R32 Skyline 4dr Sedan SR20DET Low Style Daily

After a few months of forgetting I even owned this car I've finally found the motivation to get my shit together and work on it. All thanks to STL 4 event at Driftland UK which definitely made me miss driving/ owning a cool looking fun car. I think one of the things that was putting me off was the amount of work needed to be done for it to be anyway near drivable, that along with me wanting to do things properly I knew it would not be an easy ride. But I think I've finally taught myself how to be a little bit more patient with things, Also I've massively cut back on any other work outside of my day job purely to focus on my own personal projects.

So to get started there is some small updates for now, some of which did happen a few months back and some very recently.

To start with I did finish off the stone chip under sealing along the front chassis legs and wheel arches, and was very pleased with the outcome! Most of what you can see in the engine bay will be overpainted but its good to know that the extra protection is there.





By this point I was under pressure to free up the ramp at the unit so I then fitted my freshly powder coated subframe with the rack and tension rod brackets :-)




Also fitted the lines underneath but once I'd fitted them I wasn't happy with them not being protected so gave them a quick coat of stone chip and thought it looked much better instantly, the pictures were taken just after I painted them though so you can tell its still a wet finish.







Rear arches also got coated including the area around the fuel filler hose which was all removed previously.


Notice the rear arches look all wavy like someones made a terrible attempt at rolling them, well I actually pried the roll back so that I could clean behind and get some paint in there. Further down this thread update you will see I've paid a visit to the rear arches again for some tidying up and extra protection.





Fuel tank also got a quick clean and a coat on the underside which was badly scratched from what looks like a visit to Driftland bank. I will do the other side as well when I coat a few other areas I want to pay attention to still. Also looks like these tanks were galvanised? but can't really tell if anyone knows whether they are or not leave a comment.



I do need to paint the straps as well, i might treat them to some powder coat but might just paint them myself with hammerite no doubt.

Eventually I had both the front and rear subframes and all suspension fitted and had it back on the ground rolling again. I do want to get the rear subframe powder coated still with new soft polly bushes but I had to get my car moving again so for now its as it was.







This is pretty much where I left the car for a few months without any progress. The most time consuming job next was to finish off the prep on the engine bay which has required a hell of a lot of hand sanding and filling on the two intercooler holes that were previously patched up.

A quick reminder of how bad it looked when I got the car.






And heres my progress with it and how it looks now, it's very nearly ready for priming and painting but me being me I want it to be the best it possibly can be so I keep seeing imperfections and adding more filler etc, but so so close!

The hinge areas were pretty bad.



After some sanding Kurust and etch primer.



Pretty happy with how this side is looking now too



And also this side.





As you can see, pretty much night and day from the state it was in before and I'm really excited to have it painted finally.

Now back to those rear arches, I wanted to roll them back flat on the inside but also get the outer shape better as before it was mostly just rolled at the top and then had a big kink where it wasn't rolled so much. So a heat gun, arch roller and trusty hammer were used to work the arch.



Once I was happy with my rolling I wanted to then seal them from any water/salt/dirt over the coming years. So I had the idea to use seam sealer which I think will work out great in the long run, as I will want to use this car in all seasons.







Once I've done the other side I will give these a coat of stone chip again on top of the seam sealer ;-)

And this is how it looks with the wheel back on, you really cant tell how much better the roll looks from this picture but I'm happy with it now on this side. Both arches will need sanding down on the outside and filling slightly to smooth them out nice before the car gets painted.



And that's about it for now! My next update will be once the bay is painted no doubt, keen to get this done asap so hopefully I will be posting sooner than later. Overall it feels great to be back working on this car, the feeling of driving this car will make all the hard work worthwhile.

 

Hey Ya'll I'm back finally and have been busy working on the R32 once again. Took a long break from the car to swap my time to work on my house instead. But it feels so good to be back working on it and finally see the engine bay fully restored to a higher standard than the original finish.

A while back I got myself set up with two spray guns, a 1.4 for primer and a Devilbiss 1.3 HVLP for the Base Coat and Clear.

After countless hours of cleaning, sanding, filling, etch priming degreasing, making and sheeting up it was finally time to make it all one colour.

I sprayed the primer down taking my time and using it as a practice run to get used to handling a spray gun, laying 4-5 coats down of high build primer.






I did a pretty terrible job of spraying the primer to be honest but I was able to sand it all flat for the base coat. In the process of sanding I removed all the plastic sheeting and masking tape as I knew that I would have to apply fresh masking etc so that I didnt contaminate the finishing paint.

