Restoring a Datsun 510 doesn’t make any sense. Yeah, we said it. A flip through the NADA Classic Car Guide tells us that a high quality bone-stock 510 two-door sedan will run a paltry $8,000, which seems a little low in the current market. Kelly Blue Book suggests that a two-door 510 can be a $12,000 car, and a wagon in top condition tops $17,000, which sounds a little more on target, considering how not every person is really available. Buy one cheap, and the metalwork (plus parts, in the lack of reproduction sheet metal) plus a decent paint job alone would run that much. Seventy bucks one hour at a shop adds up quick if you’re not handy having a welder or possibly a spray gun. Who in their right minds would spend $25,000 of their own money to restore a $12,000 car?
Because of this sad economic fact, the 510 isn’t the type of car that gets restored much. Oh, they’re redone plenty-modded and rodded to the owner’s heart’s content; just about any old-school car demonstrate care to check out will bear that out-but rebuilding an automobile with just 96hp under the hood and skinny steel wheels on the ground back to factory specification? And then getting blown away by the girlfriend’s Nissan Versa in a light? Absolutely no way. And when it’s so easy to create performance in a car you’re keen on returning to life, temptation beckons.
Fortunately, the old-car hobby doesn’t often make sense. The center wants precisely what the heart wants, and in Ryan Bauer’s case, he wanted a Datsun 510. Aiding in his quest: as someone who has repaired and built cars for almost two decades, he had the talent and work ethic to accomplish most of what he required to do himself, without farming it out to shops.Do Not Pass Go Ichi Maru
The Fullerton, CA resident (or, more correctly, his wife, Leslie) found this particular one quietly rotting away about ten minutes at home, back in ’07. (Attention single men looking at this: when your wife encourages anyone to have some fun with an old car, take her on it and say thank you.) Truth be told, what Leslie found was a mess. It was generally a bucket [of what, Ryan failed to say -ED], though it was fairly complete. The interior was thrashed, where there was no carpet, no headliner, along with the gauges didn’t function. It had a sunroof, cut in by a previous owner, which leaked and rotted out the floor pans. The reduced rear quarters were rotted from the trunk seal leaking. With a rebuilt L-series 1600 and a five-speed stick, though other than that it had been pretty solid. It was still a running and driving car.
Which, that you can gather in the pictures, promptly got yanked and replaced using a Nissan SR20. Old school is relative; including the all-aluminum, DOHC 16-valve all-electronic marvel of the two-liter Four known as the SR20 is a quarter-century old now. Even so, the turbocharged black-top SR20DET more than doubles the L-series’ power, and enables greater tunability. I had wanted SR power for years, and now I could have one in a pre smog car. I’m not a carburetor guy therefore i didn’t would like to keep the L-series motor, plus a built L-series is both pretty expensive and not nearly as good as an SR. Honestly, no other swap even occurred to me. For Ryan, the issues an SR20 solved were in excess ofunderneath the hoods of recently-built 510s, existing kits require some massaging and finessing to help make work. (See sidebar.) Ryan started with a McKinney Motorsports crossmember that I heavily modified. That’s the biggest point about this swap. The conversion is remarkably simple; it’s why the SR is so popular in these. I had the fuel lines backwards, once I reversed then it fired up try. The heavily modified crossmember was to accept NISMO Silvia motor mounts, the Flaming River rack-and-pinion steering conversion, and the re-positioning of the control-arm pickup points; Ryan moved those by an inch, i had the swap done and running within six months.
The JDM S13 Silvia five-speed remained aboard. Though it’s not been to a dyno yet, a brief look at the pieces used in the build-a GReddy intake manifold, McKinney ceramic-coated exhaust manifold, Crower cams, Deatchwerks 550cc injectors as well as an ECU optimization-should bring it near enough to 300hp. The Silvia’s transmission might be able to handle that, nevertheless the 510’s stock rear end can’t. Hence the swap to an R180 rear, an even more-or-less direct bolt-in pilfered from the Subaru WRX STI. For your SR guys, the STI R180 rear is popular. The R160 rear ends don’t like big power. Plus, it’s a factory LSD and plentiful, so it’s sort ofWill Not Pass Go Ichi Maru
Tripling the ability, you’d think, would make a mess from the unit-body, threatening to pretzel the subframe rails or pop the windshield clean out; a stock 510 wasn’t built for the torque that 300 turbocharged ponies would send through it. Rather than add weight and complexity with a roll-bar, Ryan made a decision to seam-weld the subframes to the new floors. So far, seam-welding seems to be enough, he reports. Since I don’t drag launch it, it doesn’t get massive levels of power applied from a stop. That’s really what bends the chassis.
But none of this touches on the mess of a body he was presented with. The definition of a 20-footer, it looked fine under its relatively recent orange hue. Again, hands-on experience eased things considerably, (It wasn’t.) Luckily. With the exception of the rooftop replacement, this entire car was built by me in my garage. Troy Ermish did the roof; that’s one thing I wouldn’t attempt. He’s tried it countless times and is very familiar with the procedure. Also, I planned to do the interior inside the original style, and doing the headliner would have been a total bitch. I have done upholstery for any living years back, and I didn’t even want to deal with that. Patch panels, new floors and rear quarter sections were finished, welded and smoothed with little more than a skim coat of body filler. That got our bodies solid, and hours of sanding, painting and blocking made it look straight.
It can look far deeper and cooler in diffused light, though the paint is a BMW Z4 color, Urban Green; in some light it looks almost military. I needed a vintage look, nothing too modern and not too loud, Ryan tells us. I saw this shade of green on other cars; I just never knew what car it came from, although I was originally going to paint it grey. Once I saw it on a BMW Z4, and that i knew it had been the original paint color, that simply sealed it for me. It also helps the NOS badging get noticedDo Not Pass Go Ichi Maru
What’s more, it’s not just a show pony. It’s never been trailered anywhere, it gets autocrossed, and I’ve driven it to SoCal and back. The suspension evolved during the period of a year while i was heavily autocrossing it and making changes as I saw weaknesses. It’s very stiff but rides well, because all the geometries are changed. So it’s lowered but it really doesn’t ride like it mainly because it has a lot of travel and proper control arm angles and correct bump steer. This is my first old school car of any sort, and it’s the most reliable car I own, Ryan tells us. I don’t drive it as much as I’d like these days, even though Over 8,000 miles throughout two years. Life has gotten busy.
Ryan shies away from thinking about how much he’s invested in his 510. If he did, we bet he could be perilously near to top-end guidebook money for his 510, if not more, I’ve never added up the money…I’ve for ages been told to never accomplish that. Yet. Costs would likely have doubled had he subcontracted everything out.
Try it for yourself? Take your time? Make it restrained? Mods or no mods, we could just have tripped into the justification for restoring a Datsun 510. Have got a go. Make it happen. Suddenly, it seems perfectly rational. The speed parts are simply icing.