I’m forever mucking around with projects, though I’m normally too engrossed in what I’m doing to document them. Here are a few projects that I have photos of. This is just a small sample of what I’ve been up to, I will have to get better at documenting the interesting ones! – Grant
180sx Bumper Support and Jacking Point
This 180sx had a custom fibreglass bodykit, with very few mounting locations that aligned with the factory attachment points. Being fibreglass, the bumper is also very rigid and brittle. The plan was to support the bumper as much as possible without rigid mounts to the body, allowing some movement/flex in the event of contact or a crash.
The bumper support also featured a jacking point, as getting a trolley jack all the way under the differential can be difficult at the track. The jacking point also serves as some additional protection for the fuel tank, which is located very far back in the chassis.
180sx Front Tub Fabrication
The front tubs on 180sx chassis (along with S13, S14 and S15 chassis) are notoriously bad for drift cars, especially when you have significant amounts of steering lock. This car had large 18″ wheels and up to 70 degrees of lock, which was fouling on the front tubs.
We cut out the factory tubs ahead of the strut tower, all the way up to the back of the headlight support. New panels were rolled, beaten, folded and tacked in place. This gave more than 20 mm clearance at all steering angles, with the suspension sitting on the bump stop. Perfect!
We also had the opportunity to stitch weld a lot of the seams around the strut towers, chassis rails, radiator support and headlight supports. This was the perfect opportunity to weld them, and many of the factory spot welds had actually broken due to the rather hard life this chassis has seen.
The front tubs were welded to the factory sheet metal, covered in seam sealer, primered and painted. The result was quite tidy, and the customer was very happy with the results.
Cabinet Makers Fixture Table
I spent some time working in my friends cabinet making business, and it frustrated me that there were no simple clamping systems for the cabinet making industry, like those that exist for metal fabrication. So we designed a fixture table, inspired by traditional engineering welding tables.
The original table worked well, and was exceptionally flat and stiff (far exceeding requirements!). The main issue was the ease of use, predominantly due to getting clamps in and out of the holes. A new hole profile was developed that fitted every clamp we could get our hands on.
SR20 Coil Conversion
I’m probably a bit too fussy with car parts for my 1999 Nissan Silvia. I was looking for coils to convert it from distributor with inbuilt coil, to coil on plug. I could have converted it to factory S15 coils, but at the time they were very expensive. And I happened to have a VK45DDI engine sitting in my workshop…
Mucking around with the factory VK45 coils, it turns out they are very similar to the VR38 coils, but have the perfect length stalks to suit the SR20 engine. All they required was a custom mounting bracket. With access to a CNC router, I made a custom machining jig from 18 mm plywood, and machined a trial bracket from 5000 series alloy.
After some modifications, a new design was perfected, and a number of these brackets were cut. These were cut from 6060 T6 alloy, which machines beautifully on a CNC router with a single flute 1/4″ cutter. The end goal with these is to sell them on Amazon and Ebay as an intermediate solution between standard S15 coils and the more expensive VR38 coil conversion kits.
MR2 Water to Air Intercooler
A friend of mine had brought his MR2 over from the UK. There was a lot of work that went into getting the car ready for compliance and low volume vehicle certification in New Zealand. One aspect was finishing the installation of the water to air intercooler, which was not mounted or finished.
A frame was made up to support the intercooler onto the rear chassis rails, and was designed so rear impacts would still crush the rear chassis rail legs as they were designed. The existing top mount was utilized, running forwards to the firewall. This allows the intercooler to slide forwards in the event of an impact.
Existing plumbing was modified for the intercooler. The owner did not want to redo the plumbing from scratch, so as many original components were utilised as possible. Small details were thought about, such as the engine cover stay being accessible, as well as the oil filler point.