Darryn's FJ20 180sx and eventual re-kickoff all out s12 build

darryn.
um no idea but im pretty sure it would be alot cheaper to import a silvia from japan. And youd get something nicer aswell as most of ours are Mk1 and all are ca20e unles had a conversion or been imported here already.

ah k cool, yea i have found some pretty useful things already...  cheers fingures crossed i should have the fj home and bolted in on the weekend

Dang the project is looking good!

I'll be floating around Adelaide in late May hopefully I'll see it driving arond!

yea hopfuly itl be near running about then. Oh realy, what you coming all the way here for?

I know someone from around there, actually from the Riverland, so yeah. Hahah

Project is lookin' sweet! I didn't know any s-12's came with rear drum brakes?? all mine had 4 wheel disk... (I think!)

I know someone from around there, actually from the Riverland, so yeah. Hahah

Project is lookin' sweet! I didn't know any s-12's came with rear drum brakes?? all mine had 4 wheel disk... (I think!)

hey guys,

Just droped the FJ in  looks alot nicer then the CA20 lol

Just a couple things, Stupid me for not checking but the trans mount doesnt match  car was origonaly auto and the manual FJ box different mounts ets so probly have to make something up...

And Fire wall will have to be modded for fittment of the dump pipe but other then that its coming along  just good to look at it with the engine finaly in

pics...

Looks great! Painted in... let's say white to mach the engine bay ... valve cover would look better imho, but looks great anyway.

haha cheers. Yea just want to get it running first then i can mess round with painting and sttff after its done if i feel the need to. Rocker cover would look gd white though

keep it coming

FJ20 cool  

very nice

cheers guys, hopfully get to work on the auto to manual gearbox mounts... got an idea that could be a simple solution to all those wanting to do the swap but not keen on fabing up the mount. will post up if it works

also want to get started on some of the wiring this weekend if it cools down lol its going to be 40 degrees C all this week  sucks lol.

also my mate has some volk meshies he said i can have for $40 haha 15x7 or 6.5 i think... hopfuly get them when i get paid

hey guys. Had a slight change of plans lol, yea slight thats funny

any way the change is new shell and new engine haha so pretty much getting ready for round 2...start fresh.

any way heres the car. stock CA20 hatch s12 with s13 front suspension, welded diff, stripped bare, and cut king springs in the rear, with 25mm bolton spacers on rear and 20mm boltons on front with an 8mm slide on.

this pic is pre spacers and lowering in the rear




So im picking up an SR20DET redtop with aftermarket ECU, haltech E8 to be exact, next weekend and then the workwill start again...

Those back wheels are awesome!

no FJ20 Win?

LOL @ slight change!  

What happened to the FJ?

Haha yea only slight.

Yea the FJ got sold to a friend who is putting it into an s12 too so thats not all bad lol. I just decided that it wasnt practical for the way i want to drive the car with the lack of readily available parts and the prices of the parts that you can find haha plus all the gear i am getting with this sr20 was too good to pass up for the price im paying for it all

Ok well did you get the guy to sign up on here?

Ain't nothin' wrong with an SR... keep us posted, and now that you can change threat titles, be sure to change the title to reflect your new engine choice

Yea mate will keep posting progress...

Uh dumb question but how do i change the thread title??

damn i suck at sticking to one car lol, picture tell a thousand words.

New whip day 1 coilovers going in



Bride and steering wheel fitted



front wheels bought 14x7.5 -5 ssr formula mesh with 30mm spacer sits at -35 offset



CA20+last few days of rego+rains = bellow



Rear wheels bought 15x8 -14 hashino racing mesh soon to have 20mm spacer bringing it to -34 offset



all caged up



Knuckles modded for retarded steering angle






New power plant



sittin pretty



so yea, skip all the bullshit in between, back in an s12 lol... action shots and possibly video next month from the next drift day at the local track Cheesy

looking sick man!!!
i just read this thread on S12silvia too. Definately an inspiration for when i build mine Cheesy
SRA FTMFW!!

So how is the clearance to the frame from all that steering angle and did you do anything to the steering rack mounting point to stop it from going over center? Cause this shit looks sick and moar angle means moar better lol.

