🛠 Anatomy of Speed: Classic Rally Datsun 1600 | TECHNICALLY SPEAKING

today on anatomy of speed my absolute favorite a datsun 1600 but not just any datsun this one belongs to jake he won the 2020 clubman rally championship in this beast of a 1600. [Music] well there we have it the best car of all time a 1968 datsun 1600 or few americans at [Music] p510 all right well it might not be the best car ever made but to me it is because a 1968 that's in 1600 was one of my very first cars i learned to drive in one of these i used to take all my friends and we'd pile into these and go to mcdonald's and hang out or go down to cranola beach in sydney and just drive up and down showing off our datsuns it was the first car that i did an engine conversion in i bought one of these that had a l18 1.8 liter on lpg so it actually had a gas tank in the back it was really weird that was one of the first conversions i did where i put a nissan ca18 turbocharged engine in it out of a nissan 180sx that was actually my start into haltech as well incredibly where i put that engine in the car and then didn't realize you needed a computer to control it i was about 16 or 17. and i actually went to haltech which were in taran point at the time near cronulla where i grew up um and said listen this is what i've done and then i ended up buying an e6k i think it was so very very early haltech engine management system wired it up got it tuned got it running and that was it so that was my first sort of venture into datsun's and sort of got me to where i am today now when i got my first datsun it was around 30 years old now these things are around 50 years old they're even more popular than they were then and they're being turned into race cars every single day now there's got to be something amazing about these cars and there is they were one of the very first cars in the world to have an independent rear suspension set up and just have a look at it don't you think that's one of the nicest looking cars just ever made [Music] now jake and his family run the datsun as a classic rally car and in classic rally cars you might remember bruce's mach 1 escort that we did a feature on not so long ago now that wasn't such a classic all the body was classic but remember that that had the honda k24 a3 engine in it not the datsun [Music] so this car we've we've owned for five years um i've bought into it with my dad so he he owned it and i've saved my money so i could now half own the car and we've we've gone through a fair few cars now where we're slowly getting better more technology getting a bit faster and we want to keep moving on with the times we bought it because it was such a good start it was or someone had had it on a spit for probably it looked like a couple of years everything had been seam welded the cage is nice in it and it was a really good starting point to where the car can be developed so the our goals were to make this car into a better rally cars bigger suspension bigger engine more safety so when we crash we we're safe um the bigger brakes that sort of stuff all the basics you need to turn it into a proper rally car the almighty l series it's powered plenty of rally cars in its day they're still an excellent engine single overhead cam they've got a timing chain down the front started as about well this started as a 1.6 liter in this car but there were the l18 1.8 liter the l20 and then l24 as well so this engine has been around for a long time there's been plenty of support plenty of development they do make great power so if you do have a 1600 if you have got a classic rally car don't rip this thing out and just throw it in the bin to put something new and high-tech in because the case often is the case that you don't need to these things make great power they make great talk and they sound amazing [Music] it's a gravel rally car it we go for the two-wheel drive um sort of aspect of it it is a classic so we can compete in that class as well but we we want to go for the two-wheel drive we want to be the fastest two-wheel drive car on the gravel so we wanted to compete in the two-wheel drive class because we can prove that we can beat the the more modern the more expensive cars in in an old datsun the reality of beating someone with a 43 year old motor when they've got their sr-20 turbos it makes it a very rewarding experience one of the reasons you would do an engine conversion on another particular car is maybe that you simply can't get parts for them anymore whereas this is not the case on this thing full gasket sets rods pistons crankshafts you name it water pumps you can get them so when you are in the middle of nowhere when you tell someone you've got an l series you still will be able to get parts for it and repair it and that's really really important when you're running a rally car this particular 1968 model 1600 would have started life with a pretty asthmatic 60-ish horsepower l16 1.6 liter engine this thing has got well now a 2.4 liter l series it's pushing nearly 160 horsepower at the wheels and with these trumpets on the side would sound a whole lot different the engine's been prepared by jake's dad michael and he