Project Silvia

[onehundredoctane]

while I've had the car over 2 years now, I started a build thread on a smaller local forum, but never here on Zilvia.

The skinny: When I bought the car it was a KA-T, blown. The body looked straight, I did notice one rust hole, then found more at the bottom of the firewall. I started on the car when I was in college, I had plenty of time to throw at the car then, now I've started my 40/hr a week job, and have less time to throw at it.

The plan: replace the rust, make a car that is track worthy, and an all around badass. I'll go ahead and tell you that the car was originally LHD, the windshield had a leak for who knows how long, and that went ahead and made rust holes in the floor, carpet covered that well so the previous owner didn't even know about it.

I don't have many pics of what I started with, but here's what I do have.





nice comparison huh?








that was 2 years ago, this is now
fuel cell mount


less metal in the trunk, believe it or not, you can make your OEM trunk lighter than any CF you can get.


pretty much what it looks like now


the valvetrain, all Brian Crower

a friend wrecked his S13, so I got the Nismo brace cheap, not too shabby.




THE ENGINE TEAR DOWN: most recent work







added spot welds to the door seams:


at this point this is all mock up, before the car is complete the car will be stripped of everything that is bolted on to it, notice the floor? that will all be undercoated.



as of last friday the engine is at the machine shop, full head work, here's some extra's I'm dropping off this weekend.





I still have alot of work left, and as of now, only get to work on the car on the weekends, everything pictured has taken place over the last 2 years. This isn't something that just happened last week. I'll try to keep updated as much as possible, hope you guys enjoy my money pit.

[blueshark123]

Damn now thats some rust, but good way to freshen up the car.

[burnsauto]

way to take on the challange i know alot of guys who wouldnt touch a car with that kinda rust. cant wait to see how it all turns out.

[eds13]

very sweet. i hate rust

[koukimonster139]

ssiigghhhhhhhh

[kikit-sideways]

love that nismo front brace, going to consider getting one of those.

[Vision Garage]

your car actually scares me. ITs like putting a new heart on an old body. What did you do to remedy the decay of the frame?

[SW20Racer]

all i want for christmas is a wire brush wheel and some powdercoat in a can...

c'mon! you all know the words!

[BigCrash]

Nice work but why do you have so many coilovers?

[SW20Racer]

^^gawd i hope youre joking...

[s14_rob]

wow...lol ^......

[KOUKI KAN KAN]

Can you guys say DEEE DA DEEEE!!!^^^

[soon2bs13]

nice mods and good luck with the build...

but looking at the under carriage and all the rust, is that car gonna be driveable?

those diff. bolts look like they are gonna snap.

[S13SilviaGirl]

Originally Posted by BigCrash

Nice work but why do you have so many coilovers?

You can't be serious, and if your joking...make it more apparent next time.

[BigCrash]

I figured the ludicrousness of the statement itself would have made it apparent.

Anywho, nice build!

[Irukandji]

I did the samething to my trunk, and it wasn't much weight AT ALL. Just made the trunk flimsy and make loud sounds when I closed it.
Carbon is definetly lighter.

[onehundredoctane]

coilovers? um, yeah, ok.

anyway, to answer questions, the rust has been fixed by combination of cut and weld, and the sections that aren't as bad get stripped to bare metal, ground smooth, and coated in POR-15, great stuff.
hope this gives you an idea, it gets a bit messy, using a chemical based stripping agent, you will need to let it sit for about 15 minutes to penetrate, then scrape, usually I repeat this process 2 or 3 times before it will get the area to bare metal.

^ here is an example, I didn't even really think about rust lurking under the surface, I knew there was enough here and there, but when I stripped this area, I found 2 spots, you should be able to see one here, look near the lower right of the picture, there you go, see that? CANCER! after stripping an area I use POR-15 and make 2 coats with that, which turns out something like this (on the radiator support)

nice huh? after that you can lightly scuff the surface and spray a rubberized undercoating on it, atleast that's what I like to do to areas that are not inside the engine bay and visible when the hood is open, which turns out looking something like this (driver side floor pan)


Most of you know that when you buy a front clip the main harness is cut right in half, after re-wiring everything in the back half of the car I found that the only mistake I made was in the rear speakers.
One small problem that I found in putting on the Z32 brakes, was that the American LHD bmc doesn't exactly like the right strut tower, see how the out put to the rear brakes almost touches the strut tower? Instead of getting a rhd Z32 bmc (too many abbreviations in a row?) I think it will be easier, to just make a small hole in the strut tower and run some line from the bmc back into the engine bay somewhere, this will help if I ever decide to remove the bmc, and replace it with another lhd bmc, or at least that is my rationalization.

that's about all I have for now, check for updates after this weekend.

