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Hello From Missouri


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Hey everybody, just wanted to make my first post kind of my introduction.  Umm...  So yeah...  I'm Josh and I live in southwest Missouri and I have a 1969 Datsun Roadster 1600. So a little story about my roadster, I purchased it from a guy local to me who had owned it for a few years.  He started tearing it down, and buying a lot of NOS parts and collecting little things here and there with plans of doing a full on restoration.  I guess somewhere along the line he decided it was just too big of a task to restore this car and just wanted to get rid of it fast.  I swooped in, snagged it for a super cheap price and towed it home.  My intentions early on were to pick up where he left off and do a resto-mod and have a nice back road cruiser and Auto-x car.  I then started to clean it up and tear into it even more, very quickly coming to the realization that this car was a little too far gone to restore.  Especially given that there were plenty of other roadsters pretty close to me for sale that were still running and driving for a TON cheaper than what it was going to cost to fix this one up.  

 

So I've decided that I am not going to resto-mod this car, but instead do something from what I can tell has not been done before.  Do and American style rat rod build on it.  Being RWD and a full frame car I figured why the hell not, right?  And so the name "Ratsun Roadster" has been coined and where is a better place to share my build than Ratsun.net???  I won't get into too much detail on this thread as I do have a Facebook, YouTube, and Instagram that is documenting all of the updates as I have time to report the progress.  But to give an idea of what I'm gonna do, remove the whole front end from firewall to grill.  Expose the frame, throw some late 20's early 30's Ford headlights and grill up front, and keep the factory R16 exposed to the elements.  If you're interested in following along you can find the URL's in my FB and YT pages in my sig.  Thanks for accepting me onto the forum and I hope to learn a lot from you all.

 

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Welcome. My wife went to grad school in Springfield and has family across Missouri :)

Very cool, I'm about 15 miles East of Springfield I'm originally from Kansas City, MO but came down here for school.  Met my wife, found a good job, and just never left hehe.

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Welcome! Dont' shy away from posting updates here too.. at least pictures. You can save the words for other platforms. 

 

I was actually thinking about posting up on here as well, probably won't go into dept as I do on my FB page or YT channel.  But I can certainly do pictures :)

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I was actually thinking about posting up on here as well, probably won't go into dept as I do on my FB page or YT channel.  But I can certainly do pictures :)

welcome to ratsun nice project and we love pics

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Welcome,

Just for reference, it does not look like you have a '69. Unless it has a third seat ('63, '64), the body style looks more like a '65. Chrome trim goes to the headlight and no side marker lights. Likely to have a 1500 (early '65) or a 1600 (late '65). Should have front disk brakes, rear drum brakes. The vin tag will give a lot of info. you can look up.

 

There is a wealth of information at  http://www.311s.org/, very knowledgeable people, original manuals, engine swaps, brake modifications, etc.

 

Good luck with your plan and keep the pictures coming.

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Welcome,

Just for reference, it does not look like you have a '69. Unless it has a third seat ('63, '64), the body style looks more like a '65. Chrome trim goes to the headlight and no side marker lights. Likely to have a 1500 (early '65) or a 1600 (late '65). Should have front disk brakes, rear drum brakes. The vin tag will give a lot of info. you can look up.

 

There is a wealth of information at  http://www.311s.org/, very knowledgeable people, original manuals, engine swaps, brake modifications, etc.

 

Good luck with your plan and keep the pictures coming.

 

It is a 69, front fenders have both been changed at one point in time.  VIN's match on all three locations on the car, the frame VIN, the cowl VIN, and the dash VIN as well as my title.  They didn't start putting VINs on the dash until 68, and I've also registered the car with the 311s.org registry database and comes back as a true 69.  Pics of dash and frame VINs below, thought I had a pic of the cowl VIN plate but can't find it.

 

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