Honey Badger the Y60

Headlights are foggy old, with dust and unfortunately already loosing some of the reflector chrome plating, one of the turn signals has broken amber lenses and one of the cornering lights is very damaged. Took care of it the best way I could, before I can replace all the parts. Here on the fenders you can have a clue of its original second color (yellowish gray) that was covered with blue at some point in its life.
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Front turn signals before and after cleaning.
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Notice one of the front turn signals missing a big part of the amber lens.
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Washed the front grill very carefully, as I want to keep it chromed if possible. If not, I will try to keep at least its "eyebrow" chromed to contrast with some dark gray on the grill.
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Aussies are probably too used to the Patrol looks to think of it, but the front end looks darn mean in my opinion! It is a mean looking car!
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Gave the front end lights a good wash. Notice here one of the corner lights missing some part.
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This is how it turned out, for the moment:
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Front lighting updates:

For headlights, I got these LED ones with DRL from AliExpress:
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For turn signals, on a work trip to Argentina, I was able to score these:
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For the cornering lights, the only thing I was able to do so far was to make up for the missing part with resin. Not that good, I must admit, but I left extra material to be sanded once the car is painted and then will paint the surroudings with a similar gray color. I hope that it looks a bit better after that of if I can hopefully be able to find new ones for an affordable price.
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The tail lights were pretty rough and filled with dust. Left side had a big hole in it and both had bad contacts all over.
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Took them out, gave them a good clean, checked all the wiring and cleaned contacts up to the point they worked. I had priced replacement ones from AUS and neighbor countries but all the quotes turned out very expensive. I had heard about some local companies that fix/refurbish tail lights and decided to give it a shot. What they do: they break it apart, clean all the parts. Then they search among their inventory of scrap yard tail lights for one with a close enough color to be used to patch the broken part. They square out the broken hole, cut a matching section of the scrap yard donor part, heat/bend/mod it to fit. Then glue and polish it. The result surprised me.

Here you can see the patched part:
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There is no crack on the reverse light white lens. It was also glued and polished, so it is all watertight.
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Now compare with other side, which was polished as well:
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Final result:
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OEM horns were working properly (when hardwired to the battery at least) but looking ugly. Greenish/moldy kind of ugly. So one of those days with nothing interesting to work on the car, I decided to give them a good clean an paint. Only external work, I didn't pop them open.

After some wire wheel:
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And after some paint:
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Now the fun part... They are sounding like crap now they are cleaned and painted LOL. Not sure what the external paint coat could have done wrong LOL.

So, by now the bodywork is done and the paint job is halfway though, but I'd rather post the complete work for specific parts so one can see the evolution. Also, at some point I was able to buy a donor junkyard car. Rusted to death but with several hard or impossible to find bits and pieces that I can use on mine.

The actual choosing of the colors was made after bodywork was complete, but again, since I am going to show parts evolution from start to finish, the chosen color will be there, so let's start with the color.

Since beginning of the restoration I felt in love with the 2020 GM Onix called Seeker Blue:
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One day, on the drive-through to take my COVID jab, the car in front of me was a 2021 Fiat Toro in Jazz Blue:
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Indecision had been planted! Also, for the "yellowish gray" part of the car, I was in doubt for a very light gold/beige or a bit more presence beige. So I ordered small samples to be mixed at the local paint shop.
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Left to right we have Fiat Jazz Blue, Toyota Aurora Beige, GM Seeker Blue, Honda Shoreline Beige.
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I feel it very hard to realize the tone of a color looking into a small paint card, so I decided to test the samples using the barn doors of the parts car. Gave them a good wash, some very light and uncompromising sanding and gave them a go. I combined darker blue with darker beige (Jazz/Aurora), not so dark blue with lighter beige (Seeker/Shoreline):

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Both combinations came out stunning!
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And the verdict: I stood with the original pick, GM Seeker Blue. I am glad I took the time to do the comparison, though. I would possibly have second thoughts when looking at that Jazz Blue on a car on the road. Also, my end product is a tidy more dark then the Seeker Blue in the tests, for the reason the test doors were white, while my real car had a light blue primer applied. That enhanced the final color perception a bit.

