For those of you who didn't catch my thread in the introduction, My name is Eric and I've recently purchased a '72 GC10 Skyline 2000GT. I look forward to sharing my progress, trials, and errors with the JNC members. Welcome to my build thread.

I purchased my '72 GC10 Skyline 2000GT mid April of 2012. The car was located roughly 400 miles from home so I drove up and towed it home.
Here's the first picture I took of the car once I had become the owner. All loaded up and ready for 400 miles... at 55mph...
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(taken from my intro thread)
Here's what she looked like when I first took her home. After the basic run through, oil change, coolant change, spark plugs, cap and rotor, valve adjustment, carb rebuild, and hours of tinkering with the adjustments shes running pretty well. I've still got a flat spot through the mid range but I'm banking on the fact that the jets are all out of whack. Once the correct jets are installed it should sort itself out.
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(also taken from my intro thread)
The orange spokes were interesting, after closer inspection they were spray painted. These are SSR MkII wheels, 3 piece with a healthy width and offset.. Not cheap in the least so a backyard spray job doesn't really do them justice. However, since they've already been sprayed I figure they can't get any worse. The orange and silver is not exactly my cup of tea so I removed the wheels, masked the tires and gave them a fresh coat of primer followed by flat. I also replaced the hardware with class 8.8 Gold fasteners. IMO they turned out quite well. This will hold me over until I can decide which route to go with these wheels. Also while I had the wheels off, I took some time to paint the front calipers.
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So now we come to my first major renovation. As I scoured the local junkyards for anything I could use I came across a 83 Maxima with a fresh L24E engine just waiting to be plucked. The Maxima was super clean, some moderate damage to the right front but repairable IMO. Anyhow, I checked the cluster, 6 digit odometer reading 052935.
The next day I returned to the junkyard with a bag of tools and within a couple hours, the L24E was dangling from the crane.
That night I pulled the L20 from the skyline and began the teardown.
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L20 pictured on the crane and then again on the stand. All I needed from the L20 was the oil pan and pickup tube.
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Pictured now is the L24E fresh from the junkyard on the engine stand. I noticed somebody had taken the spark plugs from the L24 between the time I found it and went back to pull it. I tried to turn the engine over by hand and felt an obstruction. I fished around through the spark plug holes with a magnet and pulled a small screw from #3 cyl. I then again tried to turn it by hand and the obstruction was still there. From here I just removed the head. Here is what I found in #6 cyl
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After seeing that I was relieved it wasn't anything serious. Its sad how somebody would try and sabotage a perfectly good engine like that.
Next stop, complete disassembly.
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I sent the head and block to my local machine shop. Had the head checked out and a valve job performed. The block was also checked out. I had them remove all of the freeze plugs and remove the rust from within the cooling jacket. I also took everything else to work and hot tanked the internal components to remove any debris and carbon from the pistons. Here is the L24 back from the machine shop after I had installed the crank. I came close to painting the block the original blue color it was but decided to go with a more neutral iron color.
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Also while the engine is out I decided the wheels really needed some professional help. I removed the tires which were 11 years old and made an attempt to chemically strip the rims. Unfortunately, like I stated above needs professional help.
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Currently the wheels are out being stripped. After the strip the barrels will get polished, spokes powder coated silver, and then each rim completely powder coated clear. The picture I sent with the wheels in which I'd like them to return as was this,
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More to come.

Nice car, very nice wheels and nice engine upgrade!

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Japanseklassiekers!

1970 C30 Laurel
1972 240Z
1973 610 Wagon
1977 260Z
1995 Micra
1999 200SX

Cooool. Nice job on the motor so far...shame Beavis and Butthead tried to ruin it for everyone with that split pin *shakes head*

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Looks good! keep it coming !

do you know what the specs of the wheels are ?

How is the rust situation throughout the car ?

I need to measure the wheels to get the specs, I'll do that first thing when they return. As for the rust, the car has its share but I'd say its light to moderate. A couple places need some help but overall its in good shape. My 71 510 was a California car and it was much worse. The worst spot is in the frame up at the front right tension rod mount. It appears to have rusted completely through and at one point a repair was made by welding on a support plate. I'll be taking care of that this weekend hopefully. Perfect time while the engine is out. I'll be sure to document this step.

Nice GC10! Was this the one that was up on craigslist in NorCal that eventually went up on eBay?

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87' HR31 Skyline GTS Turbo
84' DR30 Skyline RS-X Turbo
85' Toyota Apex Trueno Liftback
65' Toyota Corona (Toyoglide)
85' Mazda RX-7 S

Good work Eric!

Do you have an eta when it'll be up & running again?

It would be cool if we could caravan up to NorCal at the end of the month!

I dig how you did up the MkII's... Nice touch with the new hardware

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1970 Nissan Skyline GT + 1973 Datsun 240Z + 1974 VW Karmann Ghia + 1998 Toyota LandCruiser + 2006 MINI Cooper S

Mason, this is the one your thinking of.

Eric, I hope it will be back on its wheels within two weeks. The engine is almost back together and if all goes well it'll be running by then also. I'm debating wether or not to grab up some DCOE 40's to take the place of my Solex 40phh's...

