In reply to SkinnyG :
yours look great !
I always loved the hardbody especially in turquoise. In 2002 I bought one from a Subaru dealer in st Loouis. 93 k miles, factory chrome wheels 5 speed manual and turquoise. As I was driving home the CEL came on. Dealer took it back to fix, after 3 days told me “for the same $ you can pick any car from our lot as we don’t want to sell the Nissan”
so I picked a used manual outback which I had for a year
Miss my '84 Nissan 720 king cab.
Lowered front and rear, smoked lexan headlight covers, reverse tilt hood, turbo mirrors and a colour-matched cab-height canopy.
Yesterday I tried to do cool stuff. I got the truck outside and jacked up and wheels removed.
And then this damn thing decided to not work. The engine runs fine, but it won't make pressure.
Internet trolling shows that typically you just need to replace the pump head itself for about 175 dollars. I'm somewhat on the fence about just buying a whole new pressure washer. I'd like an electric one to be honest. The engine powered units tend to make me stressed and hurried. And it's a pain to do start and stop jobs. I'm thinking an electric would work better for that. I could spray, then stop and do some scrubbing or scraping, then spray some more, all without the hassle of restarting the engine each time.
Have confidence, this project will kick off in a big way as soon as some parts arrive.
You probably have a rock or something in the nozzle and it's not letting the unloader valve drop out of bypass.
Poke a wire in the nozzle or blow back through it with compressed air.
If you go electric with a pressure washer, Harbor Freight has them around $100 with a lot of high reviews.
californiamilleghia said:Around here they cut the roofs off, lowered them and put on the Porsche alloys off the VW with wheel adapters ,
Add some wild grafics and tinted windows......
After that Suzuki Samurai got the same treatment !
Around here, they would weld the tailgates shut & bondo it all smooth. The high-dollar guys would throw a topper on the bed & have HUGE speakers filling the bed. The poor guys would just try to fill the bed with water & make a swimming pool. lol
Oh man, a minitruck track rat is on the build bucket list for me. I will live vicariously.
I had an electric power washer, I'm much happier with my gas one. Gas one is far more powerful and the electric one was just a plastic POS. Everything on it was plastic and got brittle and broke...
To update the pressure washer situation.....I fixed it.
Feeling that I had nothing to lose, I removed and disassembled the pump. Not knowing what was wrong with it, I just polished all the brass pieces with crocus cloth and replaced the orings with new ones from my generic oring box all assembled with my beloved Shin-Etsu grease. Somehow, it all worked. I am back in the pressure washing business without any out of pocket cost.
Splatter paint FTW! Yellow is best. Or day glow anything.
I'm seeing an absence of 302....
Cousin Eddie loses sleep over oil leaks. And this engine had a few. So, remove engine, and commence to repairing everything I ran across.
The main leak was under the front timing covers and ultimately wound up being the crank seal.
Cousin Eddie has a sad. That keyway is what is properly described as boogered up.
So this project just turned into a rebuild.
A fresh crank and bearings is called for anyway. The rod bearings were well on their way out.
The problem is, 2.0L Mazda cranks are fairly scarce on the ground around here and core engines equally so. Fortunately AutoZone is running a 20% off and free shipping special right now. I can get a reground crank kit which includes rod and main bearings for 198 dollars shipped to my shop, and that includes me eating the 30 dollar core charge.
Unfortunately I have to leave town for a week to go on a trip with my wife (Vermont). But I will get the crank ordered while I'm away so it should be delivered relatively soon upon my arrival.
And this is how a simple oil leak cascaded into a full engine rebuild.
And this is how a simple oil leak cascaded into a full engine rebuild.
BT;DT.
Meanwhile, we're just sitting and watching and waiting for MOAR LOW.
The engine is torn completely down and everything has been evaluated. I'll be taking the block to the machine shop Monday for a vat, deck, bore.
Eventually the crank will be going there too. I cannot find a 2.0L crank anywhere in the Western Hemisphere. So I'll have to have this one repaired. That should be fun.
In the mean time, I just clean and detail. Eventually all the little pieces fall together into a finished project.
