Excuse some stolen wording from other forums; can't be stuffed writing the whole thing out again.

I was looking for an MS55 Crown wagon for ages and couldn't find anything. All this stuff is really rare in Australia; previous generations have thrown cars out left, right & centre because they aren't fitted with V8s. You ask any wrecker, part distributor etc about any bits for any of these vehicles and they look at you like you're retarded or laugh in your face. The older generation don't seem to understand that they took so many liberties with what people like me would go to such great lengths to get their hands on. We just get left with the exceptions that didn't get penetrated by shotgun pellets or sent to the wreckers because they had blown head gaskets.

I had some criteria that needed to be fulfilled:
Wagon
Bench seat in the front
Inline six
Manual
1960-1980
Aged paint
Pref Japanese & filled with quirky shit

Well I got bloody lucky!

Some time in Feb my mate found something for sale that was a bit out of the ordinary. I'd never even seen one before (and I haven't seen another one since!!!). $950AU later I had some mad car not many people really 'get' the attraction to, don't know what they're missing out on lol

It's a 1973 Datsun H230 Wagon. In Australia this one was called a 260C but there are a myriad of names for it internationally, for all intents and purposes, it's a Cedric - Nissan's answer to the Crown (but Nissan also have a more upmarket version called the Gloria which is pillarless, although that is not available as a wagon). We never got Glorias in Australia unfortunately, but we got Cedric sedans, pillarless coupes and wagons. Not that many people would know because you never see them!




This one is an L26 backed by a 3spd manual on the column with a hydraulic clutch and a Banjo-style live axle with big drums, rear end suspended by leaves with canted shocks, no swaybar. Front end is double wishbone with a 23mm swaybar, steering box with linkages, twin piston calipers on solid discs. Fortunately it's a twin circuit braking system too.

Bench seat front, bench seat rear, two person dickie seat in the back that faces the opposite way.

It's got all kinds of important factory features like a hidden map light in the dash, cooling vents in the front footwells like you get on an 40-series Landcruiser, only these ones are hidden from the outside (a bit more subtle than the steel doors on the Cruisers). It's got a light that sits on the underside of the bonnet so if you break down at night, the whole engine bay is illuminated well. It has an electric window above the rear left quarter that can be activated by the key barrel in the guard or a switch on the dash. It's got storage space under the rear seat, and it all folds flat with hard rubber on the back of everything so it's good for chucking diffs and gearboxes in the back (which will be a common activity in this car). Four windscreen washing jets, intermittent wipers, two piece tailshaft, five stud wheels (5x114.3), mechanically sprung tailgate and bonnet, etc. The spare wheel is stored up under the arse and it has a mechanism for lowering it gracefully, it has a nice original toolkit which has a few things in it including 'Datsun' folding wheel chocks and a speed-wrench with rotating grips so you don't rub your skin as you lower the spare wheel or jack the car up using the scissor jack that is stored under the bonnet which has its own reduction gearbox incorporated into it! The Japs were onto it!





All of those shots were taken the day I bought the car.

All folded down, before I started cleaning shit. Still had heaps of bits of screen protectory stuff from when it was new! Unscrewed all the trims one by one and cleaned them up since


Pulled the sill trim off to fix up the rust




Other side too:


Little bit around the screen:


Had LOTS of fun finding a replacement lense! I managed to find what I guess is the only one parts car wagon in Australia, never saw the car in the flesh though.




It was a country car its whole life, had lots of cleaning to do. Anyway it came up mint - the dust film must have protected the paint hahaha


Front end needed some love


Painted in all the arches:


Couldn't buy balljoints or anything, nobody makes them haha. I cleaned all the joints out, put new boots on them and gave them fresh grease. Nothing seemed excessively worn so I'm not too concerned. Put new shocks in and adjusted the springs a bit while I was there. The rotors copped a skim too.





Drums machined and painted:


I just spent ages copying as pasting little bits of image URLs into the format because this forum doesn't allow proper manly sized images, so if a few links are broken, sorry.

Very noice!
It's the first wagon I've seen.

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Cheers mate, yeah I still haven't seen another one but I know of one being wrecked in another part of the country (hence finding the tail light) and I've seen a photo of another one that has Falcon wheels and Australian plates on it. There's an orange wagon on oldschool.co.nz which is pretty cool too!

Tailshaft centre bearing/mount was pretty second hand. Couldn't get a new one so got a Bluebird one and made it fit by machining up an alloy 'snout' kinda splash guard with an interference fit on what was already there, and a steel washer to space it off. Diameters were all correct but the guards were different, offset was wrong etc.