The roof on my Patrol had at some point a roof-rack, but not the type that goes on the rain gutters, but rather, the one where the roof is drilled. Rack was no longer there, but the 8 holes were... Also, the back left corner was dented towards the inside of the trunk, most possibly due to carrying too much weight on the roof, or maybe due to someone standing on top of it.

First, I took all the roof inside parts apart. The roof lining is completely stained of iron ore dust. I saved it for now, to be used as a template for a new one when the time comes.
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From the inside the roof had surprisingly nothing to deaden the sheet metal sound other then very few patches of cotton/wool blanket. Tapping on the roof would make drum-like noises.
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Here the roof dent had been roughly beaten back in place and the holes were welded shut. The roof panel was later softly beaten to a better finish.
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Some more gently beating, light coat of bondo, lots of sanding and some protection primer.
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All the parts are being primed with a multifill primer tinted with blue paint for the final sanding phase. Here the roof is ready for final paint and can be seen in such light blue primer.
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After the bodywork was complete, we used SILOC 44 rubberized PU adhesive to fill the gap between the roof sheet metal and the roof cross-member supports I don't have a good picture of it now, but the same was done on the hood/bonnet and for that I have pictures that I will post here later. Now, tapping at the roof makes a solid thud. Very good already but proper sound deadening will be addressed at reassembly.
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And the final result after 6 layers of Seeker Blue paint and 4 layers of clearcoat:
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Far out! That looks really, really good mate

Quote:

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Originally Posted by growler2058

Far out! That looks really, really good mate

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Thanks mate. There is some real dedication being put in it to make this dream come true!

The bonnet under-structure was broken in a couple of places and poorly stick welded. it also had some dents on the front lip.
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My friend grinded that out and mig welded it back. Even so, he admitted that it was not looking much better then it was before, for the sheet metal being very thin. Also, there was nothing else gluing the sheet metal to the under-structure anymore, so I redid the gluing with SILOC 44 rubberized PU adhesive, same mentioned in the previous post. Instead of putting glue just on the pockets available on the under-structure, I chose to put it on 100% of the structure. Tapping the bonnet now gives you a solid thud. Will probably do more appropriate sound deadening when the time comes.
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Here you can see some of the mig welding that my friend was upset with the appearance. I have also later regretted myself for not cleaning up the excess glue right after application...
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I bought myself a 120psi / 130L /5 cfm second hand compressor and a orbital sander and got to work.
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That compressor ended up being insufficient for the task. I did some more research and found out that at least 10 cfm was needed for the orbital sander. After a couple of weeks monitoring local classifieds for a deal, with people asking almost the price of a new unit for their used ones, I figured it was a better idea to bite the bullet and get a new one.
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Work then started to move faster.
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My friend noticed some bondo spots on the front lip and some other parts and decided to bring it to bare metal and do some panel beating. That was quick work for a flap disc on a grinder.
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After some filler primer and lots of sanding we got it to this point.
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And after full priming the top side of it.
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Back to the underside, it was being a pain in the butt of a job to remove the excess rubberized glue, so I decided to wire wheel it and then sand out the wire marks.
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And right before we moved into the next primer, my friend decided to give his welds some better finish, so he grinded them down some and then primed it all. The bonnet was now in pre-paint stage.
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Then came paint day, and after 6 layers of Seeker blue and 4 layers of clear coat, it was almost impossible to take a picture of the full bonnet showing its color such shiny it was. The pictures were reflecting the walls and not showing the blue in its entirety.
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WOW looks bloody amazing mate, I have a respect for the patience needed for body work (and skill of course), both I certainly do not possess lol . .

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Crikey, that looks Brilliant BZ Mate [emoji322][emoji106][emoji106]


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That is a great colour and the finish is excellent.