First time popping into this thread and was scared that you spray painted the whole wheel black and used gold hardware... I thought it looked horrible, but I kept scrolling and you redeemed yourself. The polished and silver will look amazing. I currently have SSR MKIIs (as well as MKIIIs) on my car and am a fan.

Did you ever figure out what the specs were? My set are 15x7 +12s...

Cant wait to see more of this. Congrats on the vehicle purchase.

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--Tristin
1969 Datsun 510 4dr.

Here's some pictures of the rust damage, as you can see a repair attempt had been made in the past.
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First thing to do is to remove only what needs to be removed so I can salvage as much of the structural material as possible.
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And now using 2"x1/8" steel I rebuilt the vital structural support areas. Forgive my spotty welding. It's the best I can do with my flux hobby mig.
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For the inner fender well there were many spots where the rust had eaten through the sheet metal so I decided to grind out the rust and add a completely new piece of 16 gauge sheet.
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Before this piece was added I coated the inner frame rail and any bare metal which was to be covered with rust inhibiting primer. Once the last piece is welded in place I plan to drill a drain hole at the lowest point and use it to spray in cavity wax to protect the inside of the repaired area. For now, I ran out of flux wire so I called it a day. I'll have more and the finished product later this week.

Hey Eric

How's it coming?
Car back together?
Any issues?

Curious!...

-e

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1970 Nissan Skyline GT + 1973 Datsun 240Z + 1974 VW Karmann Ghia + 1998 Toyota LandCruiser + 2006 MINI Cooper S

I'm not usually a fan of 4drs, but i like this thread a lot, and 4 drs are growing on me.

just curious if you bought that 24 just because its what you could find or were you specifically looking for a 24? i know most (myself included) want a 28 for thier build (i have delusions of grandeur, and keep saying im building an L31 as soon as i get back to the US..)

anyway, do you have any updates? do you have comparisons of that oil pickup? i kow that the GC10 has the front sump pan, and most others are rear sump, you said all you had to do was recycle the pickup and the pan? thats good to know, ive been wondering how that would work out when i build my bigger engine.

AFAIK, when relocating the pickup to front-sump, you also need to drill a hole into the bottom of the block for the pickup, and block off the old hole.


Also the dipstick tube needs to be moved from the rear-position to a new position at the front (again, gotta drill out the new hole and plug the old one.)

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You guys know if rear pick up (z) dipstick and front pick up (skyline) dipstick are identical?

I'm not convinced my dipstick goes all the way into the oil pan...
Wonder if I have the right one?

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1970 Nissan Skyline GT + 1973 Datsun 240Z + 1974 VW Karmann Ghia + 1998 Toyota LandCruiser + 2006 MINI Cooper S

I wonder the same thing, too. In my case, filling up the sump with the regulation 4.7L of oil has the oil level about a half inch higher than the full-mark on the 'stick, so I'd say the dipstick isn't the same.

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love the build

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GARAGE AUTOHERO

1970 datsun 510 wagon (sold)
1971 datsun 510 4dr project
1969 datsun 2dr (sold)
2004 gsxr 750
2013 scion frs daily
2003 toyota corolla type s daily

some of your pictures are no longer working

i would love to see the final product of your frame rails!!! i just blew one of mine out and have to rebuild them bot very soon.

Hey guys sorry I was away on vacation for the last couple weeks. Before I left I was able to get some decent work done on the car and have much to show.
To answer your question Wookie, initially I went with the L24E (less the "E"lectronic injection) for the swap simplicity. The L24E block and head is as far as I've found nearly identical to that of the L20. There are obvious differences like bore, combustion chamber size/shape, oil pan and oil pickup. Then a unexpected difference I found was the rod journal size. Not your typical L24 rod bearings fit (which every online retailer of these bearings should be aware of by now! ) 3 weeks later... The other reasons were engine availability (personally found and picked this one from the junkyard) and the smaller bore and shorter stroke will allow a bit higher rpm range than that of the L28's.
Sure, I won't have the power of an L28 but I could always buy a long block and take that step if I need to.

As for the Q about oil pickup and dip stick, The L24E block I'm using (block code W24) has the front sump pickup and front dip stick tube already correctly oriented. The difference I had was the L24E pan had the well set back a few inches from the front of the engine, which required the pickup tube to extend from the front pickup port back beneath cyl 2&3 to reach the well of the L24E pan. The L20 pan has the well directly beneath cyl 1&2 which allows the L20 pickup tube to drop straight into the well of the pan.
EX: L24E pickup on the left.


As for the above pictures not working I accidentally replaced them on my photo hosting account and I'm unable to edit the above post to fix them
In the mean time, Here's a few pictures of what I've been working on since my last update,

A few pieces bead blasted and ready for installation


The wiper motor I rebuilt, The reduction starter all cleaned up, the crank pulley painted, and water pump pulley polished up


The old ignition system vs the new ignition system


Throttle linkage, bracket, and hood latch cleaned up and lightly polished


Cleaned up the wiring and used a brass brush to brighten the relays

If you haven't already buttoned it up again Could you measure the dimensions of the L20 pickup?

(that's for the L28 guys who might have to modify/make one)

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I'm no engineer otherwise I'd blueprint this pickup for you guys

Here's what I have, hopefully it depicts enough information for those who need to modify their pickup. (L20 pickup on L24/W24 block)