Project Kaoss: My Bagged and Bodied Datsun 620.

I've owned this truck for seven years and have been working on it for 3 now. Never did a build thread here because SSM used to not support IMG tags, so I wasn't going to change the pics to work for this site. Now that it does, I'm going to do a little copy and paste action.



It is on hold for a little while, but here is the progress so far!

My stock 1977 Datsun 620

Then the break down:



Couldn't get enough fat minitruckers together, so had to get creative for the cab removal.



And it's apart!



What I am working with.



I scored some of tires of a more fitting size then the ones that were on the truck for next to nothing. So like a mad man I decided to take the 30 year old tires off the original wheels and mount the "new" tires on myself.

6 hours of work later...



And that's how that is done ha ha.

The result.



For anyone that has ever mounted your own tires, take pride in your work!!!

Got the front all the way torn down.

From here it is cut city boys.



I wish that I could separate the spindle assembly from the lower control arms, but without a replacement king pin set on hand, I'll just have to work with this.



Driver side got a little loving from the cut off wheel.



Rough



Smooth



Damn, that almost fits in there.



So this was awesome.



To bad that the wheel and tire fell of the jack when I was locating the lower bag plate and the upper control arm hit the bag mount and knocked it off. I was so pissed.

Damn this thing is a bitch to bag. Second time around for the driver's side, the frame section is better this time then the first attempt.







Still have the bottom bag mount to tack in, then gusseting. The passenger side will come out a lot cleaner, since I've mostly learned what not to do.







Doesn't get much better than this. It gets good lift also about 2" below stock height. If anyone ever saw me cruise the mazda, normal ride height was about 1/2" off the ground.



And my awesome wheels. It looks like an inch and half Z is in store for this thing in order for it to get to lay.



Both sides on the front are done now. Still needs permanent welding, and I have to plate the bottom of the frame but I'm going to burn it all in later. Cycled the front, everything works great. It'll be on a shorter tire, and I won't know how much of a z it'll need to make it lay until I get the rear end tore down.

Front Down.



That'll work.



Down.



Up.



And compared to my Frontier's frame .



Got the leaf springs removed, axle center and tacked to frame using the old u-bolts. Looks like I can use a small notch in the frame to get this thing to lay. Next on the list is to cut off some random brackets on the frame and then build a cross member.



Cut out the peices to build a cross member out of some scrap I had laying around.



Welded all of that scrap together into a cross member, plated the ends, and tacked it in.



The start of my lower link bars out of 2*2 .025 wall.

[img width=1023 height=612]http://i6.photobucket.com/albums/y222/kaoss77/Datsun/IMAG0008.jpg[/img]

Notching the ends with a chop saw and a grinder. Too bad this is a scrap peice that I practiced on, and not the actual link bar. If you never knew that you could do this, check out this thread. Chop saw notching 101



Found some 17" 10 year old billet wheels!

Got the lower link bars welded together, and the axle cleaned off of the four link tabs. Still have to finish my uppers.

I had to take my link bars to a fab shop and have the bungs tapped out to accept the rod ends after I welded them up, only cost me $20 bucks, but these silly little $20 things always add up, like the $50 in grade 8 hardware for the link bars. Any ways, on to some pics.

Got everything mocked up, small truck, but it'll all fit.



Ended the night with a 2 link. Uppers are tacked in, next time it'll be the lowers.



Polished



I'll call it a three link for now.



Now there are 4 link bars!



And some more scrap metal



It's a match!



So I tried to install the notch I built and it just seem easier to run new frame rails...



The rest of the wheels off to the polish shop! Going to get some rubber on these this month also.



Getting the factory rails cut whooped my ass. 8 cut off wheels and 4 hours later, I got it all mocked up. This frame has a vertical support all the way down the inside of the rail. Total pain in the ass.





welded



polished



spent another hour and half on the one on the left.



I like these.







My mom asked me why I bought tires for truck that didn't run...

Got fish plates built and the rear frame rails tacked in place. Going to be a booger to weld this all together.



Got the back bag mounts in last night, cut out my own gussets out of flat plate.







At full lock the frame is 7" off the ground, plenty of lift.

At this point in the build I relized that my instant center was behind the truck, so I fixed that.

I lowered the upper mounts the most that I could.