The intake manifold had six plugged vacuum bibs from prior emissions equipment. I wanted to plug them a little more eloquently. Since I do not have a TIG machine, this was my method.
Tap all holes to 6mm.
Clean, paint, install stainless 6mm bolts with a bit of thread sealer.
And I stopped by Summit today. I have been a 25 years mail order customer, but this was my first time visiting the new Texas location. Holy sh1t. That place is impressive. It's said that the Texas store is the largest of their locations. I certainly don't doubt that.
Three inches of drop without having to loosen the torsion bars. Old men like good ride quality.
Looks like a fun project.
btw I remember your screen name from the the vortex back when the mk2-3 forums where a happening spot.
I used to lurk there daily.
In reply to Cousin_Eddie :
You're discipline is to be commended. I surely would have taken the bad keyway as an opportunity to engine swap for more power and then scope creep.
Most minitrucks weren't about horsepower BITD
Waiting patiently for the angled inset license plate in the tailgate.
Cousin_Eddie does not disappoint.
The bores in my block are moderately+ worn. I could have honed them and run a new set of standard sized rings and it probably wouldn't have burned any measurable oil. So I started looking at new rings in standard size. Roughly 50 bucks or thereabouts. Then I saw that Rockauto was blowing out oversize piston and rings sets for 32 bucks. So I grabbed a set of .020 over pistons and rings. I felt like the universe was trying to tell me to go ahead and bite the bullet and have the thing bored so it's done right.
The box looks like it has spent some decades on a shelf somewhere.
Now, mostly a picture dump. I did a ton of clean, thread chase, file burrs off, media blast, and paint.
Cool project! It's nice to see an old B-series getting some love.
I grew up in San Diego in the '80s and '90s and remember seeing these everywhere. Along with bed-dancing, topless, sparkle painted purple mini trucks with beds full of subs. Curious to see how far you go with this one.
My vote would be to retain some sort of factory tape stripes, but that's just me.
In reply to Duder and all the others, I basically plan to do no paint or body work to the truck. That's one of the main selling points to me is the original paint everywhere and the wacky 80s stripe package. Back in my younger years, none of us really had the scratch to paint our trucks. We could maybe scrape and gather enough to lower it or tint it or gets wheels and tires, but no-go on a trip to the paint shop.
That said, I will put the serious heat to it to get what is there looking as good as possible for what it is. I am not afraid to polish and buff.
Today I dropped the block and pistons off at the machine shop. It's a good machine shop with a 50 year track record of import car work and locally legendary with the VW guys. That said, 3 weeks. Expect to get it back about Thanksgiving. Damn.
So, I hit the yards. I wanted to try this one truly sketchy, shady yard that I had heard about. I honestly wish I hadn't gone alone. It gets pretty Western back in the back with the meth heads tweaking and trolling around eyeing up everyone's tool bags.
I found one little fella that gave up a few doo-dads though.
I dig factory chrome parts !
Even though the chrome mirrors are a different style than my current ones, and will leave me with bolt holes in the doors, I still find them an improvement.
Big news tomorrow when the UPS truck rolls in. Big, 8.5 inch wide news.
Maybe I am being too pedantic here with all these nebulous little details and pictures, but my hope is that folks might someday be able to use some detail that I covered on their own project.
So I media blasted and painted the old mirror bolts to screw back into the empty holes on the doors. Not eloquent, but sufficient.
Then I had a little brain storm. Okay, more of a brain shower. Maybe just a cloud passing through the mental sky. Regardless...
My beloved little clip box. I always order a box of 100 of any clip I need from Amazon for future use.
Bam. (These are the clips that I used on my Miata to hold the rubber flaps by the pop up headlights and the plastic air baffle in front of the radiator. I'm glad I ordered extra)
I can live with that moreso than 12mm hex head bolts.
(edited) That last picture makes me look like I got some kind of badonkadonk bootie thing going on. It's all just an illusion. I am a normal middle aged fat guy with a proportional sized middle aged guy fat ass.
Your threads are really good.
Apparently I'd much rather read about all of the tedious details than get my own damn project going.
Seriously though, your ability to chew through projects is astounding. My hat is off, sir.
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