1969 Datsun 521 Pick-up

[sb]

Jul 8, 2015 12:42:16 GMT samwell said:

Heya, I love the RX, good effort withh the splitter, have only done minor 'glass repairs so impressed with that.

Sorry to hijack but can you tell me a bit mroe about this:
---

I'm always looking for ways to clean up bits and bobs and this looks quite effective. What is it, is it easy, cheap? What do I need?

Cheers,

Sam

Thanks, I really need to get that splitter finished soon! Been in progress for so long.

As for the polishing, I used a rotary tumbler/rock polisher. If all you are cleaning is bolts they are handy but a wire brush is a lot quicker and easier. Where they are really useful is fiddly little things that are too small/difficult to use a brush on, or if you are just feeling a bit lazy and want something to do it for you!

For example, on the top are the 46 year old pins that hold the door cards on the truck, below are the pins for the straps on the bench. Originally the door card pins above looked even worse than those below, rusty, dirty and loads of old hardboard stuck in them. They came out immaculate, unfortunately now theres some minor surface rust because they're kept in a damp shed:



So it works by filling this tub:



With your media, abrasive soap and half fill with water. On the media front there are loads, I want to pick up some pins to get in tighter areas. But there is media ranging from the most abrasive to foam glass polishing bits.



Then you whack the top on and sit it on this:



Which simple rolls it over and over so everything inside clangs about, when you pop it open you will have a lot of filthy water and lumps of dirt and rust fall out. Generally I leave mine for around, usually under, 24 hours at a time.

I will warn you it is loud, or at least very annoying! So I keep mine in the shed when its on.

As for price, it all depends how powerful/big you need it.

[sb]

So its been a while. Ive been taking the truck apart and starting to try and get some parts repaired and cleaned while I can.

These updates may not be in any great order as all the pictures are a bit shuffled.


Firstly the bumper and valance got removed, along with the indicators.

In the process of this my socket set got filled with dirt



Wow that makes it look like I don't do much in a month...

As I looked in the valance to find it full of about 2-3 inches of dirt. Australian outback or just buried?




Here she is, still with the valance, blinded



Old school hakosuka race car look? Maybe? No? Ok then...


Also invested in some Autosol and got going with the elbow grease. Actually made a rather big difference to the headlight retainers, shame you wont see them.




Then the backing plates for the indicators.

Here they are after a little bath in rust remover






Quickly sanded and painted back up again, got some over spray of silver paint so they look rather metallic now. Again wont see them though.




Then the indicators themselves, no before pictures, but I can promise you they were a total mess, just brown and crusty all over!





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Then came this years hottest new modification... see through bonnet and wings!



Okay so its some plastic sheet and duct tape... might catch on though, kids do anything these days.

So now lets talk about paint and the general body work. Its pretty shoddy, the whole truck is covered in filler, up to 5-8mm in places and sometimes covering up holes, which I really hate.

Take this shot



The off whit is filler, the purple is filler and the grey is primer. Those two coats of filler are all over it.

A big issue with it, is that the filler has hundreds of little holes in it, like a honey comb almost, so the metal underneath becomes covered in little dots of rust everywhere. Which you can vaguely see here on the door





The roof also had this texture, I was worried the metal was just very rough, but nope lots of (very sun tanned) filler there too



And quite an uneven roof under it, the area of bare metal has a big dimple in it.

Heres the bonnet trying to hide its filler secrets



But the worst part of it all? This horrible lump



So the wing had a 50p sized hole in the top... and that fell out the front! so now the front and top have big old holes in them.

Hello hole!



So the Icarus plan, I went to the body shop and they said they're happy to reshape the chrome (every grille piece is dented) and can repair the wings, Ive just got to get the to bare metal. Which they now are! Just need sanding, I did think I had pictures of this but cant find any... Oh well picture a DeLorean, as a pickup, now take off the wings, hey presto thats what Ive got!


Oh and another great aussie farmer repair, the struts under the bonnet arnt really attached, it looked like the welds along it had broken loose



Nope those blobs are all foam... I really think someone tried to glue the bonnet back together with expanding foam.

