R32 Skyline 4dr Sedan SR20DET Low Style Daily

I't's been a while since I've done one of these, and I've been out of the game for a while. Some of you might remember my UK 200sx S13 which I swapped an SR20DET into a couple of years back. That car was rusty from day one and the years of daily driving and crashing up Driftland Bank finally killed it off.



So now I have something a lot nicer to work with, a 1992 Nissan Skyline 4dr Sedan GTS which was originally an NA Auto and was imported around 2-3 years ago by OP-JP Imports. Some of you might also remember how this car looked when the previous owner had it? He was running an RB25DET in it which most would argue is the correct engine to fit, That or RB20.




Cool right!? Luckily for me it was up for grabs through another owner who didn't have the time for it, and it was a very reasonable price that I just could not say no too. The car came to me with the following...
Full Rolling Shell
Full interior "Minus Driver Seat & Steering Wheel"
CS2 Coilovers "In Great Condition!"
Relocated RB Front Subframe
S13 Rear Subframe
4 Stud Hubs and Brakes
Modified Front Knuckles.

I then transferred over a few items from my S13
Rota RKR Wheels 15x9 ET0 Nankang NS2's Front 195/55 Cheap Bois Rear 195/55
Mirco Bucket Seat/ DW Super Low Seat Rail
Classic Nardi Steering Wheel 340mm/ DW Snap Off Boss/ HKB Boss Kit
Fresh Discs and Pads All Around
DW Front Tension Rods
DW Rear Camber Arms
DW Rear Toe Arms
Walbro 255 Fuel Pump
DW Braided Clutch Line

I haven't done an awful lot to the car in the months that I've owned it, And I don't really have any decent pictures of it out in the sun light, But it's looking pretty rough at the moment anyway so good pictures will follow once it starts to take shape. Anyway it's getting close to the new year and I need a cool car in my life to enjoy both on the road and occasional track.

Here's a few pics for now...



















Also there is some damage to fix but that can wait for now.

So I've collected a few bits for the SR swap that was either missing from the car or I need for the conversion.

SR20DET Engine Conversion Harness "Made by Mark Norfolk, Wiring Yoda!"
Auto RB20 Start, Charge, Gearbox Loom "JDM Garage"
Relocated S13 SR Front Subframe "Freshly Powder Coated"







I Still need a fair few bits to make everything work, Mainly Prop Shaft which I might just get custom made, and I am missing my Power Steering Lines and Filler Pot, So if anyone knows of any cars being broken or just spare parts lying around holla at me. I also want to get my front tension rods Powder Coated or I might be tempted to buy some Destroy or Die Reinforced ones that Dan has lying around.

Obviously I need the engine so here's the old girl, Ex Auto S14a SR20DET which I've had no issues with so far, Always ran stock boost in my ownership with a stock T28 Turbo and Stainless Manifold, DW Light Weight Flywheel and Hardrace Street Mounts.





Before I can drop this in my plans are to completely Under Seal the whole car in Stone Chip paint to protect it from all the road use it will be getting. The car itself is very clean, Yeah the chassis legs are a bit dented in places but that's inevitable with it being sat so low in the past. I will have the car sat at a happy medium of low and functional which is a personal preference that everyone can decide on once I get to that point.

I also want to paint the engine bay, something I rushed on my s13. With this being a nicer car I want to do things properly and not just throw it together for the next drift day.

Saturday 29th December 2018 and I've started to make a move on the work. I wanted to start stripping the engine bay area of all wiring and components in preparation for sanding and paintwork., I also needed to get the car into the area of our ramp that we share in our unit so we had to move a few cars around. Anyway first day on it and I've managed to stip the Front bumper / Wings / Lights / Wiring / Washer Bottle/ Overflow Bottle etc from the bay. I still need to remover both Brake and Clutch Master Cylinder for it to be ready for me to start preparing it for paint. There is also some holes that have been patched and primered that need tidying up beforehand.

















As for the underside, well as mentioned it is pretty dam clean under here but everything will need to me cleaned up and de-greased before I can apply the Stone Chip Paint, which will be my next job/post.

Anyway I hope people like which direction this car is heading, my plans are to keep the exterior and engine bay paint The Original Silver. Hopefully I can keep on top of this build thread as I've enjoyed typing this lot up for now.

 

OK So I've been pretty none stop the past couple of days trying to see some progress on the car so everything is pretty much a blur to me but I think the first job I did this day was remove the Clutch and Brake Master Cylinders, Bit of an awkward job to be honest but was glad to have them off. I don't have any pics of them but here's one of the bay with them removed. I do want to inspect my brake master cylinder as there was a leak from there so I might want to clean and rebuild it just for piece of mind, Last thing I want it brake fluid all over my nice fresh engine bay, I will probably fit a sock over the filler pot as with the power steering pot when I find one that is.



