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"Swamp thing" JBC 510 racecar


Icehouse

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First the good news - We had a full garage again Tuesday night, checking off a few items from the list and by the end, we had the car on the ground!

 

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Now the bad news - we need to pull the motor.  It smokes like a chimney!  We were hopeful it was a water leak at the intake gasket but further inspection tonight revealed it is oil.  LOTS of oil.  The #2 and #4 exhaust runners - and header - were literally dripping with the stuff.  Thick black blech!  Not exactly what we needed at this point in the game.  We have a recovery plan though which starts tomorrow.  Still aiming to get to the autocross Sunday.

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I can't believe how much has happened in the last week.

Basically it went something like this:

 

Wednesday - Sam and Jeff fiddle with the car some more and come to the conclusion that the motor rebuild did not take on the lower end so we basically built a one point eight liter smoke machine.  They said so much smoke was billowing from the tailpipe that someone on the road stopped to film it.  Not call the fire department or see if everyone is okay, just film it.  Thanks allot buddy...

 

No problem.  I volunteer the L18 out of Granny.  A known running good condition motor.  Only hitch is that I will need it back after the race to put in Trouble so I can drive it to Canby...

 

Thursday - I take the afternoon off from work and come home and pull the motor out of Granny while Sam does the same and pulls the motor out of the racecar.  He reports 1 hour 45 minutes including a chat break with Redeye.

 

My project takes a bit longer.  With the radiator pushed back into the motor, there is not allot of space to move the engine up and out of the bay.  Heck - it took an hour just to disconnect and remove the A/C stuff!

 

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Pulled the '72 Bluebird grill to see if it is possibly useable on the racecar.  Grill is really tweaked and the left headlight door is badly crushed but we might be able to make it work...

 

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That's a job for a different time though.  We can't stop for cosmetics right now.

 

Monkey motion shift linkage.  This will not be going back in the car!

 

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Can't get radiator out of engine bay with engine in place.  Can't get engine out of engine bay with radiator in place.  Hmmm...

 

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Trying to create space to get this thing out...

 

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A/C plumbing filled with alien blood.

 

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Wondering if lower frame rail is tweaked.  Car sits on only three jack stands.  Left front is 3/16" above jack.  I don't recall seeing anything like that before.

 

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Up and out...

 

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About this same time.  Jeff reports that he struck a deal with Redeye to grab an L20b rebuilt by Autosport some years back.  Sam would pick it up later this night.  Oh well...  I needed to strip Granny anyway.

 

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Now it can go straight into trouble.  Which is good, because the Canby countdown is getting tight as well.

 

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A/C radiator was squished pretty bad.  The bottom is folded over almost 90 degrees.

 

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Back of radiator.  Can you tell where the fan was?

 

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Friday we got together at 2pm to begin building motor #2.  This is what we started with.

 

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Had to take a few parts off of the L18 as we went.

 

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Getting close!

 

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Engine #2 in the car.

 

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Topping up the fluids.

 

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Friday night at 10 or 11 or something like that, we fired up the motor and after it burnt all the oil out of the exhaust from motor #1, it purred like a kitten! 

 

Bad kitty!  We find that the check valve on the front carb bowl sticks open and doesn't stop fuel from overflowing the carb....  *sigh*  Time for bed.

 

 

 

1 day to the autocross!

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Got  some gages in the mail Saturday morning

 

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Now about that carb problem.  No problem at all.  I have a set of new z-therapy carbs on trouble.  I'll just grab those.  Thus rendering two of my datsuns useless in two days all in the name of "Racecar"!

 

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What am I doing?!

 

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Carb swap complete!

 

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Now we start tackling the list of other items required for getting on the track the next day.  Like installing a windshield.

 

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Lookin' like something...

 

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Carbs tuned

 

http://datsun510.com/index.php?/gallery/image/38823-04142018-swamp-thing-1mov/&browse=1

 

Velocity stacks installed

 

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Jeff and Sam aligned the front and rear suspension and I finished installing the hood.

 

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Time for a test drive

 

http://datsun510.com/index.php?/gallery/image/38825-04142018-swamp-thing-2mov/&browse=1

 

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Unfortunately, the car runs like crap.  I guess we'll sort it at the track in the morning...