[JRas]

Originally Posted by fakeshemp44

less metal in the trunk, believe it or not, you can make your OEM trunk lighter than any CF you can get.

any proof to support this statement? if it's true, I'd be interested in doing it which is the only reason I ask.

[240truk]

that handbrake setup is siiiiickkk!!! where did you pick that up?

[onehundredoctane]

^CNC brakes, here is a link to the main page http://www.cncbrakes.com/ and a link to the exact product, http://www.cncbrakes.com/hsb.asp?grp...412&subseries=

I don't have proof right on hand, but I can take it off and weight it, I dare say it is less than 15 lbs. now, I have noticed a I have a small leak somewhere,but I'm not sure it is a result from the bracing removal. Then again, I have 3 trunk lids, and I felt like messing around on that one.

[onehundredoctane]

Originally Posted by soon2bs13

but looking at the under carriage and all the rust, is that car gonna be driveable?

those diff. bolts look like they are gonna snap.

actually everything on the diff has been cleaned up, and a Z32 diff rest nicely in there now, I'm getting another sub-frame then having it blasted and powder coated, then swapping it all over.

[onehundredoctane]

machine shop sechs

looks great

smooth as ass





hot tanked, 3 angle, +1 mm on the exhaust seats, ported, re-shimmed for proper spring height, and resurfaced, Brian Crower springs, valves, and cams in the head, stock valve guides were used in the re-build.
should have progress on the body posted after this weekend, anyone ever seen a bare mteal S13?

[RedtopTech]

great build. During my build i went with 6mm sr20de guides and ferrea ss valves on both the intake and exhaust. There is an insane weight difference b/w the sodium filled factory valves and the ferrea 6mm ss. Also how did you go about setting the rocker height? I ended up getting a tool fabricated to fit perfectly inside the lifter bore and provide a mounting point for my dial indicator. It worked out great but it was "one more expense" toward the build.

[onehundredoctane]

the pics are literally from a few hours ago, the lifters haven't been installed yet, my friend owns the machine shop that is doing all the work and has been in the business for more than 16 years, when it comes to those details I simply don't ask questions and trust the pro.

[RedtopTech]

nice to have someone you can trust with your shit like that. Ive been in the biz for a while now and personaly wouldnt let half of the pro's out there change my oil.

[onehundredoctane]

I know exactly what you mean, I've learned alot thru this so far, to HP Engines credit they have build many Honda B series n/a and boosted engines the majority over 400 hp, when it comes to V8's I can't even begin to tell you the depth they've gone into, as far as SR's go I think they have done 10 so far. I know last time I was there they had an all aluminum 460 cu. in. Ford block that was build for 1200hp doing one 1/4 mile at the time, and my piss ass 4 cylinder isn't much compared to that, granted they are completely different engines. Thanks for the input!


edit: added more info

[frankist]

what type of wheels are those? i thought rota grids didnt clear z brakes. correct me if im wrong, nice build =)

[onehundredoctane]

dt05rs, copies of the LMGT4's, fronts are 16-7, rears are 16-8.5

[onehundredoctane]

thought I would post an update of the progress I made last weekend, at some point the whole car will look like this.

above: no the jack isn't touching the car, theres a jack stand on the rear sub-frame.

below:removing the flange cleans up the lower part of the quarter panel, atleast looks better to the eyes,




below is the end result of cutting away, tho not the final product, it will pretty much look this way when it's finalized.

[ByeByeSti]

glad your resurecting her from the dead and not giving up!! keep at it man, your engine looks amazing right now, wish i could say the same for mine haha. but more pics as soon as you make some more progress!