All the door hinges had some severe play on it. And I really mean ALL the 12 hinges!

Someone suggested me to take them to a certain shop specialized in in door adjustments. I took only the second row hinges (4) for a service test, as I was a bit skeptical about the shop appearance not inspiring me much. They worked the hinges and returned them on the next day.

What they have done: they POORLY grinded down (as can be seen in the pictures) an old hinge pin they had laying around to match the worn bushing and tacked it to the hinge "C channel". Then, to take out the extra play of the worn bushing height, they added a copper washer. I must admit it does work, no play at all right now, but damm it, what a dirty work! That is light years away from my OCD demanded quality control levels! I decided to use them for the time they last and control the impulse of having it redone.

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Front row hinges were a different story. Took them to the machinist that did all the suspension poly bushings and there the job was executed like a piece of art. The hinges were taken apart, the parts that were clearly bent were flattened, new bronze bushings were turned. And instead of making the bushings ID to match the original pins, he even made new pins to the precise measure of the old one taken at a section not driven by the bushes, so "his work is not influenced by any worn part". What a pro. Here you can see the result of his work.

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For the rear/barn doors hinges it was a no brainer. Left them on the machinist as well. Here you can see how bad the play was between pin and bushing when the hinges were disassembled:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o7ELtKAx8LU

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZFy7sAdaPbs

And here is the final result for the barn doors hinges.
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The front row hinges were also missing their springs. I used the same technique I used to make the parking brake cable: printed a picture of an OEM hinge unit and compared the measurements with my real one to come up with a scale factor, and from there, I took the closest assumption I could take about the number of turns, wire diameter, etc. Found a local spring factory and ordered some made to my numbers.

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Here you can see the new springs working. I am pretty happy with the result.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-DD6FUz-BDY

Wheel wells were somewhat in good condition. Front-left side had a crack that was nicely welded and sanded down but that's all.

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Cleaned them all, applied some wash prime on any exposed metal part and then coated them all with a product called Siltex 400. It is a rubberized/urethane thick coating that both protects the sheet metal from rocks and debris and sound deaden the wheel well. It is marketed as "body protector" and you use a plastic disposable paint gun to apply it, because it will clog the gun if you left it dry for a few minutes. My gun is still good to use as I have cleaned it good right after applying the product, but the idea with the disposable one is not to risk a good paint gun with it.

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Front fenders required some beating to get into shape. One of them wasn't the car original anymore and curiously it was from a Patrol without the corner light, and the hole for it was clearly hand cut.

Weekend arrives, sand, prime, store, repeat...

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Weekend arrives, sand, prime, store, repeat...

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Weekend arrives, sand, prime, store, repeat...

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Applied that same Siltex 400 used on the wheel wells to the fenders, despite them being protected by the OEM plastic wheel well covers and not being supposed to be exposed to rocks and debris. I had product left over, and it does sound deaden the panel, so why not...

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All doors had some kind of bend or kink from the outside. From the inside, all passenger's doors were OK, driver's door was broken in a couple of places, small barn door was OK, tire carrier barn door was damaged in more then one way, with cracked spot welds, with a thick but totally crooked reinforcement plate torch welded to the inside.

Passenger's doors
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Driver's door
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Took off all the doors for the necessary panel beating everywhere. The driver's door was welded on the inside panel where needed and here one comment: what a surprisingly thin sheet metal! The tire carrier barn door had the crooked reinforcement removed, panels were beaten back to place until they properly seat on the internal OEM reinforcements. Everything was squared/aligned before remaking the spot welds everywhere and some extra weld beads were laid on the sheet to internal structure places that hold the spare tire weight.

Than it was the "new weekend, sand, prime, store, repeat" all over...

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New weekend, sand, prime, store, repeat...

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New weekend, sand, prime, store, repeat... x1000 LOL!