 

Time for bed.

 

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Oh yeah, I forgot to report - Friday and Saturday I also spent time getting my 1972 Chevrolet Suburban back on the road so we could tow the trailer.  It had been sitting idle for about 2 years following some engine bay wiring damage from a rat.  Not sure if that's what they mean by "rat motor".  Besides - I have a 383 "mouse motor"...

 

Anyway, I left the truck with the boys Saturday night and they took care of a few last minute Sunday morning checklist items before loading the car on the trailer and hauling it it the track while I was at Church.

 

Jeff said, "you think you get a lot of thumbs up driving a 510?  Try driving a classic suburban towing a 510!"  : )

 

Anyway, I met them at the track about 1pm and they had been suffering some driveability problems.  We spent the next 4 hours working in frustration trying to solve whatever issue we were experiencing - playing with fuel mixture / carb balancing / timing, etc.  We found a couple problems in the process.

 

1)  The check valve in the front carb float bowl would stick closed and not allow fuel in.  We finally fixed this at the track with about an hour to go.  I ordered some replacement valves today just in case - along with a half dozen float bowl gaskets.  I think we killed these after taking the bowl lids off at least a dozen times each.

 

2)  The fuel pump stopped pumping fuel.  At one point - I had removed the fuel pump from cooper to swap it out. (For those keeping score, that makes three inoperable datsuns in three days)  But we later determined that it was a clog in the line from the gas tank starving the pump.  The pump itself was fine.  We will have to run a new line before the race next weekend.  Right now we can't run 7 minutes.  Next weekend we'll need to run 7 hours!

 

3)  The timing needs adjustment.  Possibly at the cam itself.  We really need to sort this.

 

4)  We overfilled the sump and dumped a bunch of oil out the crank vent into the engine bay and at one point, onto the header leading to a nice little smoke show with a flash fire while Jeff was navigating the slalom.  He didn't even know he was on fire.  Oh boy...  Prior to that, they pilfered a heater hose off an abandoned cadillac northstar v8 parked on the outskirts of the track.  Donor car!  : )  And ran that hose to an empty gatorade bottle found nearby.  This worked great until the vent tube popped out of the motor - which is what led to the fire.

 

Even though the car ran like crap and had no power above 3,000rpm, we were not the slowest car at the track!  It may not cruise or accelerate but it can corner!  Sometimes on just three wheels - right Sam?

 

We've got our work cut out for us this week for sure.  Saturday is coming up fast!  Oh man...

 

Various pics from the track below...

 

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As Carter said, our day at autoX was anything but successful. We worked all day and probably left with more questions than answers.
However, that was exactly what the autoX was intended to be, a shake down. Turns out we needed it! 

We had so many little small issues adding up that we spent the whole day troubleshooting ourselves in circles. 
We were able to determine that one of our float bowl check valves was sticking closed, resulting in a dry bowl.
Issue #1: check

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Once we solved the check valve issue we found that after a full throttle lap we die with dry bowls on both carbs...
We left autoX suspecting a fuel supply issue. After checking flow through the fuel supply components and working our way back, we eventually found the root cause.
Our fuel supply port from the tank was absolutely filled with dirt from the field whence it came. 
It's really quite amazing it ran at all! Now unclogged and running free. 

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With the full fuel available, we were disappointing to find that on our test drives, the car felt... lacking. It took off great down low then fell flat on it's face. No go.
There HAD to be another major issue. Lots of troubleshooting, lots of testing, lots of head scratching and then we finally found the embarissingly simple issue.    

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Our throttle linkage was only giving us a wink out of the carb butterflies! The image above was our FULL throttle. A few tweaks to the linkage and viola, the power we expected was there.
Just in time! We leave tomorrow.

 

We have one last running issue with the motor that we haven't solved. Looking for suggestions.
We have a persistent firing miss throughout the rev range. Rev's fine but a constant throttle input makes the misses obvious.
We have changed the entire ignition system from the coil packs to a matchbox dizzy without improvement. So ignition is thoroughly ruled out.
Any other ideas from the crowd?

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