Breakages - "Have we got a ..."

Off roading can be like riding on the bumper cars; sometimes you'll drive around and have no problems, sometimes you'll have a car that breaks down and sometimes you'll get hit by someone else...

A good supply of spare panels and doors, or access to a panel beater, is a must. Not only does body filler weigh the car down, it's not worth the effort.

Pictured is our dented boot; the dirt on the left hand side is because it was only hanging on by one hinge (the other had been snapped off).

This is what remains of one of the half-shafts. This is just one of the many ways the drive-train components can let loose. They also shear the rear swing-arm axles (at the end of the spline) and shear the bolts on the differential flange.

Note that it is recommended that you don't put a left half-shaft in the right hand side (or CV for that matter). They torque up in one direction and don't take kindly to being untorqued, as it were (I'm sure I've mentioned this somewhere else...)

A series of half-shaft failures resulted in the conversion to an LSD/CV rear-end on the Datsun. The shafts and flanges on the CVs are larger than those on the half-shafts, so something else should be the weak point now...

This is what remains of the swing arm after the entire wheel/rim/brake/drive-shaft assembly decided it didn't want to stay on the car. We think this may have been caused by having slightly loose wheel nuts, and all the extra vibration was just too much for the standard metal. Oops!

As the swing arm was held up by the rear roll-bar, the car was still drivable. Unfortunately because the single hydraulic brake circuit and cable hand brake had been ripped off, there was no way to stop.

This breakage resulted in welding plates onto the tops of the replacement arms and the conversion to a disc rear-end. I'm pretty sure it also resulted in the forced fitment of dual cylinder brake masters in some other cars after the CAMS regs were changed.

Hmmm. Interesting story behind this one. This is the type of brass-button clutch that we ran in our Datsun drive-train. It tends to be very "grabby" so it's really only useful for racing applications. We had run this particular clutch for just under two years (which is probably too long) when one of the springs popped out. It managed to jam itself between the fingers and the clutch with the strange result of engaging the clutch when the pedal was depressed to the floor.

We've since replaced the clutch and had a standard pressure plate rebuilt to 1 tonne specs. Not only does it make the car more drivable, but it's also cheaper.

Damned if we didn't manage to bend/break all our steering linkages on the last long course! The problem with the 1600 steering setup is that the small linkages are located behind the pivot points of the front wheels. The end result of this is a compressive force being applied to the linkages every time either wheel hits a bump/rut. Hit too many and the front wheels start to toe out quite badly. If you keep on driving, steering becomes exceptionally difficult and one of the tie rods will probably break. This is not an ideal setup. I would think that the steering linkages would be able to take far more tensile strain than compressive. As far as I can see there are four solutions:

Replace the components with larger diameter items.
Move the linkages in front of the pivot points.
Replace the linkages and steering box with an equivalent rack&pinion system.
Any combination of the above.

We've just replaced all the steering linkages with those from a donor 1600. This is causing a bit of a problem because the new straight steering bar is contacting the underside of the motor. Obviously the L16 used to sit a bit higher than the rotary does now.

Others have mentioned that to strengthen the steering linkages you can just weld another steering bar onto the existing one. Not the prettiest of solutions, but definitely a cheap one (a better solution is to simply sleave the existing linkage). The other problem area, the tie rod bolts, can be replaced by some 25mm (or larger) hexagonal bar. All that needs to be done is to turn down the ends of the bar and rethread to suit.

Before you can look twice, the Datsun's been busted up again. This time it was another car stopping in front of us. These guys had decided that it was preferable to stop in the middle of the track, rather than leave it. This prang has left us with both front struts bent (right at the bottom), three punctures, lots of smashed lights, and a mangled front end/right side.