Sunny Ute

[starni_boy]

Been busy working on this after work each day lately. All rust is fixed, 90% of the panel work is done and the engine/box are in and mounted. Still yet to spray any colour but I've been smoothing out the engine bay and getting rid of any unnecessary brackets around the car.

AE86 front suspension is all in and mounted, and the steering has been converted to an AE86 steering rack. With the 13x8's i have here for it they clear everything by around 10mm.

[benzo]

right on!

[starni_boy]

The engine was pulled out of the bay again to start setting up the steering/suspension. I stripped the shell out from wiring etc so I wasn't working on top of other shit/getting the shits with wires everywhere.

Got the rack in place/centred and got it welded up:



Then it was time to clean it up and give it a paint/bolt it all up:



Then the task of tie rod ends/rack end lengths. It needed to be much shorter than AE86 items so that was sorted with an angle grinder to shorten the AE86 items. Probably still need to get them trimmed a little more though to allow for more adjustability.
The LCA's needed the bolt hole drilled out to accommodate the AE86's larger LCA bolt. Spacers were also welded on the inside of the engine Xmember for the LCA's due to the AE86 items being ~15mm narrower than the Datsun items. This also allows me to put XT130 LCA's in at a later date if I want, but at the moment the 13x8's are going to be a push to fit under the small guards. I guess Camber will help a bit here.



While the struts were out it was time to fix the caster arm mounts. The stock mounts were on a totally different angle to the AE86 arms so they were cut off, notched the rails and new mounts fabled up out of 5mm plate. The caster arms also had ~75mm more thread cut onto them and then 50mm trimmed off them due to the arms being too long to fit in nicely.

Old mounts:



New mounts:





Front struts all bolted up and sorted!

[Sup2a]

This is so good!

[Mirko]

so good dude nice work

[drift kid]

Oh lawdy this is too cool, going to be one of the coolest sunny trucks around

[starni_boy]

Cheers guys! Ticking boxes all this week after work so I'll hopefully have some painting happening soon.

Started the new handbrake this afternoon so that should hopefully be welded in tomorrow afternoon. Upgraded to a KE70 item due to the handbrake lines becoming a HEAP cleaner under the car

I'll have more photos over the weekend.

[Mirko]

Wish l have the fab skills like that dude. Hats off to ya

[Jdm-Mcc]

f'yeah

[joeschmo_57]

You don't do things by halves! Looking rad