I am yet to drive it with the new knuckles yet. at the moment the back of the tyre of the leading wheel hits on the wheel arch but that is due to stock caster arms and the trailing wheel hits the front of the wheel arch... nothing a bit of massaging wont fix Wink
As for binding as i said yet to drive with them but the guy who did the modification runs the same design in his competitive drift s14 and the main focus on the design was to minimize the ackerman angle and binding and he has almost eliminated both. On his s14 the leading wheel sits dead on 60 deg at full lock and the trailing wheel on 57.5 deg and virtually no bind. although no one has run this specific design in an s12 yet, pretty keen to see the results once on track Cheesy

cheers I_heart_VVL... its coming along Smiley should be a fun rig once its all sorted.

Also, stance in the picture above isnt final... tad more tuck n poke to be had soon Smiley

how did you mate that bride to your car? weld in seat bracket? or mod stock seat bracket?

the seat is bolted to BRIDE s13 super low seat rails... the two front mounts on the s13 rails line up with the s12's floor pan and with the rears i drilled holes in the floor, cut up some tube as a spacer to take up the gap and bolted the rear mounts down that way.

not sure if it would be different from RHD to LHD

Not too sure on the ratio of the s14 rack sorry, but it has more travel than an s13 rack.

As for the ackerman these knuckles have 2deg difference between the inner and outer wheels at full lock. Although I just sold these knuckles to buy a pair of Powered by MAX pro knuckles :) and as for the rack I have KTS solid bushes and am going to move the rack hard up against the cross member and re weld it.

The seat rails are s13 bride sidemount rails. the two front holes line up with the s12 ones and the rears I drilled holes, made up some spacers out of steel tube and bolted them to the floor :)

Set the ride height to where I want it to inspect what was fouling, what the clearances were like etc...



Its sitting with a 30mm gap between chassis and ground... proper low lol, just need to get it to handle good down there...

which is why the MAX knuckles are coming into play with the 45mm roll center adjustment, as mine currently sit like this! not doing the handeling any favours like that haha



Today my oil block and cam gear arrived... finally! haha.



Just want to start putting it together already lol, getting anxious to drive the finished product :D

So the car still hasn't been touched in a few weeks due to everyone being busy :( and probably not again this weekend either seeing as how ADGP is in town. I did get a couple more bits for the SR ordered though :)

Did a bit of this the other weekend, probably could have been working on the car but hay the sun was out for once! haha :D





Other than that, the last couple of days I've been crunching some numbers... turns out I was pretty naive to think this would be a sub 5 digit build :facepalm: after ending up with a rough estimate of parts cost to get it "finished" my reaction was something along the lines of this....



A little bit more on the tech side of things now... I have pretty much 99% decided on the final product/setup for the engine (given clearances allow what I want to do). I have settled on running 260 degree 12mm lift SOLID procams with solid lifters and upgraded valve springs. This cam profile with the turbo and manifold should provide lots of torque and a really punchy midrange.
Now on the subject of torque I am planning on bumping the compression ratio up to 10:1 to achieve this with my 8.5:1 pistons I will have a 1.2mm head gasket, 0.2mm machined from the deck and 2.0mm machined from the head face to arrive at a compression ratio of 10.04:1. The only concern I am having with taking the 2mm off of the head is how much machining the piston to valve clearances will allow, which I wont know untill I can assemble the motor to measure <_< seeing as how no where on the interweb can I find the piston to valve clearance of a standard sr20.
Another thing I am having trouble finding is a cam card for the tomei cams... they seem to be non existent for SRs? so Im not 100% what I want to do in regards to degreeing in the cams :thumbsdown_anim:
I have also been reading up a bit on porting, what to and what not to do, what areas to concentrate on etc... really cant wait to give it a crack myself :thumbsup_anim:  pretty damn interested to see what kind of numbers my own engine build/setup with my own porting will pull :D

Why not just get some higher compression pistons/rings from the get go?

