We'll just cut a piece of steel using the pump housing as a template and seal it with a gasket. Should (hopefully) be pretty simple

_________________
Current Garage:

1971 Datsun 1600
2019 Mazda 6 Touring Wagon
2009 Holden SV6 Sedan

That's what I did, it's easy enough. I used 5ish mm thick aluminium, as it's nice and soft and easy to work with hand tools.

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build-threads.com

Quick update

Radiator is now in. Wasn't a perfect fit however, we had to bend out the cut-out section at the front to accommodate it but nothing too major that couldn't be done with a pair of pliers



Also had to shorten this bit of pipe a bit, used some stainless steel here



Water pump blanking plate now fitted. We used aluminium and dad just filed it down and drilled it to fit with a new gasket. With the thermal fan in there is not much room at all!



Next job is to fit the electric water pump, we're going to position it to sit next to the alternator. Also will be a bit of a tight fit but it will go in. Also in the process of re-routing the ignition leads to go around the engine head to make it look a bit neater

And for some reason I never thought to buy a bloody thermo switch for the SPAL fan too Can anyone recommend a switch they use? I was just going to get a SPAL one, figured 85 degrees off and 90 degrees on should be adequate...

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Current Garage:

1971 Datsun 1600
2019 Mazda 6 Touring Wagon
2009 Holden SV6 Sedan

Use a thermo switch mounted in the cool side of the radiator. Get a fitting welded in the tank. As per our rad.
Do not fit to hot side or on the Tsat housing . The hysteresis is not as good as the cold side. 92 on 87 off. hard wire it so it controls the heat soak.
Even tho we are spal agents we do not use the spal controller. Too expensive. Use of the Spal 16" 63mm thick would have done the job & given more clearance. Cools SRs quite well

_________________
A little knowledge is a dangerous thing.
www.datsport.com

"R.I.P. Baz. 29 April 2022. Thank you for all your contributions to the Datsun community over the years. You will be missed." - OZDAT

Thanks Baz, assume you mean get the fitting welded inside the tank? Horse has bolted with that but an inline one like this: http://www.daviescraig.com.au/Controlle ... tails.aspx would surely do the job.

Given the modification we made above to fit the pipe we could replace it with this instead...

_________________
Current Garage:

1971 Datsun 1600
2019 Mazda 6 Touring Wagon
2009 Holden SV6 Sedan

You could do that, I just prefer the bottom as it is a true reading of the temp of the water after cooling in the rad.
The engine temp is controlled by the t stat. Air temp & flow thro the rad is variable.
It is the hysteresis that suffers. You choice tho.

_________________
A little knowledge is a dangerous thing.
www.datsport.com

"R.I.P. Baz. 29 April 2022. Thank you for all your contributions to the Datsun community over the years. You will be missed." - OZDAT

He means get a bung welded on to the side of the rad. You can kind of see the setup on the right hand side in this image

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build-threads.com

Thanks guys, wish I had of thought of getting that welded in when I bought it. Would have been nice of PWR to suggest that at the time of purchase as they do offer to do it too

Anyway after a bit of consideration we're going to go with the one in the hose for now.

Here's a better pic of the blanking plate too

_________________
Current Garage:

1971 Datsun 1600
2019 Mazda 6 Touring Wagon
2009 Holden SV6 Sedan

hey mate, loving this build. Its going to be awesome when done. I have a question, i am looking to box off my boot in a similar style to what you have done, how did your old man attatch the mdf pieces in the boot to get them to stay in place. Any pics would be awesome.

Thanks for any help, good luck with the rest of the build, im looking forward to seeing new posts!

Jimmy

Nice one mate, looks great

Anyone know what the deal is with those harmonic balancer style crank pulleys on the front of that engine??
My engine came with one of those attached, engine was a s2 bluebird l20b with an auto trans.
Are they only needed with an auto because the don't have a flywheel, or do they have other benifits?

_________________
When the sign says "don't feed the bears", man you better not feed the bears.

Cheers mate

I spoke to Dad about this and he just made them a very snug fit so they sit in nice and tight. Definitely no plastic screws or anything like that. He's semi-retired so has all the time in the world do this kind of fabrication stuff, although I must admit he has always been very good at this kind of thing. They can be easily lifted in and out if you need to get at things which is probably a good thing as he is mocking up the tailights to use LED's so they're bound to have some teething problems.

Unfortunately mums gene's filtered these creative hand-skill ones of dads out for me, meaning I don't have neither a hope in hell nor the patience to be able to do work like this! I'm better at the technical stuff, comes more naturally to an IT worker.

_________________
Current Garage:

1971 Datsun 1600
2019 Mazda 6 Touring Wagon
2009 Holden SV6 Sedan

Not sure mate, to be honest I thought the extra pulley wheel was there for driving an air-con unit or maybe power steering?

_________________
Current Garage:

1971 Datsun 1600
2019 Mazda 6 Touring Wagon
2009 Holden SV6 Sedan

Yeah it has the extra groove for another belt, but it also has a weight on it, harmonic balancer style.
Just wondering what the weight is for, if it's beneficial for a manual tranny or was just used for a auto that runs the flex plate instead of flywheel.

I might dig mine out as it may work well with my crank being partially counterweighted z24 crank. (Even though my engine has been balanced)

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When the sign says "don't feed the bears", man you better not feed the bears.

I had a expensive harmonic balancer on a balanced L20b and it definitely made a difference according to the engine builder - we saw the difference first hand when we added the same balancer to my brothers balanced/lightened/blueprinted L18.
Idle was very improved, smoother torque and power delivery across the whole rev range.
I guess a standard balancer can't hurt and is probably helping a little bit.

Few more updates. Dad is on holidays at the moment so he has had the time to work on the car

Rear CV boots in and cleaned up. Just a couple of circlip pliers were needed to get the shafts out and the boots on



Electric Water pump installed



Little tray made to tidy up the leads



Dad decided, without telling anyone (the old story its easy to ask for forgiveness instead of permission) to go down to Bits of Italy and bought the Weber Air Box. He reckons the guy that works there really knows his stuff too when it comes to Webers - which he should given our engine builder actually got him to help tune the L20B on the engine Dyno!



Not to mention a big F-off pod filter and some silicon hose!



We're now going to take out the high-beam on the intake side and mount the pod filter there, the cold air intake should give us a bit of an increase in power out of the L20B now

We've also put heat shielding under the Webers and these little trumpets will fit inside the air box



Other work coming up is installing the thermatic switch in the radiator hose and then hooking that up to a relay to control the operation of the thermal fan

_________________
Current Garage:

1971 Datsun 1600
2019 Mazda 6 Touring Wagon
2009 Holden SV6 Sedan