just freshened this thing up over the christmas holidays so in here it's got a nissan navara 2.4 litre crankshaft it's got the l20 rods it's got some oversized pistons making it a 2.4 liter engine in the intake system for this engine we've got an efi hardware throttle body set up it's got 50 millimeter intake throttle for each individual cylinder it's got fuel injection obviously that's why we're here the air goes into the cylinder head then we've got a work style camshaft up the top that helps the engine breathe then the exhaust comes at the exhaust doesn't come out over that side the exhaust comes back out over this side so a non-cross-flow style cylinder head meaning the air goes in through four ports up the top then four ports just to the side come back out the exhaust and intake are both on the same side here it's got a tuned length exhaust manifold through the exhaust and out the back when michael converted the l series over to the electronic fuel injection there was a pretty big challenge being a carbureted engine to start with there was no engine position sensor or no cam reference signal so he's done something really clever here so he's pulled out the factory distributor and he sort of retrofitted a bunch of parts including a mitsubishi magna sort of distributor shaft made it up to the top with a nissan pulsar gtir crank angle sensor and he's done that because he's had access to all of those parts and they actually rally a gdir pulsar as well so having access to all of those bits and pieces it makes sense to use the parts that you've got so that you only need to carry one spare of each over the other side you can definitely tell they're a rally family they've done an individual coil kit but normally we see the nissan r35 coil or the yaris coil or an ign-1a coil or all of those different styles they've opted for the subaru coil rally guys they've got subaru parts so they've put four of the subaru coils they've still got a built-in ignition module they still make really good spark energy got a nice bracket so they sit over the top don't have any spark plug leads to fall off again being a rally car the most important thing is being reliable and having a coil set up like that is absolutely perfect one of the biggest dangers to any rally car is engine temperature these guys have fitted an absolutely huge aluminium radiator up the front here it's got heaps of volume it's got a recovery tank on the side these engines see some serious rpm for prolonged time so we need to make sure that we keep these engines cool because in a rally stage you don't know how much dirt is going to come through the front how much mud's going to come in if you block off half of this radiator with any luck this thing will still finish the stage and like the motorsport saying goes to finish first you must first finish uh that that is the main reason why i'm in rallying if it wasn't for my family being in rallying i definitely wouldn't be here it's it's such a family based sport it you you just can't do it without them first time i would have noticed and started sort of growing a personality and that sort of been 12 13 years old when dad's put a video camera on us we did a lot of footage filming that sort of thing and standing in the forest six seven hours watching rally cars drive past and being like i want to do this because this is a competitive rally car chassis strengthening is an absolute must you don't want to get halfway through a stage and start noticing that your window's falling out or the chassis is starting to get cracks through bits and pieces or it's starting to get weird rattles so this car has been fully seam welded that means that every single panel on this car that used to have just tiny little spot welds to hold everything together has now been fully stitched and seam welded it's got the strap brace across the top to hold these strut towers in place once you're coming over a crest or whether you're jumping it or whether you're hitting huge potholes or whether you're occasionally coming off the track and of course it's got the beautiful mca suspension with the remote reservoirs up here in order to help sort of manage that shock as that shock absorber is getting pressed so hard as you're smashing those potholes so having the mca's in it i'm sure makes the ride a whole lot nicer and helps the driver to get that sort of that control as wheels are starting to lift on and off the tarmac and lastly in the engine bay we've got our datsun 180b brake booster coming up to our nissan patrol 1-inch master cylinder up here for the brakes remembering the nissan datsun relationship so many of the parts are interchangeable and that's what makes the datsun so much fun to work with when you need a master cylinder that's got a bigger diameter because you're running bigger calipers just look for the nissans you'll find one it'll fit everything will just work the front of the master cylinder is pushing towards nissan z32 four piston calipers the rear of this is going to the rear of the car obviously to the rear brakes which happen to be mazda 4 piston calipers what's up with that we've done a fair few rallies in this car and in