Virginia_PL521

I have a 1970 PL 521 1600, ran a couple years ago, burned out the starter after a couple months spent at sea instead of cleaning the carb like a good monkey. Overall decent I guess, but its been sitting for a while and cancer is starting to appear. Had great plans for her but never got around to doing anything with it. All original parts including the stereo owners manual and other such smalls, speaking of which no I wont part it out and ship stuff off. If your local you can come get the whole truck for $400. I hate to admit it but if someone here doesn't take it the wife is sending it to pick n pull or the recycle center. Here are some pics that are about 5 years old, not much has been done to it since, like I said it has sat for several years. Or there is a whole album of them HERE.

Ahh so you are up by Alexandria then, good deal, I have friends that work up that way.

Good Deal, thank you for the help. I have also found out that we have the stainless steel tubing at work and a bender so i am going to go on friday and make an assembly out of that, well attempt to at least.

Thanks Dett, The one i am looking for in particular is seen in pic below...

Dett, Any chance you got a steering wheel from a 70 521? And do you happen to have any more of the moons for the wheels?? Let me know Ken

Unfortunately the CJ bows are different the 97 TJ did some weird J hook looking things (see pic) I do appreciate the thought though. He was looking at the bikini top when he decided to do the full soft top as a just in case, is there any special hardware that is required to mount the bikini?? Thanks again, Ken

So Hello again all, I want it to be known that even though i have not posted anything in a while i am still plugging away at my 521. Have just gotten done overhauling the original carb, rebuilt the under the dash wiring harness from scratch (and a lot of scrap from pic n pull), coated the original dashpad with fiberglass resin, drained flushed and bleed the brakes, pulled the bench seats and redid the floorpans with stop rust and some other minor things here and there. Anyway what has been taking most of my time away from the datto other than the endless stream of projects around the house is a buddy and his 97 jeep wrangler. It is a TJ with not too many problems but we have given it a very thorough tune up and been playing around with this and that. So when he got it, it came with a hard top and full doors, he has recently purchased a soft top for it only to find out that he does not have the original factory bow assembly, well these do not appear to be cheap, the cheapest aftermarket ones we have found are $350 and being that he is on a fixed income of around 1k a month and being quite handy we thought hmm those dont look so difficult and we figured we would attempt to make some out of pvc. I have already figured out how to make some hinges out of the pvc and how to make an extendable arm, but before we delve into the project i wondered if anyone here had attempted anything similar or if anyone happens to have good pics and dimensions of the original factory stuff / aftermarket stuff. As always any help is appreciated and i promise to update you all with PICS of the progress on both the datto and the jeep. Ken

Man that looks awesome. What part of virginia are you in? I am in Norfolk.

So all, It's been a busy busy weekend here and it is only half done. Started working on rebuilding my dashcap. Originally i started out by clipping all the raised edges down, then sanding the foam somewhat smooth, and then finally i filled all the deep cracks with silicone caulk. I had planned on fillin them with black RTV but I have a limited ammount of RTV and a huge supply of caulk. I would have liked to have kept the dash soft and flexible but after getting everything filled in i think now i am going to cover it in fiberglass. Anyway here are the pics of the dashcap resto after the silicone application. at the moment i have the first layer of resin on it but have not attached the fiberglass mat yet. So after i played with the dash for a day i moved on to the wiring harness. The pictures dont really do it justice, it is a mess. I started at one end and found one pack of wires where the insulation had broken down and fallen off, further investigation also led me to finding a bunch of splices that were just twisted together and covered in crappy tape. Here are my shots of the harness before i cut into it. So i went to Pick N Pull (junkyard) and ripped a bunch of wire sets out of old beater cars. It may not look like much but the following pics are after three long hours of work removing tape, tubing, and covers plus washing to clear off old tape adhesive. I am still in the process of splicing in replacement wires but i am doin it the right way, you know solder, dielectric grease, tape and heat shrink, the whole nine so for now i can only show you a couple pics of the bundle of wires i managed to salvage. have to work tomorrow so i doubt i will get to do any work on the truck but hopefully on monday i will do some additional work on the dash. Pics to follow. Ken

Sweet lookin ride man, I'll admit it, yeah I'm jealous. If ya don't mind me askin where did you get the fender mirrors and how much were they? Ken

