Well even a blind hog finds a nut now and then.My daily watch of CL paid off yesterday when I found a '93 Hijet that is street legal in the land of fruits and nuts,title and all,unbelievable!!I got it from a ret.firefighter who has another truck that he built into a drop dead gorgeous mini firetruck.He just did the body work and paint on my new truck and it looks great.I have to do the interior and bed liner and it will be real nice.The carb was just done but needs some fine tuning and the brakes need some work but it seems well worth the effort.The really huge deal to me is the street legal part.
I'm Going to keep the Scrum,for a work truck around the place,it's a great little truck and I have quite abit of work in it.I figure on prettying this new one up to run around town in. I don't know why this post ended up in the reference section and don't know how to move it.I'm a low tech red neck so would appreciate it if one of the mods would locate it properly. You know the old saying "if it looks too good to be true it probably is"? Well in trying to transfer the title to my name the DMV said it has to be smogged,it was first registered in 2006 and every year since with no smog,but to transfer title it must be smogged.The smog shop computers, supplied by DMV, have zero for Daihatsu so now I have to go to DMV referee.This involves hauling the truck 50 miles to San Diego so the Official STATE dude can give his or her blessing.My appt. is next Tues. at 9:40 AM.The only good thing is it's only $8 but no guarantees. I sure hope I didn't screw up.
Well today I went through the DMV referee hoop with the expected result.Real nice guy but can't help me,said it should have never been registered but since they did the people at DMV registration need to tell me how to proceed.I found a guy that does registration for a living working on it so we will see....
Well it looks like the registration thing is going to happen,when I went to the DMV referee he said that he couldn't smog it because of lack of specs. but it would be exempted if 2 cylinders or under 50 cubic INCHES.I know nothing about metric conversion and just assumed that he did.I finally woke up and googled conversion rates and 550cc is just over 33 1/3ci so I found an independent registration guy and he says it looks good and will finalize Tues. While fumbeling through all this I have been working on the little truck and it is running a little warm.I replaced the thermostat which looked like it was from the factory,I located the bleeder in the intake manifold and took it out and reamed everything out so it functions and bled the system with heater on high etc..I've checked with a non contact therm. and it gets up to around 200F. The fan cycles like it should and cools it some but I'm not comfortable with it this warm.Could it be the sensor that kicks the fan in should do it at a lower temp.? If so how do you adjust it ?
Well this unit is still running warmer than it should and I have tried everything including radiator service,thermostat.cap,new neck on radiator and another new cap then yesterday I finally got around to getting into the water pump.I got a new one from chaseo a while back and was hoping mine had a bad impeller.I got in to it and the inside looked as good as the new one but I changed it anyway.When I put it back together I learned that the shaft on the new one is 5/16" shorter than the old one and you can't get the pulley on because it rubs on the timing cover. While I was in there I found a lot of rust and a calcium looking build up that you would expect to find in a Japanese truck but as far as I know these S80's were all American market trucks.I'm kind of thinking the water jackets in the head and block are probably loaded with this stuff and that's where my problem is.When I had the radiator serviced the guy said it was pretty dirty. Any thoughts on this or how to clean it up without a tear down?
A cupple things you can do jim. I did this on my 71 GT6+ many years ago. Drain the coolant and put it water for a wash. Open all drains, mine had 2 on the block and one on the rad. Park it on a pad, open the rad and wire the garden hose in there on full blast. Let it idle all day. I got half a shovel full of rust flakes out of it. Never had another problem with it. 50/50 premium mix refill. You may consider putting 1/4" holes in the bottom of the frost plugs for the clean, then replace. Might be tough. Maybe you could vent the system enough just by disconnecting smaller lines off carb and such. Getting a good flow that the garden hose can keep up to. Draining from the bottom, the lower the better of course. Also consider bypassing any coolant lines that run to the carb/manifold for pre-heat...for the summer. If you can get the running temp down low by running the interior heater at full blast..then you will be able to tweak it to where you need it.
