Everything started when I found an advert of an used 180SX at England. It was imported from Japan about 15 years ago and has 80.000km . The owner told me that he bought the car from a professional dealer, and he has all the bills from the maintenance operations and the car is full OEM, which is a very rare thing at this type of cars. Also it's an 1998 model so It has the SR20DET and not the CA18.
After seeing the car and making a test drive, I made an offer for it and the owner accepted. After that I had to drive home so I only took a few pics of the car.
One week later I decided to make it a track car, but after seeing the 24h of Nurburgring I decided to race it with this car. It will be expensive, but I've been a lot of times at the Ring and I have many frends that would join the project, some of them as drivers and the other ones as mechanics. Also I know a lot of people that work at very important motor-related companies, so they could help us to find sponsors for our team, so why not?
So here is the moment where all began...
The first thing de did was take out the engine and make a full rebuild of it, also we take off all the unnecesary things (rear seats, co-driver seat, door panels, spare wheel, the floor mat...)
Then we bought a turbo kit with a bigger turbo and the rest of the parts, very easy to fit, almost plug and play. Also we bought a racing Mann Filter air filter, an HKS racing intercooler, a full customizable racing suspension from H&R, a Brembo racing brake kit, a customizable ECU from MoTec, a light flywheel and clutch kit from Ogura clutch, a secuential gearbox from ZF, a fully customizable Quayfe LSD and a custom exhaust manifold and a race exhaust from Fujitsubo.
Fitting all of that at the car took us about 2 months, but after all the car was giving about 350 HP at the Dyno, so we were going in the right direction.
The next step was to buy some racing wheels, and a wing that make a great downforce at high speeds. Also we found on eBay a custom rear bumper and side skirts that looked good so we bought it for a relatively low price.
But the best thing came when we realised that at night the car will be less aerodynamic with the pop-up headlights on, and that at an endurance race in a high speed circuit like Nurburgring would result on more fuel consumption and less top speed. So after searching many days on internet we found a complete front from a Silvia S13. It was the only one at sale at the moment so we bought it for a high price. Also a local workshop made us a roll cage, a good qualiy job.
About three days after that, the parts from ebay arrived, and the next day the wing also arrived. So we mounted all the parts, and the car looked like this until we receive the S13 front:
And when the S13 front arrived looked like this:
Once we had the car full built, we put it tow hooks and bonnet pins. The next step was clear: take it to the ring and test It for make a good suspension set up. The only problem was that we had to use semi slicks instead of the racing slicks.
After a long travel from The UK, we arrived at the evening, and we started to test the car the next day in the morning.
Here are some pics of oír car that some guys uploaded:
Ah, that was a good day. But the best part was when I received a call from a close friend telling me that Shell will make us an offer for becoming the main sponsor of our team. The answer of course was yes, and after Shell many companies like Rockstar Energy, PIAA (they will test in our car a new type of LED car bulbs designed for classic cars) or Pioneer joined our project. Also Avon joined us as a tyre supplier.
So we brought our car (finally) for a paint job:
And here's the result:
So much better, I think. BTW sometimes i miss the Midnight Purple...
After the painting process we had to wait a few days until the paint dryed completely, and next to that we started with the vinyl wrapping. Here's a picture just before se started:
And there's what we got:
For me it's like a dream when I see It, we spent a lot of time working on it and now is finished...
(will continue soon)
After seeing the car and making a test drive, I made an offer for it and the owner accepted. After that I had to drive home so I only took a few pics of the car.
One week later I decided to make it a track car, but after seeing the 24h of Nurburgring I decided to race it with this car. It will be expensive, but I've been a lot of times at the Ring and I have many frends that would join the project, some of them as drivers and the other ones as mechanics. Also I know a lot of people that work at very important motor-related companies, so they could help us to find sponsors for our team, so why not?
So here is the moment where all began...
The first thing de did was take out the engine and make a full rebuild of it, also we take off all the unnecesary things (rear seats, co-driver seat, door panels, spare wheel, the floor mat...)
Then we bought a turbo kit with a bigger turbo and the rest of the parts, very easy to fit, almost plug and play. Also we bought a racing Mann Filter air filter, an HKS racing intercooler, a full customizable racing suspension from H&R, a Brembo racing brake kit, a customizable ECU from MoTec, a light flywheel and clutch kit from Ogura clutch, a secuential gearbox from ZF, a fully customizable Quayfe LSD and a custom exhaust manifold and a race exhaust from Fujitsubo.
Fitting all of that at the car took us about 2 months, but after all the car was giving about 350 HP at the Dyno, so we were going in the right direction.
The next step was to buy some racing wheels, and a wing that make a great downforce at high speeds. Also we found on eBay a custom rear bumper and side skirts that looked good so we bought it for a relatively low price.
But the best thing came when we realised that at night the car will be less aerodynamic with the pop-up headlights on, and that at an endurance race in a high speed circuit like Nurburgring would result on more fuel consumption and less top speed. So after searching many days on internet we found a complete front from a Silvia S13. It was the only one at sale at the moment so we bought it for a high price. Also a local workshop made us a roll cage, a good qualiy job.
About three days after that, the parts from ebay arrived, and the next day the wing also arrived. So we mounted all the parts, and the car looked like this until we receive the S13 front:
And when the S13 front arrived looked like this:
Once we had the car full built, we put it tow hooks and bonnet pins. The next step was clear: take it to the ring and test It for make a good suspension set up. The only problem was that we had to use semi slicks instead of the racing slicks.
After a long travel from The UK, we arrived at the evening, and we started to test the car the next day in the morning.
Here are some pics of oír car that some guys uploaded:
Ah, that was a good day. But the best part was when I received a call from a close friend telling me that Shell will make us an offer for becoming the main sponsor of our team. The answer of course was yes, and after Shell many companies like Rockstar Energy, PIAA (they will test in our car a new type of LED car bulbs designed for classic cars) or Pioneer joined our project. Also Avon joined us as a tyre supplier.
So we brought our car (finally) for a paint job:
And here's the result:
So much better, I think. BTW sometimes i miss the Midnight Purple...
After the painting process we had to wait a few days until the paint dryed completely, and next to that we started with the vinyl wrapping. Here's a picture just before se started:
And there's what we got:
For me it's like a dream when I see It, we spent a lot of time working on it and now is finished...
(will continue soon)
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