Hi everyone.

On Saturday July 19 I made the trip to Buckley WA and picked up the 1200 sedan that Biggc2 had forsale. The car is in pretty good shape considering that it has spent 32 years in the Pacific north west. All the trim and bumpers are in great shape. Needs lots of work removing rust and replacing chuncks of the floorboard that have rusted away.

This picture shows the good side of the car! The drivers door has a dent in it.

Sure feels good to be driving around in a 1200 again. So much fun .

This 1200 would be #8 in the life long datto 1200 obsession if I get to count parts cars too. 5 sedans, 2 coupes, and a '63 1200 wagon. Other dattos owned were a '71 510 wagon, a '66 1600 roadster, and a '71 521 Pickup.

Here is a link to my home page. It deals mostly with lunitic fringe audio projects. There are more pictures of the sedan plus a couple of pictures of my old rally car that I built back in the middle '80's. I will add more pictures of past 1200's as I dig them out of the box of photos and scan them. Click on the Datsun 1200 photos link.
Gary P's home page

Things done so far:
Remounted alternator. It was barely hanging there.

Adjusted the voltage regulator. Charging system was not working very good. Bent the appropriate tab in the voltage regulator to get the system voltage to 15 volts with lights on.

Wirebrushed the and painted centers of the wheels. The paint looks so much better than rust over chrome!

Purchased new tires that clear the fenders. Got some really high performance 155/80 13 all season tires... Tempoarary fix so I can enjoy driving the car around while I gather up the all the new suspension parts I want. Looking for 1980 210 struts and a 69-73 510 station wagon rear axle. Both changes increase the track 1.5". Lets you use 15x6 Saab/? offset front wheel drive wheels.

Brazed the drivers seat frame back together. Right now I'm wishing that I didn't sell my MIG welder... but 3 years ago during my divorce the money was more important than having a MIG welder in the closet of the room I was renting...

Made a new gasket for between the air cleaner and carb. Aircleaner was just rattling around on top of the carb chewing up the aluminum of the carb and feeding it to the engine! New gasket is a piece of vacuum tubing with a slit cut in it. The slit goes over the flange of the aircleaner and makes a serviceable gasket. Still have to do my standard mods to the carb. Primary is pretty flat as it sits now.

Trying to find a front brake rotor. Right front needs to be changed.

Removed all the stick on moldings that were on the car. Door edge protector, Side molding, and fender lip moldings. I prefer the clean look.

Replaced the side mirrors.

This gets the car into a resonably servicable state. Good enough that I can drive around and have some fun. In the big picture this is just the beginning of a long trip...

The plan is after the suspension mods are done to do a CA engine swap. Has anyone tried putting the CA18 head on the CA20 block? Would like to get a good amount of HP without using the turbo.

Gary

Go to http://www.club-s12.org/phpBB2/
and poke around.Heres a few helpful threads:
http://www.club-s12.org/phpBB2/viewtopic.php?t=2608&highlight=ca18de+ca20
http://www.club-s12.org/phpBB2/viewtopic.php?t=1218&highlight=ca16de+ca20
And the website of some bloke who is attempting it as we speak, but he was going turbo too, if I remember correctly.
http://sws.mnstate.edu/majorsmc/

Quote:

If you mean CA18ET and CA20E, the heads should be the same. The difference between the two engines is mainly lower compression pistons in the CA18ET. Single-cam CA engines aren't known to produce much power, and are notoriously weak in the bottom end. Does it already have one? If not, a Z20E/Z22E would be a little more sensible, and probably cheaper. Of course there are a ton of other options too.

CA20 block is missing the strengthening webbing and has a considerably weaker crankshaft and rods.

The CA18DE would have more power than a modified CA20/CA18 frankenstein.

Chris

What car(s) is the Z20E/Z22E engine out of? I assume it must be available in US as you're from Texas, 10&20.----------------Hey Gary P, welcome. A fellow 1200 West coaster! I didn't know 1200 Wagons came to the States??? If you need some parts that you can't find them out there, give me a ring. Also, what kind of suspension setup did you have on your reddish 1200?

Hi No.

With the 1200 wagon being a 1963 model it is in it's own class. I have no clue what was imported in the early years.

The suspension on the reddish car was a quite bizarre mix. The rear suspension had the leaf springs de-arched 2" then we added a 1" lowering block later. To get some suspension travel using the stock shock length I cut the top off of the shock mount inside the trunk, built a box out of 1.5" 1/8 steel strap, welded it in place then welded the top of the shock mount on top of the box. This raised the rear shock mounts 1.5" vertically. With this setup the axle was very close to the subframe when hitting the bump stops.

The front suspension was stock struts cut down to accept ~1975 honda civic strut cartridges.

The front struts for the rally car after it was converted to autocross duty were better. With a little research I found that the outside diameter of the small struts (1200 & front wheel drive 310's) was the same as the inside diameter of the larger struts (1980 210 through the Z car).

To make the short struts we cut some 210 struts off just above the spring perch. We also cut the tops off a pair of 1200 stock struts. Push the 1200 strut tops into the 210 strut bottoms with the over all height set to properly clamp down on a pair of 310 cartridges. Weld the 1200 tops in place with a MIG welder. Back then we were able to get stiff performance cartridges for the 310's. Don't know if any are still avalable. This trick might still work with the struts and cartridges from the later model front wheel drive Nissans.

The short struts made this way were so short that at full droop the wheels were an inch closer to the body than the stock 1200 suspension sitting on the bump stops without springs! The the front springs were 1 210 spring cut in half with each side of the car getting one half . With the suspension compressed 2" the cross member was 2" off the ground. The cross member would hit the ground (never did) before the struts bottomed out. Worked just fine for an trailered autocross car.

Hey, thanks for all the input on the various CA series engines. Looks like I'll stick with the CA18DE or DET.

Gary

Looking good! This is a worthy little car (I test drove it), and sounds like it found the right owner who'll fix 'er back up.

The B210 brake rotor is the same, but if you are changing struts, go for bigger rotors at the same time?

welcome, just curious, whats this bending of a tab to get 15 volts. i feel that may be an answer to some of our alleged alternator problems.

Hi.

I just added scans of 3 pages from an old 60's vintage manual with insturctions on how to adjust the mechanical voltage regulators. They are in the photo albums technical section on page 3.

Photo album tech section page 3

Gary

Quote:

Z20S (carb model) is from a '80-82 510, or '80-82 truck

Z22S (carb model) is from '82-85~ truck.

Z20E/Z22E is from '80-83 200SX (EFI).