Now I want to do a proper job of this undersealing so I started off with removing the fuel tank, Something I've never done before but it was absolutely no hassle whatsoever.



The tank itself looks to be in pretty good condition, It looks like it's galvanized from what I can see? It does have a bit of a dent and some gravel rash from presumably drift related incidents but I can definitely live with that. I will be painting the tank in Stone Chip Paint also before re-fitting.



I doubt it's ever been off before, Looks super clean under there with the original base coat showing.



Also during this removal I found these cool little stickers in the filler cap flap.



Next up was to remove the subframe, I did remove the wheels beforehand to gain access to the brake lines. If you haven't done this before its really simple you just need to do that and also release the handbrake cables from the centre tunnel. Also Pro Tip! Find a big peace of random unit wood to balance it on, as you can see I don't have a diff to jack from this time. Obviously it's nice to have use of the ramp but this is just as easily done on axle stands as I had to lover the ramp to remove it anyway.





I do plan on getting this rear subframe powdercoated as well as the front, But for now it can wait until I've removed the stock bushings and bought some poly bushes. I really don't want to go down the solid route with this car, I want it to be as comfortable as possible to drive on a daily basis. And after catching a few passenger laps at drift events with Ali's Laurel which still has stock bushes I realized there was no need to go solid or hard poly bushed at all.



Still on the same day here, I moved onto the front of the car to remove the front subframe and double wishbone suspension setup etc. I thought the easiest way to get the subframe off was to simply undo the tension rods, and lower arms and finally undo the track rods from the rack. Well I could not belive how tight these were done up! I ended up firing the heat gun at it before swinging off my biggest adjustable spanner, with the added heat they came off finally.



So with that I unbolted the 4 nuts holding the subframe in place, Breaker bar job for sure.



So this is an RB subframe which I think has had the rack mounts moved forward, I'll probably just keep this in case I decide one day that I need RB20 noises in my life.






The bolts are in good condition too, I will paint the tops of them to match the engine bay and will refit the subframe once all has been painted. I'm considering lowering the car onto the subframe with the engine and gearbox as one, To reduce the risk of scratching the freshly painted engine may. Seems like the best way to do it while I can, I just need to find something that's high enough and would support everything, ideally something on wheels like a big engine table but we don't have one of them currently.



Following that the tension rod brackets came off, Again these are in great shape and will be getting powder coated gloss black.



Coilovers off! I was so lucky to have these DW CS2's thrown in with the car, I had HSD MonoPro's on the S13 so will be interesting to see what the difference is, but I've heard good things so far.



After removing the coilovers I could not believe how heavy the double wishbone setup was after one side dropped down and nearly killed me. Before I could remove them though I had to undo the brake lines from the mounting brackets and pull through the engine bay. I don't think these have ever been undone before so I had to use the heat gun again and a pair of mole grips, Managed to free them off without completely chewing the connectors up.





Back to the suspension. Held in by 4 hench bolts against the reinforced inner arches, I removed the bottom two on either side before lowering the ramp down so that they wouldn't fall down once removed. This worked out nicely and no toes were lost during the process.





I think this was the last job I did in this day, I'll do another post of the second day to try and spread things out and save me some time typing this up. But I'll just leave this pic of my wheels here, Honestly I love these wheels so much. I think they look amazing and for the price and sizes you can not go wrong. Obviously if I could afford genuine Watanabe's I would have some but I think these Rota RKR's are the best reps of them going at an affordable price. I think the bronze will work well against the OEM Silver Paint Code.

 

Thanks man I will check that and give you a shout if I need anything else. It seemed to have a lot of fluid around the plug connector area?

 

A lot of this post is spread over the course of a few days just to show the progression and where the cars at now. So with almost everything removed I started to get to work. The previous owner ran a front mount intercooler and had welded some brackets on the lower brace bar if that’s what you even call it?



I won’t be needing these with me running a high mount kit from an s14, So thought I would just remove them and clean up that general area from any rust that has started to develop. I used an angle grinder with a cutting disc and then a sanding disc to clean up the welds and return it to its original shape.





After sanding everything back I then brushed on some Kurust on all the rusty areas and then again sanded everything back once cured.





I then applied a thick coat of Etch Primer to the exposed metal so hopefully this will keep this area free from rust once painted.



This area was also needing some attention, I ground it all back including most of the seam sealer. Again applied kurust and ground back again.



I have applied a primer to this area too but I haven’t taken pictures of everything as I was too busy just cracking on with it.