previous cars in the last 10 years i've been driving rally cars national capital rally in canberra is one of the biggest rounds a lot of publicity that sort of thing rally of orange bieger bieger would probably be the highlight some of the best roads in in new south wales um it it may be the best rally that we've done but it's also the only time i've ever put a car off into the into a farmer's property through a fence i was borrowing the car from dad it was he let me have the car for an event and we ended up two kilometers into the very first stage of the rally we decided there was a very fast right-hander over a crest and halfway through went to tarmac i had as much opposite lock on as i could give it and it's gripped up on the tarmac and we've shot off in through this farmer's property down through the fence and it uh it wasn't a good time i've looked at nick who was sitting next to me we had to figure out how we're going to get back on the road i've jumped out of the car which is a weird thing for a driver to do usually you send the navigator to do that sort of stuff open a farmer's property fence and get back on the road and keep going we were lucky that we didn't hit anything it was just probably a two meter drop into this property so i felt sorry for for nick who was sitting next to me he it was the first time i've i've asked him along because i needed a navigator for the event within a k and a half of the first stage and going through a fence it's never a good start for for such a big rally we didn't touch anything for the rest of the rally but he hasn't been back since well let's check what's in the boot we've got these super tight rubber straps here that hold the boot lid down and if they're not super tight you'll end up halfway through a stage and the bootleg will be flapping around in the boot here the factory fuel tank's been replaced with a tank that isn't too dissimilar to what factory is but this one is all aluminium it's baffled inside holds a little bit more volume even though this thing is so good on fuel the guys are telling me that they're only using about half a tank of fuel for a 50 or 60 kilometer stage or full event so that's amazing fuel economy so you can choose to fill it up less carry less weight through the stage if you need that competitive advantage on the left here we've got a fuel center that goes to a gauge at the front of the car on the right we've got this drop-in hat that then has got the baffled fuel pump assembly that sits in the bottom of the tank now that's got two walbro 255 fuel pumps in it you might be thinking why does it need two pumps well it's a rally car and these guys are prepared for anything so it's actually got some switches up the front there where the engine management system is turning the fuel pumps on and off when the car starts and when the car runs but if they have a fuel pressure problem if they have a flow problem they've got a crossover switch at the front so they can swap from one pump to the other pump then that'll help get out of trouble if they end up having a pump value problem once the pumps have pulled that premium 98 octane petrol style fuel up out of the tank it pushes it through the fuel lines which are normally a rubber tube or a bundy tube that are normally routed along the chassis rails under the car in this case being a rally car with the kind of environment under the car with the rocks that are flicking up with all of the stuff that they're hitting this is going through stainless tube that actually runs through the cabin of the car doesn't go underneath anymore so these guys have put that through the front then it makes its way up to the engine feeds the engine then we've got a return fuel line after the fuel pressure regulator that comes back and returns back into the tank over this side we've got our regular battery system so just keeping that battery in the boot of the car so it's not up the front cluttering up the engine bay we've got our spare wheel it's really important for a rally car and like we saw on bruce's escort as well these guys know where it's at so they've got the jack over here and then in this bucket on this side i'll crack this open they've got their battery-powered rattle gun so that if it does have a flat in the middle of a stage nice and easy pull the rattle gun out pull the spear out that rattle gun's got the right end on it so it'll push the jack up pull the wheel off put a new one on and you're away nice and quick and nice and easy on these wheels if they look super familiar it's because they probably are they're from an r30 skyline and we were just talking about this before but they're quite nice looking wheels they fit the era of the car but more importantly this is a factory wheel of a factory car that cops all this crazy abuse that this car goes through it's a real testament to how these wheels were made back in the day [Music] [Music] a testament to the reliability and the build strength of this datsun is that every race that it's ever been entered in it's finished and that's a big deal for a rally car where absolutely anything can go wrong but these guys are so prepared the car is so well built