Welding itself is not difficult if the conditions are good. What makes it difficult, even for a pro, is contamination and crappy fitting parts. Much like painting, most of the work is done in the prep stages. Clean steel and minimal gaps (1/16" is too wide, 1/32" is good) make welding a lot easier when butt welding thin sheet metal. Care in fitting the new steel to the old will be rewarded. The finished work will look much more professional.

Planning to use shield gas. Chuck Buczeskie is going to send me a list of supplies to make sure I have everything, but that's a great tip on the settings. Thanks.

Thanks for the spacing tip, Mark. That gives me a better sense of how to cut the car prior to clamping.

I think I'll spend a month or so practicing on scrap, or at least until I can make a clean weld with good penetration without warping the metal.

...

In other news, my dad just called me to tell me he nabbed an F54 block and a P90a head for my birthday. This was an unexpected surprise as I had planned to run the engine I have until I had a sense of what I wanted to change.

I think he really just wanted another engine rebuild project to do, but I'm not going to complain!

Any tips on how to proceed with that are much appreciated. It'll definitely be NA, so I will repurpose as much of the stuff on my current engine as possible.

/M

Go dad!

Here's what he got:

/M

Plus the pan and some other bits. The head is in the mail.

Also, check out this gem of a page with a bunch of data on gear ratios that I was missing: http://newprotest.org/projects/510/gearRatios.pl

/M

let the fun begin!

27 minutes ago, Matthew Abate said:

 

Also, check out this gem of a page with a bunch of data on gear ratios that I was missing: http://newprotest.org/projects/510/gearRatios.pl

/M

I like the page. Tagged it...

Some pics from the block inspection:

...

Looks like someone turned the crank with the head off. The chain is trashed.

The cylinders still have cross hatching. A quick check puts them in at 85.725, but need to double check that. Factory is 86.1, right?

All told, this was a very good purchase.

Here's another useful resource for specifications: http://www.automobile-catalog.com/list-datsun.html

That's a strange looking chain.  Looks like two?

Other than being bent to sh!t, what's weird?

/M

15 hours ago, Matthew Abate said:

 

Other than being bent to sh!t, what's weird?

/M

You're right, nothing weird about it.