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We have also sprayed the inside of the doors with Siltex 400 for some level of sound deadening, but I have plans since the beginning of this restoration to do proper sound deadening techniques to the doors, like stuffing butyl rope between the safety crash bars and the sheet metal, applying butyl metallic tiles to the sheet metal, etc. That will come at the proper time.

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We then had the doors installed and adjusted/aligned to prepare for the final sanding and get ready for all the masking required for a two color job. I was pretty excited with the way the alignment came out.

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Fair Dinkum (Great Aussie Gold) you are an absolute Meticulous Champion BZ Mate [emoji106][emoji106]


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Quote:

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Originally Posted by BrazilianY60

...when I saw the car, I noticed the brake booster/master cylinder were adapted from another truck available in Brazil.

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Quote:

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Originally Posted by BrazilianY60

The booster is still a bit of a mystery. It does look equal to Y60 brake booster pictures I see online, but it has a part number that I checked and belongs to a Nissan Frontier truck (which is available in Brazil, BTW). On Partsouq they are not the same part number though. Maybe it was already adapted on the wrecked car? Who knows... Maybe you good fellows can tell me about you being using Frontier boosters on Patrols...

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Time to do some body work on the firewall, so it was time to access the brake booster situation again. The car came with an adapted brake booster from a local Chevy C10 truck from the 80's. The booster seemed to be somehow shorter and then the lip of where the firewall upper and lower sheet metal sections meet was hammered to make it fit. Time for a fix...

This is the booster that came out. Note the stack of washers used to do spacing to some degree. What a rattling can of loosen parts, LOL. I can only imagine how silent my Patrol will be when I sort out all the crap stuff that has been done to it. Also note the weld at the tip of the shaft. It seems to have been shortened. Can´t complain about the brake pedal position though, it was spot on when driving.
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This was the firewall situation. The goal was to fix that lip on the sheet metal but I was surprised to realize that the firewall booster holes were also fckd-up to fit the adapted booster, something that honestly never occurred me. I was naively thinking boosters bolt pattern were somewhat of an industry standard.
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But wait... the firewall is sandwiched between the booster and the brake pedal bracket... if it is like this on the engine bay side, the cab side must have been fckd-up as well, right?
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Here is an OEM pedal side by side with the "creative people" pedal.
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The lip and the sheet metal with the offending holes were beaten back to place.
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Here you can see a comparison between the adapted booster with an OEM unit. The adapted one is quite smaller in diameter (and so in effective diaphragm area which is what provides the force factor) and smaller in volume (which influences in the "amount of vacuum" available for consecutive brake pedal pressings. The pedal was hard before, but not as hard as if there wasn't any servo assistance. With the OEM unit being such a larger area as it is, I have high hopes for the car breaking behavior after I am done with this.
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The OEM booster also has this aluminum spacer to space it from the firewall. Remember the hammered sheet metal lip? I guess that happened with Nissan engineers as well, LOL. It was very handy, being a removable part, to be used as a template for creating an adapter plate to fix the booster mounting holes on the firewall.
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Now, comparing the OEM Nissan Patrol booster with the OEM Nissan Frontier booster I got from Paraguay back in 2019. Exacly the same diameter, exactly the same volume, should provide the same braking experience as the Patrol unit. Note that the booster to firewall studs are more then double the length on the Patrol unit to account for the spacer. Also, note the pedal pressing shaft on the Frontier unit being fairly longer.
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Trying to understand the reasons behind such differences, I started searching online for pictures of the Frontier unit. It turned out, that the unit I got from Paraguay back in the day, was not complete. The Frontier unit actually uses an spacer as well, much longer, with its own mounting studs on the firewall facing side. That was the reason for the shorter studs on the booster unit, as they didn't need to reach the firewall but rather, just reach the spacer. Also, note that there are no threads left on the booster studs once the spacer is in, so there was no way for me to use my Paraguay unit with the OEM Patrol spacer.
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I ended up buying another used Nissan Frontier booster, this time locally and complete with the spacer.