Because I wasnt planning on running higher than standard comp when I bought them. I didnt put as much thought into what I wanted to do with the engine than I should have when I got the pistons

keep it up man you are giving me some good ideas for my s12

love all your cars man they all look sick as hell.  keep up the great work, its giving me motivation for this winter's strip down and rebuild of my car!

Great build darryn!  Keep up the good work!  I feel your pain with the tomei cams.  There's no way to degree a cam without a card to verify valve timing events.  That was why I went with a USDM cam manufacturer when selecting my cams.(easy access to cam cards)
You should get the specs and start making reproduction bolt in cages!

cheers for the props guys :) it all helps to keep the motivation there with such a big build on a low budget. Waiting and saving for parts in between doing any work is the easiest time to loose it, but I really want to see this done and finished up to competition spec so I can enter some of the local comps down here and hopfuly stick it to some of the newer cars repping the s12.

which is why the s12 has taken the back seat for the time being... It was an argument going on inside my head about having not driven for so long that made the decision. Its been over a year since I last steered a car sideways and it has been killing me, with the s12 close to another year off of completion it was either rush the s12 and run a more basic set up than was originally planned or buy a 180sx shell from a friend and run that as a practice car and slowly get the s12 done piece by piece... the decision to get the 180 ended up getting the go ahead.
So the s12 now sits patiently after having all the seam welding and tubs finished off.

The 180 has been getting some treats after becoming defected (was a daily driver) so far its got...
. S14 steering rack + lock spacers
. solid alloy rack bushes
. alloy steering shaft bush
. Ikeya formula tierods
. Powered by MAX pro knuckles (Huge thanks to Justin Carter for the hook up on the stock knuckles)
. Whiteline adj front swaybar
. Buddy club front coilovers
. cusco half cage
. God speed rear cross bar
. 17x10 +23 mesh for rear
. under rad support cooler set up

prob more that I have forgotten, but its coming along nicely. The engine that was meant for the s12 is going into the 180 with a smaller turbo and less aggressive cams than were planned and another sr20 will be built eventually for the s12 (with 300rwKw in mind)

Ahh^ :yes:

Can you please upload some pics of the seat rail setup? and how it all works?

Hey guys! been for ever since I last posted here! Unfortunately I haven't done any more work on the s12 since the last post, I had got the 180sx running and drove that a bit ripped the ca out with every intention of an SR going in and then kinda just gave up on cars for a year. Recently just purchased an FJ that I am putting into the 180. Got a custom turbo manifold made up for it with a t28 flange and external gate, planning to run a Td05 18g with a 50mm gate. Should make a bit of noise ;) haha

will try and update a bit more often now that I'm getting back into things. the s12 will kick back off once the 180 is all sorted.

the old CA set up



used to run 17x9 up front and 17x10 down the back



running these fancy guys



Did a bit of driving







Shed skids are always good haha



New wheels, 16x9 riverside mesh all round



the FJ and the new manifold




Also picked up this HKS kansai service refresh bar :)



Its just a matter of gathering some money to finish off the rest of the 180 now, same old story with cars hey, always waiting on money haha, like I said I will try update more frequent. Sorry no s12 action, that will come eventually! ;) I hope some of you guys don't mind a bit of s13 action in the meantime :P

Is that a custom manifold? I want one lol. What engine management are running?

Cool 180!! I always see Aus kickin ass  :yes:

Yeah its a one off by a guy down here called Rex Kellway, Steam pipe uneven length runner design :)

As for engine managment, Ive modded the dizzy to house an SR20 CAS and running an SR20 throttlebody and other sensors etc so the FJ will just plug and play into the 180 with no wiring needed :D so ECU will either be nistuned stock ecu or a powerfc :)



shitty phone pic :/

Cheers burritomannn :D

this is my FJ EFI guide right here. fucking awesome! keep at it

This company in Texas actually sells a complete coil over pack set up for the FJ

http://www.millersmule.com/blog/new-part-announcement/nissan-fj20-distributorless-kit/

If I had the money I'd jump all over it.

Faaaark, that's a pretty sweet set up! If I was using stock fj wiring and eng managment I would probably go with that.

Also I have been looking into R35 AFM instead of a z32, Pretty keen on the idea and running it on the cold pipe just before TB.