From scrap car to project car

So from lurking these forums for along time i thought id contribute, part to show you guys my project part to give me motivation to finish.
Little background on me and the car and how i came about it ( although i know your only here for the pictures ) Im Adam im 27 i have a little to very little drifting experience i started life in a s14a being naughty in mexico and caught the drifting bug.


I decided to buy a dedicated drift car so here came the little 318ti compact


i welded the diff threw some coilovers on it and took it to the track and very soon found out i really wasnt good enough to drift something under powered.

only corner i could skid all day


i came home from the first drift day and bought a 2.8 engine and box and fitted it the following week



I loved how natural it looks in that bay

After fitting a 2.8 i decided i needed buckets because the leather seats were not that supporting ( who would of though it !) so i got some buckets and ended up with hubs and arms off a friend aswell so i did a few drift days and really enjoyed it more power made things much more easier


at the beginning i was really up for turning my 200quid compact into a "missile" and didnt really care for what it looked like but towards the end i really started to love the little compact that could and decided to treat it to a freshen up. i ended up buying a set of dakar yellow msport bumpers and did the only sensible thing....... paint the car to match



after that last picture in teeside it went all down hill, i snapped both engine mounts and ended up driving 200miles home with the engine rachetstrapped in. i replaced the mounts and did a few more drift days but then my girlfriend and inner adult me decided it would be best to buy a house so i had to sell the drift car to help fund the deposit.

if people were wondering where my s14a was during all this here are some highlight photos ( can post them all if people are intrested)











^^ One of the criteria of the new house it must come with a garage !
and some random shots from a photographer that we met at the nurburgring

 

right now all that pic whoring of cars that are unrelated to the title are done with lets move onto the project car after we bought the house but before we even moved in i got tagged in a s14 with crash dramage if you havent guessed i work in a body shop so this was right up my street. it was cheap but in scotland ( im from northwales) i had the decision to make weather i was gonna go down the rusty straight car route or the bent but very clean route. (itwas actually a london car which why it was so clean. also one owner from new )

picture when i picked it up im sure i took more but cant seem to find them it was in a scrapyard


i managed to get it home so i snapped a quick photo at this stage i still hadnt met any of the neighbours and at this point i drove a s14 into the garage with nothing but a dump pipe off back of turbo and brought this scrapheap and parked it behind the garage bet they had some horrible first impression


when i saw the car the damage was alot more than i expected / saw on pictures the chassis leg was over which i knew but the damaged went alot further back than i thought all the way to bulkhead and strut tower


after i pulled it was ready to come back home


i was really battling my head with this one i really wasnt happy the initial plan was to just pull the leg back brace it and drift it simple right? nope because the damage was so bad i made the decision that im just gonna tube the front end but even then i the strut tower is bugging me because it had a crease through it and just wasnt sitting right with me so the car sat there for months with no motivation at all untill this little beaut got posted up free for collection


i really dont know what i did to deserve such luck it was exactly what i needed, free, pretty local and came with a shit ton of other things like interior and panels that i also needed all for free!
and that is where i am up to at the moment

if anyone has any questions ask away i know this looks like a scary huge job to most people but remember i do this sort of thing every day granted not to this extent regulatory but its nothing ive not done before.

 

You literally saved this car with that front end thank you very much again! And yes it has taken that long to actually work up motivation to start it with a little help of that I've booked driftland for early next year I'll do a quick update later when I'm at the computer

 

Havent really had chance to touch the car so far this week due to building up and refitting an engine to my apprentices ds3 although it reminded me that i have pictures of my engine build progress aswell.

this engine was bought a long long time ago as a spare engine for the purple car ( partly why i ended up buying red car because i had alot of the missing peices)


Dont ask me how but i managed to bag this engine and the head next to it for somewhere around 150quid and 20miles from my door although it was listed as "smoking and rattling" in my spare time i help a friend build engines so it wasnt too much of a problem. After buying the drift car this became the engine for it so the plans were do a leak down see whats going on if all is okay whack a set of bearing in it for piece of mind nice cheap and cheerful drift car i was aiming for sub 2k ( not including parts i have left over from building purple car) build when its on the road


as you can see this engine wasn't very well maintained and was very very coaked up so thought id pull the head and atleast freshen that up,


As you can see the hot wash got a bit of it cleaned up but ill send it out to get skimmed and seats recut


As i was stripping it my friend mentioned he may have a gift for me, he went upstairs and came down with a set of rods that he bought for a job but it never turned up. so i went a head and decided to strip it complete


The bearings were a nice surprise i thought they were gonna be toast with it "rattling" but looks like i caught it just in time!