It turns out that the mounting face to pedal clevis pin distance of the Patrol and the Frontier units are exactly the same, with the same amount of adjustment threads on the shaft still available for fine tuning.
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And this is how the Nissan Frontier booster looks on the Patrol firewall, with its larger spacer. Good enough for me and now I am confident that it is an easy fix whenever I need (I also have an spare booster from Paraguay :D)
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Now back to the firewall fix. I have drilled 4 more holes to the adapter plate for plug welds. Aligned the plate with some screws, welded, primed and seam sealed it all.
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BTW, I am going to change my signature to Booster Collector, LOL.

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The OEM Patrol brake booster had this bracket highlighted on the pictures. It was bolt to the booster-to-master studs and has a tab with a captive nut to hold something.

Anyone know what it is supposed to hold?

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Our little 1989 SWB Ford Maverick ( AKA Y60 Patrol) bracket I believe you may be enquiring about BZ Mate holds the vacuum lines between boosters safely up and over the top?

http://www.nissanpatrol.com.au/forum...2021/12/74.jpg
http://www.nissanpatrol.com.au/forum...2021/12/75.jpg
http://www.nissanpatrol.com.au/forum...2021/12/76.jpg

EDIT: 1989 model

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Thank you MB. I see your Mav bracket is a bit different as it tilts backwards while the one I have here is flat, but gives me a good cue. I will see if I can find any specific arrangement of my vac hoses to make use of it when putting it back together.

Left side quarter panel had a deep dent that required some more difficult hammering as at the time we didn't had access to a spot welder. After the initial brute force approach, some more cautious hammering with a dolly support, then some filling and only after we were satisfied with it, a little bondo. Then, it was sanding, priming, sanding, priming... This is how it evolved.

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Right side had only minor defects and came out pretty good.
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At some point, my friend got himself a spot welder, and used the rocker panels to play with his new tool and practice. Came out really good. I don't have before pictures unfortunately.
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Without a proper paint-booth and it being rainy and windy over the last weeks, I was looking for a cheap way to close the front part of the garage/shed to get the best results possible as our place is almost "in the wide open". I ended up buying some 15m x 4m greenhouse plastic, the type used to cover flower greenhouses or covering the soil for farming strawberries and stuff. It was the cheapest I could find with enough thickness to be able to hold itself hung without tearing. This is how our "shady paint booth" came out! We filled buckets with water to hold the lower section down, otherwise it would fly into the work area.

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Blue paint was applied without the need to mask the lower panel section, we just eyeballed where the color separation would be and let some over-spray to go over that line without much concern.
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Then we took a loooong time marking the color separation line with a very thin tape. I may have walked around the car some 200 times looking corner to corner looking for parallelism and natural curves.
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On top of that delimitation tape, we masked the blue paint.
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And then it was time for "yellowish gray" A.K.A. "shoreline beige".
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Delimitation tape taken out, check this precision cut between colors! WOW! I am SOOO HAPPY with it!
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"Precision" work was done! We took our time for a few beers before moving into clear coating.
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We also decided to store these guys again and leave them for the next opportunity, when we will be painting the front panel, the core support and the engine bay. Blue paint is done, at least.
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Can't say how happy I am with it. I'll let you check for yourselves over the pictures and videos.

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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ofzLnNhsjls

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AcjUg1W9b94

Quite simply Friggin Beautiful work BZ Mate [emoji106][emoji106][emoji106]


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Wow, bloody awesome mate absolutely top notch [emoji106][emoji106]

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Thank you folks. There is some real dedication put into this restoration and it is really good to hear from you.

I agree. Top work on the restoration, it's really looking fantastic.
I'm also enjoying following your progress, keep it coming!

Wow! Thats come up beautiful. So precise is the colour separation.

Looks great, well done, certainly not something I would have a go at.

Long time since we were able to tackle painting again. It has rained a lot since December, and the humidity in our garage/shed was very high, making it improper for painting. We had to wait for a couple of weeks of full sun/heat to be comfortable enough to bring out the paint gun again.

