Dash The Automatic Express , 70 2 door auto

[Pjackb]

Since I’m not going the "traditional" route with this car and just swapping in a 5 speed and I got so much good information from this forum. I thought I would share my experiences refreshing it in the off chance it can help someone down the line
For background, I’ve been wanting a 2 door 510 for the longest time and was just waiting to find the right candidate and found a nice 1970 2 door , column shift automatic ,
Its a very solid car that had spent its whole life in Quebec mostly garaged in the winter and I’m its 3rd owner.
I first saw this car in 2018 at a local car show and asked the owner to let me know when he would be ready to sell and I had been calling him every 6 months since , then back in December 2021 he finally said maybe , I then called him every month (lol)and had him over at the house for beers and to see my collection and Datsun . I finally convinced him to sell it to me last summer.

This is when I saw it first



And when he came to visit and we clenched the deal I had all my cars out to convince him I would take good care of it



This car is a very solid base for a refresh







I got the car in July of last year, put on some 14 Roadster steelies to replace the like new but 15year old tires and drove the snot of all 60whp all summer as i made my plans for the upgrades

[Pjackb]

My Original plans for the car was to swap in an L20b engine and 5 speed , paint the car refresh the interior and upgrade brake and tires. so as soon as i had a maybe from the seller in January last year i put the word out that I was lookin for an engine and got a hit right away from someone selling an L20 in BC(I'm in Quebec) , the shop owner who contacted didn't know much about the engine other then it had a cam and sounded great before they took it out to install an Turbo SR or the guy . I asked for pictures and this is some of what what I got :





Price was very good , engine had solid compression across all cylinder it looked like a solid package so I took a chance and had it packed and sent to me , (little did I know how much I scored then but I wouldn't for almost a full year since I put the engine in storage then until I actually have a car and started working on it

[Pjackb]

Hold 2

[Pjackb]

hold 3

[loungin112]

Following

[Pjackb]

August 2022
First thing I needed to do was to assess what I could do with the paint before deciding on where to take this project , since I have the “might as well” syndrome fairly strong I wanted to be careful as doing a repaint would take this project to a whole other level I did not want to go to.

The car was treated with rustproofing almost every year for most of its life during prior ownership and has no rust , however it was repainted about 12-15y ago and got plastic fenders. the car has some decent shine and looks really good in pictures or from 5-10 feet away but up close while it’s still not bad there is very little reflection and the orange peel is like I’ve never seen

Here’s a few close ups lots of orange peel , very little reflection with lots of scratches and swirls





Normally with orange peel like this there’s not much you can do but I consulted with my body guy to assess the car expecting him to recommend a respray. , but he surprised me in saying that he felt that a quality professional 3 steps wet sand , compound and polish would bring this back to a very acceptable level .
Now I’m pretty good at polishing but I would not take a chance a wet sanding a car, and I did not want to paying over 2K for a professional job either.

I decided to do some research to see if there was not another possible option and found lots of articles and videos on denim polishing to remove orange peel , from the research I could see that while no one guaranteed complete removal if done properly the results would be pretty amazing.

Well what have I got to lose right ? So I ordered some specialized pads and tested it

Now before looking at the results please note this is not an easy process, it’s tedious , takes some skills and lots of patience BUT if you have orange peel and want to get rid of it it absolutely works , I would also say that mine is tedious to do because of the amount of peel , on something more normal it would take a lot less effort.
I’ve only done the hood for now and leaving the rest to be done in the spring when all other things are done .

Here are some before and after of the denim polishing
















Obviously it’s not perfect or new paint but it made the decision really easy on what to do with the paint and I can keep it as is for a few more years

[RONSLYCHUK]

That is an amazing difference. Where did you get the supplies for the job?

[Pjackb]

That is an amazing difference. Where did you get the supplies for the job?

I’m in Canada and I’ve found the best place for detailing supplies for us is Carzilla out of Calgary
Good selection, decent prices and fast shipping

[datzenmike]

Oil dip stick on left side... may be an import engine.

U-67 head ('75-'77) so could be an L20B or on an L18SSS. Look on top of block just below the head above the starter for the engine ID

Has the dual wire oil pressure sender that is used with oil pressure gauge. The '77 S10 200sx would have the U67 head and the oil gauge sender.

71B transmission but can't tell if 4 or 5 speed

Most encouraging thing is it doesn't have a fram filter on it.

Can you post a picture of the transmission? also the front of the engine and the exhaust manifold?

[cwd240z]

Great work on the polishing, turned out really well.

Nice collection/garage btw!

[gooned]

I have never even waxed a car let alone power polish, that is a huge improvement, how many hours on just the hood?

[Pjackb]

Now that the decision on painting the car or not out of the way it was easy enjoy the car for the rest of the summer, we were lucky this year with no real snow on the ground before late November so had plenty of time behind the wheel to see what I liked or not abut the car.

So fast forward to December ;
Next on the list was the interior,



Only driver the seat was ripped


Cigarette smoke yellowed headliner


While the seats and door card s looked fairly decent and could probably have been repaired the PO was a fairly heavy smoker and he did smoke a lot in the car for many years so a decision was made to replace the whole interior .

Started by removing the old floor soundproofing which came out fairly easily








Surprisingly nice floors for an eastern canada car




after Por15 treatment and new sound deadening

[Pjackb]

I have never even waxed a car let alone power polish, that is a huge improvement, how many hours on just the hood?

That's hard to say as I was experimenting and testing different techniques and polishing compounds to see what worked best , I would say in 2 months or so from now when I get in the thick of it and doing all the panels I will be able to provide you with more details , but the whole car is an easy 20-30h job

Great work on the polishing, turned out really well.

Nice collection/garage btw!

Thank you

[Pjackb]

I also gave the contract to redo my seats to a local upholstery shop ,
Nice young couple who's been doing really good work and happens to both be Datsun owners and fans so couldn't have gotten better shop

This is the selection of Material for the seats

[gooned]

Good luck with the seats, I had my FJ55 seats done here in BC and for the money thought they could have been a bit better, but my first time with upholstery so maybe expecting too much.

The stock 510 texture was very similar to the Landcruiser’s.