So here is the story of my latest S13 Silvia
I purchased this silvia as a road car off
www.silviansw.com that had just run out of rego
here. It was loaded with suspension goodies and various other quite expensive parts.
The car originally came with the following:
SR20DET + 5sp
Bride Ergo II's in near new condition
Advan RG's 17x7.5 and 17x8.5
S15 front brakes with pmu pads
Teix flex with edfc
Kazama castor rods and rear upper arms
Random strut braces
Cusco swaybars
5stud replacement hubs
nardi deep corn wheel
GT28r on stainless manifold
trust PEII stainless exhaust
trust fmic
Blitz ID3
Defi link guages
Koyo 54mm radiator
Nismo copy front bar
Nismo skirts
Wisesports full bodykit
Rice headlights
+ various other stuff i've probably forgotten
The car was cheap as it just run out of rego, and had hail damage. The previous owner had spent 5k on a black glitter paint job, only to have it hailed on 2 weeks later.
The first step was to sell off all the bits I didn't plan on using in the car. Anything that didn't make it go any faster, or could be replaced with cheaper/lighter/more effective/cheaper parts were sold off. The goal was to make the car as fast, and cheap as possible.
The first things to go were the rims, seats, exhaust, nismo copy bar, nismo skirts. Since they were all top shelf parts in immaculate condition, they got good money and I recouped over half the cost of the car straight away.
I found a set of R32 GTR brakes with aftermarket disks for a good price so I snapped them up and sold off the S15 brakes. I also swapped the 5 stud conversion hubs off for S14 front hub setup to give me more track due to the longer lower control arms.
Fitted an oil cooler just to be safe.
Also the car was ex-SR20DE so it didn't have an LSD. I picked up a 4.4 VLSD up and chucked it in.
Then it was off for a wheel alignment. The settings I chose are:
Front
Castor: 8deg
Camber: 3.5deg
Toe: 3mm total out
Rear
Camber: 2.2deg
Toe: 2mm total in
This is how I like to set my cars up for the track. It seems to work pretty well in my Sil80 so I figured I'd copy that in this car.
For its first trackday at Wakefield, I had to borrow a seat and exhaust, but everything else was left how I bought it. The car was only running 10psi (so say 140-150rwkw).
We were running some shagged A048's at at the front and azenis rt215 at the rear for this day. This was an Autosports day and there was a field of 60 cars. I came 5th overall with a time of 1:10.4. My mate bhdave was also driving the car on this day and he got a 1:11.9. I figured this wasn't a bad starting point, especially considering the car's lack of power, decent tyres, and development.
From this day we decided that the car had too much body roll, So i sold the cusco swaybars and got fat whiteline adjustables to replace them. Also at the end of the day we noticed that the BOV was spitting out alot of oil and there was oil all through the intake pipes, so we determined that the turbo was shagged. On inspection, it looked like the turbo had ingested something. There was some very dodgy welding on the intake pipe from the previous owner's mechanic (we spent days fixing the dodgy mechanic work on this car) and one of the dags must have fallen off and gone through the turbo. The front wheel was pretty munched.
Time for some power. Since the turbo was stuffed, I used one one of my other cars as a parts donor. I yoinked the GT2871rs-48t and HKS 264/264 cams out of it, and the 740cc injectors. It hasn't been tuned yet but i'm expecting 225-235rwkw without pushing the car too hard. Its due for a tune on the 20th August at Unigroup. I'm running a nistune daughterboard.
We have spent many hours stripping crap out of the interior. As it stands, the car only has the bare minimum in it. So far the stuff that has been stripped includes:
Air Con
All sound deadening
All underdash crap
heaps of unnecessary body loom
headlining
Various other trim
The interior was brush painted with hammertone rust kill paint to hide any imperfections in our preparation
Some other things I bought are D1 dmax copy wideguards. They are rubbish quality, but fit up ok and will give me the guard clearance I need for running RE55 235 semis. I also bought a fibreglass bonnet which saved me 7kg over the stock one. This also allowed me to remove the bonnet latch for more weight saving.
Thats basically where the car is at right now. There is an Autosports trackday at wakefield on 13th September which will be its next outing. I'm expecting it to be significantly faster than last time due to +80rwkw, -100kg, good tyres, stiffer swaybars.
The next things the car will be getting are:
frp bootlid (The stock metal one is DAMN heavy)
funky half cage with side intrusion bars (This has been purchased and awaiting sea shipping from Japan - thanks Streeter)
frp doors (price depending)
Body loom full rewire and stripping.
What is the car capable of? I know I do 1:08.4 in a car that has less power and more weight and I haven't spent any time developing (Sil80), so i'm suspecting 7's this time out.
So far the car hasn't taken massive amounts of time, and has cost pretty much bugger-all (maybe 7k as it sits) so even if it doesn't perform, i won't lose too much.
There are several track-only S13's being built at the moment, so it will be interesting how they all compare at the track
Big thanks to BHDave for his skills at labour and beer drinking and talking shit.[/url]