Then I cut the crap out of everything that was keeping it from laying. There are a couple more remnants of cross member that are still keeping it up, not to mention that I'm out of suspension travel in the front.





Hopefully tonight I

Got the four link squared away this afternoon.



Feels good knowing that's it right.





Also trimmed a quarter of inch of the bag plates so they could be mounted off the frame instead of on top. Started working on getting all of that mocked up. Not sure how I feel about how I'm going to have to run gussets though.



Got one bag mount figured out. A lot better then last time, there will be some vertical gussets build also.



I now have 4 matching tires, but not 4 matching valve stems so I have to take them back to the tire shop to get chrome ones on the other two. Seems petty, but who the hell runs black rubber stems on billets?

I got the other bag mount tacked in.



These are the parts that I got bent, had to cut and test fit, cut and test fit, cut and test fit, then it wouldn't fit in the chop saw so it was to the vice with the cut off wheel and the grinder. Total pain in the ass, but it's the details that count.

This picture doesn't show the hour and half of grinding...

So after I got those squared away and tacked in, it was time to play a little mini truckin' by numbers. I made some templates to take to the fab shop to have my vertical gussets cut.



Sunday I may throw the cross member on the rear put all matching wheels and tires on it and roll it out of the garage, just to make the neighbors wonder.

Not perfect, but the best I can get with a 40 year old vice, a propane torch and a 3lb sledge.



Driver side will be next weekend. Then I'm taking a day off from work to fully weld all of it in.



Blew everything apart to weld it all up. Probably spent a total of 4 hours welding, I'm exhausted, no way I could do this for a living.







First time that I ever reached the cycle duty of my welder.



Well, Henry from Canada stopped by on his North American Tour and we decided that we would just replace the frame rails on it while he was here.

I built a jig a long time to locate the body mounts. We used with a few pieces of additional metal to jig it up, cut out the old frame rails, and tack in some new ones.





Did a little fabrication by numbers yesterday. Dug deap into the supply drawer and found any old blade and roloc disc that I could to get this done last night.

Hand cut these with my 4.5" Makita grinder and cut off wheels. They are fish plates to strengthen the connection between the old frame rails and new.



Tacked them to the plates I also hand cut to fill the gaps between the old frame rails and new.



I also cut the plate that goes on top to cap it off. I hope to get it welded up tonight. Total time for these little plates is 6 hours. Not sure if I'm just slow or what.

Got the plates welded up and capped off last night.



Nothing too exciting, I cut a couple more fish plates, welded in the front to be fish plated, and ground down the welds on the caps to smooth them out a little.

I decided to document the making of my fish plates, and time how long it took.

I started by making a template. I like to use construction paper that I find in my wife's scrap-booking stuff, cardboard is to bulky. I already had half of the plate cut out from the other side.



Traced this onto my plate.



Tool of choice for this.



Then the timer started. Here I gouged the metal with the blade, tracing the sharpie lines.



I gouge until the blade can cut through the metal like butter. This is after 9 mins



Time for a new blade.



Getting closer.



For the rounded edges I usually do one of to things, I gouge the metal a little at a time in a circle. This take a while but works great. Sometimes I'll just make a bunch of different straight cuts at different angles.





After 26 mins, here's a rough cut



Time for my favorite tool. This Makita is awesome. I've used some good DeWalts, but they just don't compare. That's a flapper wheel on it.



Into the vise it goes, smoothing out the edges.



I can't get that corner, so off to the hand file.



32 mins in, it's done. Pissed off neighbors, numb hands and ringing ears. Too bad neighbors, I still have another one to do.



Luckily with this one, I already had a straight edge.





Then there was two.



Off to the fab shop, I don't have enough heat and pressure to make this work.

Oh, and a little trip to the local fab shop this morning where he has a big torch.



Getting closer.



And this is were it actually sits as of 07/18/2011.

1977 Datsun 620, now with permanent frame rails!

very nice, i dig the path you are going down for sure!

Nice work! Going to be a sweet little truck.

Nice man. Looks so familiar to the way I have to cut rounded corners and stuff...sucks...but works!! Nice lookin' work though.

LOVE those billets you found! great work so far indeed..

awesome build!

Awesome work man! Attention is in the detail!!!!!!!!! Keep it coming!!