Now this car is very clean underneath but, there are definitely some areas that need some serious attention to keep it this way. I started to wire brush all of the dirt from the underside.

As you can see the chassis rails are a bit beaten up and have exposed metal which has started to rust, also a lot of under seal that is loose.





So I ground everything back applied kurust again and repeated the same process, eventually sealing them up with some trusty etch primer. Hopefully the Stonechip paint will bond to this area nicely now and keep them good for a few years.

I carried on with cleaning up the rest of the underside moving towards the back of the car.



Rear arches were full of dirt, they cleaned up nice after a good wire brushing!







Removed this rear vent and filler neck boot, there’s no point under sealing if I don’t do a proper job so everything that’s covering metal is being removed.



The rear arches are all metal still, but they had been rolled back completely flat. So I pride them back out to get behind and clean out the dirt and also so I can get some paint in there before rolling them back again. I want to try and keep these arches good for as long as I can, as I really like the idea of having solid rear arches.

I’m really excited to have all of this sealed in black under seal, it’s going to look the part and make me less paranoid about it being weathered from being used every day.



Ok so there’s two plates that have been welded in either side of the engine bay, to cover the existing cut holes for front mount intercooler piping. I spend a while grinding the welds down the best so could before applying some of this hard filler.





I hate filling because I always make the sanding harder than it should be by putting too much on but after a lot of sanding it finally started to look like the oem bodywork.





And then finally a cost of primer which shows off all the hard work, but I still think there’s some filling and sanding to be done on these areas, I’ll try a higher build primer first before I add anymore filler.

I’ve also been slowly sanding the rest of the bay down, removing the dirt and keying the paint for when I primer the whole area.







It’s a slow process but this is how everything needs to look before I clean it and apply the primer. Speaking of primer, I’ve bought myself some of my own kit for doing so



I proper primer gun, primer kit, measuring pots etc all from my local paint shop which were very helpful.



No I am not a painter! Let’s get that straight, I just like to try my hand at every and I believe that with patience I will be able to get a good finish hopefully. I’m excited to use the gun to be honest, but my overall goal with this car is to do almost everything myself. No harm in trying right?

One last small update, I have given the headlights a freshen up.



After cleaning off the previous paint and dirt I decided it might be a cool idea to vinyl wrap the outer edge.





Super happy with how it has turned out! Makes the lights look brand new and should hopefully direct the light better and make them as bright as they can be. My previous S13 lights were not very bright so hopefully these are a bit better.

Anyway thanks for reading this, more updates to come, hopefully some paint in the next post.

 

Seeing some progress on the car now! I was going to spend the day prepping the engine bay but I wanted to see some real progress so I decided to dedicate myself to laying on some stone chip.

But first thing this morning I went to collect my front tension rod brackets from PT Powder Coating in Stockport.



Pretty pleased with how they look now, these combined with my front subframe are going to look so good in the engine Bay area.

So back to the painting, I have never done this before using a gun on an air line. Always used the brush on hammerite stuff and never properly cleaned the surface as much as I have with this car.

I started off by degreasing the area on the underside where I would be applying the paint. Amazing how much dirt was under there even after a thorough wire brushing.



You probably can’t even tell from this image but this is the cleanest it was going to get and as you can see I started to mask off any threaded areas etc.

After my prep work I needed to protect the unit from this stuff from going everywhere, I share a unit with some pretty familiar cars and I know that I wouldn’t be impressed if my car was covered in thick black over spray.

So I lined the floor and then draped plastic sheeting from the sides of the car, effectively creating a spray booth.





With the car all prepped and ready to go I could finally crack on with the painting. I advise everyone before you spray this stuff buy a brand new mask before starting this job because I used a used one and half way through I almost died from the fumes.



Undersealing attire on fleek

I was really impressed with the coverage of this paint, and the gun that came included worked perfectly giving a great finish.

Here’s the finished outcome...









I got all the areas that I wanted to get covered today. Made sure there wasn’t any hard to reach areas that I had missed, you really need to point and shoot in with this gun to get in the tight corners.

As you can see I haven’t yet completed it all, I still need to do the rear arches, front arches, part of the bulkhead with a neater masking job and also the front chassis legs in the bay area. I will get around to doing this ASAP as I’m keen to have this rolling again soon.

One last update before I sign off, Mate Charlie who bought my old S13 shell had hold of my Walbro 255 fuel pump which I left in the car, thought I’d chance it and see if he still had it.



Luckily he did so I bought it back off him and it came all together as one unit so pretty chuffed I have a good working fuel pump that I can rely on, which hasn’t been over worked as it was never hard wired.

Not sure if you can get a replacement filter for it but I’ll have a look as it’s looking a bit grim after 2-3 years.