  With 500 hp at the rear wheels and 2900 lb weight.   :D :D :D :D  VERY FUN.  Didn't race the Z06 at the track, just the Mustang.  In 4th gear, it accelerates with enough force to pin you to the seat and do 137 mph at the end of the straight before the braking zone at Thunderhill.

 

[]2eDeYe]

That T Speedster is pretty epic. :cool: 

[HRH]

It is epic, but many of us who have been given rides agree:  The speedster at 45 mph on a bumpy road is 10 times scarier than the Mustang race car at 130.  Suspension is a good thing.