Also the front edge of the bonnet appears to be a water trap and has started to rot



So heres what I want to do, and please tell me if this sounds crazy, looking for actual advice, I want to cut the bonnet on the dotted lines, clean the metal underneath then weld it back together. Is this the dumbest way I could do this? As the metal under the struts is very heavily rusted and needs treating.






But the saving grace, the best part of a pickup is carrying your own storage!



And the best piece of ebay tat Ive ever found, 99p direct from China, they covered everything. For these Gold plastic CROWN dust caps... The ugliest dust cap Ive seen and I had to have them

[hastandard]

The bonnet Glue is factory Mine has it too. Then someone has added a bit of silicone probably to stop the vibrations.

Then again my bonnet is full of bog...and I live in Australia...Maybe the same farmer?

[sb]

Aug 15, 2015 10:16:15 GMT hastandard said:

The bonnet Glue is factory Mine has it too. Then someone has added a bit of silicone probably to stop the vibrations.

Then again my bonnet is full of bog...and I live in Australia...Maybe the same farmer?

I don't know if that makes me feel better or not, better because its not bodged by an Aussie farmer, or worse because it was bodged by Datsun in the first place! 

Although it would explain some other bad design ideas lol

[sb]

For those whose imaginations don't allow for the creation of DeLorean Pickups missing all but theirs wings I took some pictures...

[hastandard]

Please tell me that's getting clear coated

[sb]

Aug 18, 2015 4:19:21 GMT hastandard said:

Please tell me that's getting clear coated

Afraid not, I now have a colour in mind and keeping it in the family.

Planning on something similar to Midnight Purple 1. So not the pearlescent ones.

[hastandard]

Borrowing the grandsons duds. I like it!

[sb]

Aug 18, 2015 23:34:31 GMT hastandard said:

Borrowing the grandsons duds. I like it!

Aha, yes it's a theme I hope to continue, anything I can't keep datsun I would like to keep custom or nissan

[sb]

So as the bank holiday was pretty much rained off I tried to do some modelling for ideas Ive had floating around my head, so here is one idea for possible custom rear lights:











The idea is to have an LED neon tube (like modern German models use now) as the main highlight but there will be an array of bulbs/LEDs but these will be hidden with clever use of reflective surfaces. I want the bulbs to be almost impossible to see and also making the lights look infinite if you looked at them up close.

[randywanger_]

What rust remover did you use on the indicator backs?

[sb]

Sept 1, 2015 12:44:46 GMT randywanger_ said:

What rust remover did you use on the indicator backs?

I used evaporust, you can order it from frost

[randywanger_]

Sept 1, 2015 15:08:09 GMT sb said:

Sept 1, 2015 12:44:46 GMT randywanger_ said:

What rust remover did you use on the indicator backs?

I used evaporust, you can order it from frost

Lovely thank you. Inspired to do mine.

[sb]

So it seems like this is becoming a monthly update, I promise there is more going on but heres a little update my first attempt at some metal shaping.

So I took the whole front end off a while ago, the wings as youve seen are stripped ready for the body shop, so I turned my attention to the bonnet. As per a previous update I cut all the struts out (which were not really attached anyway) and clean out all the rust underneath.

There were however other area that needed work, the front has quite a few pin holes, the front of the support had rotted away and will need remaking and the front lip the grille screws to:





So after reading about it and seeing yuo lot doing it I thought how hard can this all be? So heres my first attempt, first cardboard template:



Cut out from sheet:



Then no pictures of the forming, but it was quite low tech compared to some of you, using a vice and a lot of hammer work:





Boom curves on curves!:



Its a bit wavy in places and the edge isnt fantastically straight but I'm happy with it for a first attempt!

Any tips or tricks would be very appreciated! Ill make up the other side and see how I feel about redoing that first piece.

[sb]

Right so I thought I would make a slight change, as the Rex hasnt been touched in ages Ill dedicate this thread only to the Datsun.

So welcome to welding week! I notice not many people reply to this but one thing you all seem to love is welding so Ill try and post something you might find interesting...

