How to build a drift car – S13 Project Pt 1

Hi Folks,

I made a conscious decision about a month ago that i wouldn’t turn this blog into a depository for my random babbling about shit that (quite frankly) none of you give a fuck about. Instead, I’ll use to it to update you with real world, useful and hopefully interesting articles that’ll help you in your progress and understanding of the little clicky community we immerse ourselves in.

With that out the way, the aim of this ongoing series of blogs is to follow and document the build of a real world skid car. Everybody and their dog (or whale) is building a competition car. It seems the very “cool” thing to do within the drift scene. Buy a car, strip it, cage it and drive it round on the street while “dealing” with the fact that your usually a) bloody hot b) bloody deaf c) bloody sore or d) all of the above – but it’ s worth it because your living the dream.

Frankly, fuck that.

Fact is that stripped cars don’t make you skid any better – for a PURE competition car, sure it’s worth it – but for an everyday driver and weekly pod skidder it devalues your car and is the equivalent of driving round in a drum.

With that particular rant over with – let’s begin:

I started the project by looking for a decent base to work with. I found this on PistonHeads local to me – it was a 1994 L reg S13 with around 80k miles and a number of goodies included in the package. The car had a seized engine and suspected oilpump failure and was mine for a tidy little sum.

 

Poorly CA

 

Back at base camp we checked the engine to make sure that it was actually knackered (boy was it) apparently the engine had been rebuild just 400 miles ago with new ACL shells, head gasket, Pistons – when i took it apart it was a disaster. The head was overtorqued, they had marked the top of the pistons with a PUNCH to number them and it obviously hadn’t been washed or honed recently by the massive amount of burned oil sludge in the head. I didn’t even delve into the bottom end – Not pretty at all. Luckily i did manage to salvage an almost brand new 1.4mm metal head gasket out of her which was a result.

A quick search on Driftworks revealed that an old buddy of mine (Lance) was breaking a MINTY FRESH S13 a short hop around the M25 in Grays, Essex. I he agreed to sell me the long block. I picked it up early one Saturday morning and landed it back at mine. Lucky for me, Lance had the documentation with the car that showed it had recently had ACL bearings fitted. Combined with the engine originally being attached to an automatic – we were onto a winner.

After doing the headgasket and inspecting the bottom end and clearing out any gunk from the cam covers breathers THEN re assembling it all. The engine looked like this…

 

Healthy - Fresh CA.

 

Engine spec:

- Standard Rotating Assembly & Head

- 1.4 mm metal head gasket

- ACL Big & Main Bearings

- GT28R Turbo

- Adjustable Actuator

- Japspeed Turbo Elbow

- Light Weight Alloy Pulley

- 444cc GTR injector

- RB25 Air Flow Meter

- Techniclutch Clutch disc & heavier pressure plate

I obviously had the option of fitting a stainless tubular manifold (which does free up a little bit of power) however from experience the reliability of these manifolds is pretty inconsistent and they have a propensity to crack. subsequently I’ll run the standard cast unit and have the extra reliability and piece of mind. It’s a road car after all.

Once the engine is installed Steve Sadler from FC Tuning (www.fctuning.co.uk) will be fitting and mapping a Niztune ECU which will give us both reliability, fuel economy and 300ftlb’s of torque! (torque wins races peoplez)

Many of you may be wondering why i chose to go with the CA instead of just fitting an SR? Basically it’s down to cost vs fun and the sheer accessibility of a CA engined car. If it goes bang (which it shouldn’t) but if it does a new longblock is 150 squid. If an SR goes bang (and they do) then it’s 700 squid. CA’s in my opinion are also less complex and this is an easy access vehicle afterall.

 

 

 

 

1 Comment(s)

Comments RSS TrackBack Identifier URI