1969 S13 SR20DET Project

[SR311DET]

Background

My name is Eric Straw, I am 25 years old and I live in Corvallis, Oregon where I am a student at Oregon State University. I’m a Datsun 510 guy that has pretty much fallen in love with Roadsters. My background is I bought my first 510 when I was 15 for 100 dollars and now have owned 6 of them.

My love affair with Roadsters started with me asking Michael Spreadbury at Spriso Motorsports for some help on my 510 that I was working on and he was nice enough to consult me and sorting out the many issues I was having on wiring and many other small things.

Then it snowballed from there. I have free time and love to work on cars therefore I started helping him on projects to repay his time that he helped me. We quickly found out that we work well together and can help each other out in our goals to build and restore Datsuns.

To skip forward we agreed that if I helped him build Bob (a SR20DE powered 1969 Datsun Roadster) he would help me build another 510 that was SR-powered which would be very creative to say the least. So I started sourcing parts for a 510 and found a great deal of 510 stuff online and calling all of my friends that might have some clean parts.

I found a shell that would work perfect. We spent about 8 months building Bob as I was collecting parts for the 510 project. Working with Michael, I was learning a lot throughout the whole process of the build. We were working exceptionally well together and becoming very creative at bouncing ideas of each other.

I was very surprised at all the differences in a Roadster from a 510 as everything is nut and bolted and very busy cars—compared to a roadster, 510’s are easy.

When Bob was completed, Michael offered to let me take it to the Oregon coast as it was May and Kara, my girlfriend had earned some quality time. So we cruised up Hwy 101 and were even lucky enough to spot some whales along the shore. After returning from the most amazing drive I have had in the last 2 years I sat Michael down and handed him the keys and said I want one.

At that moment, I decided that I would sell my complete 510 project and start over with a roadster. He just laughed. That very day I starting selling my stash of 510 parts and the search started for a high windshield roadster. I need high windshield as I’m 6’ 3� tall and really don’t like bugs on my forehead.



VG33E powered

[SR311DET]

Yota:

It took all summer and I finally found the donor. I did not want to “over-buy� as we did not care about the car’s mechanicals, I only wanted a car with a sound body. Actually it turns out I bought two cars that summer to finally find the car that fit my needs. First I bought a 1970 from Portland that someone thought they could fix a roadster with putting an engine swap into the car.



They put a Toyota 22r engine with a 5 speed that was very rough—but it was very cheap, and for what we wanted to start with, it seemed that it would work fine—that was until we started to see just what they previous owner had done! The lesson from this car was don’t buy a roadster in the dark from a crack-head—no matter how cheap it is!



After dragging it home, we discovered that “Yota� the Toyota powered roadster was not quite a ‘sweet’ as we though it was. The transmission mount turned out to be a piece of 1� x 24�x 1/8� strap that was just set on the frame. It turned out that they cut the entire X member out and the frame was junk. Then we started looking at the body and VIN numbers that were on the car. The B pillar ID tag had a different VIN number then the rest of the car.



It turned out that the car had been cut in two right down the center and was welded back together with a different back half. At this point I had decided that it might be time to look for another car.

[ppeters914]

It turned out that the car had been cut in two right down the center and was welded back together with a different back half. At this point I had decided that it might be time to look for another car.

D-uh, ya think?

Love the custom motor mounts.

I hope you're telling all the DatsunsNW folks you're moving from a dime to a roadster, especially Bruce.

Ummmm, you do know that one roadster is never enough, right? Welcome to the Looney Bin.

[SR311DET]

Finally a Winner

I spent a great deal of time searching and found a 1969 SRL311 up in Beaverton, OR for sale. It was a little rough but seemed to be all there. So I bought the car and then sold the U20 and 5-speed engine and transmission and misc. other parts to help pay for it. The car was disassembled completely as I need to start to prep the frame for modifications.

[ppeters914]

Nice. Color me extremely jealous.

Now, you're in shorts and it's green outside, so all this was happening waaaaaay before the white stuff hit. What's been the actual time line?