The hot wash didnt really touch the years of grime on the block


As you probably guessed it the domino effect soon hit me hard. New rods ? may aswell get new pistons right? if your going stronger internals why not get a metal headgasket and run more boost etc etc so did a buy or two



i still need to get a few more things but basic spec of this engine will be rods, pistons, arp head studs, arp main studs, metal headgasket and standard cams ( not the ones in pictures they are very rusty ) ive made the decision that this engine will end up going into the purple one and the purple engine will be going into drift car for the reason that i way over built that engine for the road and would be better suited to a track environment that engine spec is same as above but with 272? tomei cams, rocker stoppers, brian crower solid lifters and uprated springs and a ported head

i think ill have time saturday to work on the car for a few hours so should update weekend

 

havent really got round to doing much as ive been down with man flu the last week but managed to do a couple little things today,

i started with pulling the dash as im gonna relocate the fusebox where the passenger airbag is like i have done for my road car,
View attachment 305347


then i went about setting it up where its gonna live for the next couple of months


not much of a update still feeling slightly under the weather but little progress

 

A long time since update and got quite abit done first thing was to drop the subframe


then i went about cutting off the damaged leg


then i got on with un stitching the inner wing



once the inner wing was out of the way it made room to access the welds for the turret


as you can see the leg had a awful crease


so i did my final cut on the leg as you can see ive staggered the joins and kept the strengthener that runs down the leg for maximum strength also them two tubes you see on the outer chassis rail are for the subframe as that also bolts through the front and rear of the rail


if your wondering how i knew where to cut i lined all the holes up with the excess chassis leg and that was my cut line


the "new" front end ready to go in


after un picking everything this is what im left with everything ready to be stitched in

 

Thanks, The only reason i joined the leg was because thats all i had i would of preferred to take it back to factory seam but i only had about another 3 inches after the cut

ill post another update later

 

Right back too it t minus 14 weeks untill i should be at driftland

i made it over the hill and time to start putting some metal onto the car instead of removing it

first i started with the drivers inner wing i forgot to take pictures of the inside but this it pretty much done left the top piece off because it is alot easy to do tweeks if i need to


ive had to unpick the new to me chassis leg to let it slip over the peice of original leg im leaving


Chassis leg and crossmember lined up and measured



when measured i found out the front is still 5mm over ( 10mm out of square )

so i rigged up some pieces of wood just to push it past where it needs to be its very easy to move when its not welded together ill keep it pushed over untill all the welding is complete


i got all the leg welded in forgot to take pictures again !

next up was the strut tower but first i had to do a little rust repair joys of old nissans


tacked in place measured and measured and measured and measured and im happy with where it is so i will get it welded into place this weekend and then make a start on inner wing

 

Right a little more work has been done, starting to panic about being ready in time for driftland now i can only work on the car for 2 hours each night as i dont wanna make too much noise for the neighbors

First off i started stitching in the inner wing im really slacking on the picture front as just getting my head down this is the inner wing and brace all welded ive used the front panel clamped onto the old spotweld marks to keep everything spaced correctly


Secondly i put both outer panels a mix between old and "new" panels surprising the spot welds match up between old and new panels which make alignment a little eaiser


Now the front end is straight the rear of the panels didnt sit flat so i had to straighten that also then i proceeded to weld it into place ( also as you can see in the background i even stitched around the tunnet panel for that extra security)


