Nissan Silvia S15 Part II, with less JZ this time.

After promising I never wanted another project after the last troublesome JZ S15, I have went against my own words and done something I am sure at some stage I will regret.

Some will remember the funky JZ S15 I built last time which ended up having engine failure due to knocking the sump off the road too many times, the car also nearly gave me failure as from the word go nothing ever seemed to go smooth.



The past few months I have been living the boring life and pretty much spending my weekends playing PUBG and searching the auctions and dealers in Japan, ultimately saving some pennies together.

This car came up on a dealer website, it fitted my needs and I messaged about the vehicle with no response so I just sort of forgot about it and kept on searching, me and Alan (Driftwizards) bidded on a few auctions cars and hunted high and low for stuff which met my budget. A few weeks had passed and I decided to email the dealer directly instead and got a response, yesterday we had agreed on some details and I paid for the car.

It is a year 2000 Nissan Silvia Spec S Auto, it seems from the images to be in fair condition and it suits my needs perfectly as a base to start on.













Rewind back to last week, on a Tuesday morning I was sitting in work and I spotted a "knocking" SR20 for sale on Driftworks for reasonable money, I decided to make the 8 hour round trip to collect it with the thought in my head I will rebuild it for something at some stage not knowing I was buying that S15 yet, I also ended up buying an SR20 manual gearbox when I was there. For anyone interested, an SR20 fits in the back seats of a BMW E46 330D.



Got the engine back into my garage, had a bit of a poke around and decided to investigate the "knock". I was pleasantly surprised to find the following:





It had done the common SR20 thing and broken a rocker, so that is what the knocking was, I was obviously over the moon as the price I paid for the engine reflected the knock.

As the rocker had broken I decided ive got a few months until the car comes so I stripped the engine on down to check out the bottom end and replace the headgasket for a metal one, giving myself some future proofing, upon taking the flywheel off I was presented with this mess:




It looks like someone has tried to remove the flywheel with a fucking bulldozer, it has wrecked the mounting surface of the crank, so my inspection of the bottom end would now need to go further as the crank > flywheel mounting face is now going to need machined.

Thankfully enough there was no metal in the oil and everything else seems to be spot on in the engine.









The plan now is to get the crank mounting face machined and when building it back up replace the bearings for piece of mind, a new metal head gasket, some up rated BC valve springs to hopefully solve the rocker breaking issue and some new up rated cams when I am there.

S15 will take a few months to make its journey around the world so I will just start trying to collect some parts.

More to come soon.

 

So a little update, the car is leaving Japan on the 25th of this month.

While it was there waiting for the boat I decided to order something from UpGarage, a fancy OS Giken Single Stage clutch, this one is VGC with plenty of life left on it, not something you often see for sale on the forums over here so I jumped at the chance of this one, what made it even better is the guy who is shipping the car said I can have it delivered there and he will put into the car for the boat home to save on postage!





More updates to come as more parts start arriving.

 

Some Dmax coilovers which I spied on eBay:






Should be with me in a few days time and I will be able to start cleaning them up ready for use.

Also bought a HKS Headgasket and a new rocker arm to replace the old one, hopefully should have the clearance of the car sorted by next week which will leave it so the car just needs collected.

More updates to come.

 

Spotted this on Facebook the other day whilst having a boring day at work, decided I would struggle to get one at any other time so I bit the bullet and bought it, I guess it is going to be beans and toast for a few weeks until pay day :grinning:

 

Thanks for the comments guys.

Small update of a Vertex bumper:


More pictures to come next weekend as I have stripped down the rest of the engine in preparation of some rebuilding. The car is getting very close to being here, a few weeks to go

 

So the car is here, but hasnt quite made it to me yet after a bit of a run around with the shipping company who were clearing it. It is due on Monday.

I decided today though to totally kill my bank account and cancel any Christmas plans I had in favour of these:



18x9.5 ET12 Metal Bright finish Work CR KAI - Just the couple of week wait on them coming from Japan now.

Too excited to start building this all together.

 

So it arrived today finally, after a massive head ache with customs not sending me out documents I had to wait an extra week, but today it came and I couldn't be happier.

A great guy called Paul Johnson brought the car from Newcastle for me, a total gentleman and easy to pay.



In typical just off the boat style, the battery was dead and there wasn't a dribble of fuel in it, so that was the first thing to do and then a quick wash in the pitch black.





I will take some pictures towards the end of the week in day light of the car and underneath it just to show how mint they are when they come from Japan, apart from one section of mismatched paint work it is very very mint considering the miles. The back seats look like they have never been sat in.

Looking forward to the wheels coming in a few weeks now, itching to start piecing it all together now

 

I managed to gather up all the parts needed for my manual swap and decided I would swap it to manual until such times as my DET engine is built and ready to go. This weekend me and my friend Hamish (Yes he is very Scottish) decided to have a go at fitting it, using the motor club at work I booked out the ramp for a few days.

The original suspension was quite soft so I decided to start by installing the coilovers, also a pic of the underside showing no rust.




Before the manual swap commenced I got the car in for an MOT at a local garage, a big smile on my face when it passed first time with compliments on how fresh it was considering the miles.


Most of the manual swap waiting to go in, my shifter and clutch fluid never arrived in time so I have to wait until Monday to complete fully, some Redline shockproof gear oil to keep the box healthy.




So first things first was disconnecting and removing the automatic box, a total nightmare with the weight of the gearbox and size of the bellhousing compared to a manual one, even with the engine mounts loose and the engine tilted fully back it was very hard to get to clear, the gearbox stand at the motor club came in very handy to save our backs from stress. Eventually we had it out.


The next challenge was really frustrating, the automatic pilot bush! I have always managed to get manual ones out with bread or grease, but after literally hours of battering it stupid it was not coming (3 full slices of bread into the hole ), so we went in hunt of a blind bearing puller however we did not manage to get one. A tactical Nandos dinner happened and on return I managed to get a slide hammer and used the MIG to weld a threaded nut onto it, a few smashes off the slide hammer and it was off.



Hamishes face when he does stereotypical scottish thing and drinks Iron Bru says it all.


Next thing was onto clutch installation, again didn't have a clutch alignment tool so had to get a little bit funky with some sockets and a spare cut down extension bar, worked a treat and it was in ready for the gearbox.



Literally 15 minutes to get a manual box in when you have a ramp, I am used to doing this on a garage floor with a gearbox laying on your chest so it was a dream to have it so easy.


Then onto making the holes for the clutch pedal and master cylinder, didn't have a hole cutter so done some chain drilling.




Done some wiring after this to make the car think its in nutueral and make the reverse lights etc work. Now I am just waiting on some clutch fluid and my new shifter to arrive before giving it its maiden manual voyage. At the times when we were at a loss for waiting on parts or trying to figure things out I decided to also fit my Bride Artis with Driftworks superlow rail and my gorgeous Nardi with Works Bell snap off boss.



Looking forward to my wheels arriving next week and hopefully getting the car registered.

 

I haven't done an update on the car for a little while, have been busy with work and general life, Christmas was a financial misery so only managing to get some car stuff now after recovering from it lol

Spent a little time with my Skyline and gave it a good clean for the first time since ive owned it, cleaning cars is really not my thing but I was happy that it came out so good with my basic knowledge.



Back to the important one, the Silvia.

Stuck the cage in





Got the tyres mounted on the wheels and done some testing for fit




My plans for the car have changed a little since I began the project, ive started building the SR20 back together but after reading too many project threads and getting jealous I have decided to go down a different route which will hopefully start coming into play in the next few months.