All I can say is that the paint job is almost done! We were able to finally paint the front fenders and the front panel/front clip.

To call it done we still need to paint the cowl piece, the fuel door and the side cladding thing. Well, at least for the body... bumpers and front grill will be painted separately, as they have a different color, different clear coat, etc.

Here is a sample of the result. Low quality video though, as I had forwarded it from one mobile to another using WhatsApp and it has heavily compressed the video.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rhjfVYe05F4

That colour combo is delicious!

Nice job. Wish I had the patience to fix my old Trol up like that.

As I would not take the engine out just for an engine bay paint job, we decided to give it a good clean and spray some paint around it on a best-effort basis. Whatever came out of that, we would call it good and never talk about it.

To start, the part right in front of the battery tray where the washer bottle stays was (still is) "fuglly". Bed liner was spray'd over that section to hide it (from whom? LOL).
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Anything over the firewall like brake lines, A/C lines, etc were removed. We popped the rubber grommet with the engine bay harness towards the cab and removed all harnesses from the engine bay into the cab. Whatever we were not able to move or remove, we tied to the engine with cords and then wrapped the engine in painting paper. It was looking like a patient ready for surgery.
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After some spray, this was the result:
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We also have painted the top grill, hood/bonnet hinges and the jack housing. No pictures of them after the paint, but I believe we're done with blue paint.
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Cornering lights update:

Quote:

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Originally Posted by BrazilianY60

Gave the front end lights a good wash. Notice here one of the corner lights missing some part.
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Quote:

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Originally Posted by BrazilianY60

For the cornering lights, the only thing I was able to do so far was to make up for the missing part with resin. Not that good, I must admit, but I left extra material to be sanded once the car is painted and then will paint the surroudings with a similar gray color. I hope that it looks a bit better after that of if I can hopefully be able to find new ones for an affordable price.
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I was finally able to source from China these aftermarket cornering lights at an affordable price. Definitely not OEM quality but hey, mine were epoxied/resin to shape by hand...

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Paraphrasing MB, "happy as a rat with gold tooth"!

Bumpers were pretty damaged and twisted:

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I even hammered it myself a bit after the engine was rebuilt to be able to drive around without it touching the body and making a lot of noise. But then, it was time to proper address the situation. Since it was chrome plated, hammering it back to shape would leave hammer marks, so I decided to go for dark gray bumpers as some OEM models had. First step was to de-plate the chrome. The interesting part is that to chrome plate a steel part, you first copper plate it, then nickel plate it and only then chrome plate it. So after the de-plating process, it was left down to copper plating.

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A stretching jig was used to stretch it while it was being hammered, for the steel to find its place with the tension. It stretched quite ok. Then, the square holes for the carriage bolts that were rounded, were filled and later filed back to square.

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Test fitting:

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Filling, sanding, priming:
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Dark gray paint with satin clear coat:
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Final result:
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I am still working on those big bumperettes or whatever it is called. I am going to have to drill the tapped holes through the rubber and use carriage bolts. Also, they are cracked, so I am planning to fill the cracks with black windshield glue and try to cut the excesses with a utility knife or something.

Last Saturday, after exactly two years of bodywork and paint (approximately 90 days of work total), my Patrol came back!
This is a personal milestone in this restoration and I am very happy that this day finally arrived.

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I have to reinstall the pedals, the boosters and the radiator to be able to take it for a drive around the block.
Then it will be time for sound deadening, roof lining, windshield and other windows installation.
Then it will be time for upholstering.

Today I have personally met one of the eight Patrol owners in the country. He has a donor car as well and he gave me a super nice gift!


LHD passenger side (Aussie driver) front flare.
Attachment 86201

Attachment 86202


I only had 3 of them and now I finally have the full set! Those will be restored and painted matte black.
Attachment 86203


It's like finding that last piece of a 3000 pieces puzzle!



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