[SR311DET]

I have been working on this project for about a year. The body repair was done in late summer this year. I'm still working on the documenting of the rest of the projects and what is currently being done.

Thanks Eric

[SR311DET]

Lotus Seats



I also made small floor pans to lower the seat into the floor as I’m tall and I hate to look tall in the car. By doing this I have made a large person fit in a little car.

Before: Thanks for the big thumbs up Adian.



After:







The seats that I am using are 2005 Lotus Elise seats after a great idea from Diamond Dave. These are amazing seats as they only weigh 14 lbs a piece and look great in their factory red leather. The color is very close to the original red and will work great.

[readymix]

HOLY SMART IDEA! I love stuff like this. That indent for the seat bottom is a great idea. Every seat I'd looked at was slightly taller than I had hoped, but this might fix that issue. I have a set of Sparco Evo2+ seats sitting in my basement that with a little bit of massaging should fit fine, but if necessary, I may use your little trick to make them fit a little better. Nice work man!

[spl310]

Have you checked to see if the drop pans clear the frame rails?

[SR311DET]

Sid,

Great question, The depth in the new floor pan was determined by the body to frame clearance. It looks to be more then it really is.

Thanks Eric

[windy311]

Nice work there Eric i love seeing bare metal.and your working with one of the best.
Rob

[ppeters914]

Mad skills indeed. Very nice.

[Alvin]

more pics please!
great work Eric, didn't know you had a 510!
the lotus seats are incredible. bnr is the shiznit

[SR311DET]

I was working on small projects as I was heavily involved with school, girlfriend and helping on the s15 sr20det in the garage at this point. I was also helping with the sr20de Micheal’s personal car when we had time. As time worked on It seemed that I really was not getting a lot progress done on my personal project so I decided to ask a Datsun owner Mike Broteen that lived down the street if I could barrow some shop space for a week, as he had a good welder in the shop and not a lot going on that week. I spent about 5 days 10hrs a day, doing all the modifications to the frame over my Christmas break. I then talked to the local powder coater to trade some of my time to pay for coating all my frame and suspension pieces. This was huge landmark for this project. A special thanks to Mike Broteen and Tim Luke.

I was able to source a lot of parts threw Nissan as I had a friend that worked in the parts Dept. and when he had time he would run numbers. I bought all new front suspension and steering parts. The car is using all stock suspension other then a sway bar and springs for body roll. At the end of my Christmas break I was able to assembly the front suspension and make a rolling chassis. I decided to do the z32 four piston calipers with the Colman race rotors for braking as I’m very impressed with the results and simplicity of the kit.

This kit is offered through Micheal and is the norm for these modified cars. They work amazing.

The next venture that I started was my engine detail and plumbing. The source engine was an s13 sr20det that was rebuilt (thanks to Ralph Kenyan) and I’m using a bottom mount log manifold from JGS. I bought a new GT2554r turbo as my horsepower goal is just over stock at about 215 hp. All of the pluming came from James and his old s13 sr20det powered roadster as he decided to use an s15 and top mount setup. The transmission is rebuilt and is a standard 5 speed with a lightened flywheel. I want to say thank you very much to James Standridge.

[SR311DET]

The largest and most difficult task of this process turned out to be the metal work on the body as I decided to have the body acid dipped. A week at the dippers to get all the old paint, undercoating and bondo off it turns out that I have my work cut out. The floors were bad and had those from the 1970 car that was processed as well as the 2/3s of the trunk floor was replaced as well as sections of the front and rear rockers, front and rear quarter panels and battery frame rail as well as many small rust holes. I had some front end damage to replace as the grill support was not usable and remade using some square tubing. The front corner where the body mount attaches was replaced from a donor car. When it came time to all this work I spent about four weeks close to every night after my regular job at Micheal’s sorting out the rust repair and all the modification that I proceeded to do to the body.












A special thanks to Micheal, Kari, Olivia, and Adian for putting up with me and my noise and smell.

The modifications that were done to the body were brake reinforcement, early dash conversion with functioning defrost and early column, battery box, filling all the holes that are not used (there are a lot), all of the fire wall holes, seat brackets for a fixed back seat.