Teretonga,
Do you race Karts? Do you have 2 Karts with one motor each or is that one Kart with two motors? LOL Are they gearbox motors or without?

Do you know of the 250-twin cylinder ROTAX motors? The twin has two 125 cylinders inline on the casings. Our 250 had a crack in it so we took it to the shop to get it welded. After welding, it was warped a few thousands so the guy was to true the casing. The ignorant ass milled .020 off of the casing ruining then he started lying to me about I said to take off .020. I had told him that I had .011 max to work with. I hate idiots that ruin things. ROTAX hasn't made the 250-twin since 1988 and they are as rare here as peace is in the holy lands. I am looking for another 250-twin motor. If you know of any, please contact me.

What is the diameter of the stock 1200 coupe sway bar? I have heard different aspects on this. I have heard that the B210 swaybar is larger so I tookone off of a B210. My 1200 bar is larger in diameter (20mm) than the B210 (17mm). Can anyone help here?

Dimlight,
A McPherson strut suspension has to have a sway bar. It is integral with handleing. Without a sway bar at all, you will be one all over the road at every bump, mother.

?? Question ??

What is the diameter of the stock 1200 coupe sway bar? I have heard different aspects on this. I have heard that the B210 swaybar is larger so I tookone off of a B210. My 1200 bar is larger in diameter (20mm) than the B210 (17mm). Can anyone help here?

Mareo

I received an email from one of the 18 year old member questioning the reliability of the 1200 due to all of the work I had to do on Mareo Speedwagon VI recently. Below is the answer to his letter.

In 1972, my wife and I had a 1965 Pontiac GTO. It got 8 MPG so we needed something that would get gas milage and dependable and cheap. We drove all of the new cars and liked the Datsun 1200 Sedan. I have had one ever since. I am convinced that they are the number one most dependable car ever made in old style engineering.

If you leave your 1200 in stock form and do proper maintainance, it will work one hell of a lot longer than the Enigerzer Rabbit, LOL, and require very little money from your budget. If you decide that you want a hot rod, then the cost of maintainance goes up the same ratio as the fun goes up. The 1200 makes one very strong little toy.

Through the 70's and 80's, parts were plentiful and the most least expensive of any other car. Very few people here in America have ever heard of one. They remember Z cars, 210's, 510's and the roadsters but they have never heard of a 1200 or especially the Bluebird. I have seen 1200's and Bluebirds with over 700,000 miles on them. The 1200 is a combination dependable, get you there and get you home and take your 2.3 kids to the mountains, race car that likes gas stations like most people like dentist.

The 1200 that I have now had some problems from a bunch of years of neglect but I had to over come a lot of them at one time. If I had to go buy another car that is as dependable as Mareo Speedwagon VI, I would have to pay $5000 - $8000. I have driven this car for close to 70,000 miles in the past 11 years and I still do not have $3,000 in it and it is ready to go a whole damned bunch of miles now without very many problems happening to it other than the ones that I want done to it.

I still need to finish the body. It has a bit of rust but no holes in the body. the floorboard has a little. I believe that i can drive it for another year or so and have time to restore the other body that I got from Peter Zekert in St. Louis last year. Then I can start on the one that I am driving now. Peter races 1200's in GT5 SCCA for years. He knows Mr. Horse Power real well.

MS VI has been changed a whole lot from original and a lot of those changes require changes in engineering. Every action has an equal and opposite reaction and that goes for modifying stock vehicles also. If I had a 1200 that was 100% original and in good condition, I would never, never make any changes to it except put tires on it that will not slide in the rain. The 155/12 is the only size here in America that is easily available. 185/13 are the minimum width for a safe 1200. 185/60/13 is more good because it brings the speedometer closer to correct than 185/70/13 tires but that are harder to find also.

I didn't know that there was a 4-door until I got into the club a couple of years ago. From what I can gather, the 4-door and estate wagon was a right drive and the 2-door was left drive. Coupes were both. I think that I still prefer the automatic transmission. I will put an automatic back into MS VI. That will drop the gas milage, but.

Putting in an A14 or A15 motor will require you to make motor mount adapters and move the alternator wiring to the left side. Putting in a 5-speed will also require a harder to make mount but that will give you better gas milage. If I putt around at 30-45 MPH, I can get over 60 MPG and get over 40 on the Interstate cruising at 70 MPH. The motor is a stock 80 HP A14 with a 9.5:1 compression A12 head, headers and a 350 Holly/Weber downdraft. I do not like the carb. I want two stock carbs on my next motor or 4 SU's.

Your car is your car but if you want to modify one, you said that they are not so rare around NZ, get one that has already been modified and use it as a toy instead of your transportation. It is aweful to have breakdowns and have to borrow someone elses car to drive until you get yours going again. Makes sense to me.

MAREO

Which 250 Rotax do youy have, the twin or single cylinder?