that it's finished every race amazing mated to the l series in the front we've got a datsun 240k five-speed gearbox it's had three of the gears upgraded with some hollinger gears so the guys get the right gear ratios to suit the torque that this engine's making power was transferred from the gearbox down to the r180 diff it's got a four eight gear ratio in it now interestingly that rear diff that's in this car came out of a datsun 720 ute in the 720 u that was actually used as the front diff talk about that for parts interchange in the datsuns i used to play with i used to have a huge amount of problems getting that power from the diff to the wheels and that's because these cars typically had a universal joint or a half shaft style system where they had a universal joint at both ends of the shaft the guys have come up with a really nice solution in this particular car they're using shortened cv joints out of an r30 skyline nice and simple nice and reliable again parts that you can find out of other donor cars i know we've talked about reliability so much in these rally cars and that's because michael and jake have got experience with these rally cars they know all of the things that can go wrong and that's why they've employed a haltech engine management system to be looking over the engine this car is fitted with the elite 550 series ecu it's got air temperature it's got coolant temperature it's got throttle position it's got oil pressure and it's got fuel pressure sensors as well as a wideband oxygen sensor all that information being fed into the engine management system to do tuning first of all to do data logging and in michael and jake's case to do the engine protection strategy so once all that information comes into the engine management system it's spat out via the can network to the iq3 street dash here so the guys can see all of the information there we've got warning lights that come up we've got our shift lights that come up and we can see straight away if something goes wrong but if i was driving 150 horsepower of datsun 1600 over the dirt through the bush round a blind corner and over a crest i promise you i wouldn't be looking at the dash so to keep this engine living we've got an engine protection strategy that's going to rev limit the engine and reduce power if something critical happens the driver's then got time to have a look down look at the dash have a look at the warning lights figure out what's going on and decide whether they're going to push on or whether they're going to pull over and save the engine and like i said before these guys have prepared this car so well they've never had to make that choice remembering that a car like this doesn't have side intrusion it doesn't have any airbags we need to make this thing as safe as possible for the driver and for the navigator or the co-pilot that's why it's got a weld in six point roll cage it's got these beautiful sparco winged seats and it's got these five point harnesses that are all put into the seat mounts and go back to the cage at the back there up on the switch panels here this is another rally style thing so remembering that the engine management system is turning the fan on and off the engine management system is turning the fuel pump on and off but the rally guys want to have these override switches because if they're halfway through an event they're pulled over on the side and they're waiting for another car to blast past in the dirt they just want to have their switches to be able to flick things on and off to get an idea whether they've had a wiring failure or a particular component failure so flicking things on and off nice and easy within hands reach nice and simple way to do it down here we've got a battery cut off switch we've got the ignition isolation switch our engine start button we've got a mechanical oil gauge in the middle here i know that we've got our dash here we've got all our warnings we've got all the stuff there so nothing can possibly go wrong but we've also got a mechanical gauge just so we can see right there both the driver and the navigator can see the oil pressure at all times and report back to each other on what they've noticed the gauge on the right here is just a simple battery voltage display so that might come in handy if we flick off a belt or if something somehow comes up through one of the rock cards and takes off the belt off the alternator over the left here we've got the terratrip system we've spoken about this before it's a really clever thing that brings in our road speed knows where we are and then that'll give us the distance to each corner so that the navigator can call out to the driver exactly where things are coming up where corners are where jumps are all that sort of stuff there's a cb just sitting here as well hopefully we don't need to use this but in the case of emergency we can call race control or we can call other cars to let them know there might be something on the road or we're broken down or there might be a kangaroo crossing something like that the last part up here in the car is the intercom between helmets so the guys will plug each of their helmets in so they