Once the rear was welded in i continued onto the forward panel and got that hammered out


here is how the car sits at the moment pretty happy how its turned out think next im gonna change it up a little and move onto the rear quarters and getting the inner arches plated where i cut for overfenders


also some of my purchases that you might of seen appear in the background

150ltr compresser i did have a 50ltr but it couldnt keep up with my airtools and im planning on spraying the engine bay in the garage so needed a new one that could run a spray gun its dirty and dusty but does the job


next up is a 6 point through dash bolt in cage it did a couple of years in the bdc according the the stickers. and a pair of fake brides haha

 

Since the uk has gone on lockdown i thought id update this thread

once the front end was welding i decided to have a little change and moved onto the rear arches


i decided to weld from the outside cut off the excess and grind down just because it was easy


i didnt take many pictures unfortunately

next up was tubbing the front arches never done it before knew what i wanted them too look like in my head just hoped my brain could convert those image into reality i am far from a fabricator

i started with measuring the turrets and calculating how big my tubs were gonna be once that was done i popped to my mates unit and rolled up some steel i knew i could get both tubs out of one rolled sheet so i made two for when i fuck up


first attempt didnt go to plan, i didnt take into consideration the angle of the turret and it left a funky curve at the end which i didnt like


v2 i added some steel in to fill the gap


next i added a extension to so when i make the front flat part it will be sitting at the right hight


once everything was visually looking good i removed the arch and got all the in fill peices tacked into place


arch back in and tacked into place


i was happy how it turned out so i moved onto the other side that went together pretty easily because i made templates of the other side before i tacked it in

both sides fully welded


and threw some primer on after cleaned all the welds up because primer makes everything look better

 

another quick update ive been furloughed untill june so got no excuses getting this finished now, private hire of driftland is gonna be pushed back untill later date so ive got a little more time than i thought,

i started by extending lower arns

i got paranoid with my welds so i welded out side, inside baced across join, ground down the weld put heat into the arm and then put another over the top

then i moved on to relocating the rack





and then gave them all a nice coat of paint and new balljoints

 

Abit more progress to the build

First i started off with raptor lining all the arches made sure i gave it a good coat


Then i managed to get all the suspension on and on its wheels


First time the car has seen day light a long time

i like how it looks from this angle not bad for a guy that didnt know what he was doing


the whole reason of getting the car outside was to blow off all the dust and brush the garage out form all the mess thats accumulated over the last months ready to get some colour onto the bay

First dust coat of base


and here it is all finished its grey and shiney!



i am really happy how it had turned out although ive been in the body repair trade for 11 years i have never picked up a spray gun and i am really happy how its turned out, its got alot of dust but thats to be expected with painting in a garage i got one small run which is deep down in the bay so im not that concerned

dont know if anyone is following this build but atleast its a good archive of my progress

 

All Dry looks good enough to me


next step is to get a heart for it, ive decided to use my engine out of the daily because its too over built for what i need it for on the road



getting to know each other


ive decided to go with the standard t28 for now as it will be more responsive for drifting size differance


also got a mega deal on this twinplate


and ready to go in


excuse the blurry photos


got everything plumbed up


i will end up paint the front panel but currently my compressor has shit itself




has anyone figured out the outside colour scheme yet haha

as you can see theres loads of little things added up like powersteering res relocated, audi coilpacks, brake lines run battery cable run etc just loads of little fiddly jobs i didnt bother to bore you with pictures

ive also added my aero catches to get rid of those ugly pins




as it stands atm


also gave it a wash looking like a car not a abandoned wreck now

 

fitted the overfenders tempary untill i paint excuse the huge rivets all i had at home


got roll cage from powdercoaters finally


took the door off just to make fitting easier


cage fitted


got the carpet and rear seat in


steering wheel looks at a real funky angle here i think its the wideangle
but the seats are fitted


then made a start on the dash



i like where the handbrake ended up sitting in the dash it sits in the ashtry hole, even misses the gear stick surround


and ready for the alignment and mot


and the fitment after i pulled all the camber out, not too bad for a guess eventually im gonna lower it more but currently on a set of borrowed coilovers untill i can get my bcs un seized