Mareo

Me too, Me too. I've never seen a van either.

mareospeedwagon1@yahoo.com

Yes Teretonga, the 250 Rotax is a gearbox. We raced the 125 gearbox class in WKA (World Karting Association) for years and I got out of it about ten years ago. Mike stayed into it and moved on up to the 250 twin. The 250 is a twin cylinder not a dual engine Kart. The WKA does not have the 250 class but the local WKC (Woodbridge Kart Club) here in the Washington DC area runs them. Mike has the track record with the 250 Kart at Summit Point Raceway. They race everything at Summit Point except IRL and CART. I will try to add links to WKA, WKC and Summit Point Raceway if i can figure out how to do that. I will be staying here in DC for most of the summer and building a couple of other gearbox Karts. I want to run in the 125 class a few races this year. The 125 Gearbox will do close to 140 MPH but the 250 will go over 165 MPH. The digital 128 model 125 Rotax has 44 HP and the digital 250 has 90+ HP. The top of the helmet is only 22 inches above the pavement. The 125 Karts weigh 425 pounds. The 250 Karts weigh 475. Just think about it like having a 1200 with more HP and weighing in at less than 1/3 the weight and handles better that a Formula 1 car,
AWESOME =

Is there any place to put photos in this club or do i have to put them in a web page someplace and put a link in the club?

Hey you guys,

I haven't been around an online computer very much the past few months. I have had a nightmare with my 73 coupe, Mareo Speedwagon VI. About everything that could go wrong has gone wrong. I guess that's the price to pay for neglect, hee hee.

The car was running and driving great when I parked it in 1999. It had an about stock H72 80 HP A14 motor with the dogleg 5-speed. It has headers with 2 1/2 exhaust, 185/60 14 rears on 1975 240Z aluminum wheels, 185/60 13 fronts on reversed spoke chrome steel wheels but needs aluminum. All of the suspension has been renewed except the front swing arm and roll bar bushings. The interior is OK and the body has no rust holes in it but some rust spots around the chrome.

When I started it up in, I guess, February, it ran fine but the gas tank had some rust. I took it to a shop and the guy kept it for three weeks and plugged up all of the internal lines. I had a fit unplugging the lines. The thing to use for that is large plastic weed eater line. It bends with the contours of the metal tubing going into the tank, it's affordable and you get plenty of it when you but a spool, but persevere, it will finally unplug any obstruction if you keep hitting the plastic line going into the tubing. After a three week major hassle getting fuel to my new Holly/Weber about useless carb and I get driving again but for some reason, it just didn't run very well. Remember, all of this time, this is my only means of transportation. Don't get me wrong, I have had a ball all of this time with this. I am just getting started with these misadventures and I am only 50 miles out of Good Old Knocksville, it's only been going on a month so far and there are a couple of months left before we get up to now.

I did find an air breather that would fit down over the carb and still let the hood close. Woopee. It vibrated apart and I lost most of it, the top most, nut, bolt, chrome lid, filter, all lost to the road. The base was still attached to the troublesome carb though. The idle set screw vibrated out and got itself lost also. Luckily, I had a spare carb. A pin going from the choke rod to the heated coil broke off and made the choke useless, but luckily, I had a spare carb. The accelerator pump started leaking but luckily nothing burned and I had a spare carb but the engine vibrated and just in general didn't have that extra that was normally there. It wasn't up to stock, it started detonating and slowed down and burned a head gasket. It ran so sweet after I changed the gasket.

While the head was off, I checked out the head a bit. I turned it up-side-down and poured WD40 into the combustion chambers. I let it set for five hours and there was no noticable drop in levels so the three angle valve job that I put on that head in 1994 is still holding real well. I should have changed the valve guide seals while it was off but El Stupido Grande, me, didn't do that and it still shoots a puff of smoke when I start it.

When I got it running again, it ran as smooth as possible. I started to Good Old Knocksville 50 miles away a couple of mornings later with it running sweet. When I got about 30 miles, it started overheating some but not boiling and the engine was running erratic again. I thought the carb was screwing up again so I slowed it down and I shouldn't have. I was running with only a bit of throttle and bring the speed down caused the torque range to change and I had to use more throttle on the uphills. It started coughing and quit. It wasn't overheating very much but I let it cool down and started it again. It ran sort of OK but there was smoke coming out the exhaust. I stopped a couple of times and checked it aou and i had either blown a head gasket again but much worse or I had burned a piston. I drove it on in to Good Old knocksville to my friends, Steve Holt, that has a pretty well equipped VW beetle garage called The Holtswagen Shop. He let me take the motor out in his driveway and use his shop to comfirm a burned piston.

Another friend has had a wrecked 1978 B210 for many years with the motor promised to me so I got another 80-HP H72 A14 motor for a very reasonable price. I had cleaned everything spotlessly inside and out before I took the motor back to the WV shop. I put it on a stand and sprayed it down with carb cleaner and painted the block, oil pan, valve cover, aluminum front timing cover in Chrysler engine red. I used Ford engine blue to paint the brackets and pulleys and let it all set in the sun for two days to cure a bit.

