LeMons Good/Bad Idea of the Week: 280Z Engine in Datsun 510

Welcome to the very first installment of the 24 Hours of LeMons Excellent/Undesirable Concept of the Week series, where we’ll share good racing ideas that go terribly incorrect, poor racing ideas that go unaccountably correct, and the basic maelstrom of fabrication genius/madness that one encounters at every 24 Hrs of LeMons race. We’ll commence off with one of people ideas that appears fantastic on paper: drop a big six-cylinder engine into Datsun’s beloved-but-underpowered sporty 510!
We admired the Pancho Villa-style costumes of Group Dirty Sanchez Datsun in the 2011 LeMons Team Costumes roundup, but this photograph didn’t display what produced this vehicle really special.
Yes, the Dirty Sanchez Datsun 510 showed up to the Wherever The Elite Meet To Cheat race at Charlotte Motor Speedway with the L28 six-cylinder out of a wrecked Datsun 280Z. Whilst it is accurate that you can get plenty of power into a 510 by hot-rodding the factory L16 or swapping in a junkyard KA, the LeMons Supreme Court finds people remedies dull (not to mention suspect beneath our budgetary limitations). Rather, the Dirty Sanchez guys did what the BMW 2002 guys have been undertaking for years: take the six-cylinder engine out of the car’s larger sibling and make space for it under the hood. The Dirty Sanchez Datsun guys appear to have carried out a reasonably sanitary reduce-and-paste work with the firewall and radiator support, and the additional energy need to make up for the added weight above the front wheels, appropriate? Hey, just ask the guys at any Datsun 510 forum— they’ll inform you that this combo will dominate on a road program.
Of program, the 510′s organic rival is the BMW 2002, and we’ve had a couple of examples of every kind in the 24 Hours of LeMons. The kind of 510 or 2002 that you can get for LeMons charges tends to be on the tired side—OK, they’re all staggeringly horrible basket instances, typically plucked from the extremely jaws of the crusher—which signifies that the LeMons 510-versus-2002 battles are fought a lot more in the pits than on the track. At the Charlotte ’11 race, we built ourselves active fanning the flames of the rivalry amongst the Dirty Sanchez Datsun team and the Jynweythek Engineering BMW 2002tii group from the second we noticed them pitted side-by-side. The Datsun had more energy, but the BMW group had far more LeMons racing expertise (i.e., an total weekend spent spinning wrenches at the Capitol Offense race at Summit Point Raceway, with a grand total of zero laps finished). Who would pile up a lot more laps in this showdown?
Climate circumstances in Charlotte weren’t perfect for a couple of 40-year-old heaps, and both automobiles suffered early and usually from numerous mechanical ailments.
The 2002tii managed to get onto the track in the course of Saturday’s session, but then stuff broke and the downpours dampened the team’s enthusiasm for repairs. Meanwhile, the Dirty Sanchez guys continued to attempt to get their Datsun running at all.
Saturday evening, each teams forgot all about their woes during a single of the most legendary all-evening pit parties in LeMons background. Right here we see the Index of Effluency–winning 1975 Ford LTD Landau of Group Tunachuckers carrying 44 racers on a tour of the paddock. Your Spec Miata can’t do this!
On Sunday, the green flag waved and the Jynweythek Engineering automobile clattered onto the track . . . but exactly where was the 510? Wait, what’s that black automobile passing the MGB-GT and the LTD? It is the Dirty Sanchez Datsun 510! The 510 sounded fantastic, ran some good mid-pack lap occasions, and stayed on the track for most of the day. When it was all over, the Dirty Sanchez Datsun had 184 laps and the Jynweythek Engineering 2002 had 183 laps. You can not make this stuff up!