can talk to each other and it's nice and clear because inside this thing remember there's no noise insulation there's no padding there's no nothing in here so it'll be crazy loud when you're going over the rocks and one of the things that i do love the roof fence that's an air conditioning so if you want to get into inter rallying joining your local car club there's there's plenty around sydney anywhere anywhere local you can look up to join a car club coming along to things like rally school where if you're a licensed driver you can jump in the driver's seat and have a go and we'll instruct you to drive drive the driver rally cars if that's what you want to do and you can go from there so if you wanted to get into competitive rallying it's it's pretty much as simple as buying whatever platform you want to buy suspension brakes safety gear and you're pretty much ready to go and you can be out in the forest driving before i got my license i started off in a little front wheel drive and 14 pulsar that we put a roll cage in and then it developed from there we we put the suspension in it we didn't spend a lot of money it was a thousand dollar car and we were able to get out in the forest and and drive which is what we wanted to do if you get to that point where you want to step up to to start competing at the front end it's more developing as a driver the the car maintenance once you start pushing harder you everything's getting pushed harder the engine everything and it's the the dedication you need to want to work in the shed every weekend to get the car ready to then go out and drive it through the bush and maybe drive for five kilometers and something breaks at the end of the day really it's the desire to want to win to compete the love for motorsport and gravel rallying that you need to have to to not turn it into a chore you don't want to be fixing the car and not want to do it because you just won't do it you'll sit there in the shed with a broken car and you won't be happy well now you can sort of get the idea that after we've gone through bruce's rally car and had a look after we've now gone through michael and jake's datsun and had a bit of a look you can tell that there's a bit of a different mindset here and yeah it doesn't have shiny paint yeah it doesn't have huge wheels it doesn't have drag slicks but it's a completely different form of motorsport we've got circuit racing we've got drag racing we've got street cars we've got stereo sound off cars we've got cars that have got beautiful interiors rally cars are a completely different kettle of fish but just because they don't have all of that stuff they don't have thousand horsepower engines they've got modest engines that the driver needs to use in order to finish their events there's a huge skill in driving one of these cars there's a huge skill in navigating for one of these crazy drivers and there's a huge amount of preparation that goes into these but what's absolutely amazing about it everyone that i run into in the rally scene it's all a big family environment it's often a father-son team or a full family that are in there preparing the car getting it ready to get to these events and then what's better than that the whole family is at the events they're all camping there they make it their monthly or their yearly holiday so that everyone can go and be together and work on the cars while they're at the events as you can probably tell that that's in 1600 it is my favorite car of all time and i'm sure that when you speak to car enthusiasts all around the world everyone's got a story about a datsun 1600 their dad had one their cousin had one somebody had one everyone remembers the shape i remember driving around in mine and having you know people a lot older than me you know they give you the thumbs up at a set of lights or they'd want to see you or you know they see you in a car park and want to talk to you about the time that they had a datsun and the way that they remembered their family and their kids in their datsuns so this is bringing up you know a whole bunch of great stuff for me i absolutely love the car you never know this might inspire me to start hunting around and looking for another datsun 1600. well that's it for this episode of anatomy of speed we've had a look at a couple of rally cars now we've had a look at a couple of drag cars why don't you let us know in the comments what style of cars or style of racing you want us to check out next as always thanks so much for watching my name's scott and i'll catch you next [Music] time [Music] you

Channel: Haltech

Views: 45,948

Keywords: haltech, ecu, engine management, tuning fork, technically speaking, anatomy of speed, rally racing, classic rally, historic rally, datsun 1600, datsun 510, rally cars, datsun 1600 engine, datsun 1600 sss rally car, datsun l series engine, datsun l series, datsun 1600 rally car, datsun 510 rally car, nsw rally championship, datsun 510 racing, datsun 1600 rally, datsun 1600 build, datsun 1600 sr20det, datsun 1600 fairlady, datsun 1600 sss, rally nsw, haltech elite 550

Id: nLPVZZ05-LA

Length: 26min 59sec (1619 seconds)

Published: Fri May 21 2021