I honed the cylinders to de-glaze the ring surfaces for the cast steel rings. I prefer cast steel rings over chrome rings on rebuilds because I have seen too many times that chrome rings do not seat as well on used cylinder walls. The cast steel rings will seal properly more often. The next time I use that block, I will bore it and use new pistons anyway. All of the ring gaps were .015.

The main bearings plastiguaged out at .0015 and I used some rod bearing halves out of the old motor with the burned piston along with the bearings in the motor already until all rods plastiguaged to .001. So for so good. The timing chain looked good as did the cam. The speedometer on the B210 said 106,000 miles and there was a factory Nissan oil filter on the motor so the wear on the motor was minimal. I got a set of gaskets and put it all together and put it back in the car. This all took about ten days.

It didn't run very well after I got it back in. It overheated and coughed and sputtered a lot. I got numerous high speed jets for the carb to make it run all the way from lean to rich so much that it run worse in both directions. I used some of the jets from the 1200 carbs. They have the same threads but the outside diameter of the rim is a tight fit but they will fit the Holley/Weber downdraft. I re-drilled two of the H/W jets later on to come up with the proper jet sizes but that was later, there was something still major wrong going on.

I had used the water pump from the motor that I took out of the 1200 so the pulley would work properly. The pump started making a very loud bearing noise but it wasn't leaking through the seal. I got a new water pump and installed it. The radiator got a leak around the bottom hose flange so i went to my uncle's yard again and found a very good 3-core radiator out of a 1987 Dodge Aries. I bearly fit but it did fit. It is touching in two places that I will have to deal with very shortly for sure but it is running so cool that the stock TEMP guage doesn't run up to the cold mark and the mechanical guage keeps at about 125 degrees. It doesn't get the heater warm.

I had always had a bit of wiring problems so I took the harnesses apart and spent four days redoing it. It had a couple of burned connectors on the fuse panel and other shorts, opens and maladies that I had to sort out before I started trusting the wiring harness again. I nad no other problems with the electrical harness system since.

All of my stuff is stuffed from top to bottom into a 10' X 20' storage unit but I found an old 1200 points distributor one day while looking for something else. I put it on the motor and it ran as smooth as ever. The next day, I found a distributor at my uncle's yard but it has a bad vacuum advance on it. The one that I had just taken out had a bad vacuum modulator on it also and I still need a new vacuum advance modulator but otherwise, the new distributor works fine. Does anyone know where I can get a new vacuum advance modulator?

Almost all of my troubles have been caused by a working, but working very badly, electronic distributor. It had a good looking spark and the timing light worked perfectly so I didn't give the ignition very much thought. I actually thought that there was something going on with the carb instead of the ignition. Going through the carb jets was an almost useless chore but it taught me a lot about the carb and how it all ties together but I can't find mid range jets for it that are badly needed. I think I am going to have to soldier them up and re-drill them that way until I get the sizes that I need. I want a different carb. I want a new carb like from the L16-L20 motors. I love those carbs for a downdraft carb.

I spent two weeks driving around with the car driving so smooth but the tranny was singing its long gone song. I had a 1982 5-speed that I put in. Luckily again, I had a 1200 4-speed driveshaft that fit the tranny. The clutch was different from the dogleg trans so I used an old disk that wasn't worn very much but along with the wear on the pressure plate, it slipped at little. Atfer about a week, it broke into pieces and stopped me in my tracks. I had to tow it back to my friend's VW shop and pull the tranny again. I put the flywheel in the shop and had it trued and bought a new pressure plate and clutch disk. I need to have the driveshaft shortened by about an inch or so because I moved the engine and trans backwards about an inch. The front splines on the shaft are sitting precariously close inside the trans tailshaft but it hasn't leaked any trans oil.

My nephew came to Good Old Knocksville from DC for a week and talked me into coming here to DC with him. I left Mareo Speedwagon VI in Good Old Knocksville, 500 miles away for a few weeks. I have to be back in a couple of weeks any to go to another Goose Creek Symphony show in Allegre, KY on the 29th. I will bring MS VI here when I return in July. I have missed all of their shows this year including the show at Kerrville, TX that I was planning to attend. All of my plans have been put on hold and/or changed because of the travails that Mareo Speedwagon VI has gone through during the past few months.

I will be staying here for a while though. My nephew races high speed 250cc twin cylinder Rotax Enduro Karts that do over 165 MPH. I will keep informed as to how the progress goes on them.
Mareo

I have put a few different types of seats in 1200's over the years. The main thing is to find seats that will physically fit down in the seat bay. The seat is attached to a frame which is attached to the floodboard rails. There are four (4) bolts attaching the seat to the frame. Usually, I have had to drill holes in the new seat to fit the frame. It is a very simple process. The seats that I am now using are from a Mazda 636 and they comfy enough.

I am lucky in that I have an uncle that owns a scrap yard and I get first choice on seats and other stuff when they come in. I put some very soft cushy seats in my Ford Fiesta from a large luxury Buick last year but they would not fit in my 1200.