Sunday, July 10, 2011

Productive Weekends: A Road to Lakeside

Hey All,

What a weekend!! I was originally going to do this in two parts but I really didnt get around to it last night so this one is going to be a longish one LOL...

Ok first things first as you may have noticed the extra banner at the top of my blog, Well its a bit of a tribute for my Friend Nathan for all of the hard work he has put into my Silvia with me and his future help with Project Origin X. I'm all for helping him getting his name out there as the man.. well lets face it does purely awesome work with imports so keep your eyes open because you may start seeing more and more cars getting around with an NKDriftworx sticker on the back.

In the next coming months im actually going to be doing Feature posts for all of the Core NK cars so stay tuned..

But for now onto the main reason for this stupidly long post!!!

Some may know or not know that I am a moderator on NissanSilvia.com well over the past year I have been organizing breakfast sessions out out Lakeside and Queensland raceways and they have become quite popular, well a few weeks ago I got the urge randomly to organize another one and lets face it its pretty much one email away from Keith out at QR and its booked without any drama's and with the popularity of the event spots fill fast.

Long explanation short the event is mainly a social event more then a track event as it only goes for a few hours in the morning and majority of that time is spent... well.. socializing, We usually meet prior to heading to the track and socialize and then we head out to the track for breakfast. during which... well we socialize.... yes I'm a little nuts... anyway...

The biggest attraction to the event apart from the socializing is the actual track time we get, we modify our cars for a reason and thats to push their limits and what better way to test those limits then out at the race track, The breakfast event is actually limited to "fast road speeds" so generally going at about 50% of what you normally would around the circuit but it still is a whole lot of fun.

Any outing to the track regardless of it being a drift session, time attack or a breakfast is preparation because lets face it you'll end up having drama's... well in my case even with preparation I still have dramas.

So this weekend we spent doing a bit of work to the cars to get them ready, specially mine for me as it had been at the body shop for 2 weeks and it has little quirks and bugs that still need sorting out. Well i picked Silvie up on Thursday and i was absolutely impressed with how well it came out, Camo is a bloody legend I could not possibly stress that anymore then I already have because we all remember how Silvie looked before going back there....









Before






After

So you get my point, well if you dont well that is the same front bar pictured above it and its a genuine plastic Aero bar, its mint you really can not tell that it has been repaired. he also fixed my Nismo grill that was absolutely butchered.

Saturday

ok sorry... as i was saying the preparation well Lakeside is next Sunday and with three cars to get ready we had a pretty full weekend, Silvie being the attention whore she is took up all of Saturday with fixing up the fuel system...

That part of it all started with me wanting to replace the fuel filter, Nathan with his Eagle eye spotted a bigger problem that i hadnt. All of the fuel lines in the engine bay were the original ones from when Silvie was manufactured back in 91 and my SARD FPR was actually leaking.

Now the lines were just old and were starting to perish and just die, the FPR on the other hand isnt all that old and with the way it was leaking air was also getting into the fuel even before it made it past the injectors most likely causing the fuel to atomize (turn to air) which was most likely why my fuel economy (pfffft what economy its a modified turbo) was going but not only that.. good bye nice AFR's and most likely causing the mixture to be lean.

 Old filter (no the filter wasnt the original factory item) and lines

FPR (Fuel Pressure Regulator) Threads sealed and back in


So out the whole lot came, Lines replaced, Filter replaced and FPR resealed on the threads as thats where it was leaking quite badly.

During this whole process Nathans Eagle eye also spotted a ground down behind the engine that was not actually connected.... I swear he has a sixth sense about these things.

Now that wasn't all there was to do with the fuel system and this sorta shows how slack I am, a few years ago i was running a Bosch 040 fuel pump and the thing died on me and i ended up replacing it with a Walbro pump... when Scotty and I put the Bosch in we modified the fuel pump cradle as the bosch is a whole lot bigger than the standard pump... well the the walbro is a factory replacement and as such is a whole lot smaller then the bosch. The walbro never really sat right in the cradle and i wouldn't get the right level from my fuel gauge and it was just inefficient due to it using an S14 foot over a S13 foot (they are different)

So we also thought we would fix that while we were at it as we had a mint cradle that we could use.

Old Cradle out
Fuel pump setup in the new cradle.

Since we fixed all of that up Silvie is running one hundred percent better then she was and doesnt bellow out a stupid amount of fuel from the exhaust, that's pretty much what we did on Saturday well apart from me swapping over Boss kits for my steering wheel as the old one had play in it and was in need of replacement.


Keep with me guys!!! I said that this was a long one!!!

bit of a intermission maybe? well here is some pics of the grey 180sx we are putting together that i mentioned in my last post.
.
Hmmmm some tasty Type X lights and center garnish

We found the problem!! the battery is missing!! 
(the real one was the poo CA18DET)

The car is going to be pretty basic with a SR20, FMIC, Exhaust and coilovers basically a decent rig to start learning how to drift in - once it is finished it will be up for sale.


Sunday

Kristens Black S13 has been running a Poo R180 diff since we built it and has been needing a decent R200 so this morning we pulled apart two R200 we had in the shed to figure out which one was the best to actually use in her car, well really there wasnt much of a choice as one was a long nose and the other is a stubby nose which we needed as it will match her tail shaft.

 Kristen and Kate out in Sassy13 at the last QR Breakfast.

Ok so both diff's were normal R200's that have been shimmed to make them tighter the long nose had the six bolt splines we needed to match Sassy's half shafts so Nathan and Kristen swapped them over and got the diff ready to go into the car later in the week.

Milk Crates making life easier.

Kristen's never afraid to get her hands dirty nor let the boys have all the fun

Kristen putting her new diff back together. 

Ok So like I said the fresh R200 will be getting put in during the week so its ready for lakeside next sunday, but that wasnt the end of the day as i mentioned before we have three cars to get ready. Mine, Kristens and the 3rd being Nathans Green S13.

We have had the main parts of the car ready for quite a while its just the small things that we havent done like the body, exhaust, tyres and wheel alignment that we just keep putting off, Like all true modifiers Nathan has changed his mind upon the appearance of the green car a few times.

At one stage we had it looking like this

Well like i said Nathan has changed his mind again and has steered away from the big kit for something a little smaller, we had a black Nismo Aero bar hanging around for awhile and recently the grey 180sx came with copy Nismo skirts so today the skirts and a standard rear bar was painted black to go on the green car, at the moment we have only fitted the front bar but already it looks aggressive and awesome!!

The Nismo bar originally come of a Sil80 halfcut and had a massive cooler on the front of it so the bar itself had been cut to accommodate the cooler, with a reo bar behind it well it looked ugly so that was soon fixed.




and hey presto we fitted the front bar


In my opinion with the black nismo skirts, rear bar, blacked out taillights and black rear centre garnish it will look bloody awesome!!!

well that's it for now guys as i said its been a longish weekend and I'm wrecked as I'm still getting over the flu and todays cold wind didnt really help!!

As always Stay safe.

Bev!!!






















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