Obligatory shot of me looking like a goose


Oh yeah and got given some 14x7 0 offset Japan-made chromed steelies, fitted them with some cheap 195/70s. Fill the guards spot on. Gonna sack it soon... haven't done it yet because I had to get it roadworthied etc. That's all out of the way now though


And I spent like 50 hours pulling bits apart, cleaning them and putting them back on. There was so much of that plastic sticker stuff like a screen protector on a phone that had never been removed. And poxy carpet installation etc all sorted. Replaced seals here and there, gave some locks a good clean out and dose of lube etc.

Just for good measure... totally pimping dash


About then, I got it on the road and loaded it up with some mates for some cruising

Good idea of how good it should look when I drop it properly.

Custom plates:



Also pulled the rear bar off, gave it some tap-tap back into better shape, painted the back of it, the towbar etc, organized a bit of other stuff around there too and put it back together. Much better.


Pulled the dash apart, repainted some trims, put white LED backlights in, got a few other problems sorted and put white LED dome lights in the front and the rear of the interior.

Haven't got any photos of that back together (phone camera doesn't do much justice) but it looks trick.

Plans in the near future involve lowering it more, finding a H230 front bumper (has an ugly 330 one on it at the moment). Electronic ignition, a dedicated LPG system and a working stereo (never had a car with a stereo before so I might put a decent one in this). Some stickers, maybe a chin spoiler? a sportier exhaust and perhaps a small turbo. Then I might look into a taller diff ratio with rear discs etc but that is all a long way off. Took a few months just to get it registered

That is so damn cool!
There's a 260C sedan for sale.in country NSW that I was sweet on but I settled on a Zed.

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MINE: 1977 Datsun 260Z 2+2 daily driver (read: rolling project)
HERS: 1975 Mitsubishi Galant A112H Hardtop coupe with 4G63 DOHC conversion now complete! Check out the build here!
THE OLD MAN'S Datsun 2000 Sports (SR311)

cool wagon! looks good. Why put it on lpg?

Cheers

Ummm mrflibbles, mainly because LPG is the fucking bomb...

It'll be neat so the tank is hidden under the dickie seat area, use the standard petrol gauge as an LPG gauge, filler in behind the petrol flap. And there are some nice alloy tanks being made that are lightweight and compact so I should be able to get a decent volume one in there. Should be mint

I've got my Holden 6 powered Torana on straight gas and I wouldn't want it any other way, goes way harder than it ever did on petrol, much better for the environment, extended range with 85L of LPG when it's full (standard is 55L of petrol), only giveaways are the tongue in cheek 'BBQ-202' numberplate, little red badges on the number plates and the fact that the painted and polished diff and swaybar are exposed because there's no petrol tank there. Costs me less than $10/100km, which is fairly important when you work interstate too!

Really nice wagon, i love 230s since i had a 230 GX hardtop...

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1973 Datsun 260C Hardtop
1980 Datsun 280ZX 2+2
1982 Datsun Bluebird 1,8SSS, Megasquirted.

i havent had any luck with lpg set ups in my cars, and i hate it when they mess up a perfectly good car to put the set up in!
Sounds like you have it sussed though and wont be messing up any body panels with it, so go for it!

what an incredibly cool wagon
I love it!

and lpg is good stuff! cheap as hell too!

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Japanseklassiekers!

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

Bit overdue for an update I guess. Been driving this car daily for the last year, mechanically it is pretty much unchanged.

Got some old faded 14x6.5" Starsharks and built them into 15x7.75" & 15x8.5" freshly restored ones with stretched tyres, dropped it on its guts, redid a fair bit of interior stuff, installed a nice stereo (gracefully) and heaps of luxury coupe options and that were never available here on the wagon.

Album here with a lot of the photos of the work. The images are all too big for the restrictions on this forum so it'd be a hassle to post them all across individually.
http://smg.photobucket.com/albums/v505/ ... un%20260C/

To summarize, I snapped a picture of it today comparing it to the day I bought it. Lighting is fairly different but I still think it's nice to see it in one hit.

*Like.
Looks really cool with the Star Sharks and fender mirrors.

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Omg is that the secret society?!

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Love the before & after comparison, those star sharks look absolutely amazing as far as color contrast and sizing.

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Congratulations Heath, the SW is looking great!!

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1973 Datsun 260C Hardtop
1980 Datsun 280ZX 2+2
1982 Datsun Bluebird 1,8SSS, Megasquirted.

WOW !
this wagon is so damn cool !!

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* '74 Toyota Kujira Crown Wagon * '80 Toyota Crown Sedan * '90 Toyota Corolla GTi * '74 Mazda 929 Wagon *