I got just 1l of KL0 Spark Silver which is the original colour for this car, Just mixed up from a local automotive paint shop. I mixed the paint at a ratio of 60/40 as opposed to the recomended 1:1 An I used a UPOL Clear Coat with a Fast Primer which is a 2:1 ratio but I only added 5% of reducer as it was really cold and I did not want to get any runs.

After watching countless videos online about how to spray paint, Silver in particular I folowed the spraying instructions starting with a Mist coat, then a medium to wet, then a medium, and finaly a mist coat to make the silver stand up. I allowed 15 mins between each coat, and waited 30 minds before applying the clear.

For the Clear coat I applied one Medium Coat, waited 15 mins then added a fairly wet coat until I was confident I had the gloss finish I was rooting for!

And boi did I get it!



I was so excited to remove all the masking and see how it looked against the freshly powder coated subframe and tension rod bracket.















The Stone Chip finish is exactly how I wanted it to look with it being over painted for that extra protection from the elements.




Overall I'm pretty blown away with the outcome and I'm now eve more excited to start putting everything back in the engine bay. If you're curious to see how bad it looked before just scroll back to a previous post of mine an you will see how terrible it really was.

I've started with cleaning up the main wiring harness, Theres a couple of plugs that either need repairing or replacing so my next update will probably start with some pictures of the fresh loom in place. Hope you enjoyed this post and hopefully this can motivate someone else to put in the work and have a go at spray painting for yourself.

 

Once again it's been a while since I last posted an update and a fair amount of work has happened since I last posted, which was when I just painted my engine bay.

With that being done I started to look at the main wiring harness and fuse box.



All the wiring was in a pretty sorry state, The plugs were caked in dirt and oil, here's a a prime example



I cleaned all the wires and plugs with a degreaser and fed the wiring back through into the engine bay.





Everything that goes back in this bay will be cleaned and refreshed to some degree. I cleaned up both the Clutch & Brake Master Cylinders, I actually upgraded from the previous BMC which was a BM38 to a BM44 which I believe was removed from an R32 GT-ST. The Booster/Servo was a bit rough so I gave that a quick respray also.





Another thing that I was missing from the car was the power steering hard lines, This car most likely would have had hicas beforehand so the standard lines would have been a bit of a mess. I opted for some UK S13 lines which are much simpler and seem work just fine, although I do need to make a bracket to secure the high pressure line onto the tension rod bracket.



Time to have a look at the engine.



One of the old turbo studs was seized and I wanted to remove it as the thread was damaged, I tried the old double nut tightened together job but it didn't want to budge on this occasion.



I did eventually remove it after welding a nut on and using a good pair of mole grips.



The elbow is now secured with fresh studs and locking nuts.

After this I started to fit the flywheel and clutch.

Im using the same flywheel that I previously ran which is a DRIFTWORKS Superfly, With ARP Fastening Bolts.



And I've opted for an Exedy Sports Paddle Clutch this time. I've also upgraded the standard clutch cover bolts with ARP ones also.



Moving onto heat wrap now, I've always been paranoid about heat protection which I guess isn't a bad thing. So I bought some DEA Heat Sheathing for the rear breather pipe and the rear heater pipes, I have also used this on the high pressure power steering hose as that's around the exhaust area too. Some might say it's overkill but It give's me confidence when I'm driving.





With that done, I had to do a little surgery on the head of my engine. The centre rocker cover bolt hole had stripped the thread out so I had to repair it with a helicoil kit. I also checked all the other threads while I was at it.





And when I was inspecting my spark plugs I noticed the ports were a bit grimy so while I had the head sheeted up I cleaned all the plug ports and the spark plug securing threads also.



Now for the more exciting and most recent updates.... I finally dropped the engine in!






And inevitably the gearbox crossmember does not line up, I've temporarily secured it for now but I will need to make an extension on it to be secured firmly in the 4 bolt holes.


However the shifter lines up perfectly, actually feels like a car inside now.



I've also brought the engine harness through and started to plug everything in place.






The main power plug had previously been tampered with and would not have been functional for my conversion loom.



So I reconnected the wires and with all my wiring I've been fitting fresh cable trunking and insulation tape where it's been necessary.



I also secured the main loom over the wheel arch out of harms way, Probably the first thing anyone should do when purchasing an S or R chassis. I have previously relocated it through the firewall on my last car but I really don't feel like it's necessary with this car as there is plenty of clearance.






With all this wiring and earthing falling into place now I'm almost ready to drop a new battery in and bring the car to life!



With the current situation we are all in I will continue to work on my car as much as possible, It's probably the only thing that's keeping me sane at the moment.