There are some parts that you just know are abundant but you struggle to find anyway. The transmission crossmember for an early gearbox had eluded me for months and months as I persisted in limiting my search to Australia only. I relented and after posting on Instagram one was on its way from the US in less than a day. In early December I decided to free up some floor space and take the engine in to Stewart Wilkins Motorsport. He has already reconditioned my differential and transmission and I trust his many years of working on these cars will …
Spring 2019
Delving into a variety of systems designed in the 1960’s gives you an appreciation for the elegance of engineering and its restorability. Where on modern cars components are designed to essentially be replaced as a unit, almost everything I’ve come across on the Datsun is rebuildable and you get the feeling that it’ll last another 50 years thereafter. This spring I continued underneath the car with the half shafts and prop shaft. Simple elegant engineering built to last. I can’t stress how satisfying it is to take something full of decades-old grease and rust, clean it, strip it, and rebuild …
Winter 2019
I sat down to write this post and I tried to recollect what I had accomplished this past winter. I feared another season had slipped by without much progress and I would need to squirm my way around this update. Fortunately my photos tell a slightly different story. It starts with some work on the half shafts. I have two sets and for some reason one of the four half shafts is shorter. I suspect it’s a later model shaft that was on the parts car. In any case, I battled with all of the uni-joints and only had to …
Autumn 2019
This season I was detirmined to get the car finally back on its wheels. I always feel like I’m working slowly – and I am – but the results are worth it and I can’t see anything changing. This will take me a long time to complete but I am enjoying every hour in the garage. A large piece of the puzzle was the new shocks from Koni made availavble by MSA. The timing was perfect and I took advatage of the pre-order as soon as I could. The fit and finish is fantastic but obviously it’ll be a while …
Summer 2019
Spring Break is Over! This has been the longest break I’ve taken from the car. A whole 6 months! While I know breaks like this severely delay the completion of the project, they are necessary, healthy, and sometimes unavoidable. How can you resist that little adorable face!? Her birth coincided with the start of my break and you can see why. Discussion over. As the year ticked over I made my way up the coast to meet with a dear friend for the first time. We had been in contact for a few years talking cars and finally got to …
Spring 2018
Priorities I’ve seen it – and used it – numerous times. It’s the age-old excuse… “I don’t have enough time.” I’m going to call myself out on that one. Not having enough time is an excuse used when other things in our lives take priority. You can dodge around exercise for years and then one day your doctor gives you some unfavourable news – shakes fist – and you suddenly find the time. The only thing that changed are your priorities. I phoned it in this quarter. There were opportunities for me to progress the project and I kind of …
Autumn 2018
Reproduction Autumn started off with a bang! On day one I finally joined the exclusive club of RH door mirror owners thanks to Ian from the Gong. I can clearly remember scouring eBay for door mirrors as early as a month into purchasing my rusty shell back in January 2014. They might not be as rare as I make them out to be but you do need a lot of luck to find one. A couple of weeks ago Chinese reproduction RH door mirrors popped up on eBay and by all accounts are an excellent copy and likely to be …
Summer 2018
Collaboration I dabble in a bit of photography and I keep hearing the arty folk liberally throw around the ‘collaborate’ buzzword. At work we recently dealt with a young company and their hip employees couldn’t resist using it in every paragraph of every email they sent. I’m not quite that hip but allow me to use it just this once. I’ve been collaborating with some amazingly generous and passionate people lately. Without their assistance my results would be sub par but I’ve come to realise that, outcomes aside, it’s the relationships built that are far more precious. Progress was elusive …
Spring 2017
A Beautiful Chronicle Spring brings new life as they say. They weren’t kidding! My wife started growing another little peanut this spring… high five! Elation soon made way for nausea – the all day type, not this morning sickness variety. A few years ago we went on a boat ride to The Great Barrier Reef. The seas were rough, unrelenting in their swaying. She’s stuck on that boat ride with the only relief coming from sleep. While I’m not physically with her, I am on board, trying my hardest to calm her rough ride. Not surprisingly this has sapped my …
Winter 2017
Distractions Around the time winter set in I realised the only way to get this car finished in under 10 years was to get rid of all my distractions. With that in mind, I bought an MX5… Bear with me now. My logic is sound. I purchased a huge distraction to get rid of all my distractions… It makes sense if you think about it. No, wait, I had that backwards. It makes sense if you don’t think about it. Just don’t think about it. Buy a car over the phone without inspecting it, with only half a dozen small …
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