Ive got the week off (before you say it, I know I pick great weeks off work, one day rained out and the other half rained off. Lets hope it gets better) and thought I would crack on with the swiss cheese floor. Now this is going to be a first for me, Ive never really welded before and Ive never done metal work other than some college stuff and the piece above. So today I just jumped in... then my phone died so there are no pictures during! So here is after.

The problem:



So as you can see this strip had some nasty looking holes in and I thought doing the whole thing together would be easier then two small patches. Its cut so large becuase the metal around it is curse word, its pitted everywhere but Ill come back to that.

You will also notice it is flat and the floor is not. Rather than create a template to cut out new metal with I decided to just hammer it flat and use it as a temple. Simple.

Then boosh:



New floor! It doesn't look too bad here but that curve isn't that great unfortunately



While we are on the theme of noticing things you'll also see two strips of weld on that closest edge... I fudged up.

When I first made the new piece I got the curve pretty bang on, then I started to grind it down to get a perfect fit. I noticed the curve was off but thought Ill get the grinding done then come back to it, stupid boy. I didnt consider the fact that redoing the curve meant the piece was going to get shorter, I ended up about 5mm off, so I improvised with a piece of cut off. Hopefully once everything is ground down it wont be noticeable.

Also on the pitting note from above, you may see in the lower left welds that they are about doing the width in places. As the pitting was the worst there the weld blew through instantly, but just another thing to learn!

So thats it for today, I'm hoping tomorrow and Thursday have more pictures of my awful measuring and welding abilities! If you have any feedback on my messy welds please do let me know because its something I would really like to improve!

[sb]

Oh and to mention, the wings are now at the body shop and the bonnet will hopefully follow soon after the main floor parts are done. Then I can begin re-assembling the front end, then all that needs doing is the valance and repairing the chrome surround. Trying to get as much in before the weather really turns for winter.

[hastandard]

I'm always watching. That's the worst thing about the like button being gone people read your posts but don't always post. Welding looks alright to me once you clean it up, think you just need more heat and just spot weld around the patch instead of doing runs to try and balance heat and stop it falling through. I'm not sure about earlier datsuns but 70's ones were galvanised and makes welding other than spot welds messy.

[sb]

Oct 7, 2015 11:36:11 GMT hastandard said:

I'm always watching. That's the worst thing about the like button being gone people read your posts but don't always post. Welding looks alright to me once you clean it up, think you just need more heat and just spot weld around the patch instead of doing runs to try and balance heat and stop it falling through. I'm not sure about earlier datsuns but 70's ones were galvanised and makes welding other than spot welds messy.

Yeh I'm not bothered as the view/comment ratio seems to be the same for everyone, lots of lurkers here apparently!

There should be an update right about here:

But flickr is having a bad time so Ill add one soon on my latest misadventure trying to weld.

[sb]

Here we go, so today I focussed on this:






I'm sure some of you could go "pah I could do that before breakfast", unfortunately I have never done this before really and I'm kinda stupid sometimes and make silly mistakes that sset me back. Anyway enough of the self-deprecating/pitty begging.

So rough start:

farm1.staticflickr.com/714/21996757506_5c23990a55_z.jpg[/img

You can see my shaping tools here too, a hammer and a vice. Does me just fine... cos I'm cheap.

Mmm curvy:



So first mistake of the day... I thought I could knock it all out in one, unfortunately this usually meant as I lined up one edge another would get knocked out, so solution:



Cut it into two easier shapes, still a total curse word though as the curves on either side were different and the opposite curve on the base caused a lot of hitting things one way then back, then the other way again and back again, so on.

Now sick bags at the ready, really ugly weld incoming:



So I really need to learn to keep things slightly larger than the hole for as long as possible as I always seem to get the too small and have an ugly wide gap that becomes an to weld, but its in and I'm hoping once its dressed it will look dandy.

So tomorrow will be a morning of dressing these last two parts then check what needs doing on the other side as the drivers side now just has smaller holes and a couple complicated bits I would rather attack with some experience.

[dansktaff]

Looking good, it will be interesting to see your final choice of colour, perhaps a lighter one would suit better than a darker shade. Also, the repair work is functional and so matches the pick up, keep going with it.