More boring prep work

Ok so last Friday night I got to work again on this. Removed both front quarter panels, removed the lighting wiring loom as much as I could. It went right up under the dashboard and on a Friday night the last thing I wanted was to be laying upside down under my dash so I got it unhooked and pulled it outside the engine bay. Its all going back in so I will just paint around it.

Then got out the welder again and went to town with a few more spot welds under where the front guards mount. Now I just need to pull the brake master and booster, A couple other small things out, blast some of the grease and grime off the crossmember and then I can start sanding it down for its new colour.

Still not sure on engine bay colour so if anyone has an input go for it!

On with the pictures...

Stiffening the chassis

Due to the weak design of the S13 chassis and the few small bits of rust in the car I decided I wanted to stiffen the old shell up. I already had the motor out so figured it wouldnt be too much more work.

I started off by scraping/sanding/wire wheeling all the old gap sealer out of the joins in the tops of the strut towers and inside the wheel arches after removing the coilovers to make access easier.

Once I had all the old sealant out I had my best mate come over to start welding it all up. We decided multiple spot welds would be better than stitch welding due to the heat involved in stitch welding and not wanting to twist the chassis.

I would take a guess that there would be around 200 extra spot welds now in the front of the car. This should stiffen it up quite substantially.

Once we finished welding we primed the area to stop any more rust

Then the part i didnt like, we refilled the gaps with gap sealer. I dont like this as it covered all the spot welds so unless you really look you cant tell the car has had many hours work put into stiffening it up but atleast it will stop moisture getting in gaps and rusting it from the inside out.

Once we had sealed it all back up we resprayed inside the wheel arches black again. The engine bay will stay in primer for now as I will be respraying the engine bay shortly.

Thats all for today. Will have more updates shortly. This time ill try to make them less than 12 months apart!

Time for a new start

Seems I forgot about this for a while. A lot has happen in a bit over 12 months. The Fc has had a full respray, I stupidly swapped my mint BMW for a crappy 180sx, I competed in stadium drift and failed rather epicly due to mechanical problems with the Fc.

So anyway, on with the pictures.

During the prep - New Zenkai wheels on the rear in 17 x 9 + 15 running Federal 595SS rear tyres and Advan Neova AD08 steer tyres

Turned out like this

So I did some of this

And this is how it is currently sitting. Front bar and sideskirts are a little scratched up after coming off into the gravel at the track

Ok now on with the new car. Thought i was making a great deal swapping my MINT e30 BMW for a CA18DET 180sx. Car came with a half cage, coilovers, pretty much all adjustable arms. It was also supposed to come with a 1.5 way diff, T28BB turbo and a few other things but lets just say the guy was a scam and the car had none of this and also had rust which he assured me it did not have. But thats in the past and I have to work with what I have now.

This is pretty much how I got the car. Dont have any photos but the LH rear quarter was pretty messy. Going to cover it up with a widebody when I get around to it.

Took it to a track day and the CAS decided to stop working for me before my first lap. I tried to persist with it feeling like it had severely retarded timing, not revving past about 5000rpm and struggling to keep wheels spinning with 45psi in stock sized tyres. Got the shits with it as CAS's arent easy to come by for CA18's so decided to pull the motor out

Still not 100% sure on engine choice. I would love to go LS1 but simply cant afford it at the moment. Current plan is SR20DET with T28BB turbo, S15 injectors, Z32 AFM and a few other basic mods to see about 280whp.

I will be starting another post with the next lot of modifications very shortly so stay tuned