The 510 Realm

Dear Dave,

A pic or two and an update once in a while would be nice.

Some recent progress. All views are drivers' side intercooler area work - specifically, the vertical panel which will help seal off that section of the engine bay as there will be horizontal panels as before. This will minimize warm are from the enigne going into the intake. The air will be drawn from the lower airdam.

The pictures are captions are in reverse order...sorry.

did you end up taking the ic's to nameless to get them modified ?

I did, they did a great job. As soon as the intake plumbing is 100% done the car will go to their shop to complete the radiator fabrication as well. They tried comiing out and making templates, but without the car in their shop the templates they'd made were just far enough off that we decieded just to wait until the car can be at their shop to complete the radiator.

datsunscom wrote:I did, they did a great job. As soon as the intake plumbing is 100% done the car will go to their shop to complete the radiator fabrication as well. They tried comiing out and making templates, but without the car in their shop the templates they'd made were just far enough off that we decieded just to wait until the car can be at their shop to complete the radiator.

I got a chance to crew with John from Nameless a few weeks back at the New England Forest Rally. He has been helping out Will Orders and the Summit Rally Team while they have been here in the States from Australia. Cool bunch of folks.

John was showing me pictures of his own project, which he thought to be the first VG30DETT in a Datsun sedan (his is a 411, 4 door) when Mr. Lum came knocking on the door for some fabrication help on his own VG30DETT car.

If you want to talk about a small world. Here I am in Bethel, Maine volunteering my services on a 1989 Nissan Silvia rally car from Australia and meet a guy from La Center, WA some 3,000 or so miles away who knows Dave Lum.

And likely if it weren't for this inter-web thingy - you wouldn't have known that he knew Dave... or something like that.

Isn't it great - thanks Spencer

Byron

It's a small Datsun world...

So...this thing is mostly on the road these days. I made it to Canby (Saturday for a couple hours, anyway) with it and have over 100 miles on it. Today I installed a straighter front bumper which, oddly required me to modify the airdam. It currently needs niceties like heat, defrost and wipers, but it's good enough to drive around on nice days and I am just now getting to tuning the thing.

The money shot looks a little different than some of you may have seen. The intercooler-to-intake plenum pipes had to be redone to clear the radiator once it was all said and done and some trim pieces aren't installed yet. I still plan on a splitter as well, which will make it look a bit more aggressive while adding some cooling/airflow functionality.

Current performance status is it's limited to 7PSI of boost until tuning has progressed further, but it does otherwise drive OK with no major issues.

Current plans are to take it to JCCS in September (~1000mi each way for me) , then the east coast 510 meet in 2014 (~3000mi each way).

I've been wanting to post here for a while, but didn't want to be the one that resurrects an old thread.

I used to hate when people went with any engines except Lseries. I know there's many benefits of going to a modern engine; efficiency, parts availability, etc., but engine swaps that are NISSAN have since grown on me. I've seen some really nicely done swaps over the last few years, mostly because of people's creativity of wire tucks, all the way down to the point where the whole engine bay is shaved. You look in there, and all you see is an engine. Not a single loose wire to be seen. This one is a great example:
I'll make my VG30 opinion brief. I love how nicely they fit into the 510s engine bay. The few that I've seen were absolutely beautiful. They were done so well that they look almost stock! The most recent one I've seen was a naturally aspirated that didn't have any engine covers whatsoever. I don't remember what it had for an intake setup (wasn't like yours), but wow, I was so amazed that all I could do was stare and fantasize. I don't have an example photo for that.

Now, for people that have engine swaps that aren't Nissan, I really don't like them. I believe that engine swaps should be kept in the car make family. This "Cummins diesel in a Ford" type of thing is just ridiculous.

datsunscom wrote: Current plans are to take it to JCCS in September (~1000mi each way for me) , then the east coast 510 meet in 2014 (~3000mi each way).

I wish you luck on your adventure. The thought of it intrigues me. Oh what I'd do to complete a cross-country trip like that... in a 510... and still have it in one piece when I return home.

Sorry for the thread-jack. I've been saving this for a while now. Good luck with future 510 projects/adventures.

Happy Father's Day Dave, nice going! I'll bet she's still a blast to drive!

Looks great, those openings in the hood make it very menacing!

I'm a Nissan-swap guy myself, although for some reason an American V8 in a S30 Z-car doesn't bother me much. F20C (Honda S2000 engine) is just too weird for my tastes, but the concept is sound!

Thanks Jason! It's a blast, I was up until 11:30PM last night driving around datalogging and tuning. There's something to be said for the simplicity of a stock 510...if I could only get over my power addiction I'd go back to L20B/SU 510 in a second!

So....it's been just over 4 years, and this thing has been down for much of it because shortly after Canby I overheated it by running it out of coolant (note to self: don't run w/out an overflow tank for the radiator). Nothing like rebuilding an engine that has less than 500 miles on it, but at least it's back in the car and driving - well, except the R180 was making a lot of noise so it's at a transmission shop at the moment, but after THAT...

WoooooOOOooooOOOOOoooooo! back from the dead!

Really nice job Dave, oh and man was it great seeing you at Canby. Enjoy your winter,,getting skiis in shape 8>)