Thanks for all the compliments all, here is what i know so far... To Dat521Gatherer : I may have a pic of it somewhere but i doubt it, i went through most of our old photos a couple years back but i know there are a couple boxes of old photos that still need going through. I will have to check for ya but don't get your hopes up. To SDSurf : The more i look into the electrical system the more issues i find. Appears my wiring harnesses are pretty much crap. Only have one door mirror, truck never had one on the pass side, and although it is an original i saw a pair of them at pep boys last week for about $20 each, i can go back over there tomorrow for you and see if they still have them. They were identical to the one i have on the door in the pictures. Several of the connectors are bad from too much time in the atmosphere, i replaced a couple and thought i was good to go but when i put the key in the ignition and turned it the windshield washer fluid pump kicks on and wont shut off, the fuel pump does not come on and a couple bulbs look blown. Digging in up underneath the dash again i have found several sections of the harness that is showing broken / missing insulation on the wiring. Tomorrow i intend on hitting up "Harbor Freight" to pick up a new sodering iron, heat shrink tubing, and a couple (maybe 8) spools of wire and i may just start from scratch and redo a complete wiring harness myself. I have the wiring diagram from my haynes manual (doesn't look right at all) and the one from "The620" (does look right). Ok so i say that i want to do the electrical tomorrow but knowing the heat and the fact i will be lucky to get home before 5pm so it may get pushed to the weekend. To Dat620 (Tom) : Thanks for the support, i am sure i may need several things from you and your junk yards, though alot of the stuff other than what is required to drive it will have to wait until after i get back from disneyworld with the wife and kids at the end of this august. Although if there is an original Steering Wheel out there, then depending on the price i would be interested in one of those. Anyway again i thank you for your support and nice comments and hope to get something done in the next week and get you some more pictures. Ken

Hey again all, So I know that alot of you just know where to go or where to get stuff but I am finding it kind of difficult for some things, so I figured I would start a post and we can all add on for a good list of sites you use in your truck resto / rebuild. Car Parts Manual - Complete breakdown of your datsun and all the part numbers to go with it (amazingly Nissan still carries alot of this stuff if you have the right number) Rock Auto - Amazing online auto parts store New Datsun Parts - Various NOS (New Old Stock) parts for datto trucks Old Datsuns - Online resource for old datto's to include tech info, wiring diagrams, schematics and more. Datsunland Socal - Aftermarket parts for your datto Datsun Parts LLC - More Aftermarket parts for your datto. And thats what I use so far, if people add more I will update this post and keep all the links together. Ken

Well Hey All, So I have been a long time reader of the forums but only recently got registered and got my datsun. Anyway I thought I would introduce myself and show off my new project. I am Ken and I am in the Navy and stationed in Norfolk, Virginia. My dad had a datsun 520 back in the 70's and apparently my brother had a nostalgic moment cause he bought this one to bring back some memories. This is a 1970 PL521 with 92k original miles. Well he had it for ten years and is over that moment now so it came to me. I intend on using it as it was intended, as a truck and a daily driver. My wife on the other hand has fallen in love with it and thanks to the beautiful artwork "Sake Samurai" by your very own Fisch, she wants the truck. Not only does she want the truck now she wants me to do a full frame off resto, paint it Robin's Egg Blue, and put the front fender mirrors on it, Oh and then she wants to call it her own. For now though I am just working on getting it operational enough to be a daily driver. All in all it is in really good condition with almost no rust. A farmer in South Carolina had it for 30 years and only used it to go from the barn to the fields, but it has been in the SC sun for all 40 years. It was running and could be driven but it had an exhaust leak, that lead me to take off the exhaust manifold, which led to finding a broken smog system and gallery, to taking off the intake manifold. Once i got the engine disassembled I had to wait on gaskets to be shipped in so I took the dash apart so I could redo that, well of course that led to me finding out half the wires had lost bits of their insulation so now I am working on the elec system. I have a small shopping list of things I will need to pick up for it though I am in no real hurry as with a navy paycheck money always seems to be tight. Anywho Pics are below, i have a lot more of them on my picasa site CLICK HERE if you want to look at them. Thanks for looking Ken Shopping List... Hood Emblem Datsun 1600 Emblem (right fender) Heater control switch / knob interior wiring harness engine wiring harness steering wheel exhaust heat shield (mounts on header, runs tube to breather) front fender mirrors rear view mirror (ceiling mount) smog gallery all weather stripping Exterior visor and headlight visors sun visors (interior)