Since your shown me yours, I'd thought it only fair to show you mine
My pride and joy started off life as a 1984 Aussie made Nissan Bluebird which came with a 105hp (78kw) 4 cylinder engine and a solid rear axle arrangement but this project started only because my first pride and joy had a drive line issue as you can see from the first photo
As you can see from the photo, a missing trailing arm and wheel could be a issue but considering the floor pan was bent in three different places I guess it doesn't matter
this is what happens when your Navigator misses the call 'road goes right after crest' and at over 100km/h we ran out of road, skill and luck
this happened in mid 2010
So t I turned my attention to building a new rally car which started off life looking like this
This is where I started my own mini Binky version 2
Since this was the second version of the original rally car I had a good starting point, ( the first rally car of course) after all, Who in their right mind would rally a standard 105hp Nissan Bluebird with a solid rear axle because it's a pile of cow droppings in it's original factory form
So I guess I should tell you what I had changed in the original Bluebird to give you a starting point for my current car
I had changed the original L20 non turbo engine and gearbox for a FJ20T turbo engine and gearbox (170hp) and converted the Aussie rear end for a Japanese bluebird IRS, this also included a Kaz LSD, 300xz half shafts and Nissan R31 vented front brakes instead of the non vented original front brakes and had a bolt in 6 point roll cage as well as a fuel cell sitting in the boot
Since I had to build a new car I have the view that if your going to rebuild something then you build it better
So I made a few minor alterations and modifications when building the new car
these included
a fully seam welded and braced body so I started off by doing this
I'm having issues getting what I want onto the site so I'll post and restart later
I think there should be something after ha but I've had another beer since then and have no idea what it was so I'll carry on
after driving the original rally car for a few years with 170hp I thought it would be a good time to upgrade the factory ecu to something better with the new car
and at the time with Ray Hall in the team the Vi-Pec V-88 was soon bought and installed
the only issue I had was getting the wrong tuner to tune the car which resulted in stuffing the rebuilt fj engine in it's second rally, ( this was a result of time restraints at the time)
What really annoyed me at the time was it was a simple mistake with a safety option with the boost controller not entered which resulted in excess of 50Lb boost pumped into the engine, and 50lb was the max the ecu could record so who knows what it was running, but if you ever drive a car where it can spin wheels in forth gear, back off and save yourself a engine rebuild (this was the first time my engine builder had ever seen 3 bent conrods in a fj engine)
So after a engine and turbo rebuild and another tune I was happy with around 200hp because once you reach 300hp your tyre bill cost more than most people can afford
this is where I installed the engine which included rotating the brake booster, altering the inlet manifold to fit a larger throttle body, fitting a new ecu and four coil packs, the distributor was altered to be a crank angle sensor, Spal fans, intercooler and pipework as it wasn't intercooled before, water spray for the intercooler with a 20 litre tank, fitting power steering from a Japanese bluebird, new 3 inch exhaust, oil catch tank
I then sorted out the brakes first was the Nissan R32 front brakes which were a easy install and a little bit bigger than the single disc, single pot original caliper I then wanted bigger rear brakes with a separate park brake, so I got Nissan HR31 discs fitted onto the Japanese IRS rear end I installed ( it had a solid rear axle before) on to the discs I had fitted the front brakes from a Mazda RX7 as these were 4 pot, this lead to installing a bigger master cylinder from a Holden Commodore and adapting it to the Bluebird booster complete
I then had a second fuel map done on the ecu and a switch installed under the throttle so under normal conditions it ran map one with one boost setting with gave it around 200hp and when the go pedal was pushed to the floor it switched to the second fuel map which increased the boost by 5lb and gives over 250hp it's a nice easy car to drive and despite my age of 55 we average around the bottom of top ten at each rally we enter
The picture is the new master cylinder but I wasn't happy with the capacity for the brake fluid so I made a adapter plate so I could fit bigger individual cylinders for front and rear brakes
