s30 Key Relocation
Posted on July 20, 2009 by Jesse O'Brien in In the Garage
When I purchased my Datsun 240z, it didn’t come with any keys. The ignition had been hacked and was stuck in the ”on” position, meaning that the only way to start the car was to hot-wire the starter, and the only way to turn it off was to unplug the keyed ignition switch. Since that’s not exactly ideal for a daily driven car, I picked up a ’new’ ignition off a 280zx. Unfortunately for my plan of simply swapping them out, the 280zx has a narrower steering column and the key switch didn’t bolt into the stock location.
Step 1: Shopping
I got a little creative, and went shopping for a new solution. Since I hate screwdrivers and consider allen heads to be a much better solution in pretty much every situation, I picked up some allen bolts that were the right pitch for the SIDES of the ignition key switch. The bolts I purchased are a little bit too long, so I added a nut as a spacer/washer so I could get a nice tight fit to whatever I decided to attach it to.
For tools, all I needed was the allen key that went with that bolt, a wrench to tighten down the nut, a Ryobi 18v Impact driver (love that thing!), and a carbide stepper bit.
Step 2: Decisionmaking
Next, I had to figure out where this key would go. That was definitely the difficult part. Since the plan is to make this my daily driver, the key hole had to be hidden but accessible. I’d rather not have thieves be able to just punch a screwdriver in there and fire up the car, but I also need to be able to jump in and drive without much messing around.
I finally decided to install it under the dash on the left-hand side somewhere, and was ready to fabricate a new bracket when I realized that I didn’t need the hood latch. I use hood pins for simplicity, and don’t have the stock hood latch assembly attached. This was a perfect way to repurpose it.
Step 3: Modifications
I used the stepper bit in my drill to hog out one of the bolt-holes for the hood latch lever. It’s a pretty simple process that only takes a few minutes, but make sure you keep re-checking the hole size to your bolt size. There’s nothing worse than hogging out a hole too big so it’s unusable!
After drilling the hole, I held the ignition switch up against it and threaded the allen bolt into the side of the switch. This was by far the most difficult part of the whole process, and took about 10 minutes, including a test-fit. I did eventually get it threaded and tightened down, though. Just stay persistent.
Step 4: Final Assembly and hookup
Mounting the key and hooking up the wires was a pretty simple affair. Both ignition switches use the same wires in the same place, so it was pretty much just a matter of cutting back a little bit of the wiring cover so everything fit nicely.
I did need to rewire my horn wiring, since it simply won’t reach. The stalk controls haven’t been tested yet, but I believe the ignition and stalk use a different positive lead and ground, so there shouldn’t be any troubles other than the horn issue.
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