Thought I would join in on the fun and make and evolution post of my own. It's a really long post, I'm board here at work.
I bought the car back in 2001 from a Nissan dealership of all places
This is one of the only pics I have of the car when it was close to stock. (I never planned on getting this far into the modding thing so I never took many pics at this stage.) In this pic the car is lowered 1.8 inches on stock struts and it also has an AEM short ram intake, the first two mods I did.
Here's a pic of the car at it's first show, 7 months after I bought it. I added an exhaust and some cosmetic things like wire loom and painted somethings under the hood. At this point I was just getting bitten by the modding bug.
Over the next winter I saved up and purchased the Drift Kit from Streetweapon (acutally I ran the 2nd GP for the drift kit on the org). What a time I had with that, anyone who was around back then knows the problems that arose out of delayed shipping times. It took me 5 months to get my kit and then another 2 months for them to replace the defective side skirt they sold me. I had the car painted for the first time super white with a red peral but the guy who painted the car cut a lot of corners and the peral didn't show up. I also got a really good deal on a set of 18's and on they went. At this point I had had the car for 1 year.
Over that summer I installed a NOS "wet" nitrous kit and an MSD DIS-2 ignition alone with new KYB GR2's at all corners. I got into drag racing and just wanted to go faster, I increased the jets to a 100hp shot and ran a best of 13.8 The plan was to turbo the 2.4 so I started to gather parts for my turbo setup. During the previous winter I had also pulled out all of my interior to redo it. I got it all done midway through the summer right before our local j-body show.
I ended up selling my 18's (don't ask
)and didn't have another set of wheels to put on the car so Brad (Doublez) let me borrow a set of 16's that he had. I know they don't suit the car but they were a loner set. This was the second show the car was entered into.
I took the car to Montreal a few months later (October) with a few friends for a weekend of partying. On the way back just outside Quebec city I was high in the RPM range coming off an offramp and I lost the #3 cyclinder. What a time that was, no one speaking french on a sunday, no tools and a dead cyclinder. I limped it to a Canadian Tire that was open and got some new plugs and tools. The #3 plug was smashed so I swapped it out for a new one and the car worked fine for the rest of the way home (not pushing it). The day after I got back I was on the way out to the shop so I decided to bring up the RPM's to see if it would happen again, this time the bottom end let go. After I took off the nitrous system and intake I had the insurance adjuster come out and look at the car, yay I'm getting some insurance money thank you for extended warrenty.
We talked about a few options on what to do next and it was decided to do the 3800 swap with a 5-speed. Here is a few pics of the car as it sat waiting for the new engine...
I ended up selling all of the parts that I had gathered for the turbo setup and put the money into the new setup. Here's a pic of the engine when we received it.
and here is the engine after I took it apart and cleaned it up a bit.
Next I had to get the parts together to bolt the new tranny up to the engine.
Custom aluminum flywheel...
Bully Stage 3/4 Clutch package
Here are a few pics of the drivetrain going together
The new custom sub-frame and mounts were next on the list of mods that were done...
and finnally the engine was in the hole...
The next task was getting the new wiring harness done and into the car...
Once that was all done it was time to install the little things like the 3.4" pulley, 160 degree thermostat, DHP PCM, my nitrous system (with thrasher N20 kit), new clutch master/cables/shifter assembly, relocate battery to trunk, rebend power steering lines, etc
Nitrous plate
Battery
Shifter console
At this point the engine bay looked like this...
Next on the list was a custom cold air intake...
Once all that was done it was off for the first test drive, we didn't even put an exhaust on it we were that excited to get it on the road. The first test drive only lasted about 30 sec but it sure was fun
The engine ended up "squating" back in the engine bay from the amount of torque the engine puts out. We bent the rad support, bent the lower engine mount, and bent the throtle cable bracket.
Next was to redesign the lower engine mounts and build a new tranny mount to fix that problem. Once the new mounts were done everything worked great on the street.
I was going to get my body kit fixed and repainted but I was still a few week away from having the money to get it done so I decided to just slap the kit on for now so I could drive it, bad decission on my part. I was at a local hang out one night and dropped the front wheel of the car off the shoulder of the road and bottomed out on the passenger side skirt. I didn't hit hard so I didn't think anything of it, when I took off up the road the wind got under the side skirt and did this...
Time now to get the car repainted. I went to a new body shop in town with the intention of just getting the kit repaired and repainted. The guy there really hooked me up and ended up molding in my side skirts, painting my nitrous bottle and painting the whole car too. He did an awsome job on it and I have no complaints this time around at all. I also got a new set of 17's for it as well
Next in the story is taking the car to the track. The very first time out was horrible. The first run I missed 4th gear and couldn't get it into gear till right before the finnish line. The second run I missed 4th again but this time I hit 2nd gear and lost the ability to shift the tranny while the engine was running. I limped the car back to the shop and dropped the tranny to see what damage was done. I did this all outside on my back with no air tools, took me about 9 hours to get it all back together.
Bully Clutches was very good to me about this. I sent them in the pressure plate and they had it back to me within 4 days, they even added a few more bands for extra strength at no charge.
Over the course of the summer I had a few issues with the clutch cables. The plastic clip that holds them together kept breaking because of heat from the exhaust. I ended up making a heat sheild for them and haven't had the problem since...
The next problem that came up was the first time I ran with drag radials at the track. Because of the extra traction I ended up tearing the rad support in 9 spots. We fixed this by building another engine mount in the rear. Works fine now. The best run at the track once all the issues were fixed was a 13.1@108mph with a 60ft time of 2.1 That run was also without nitrous. I never got a chance to run the car on the bottle yet.
I entered the car into Sport Compact Nights here in Halifax and took home best performance in the crazzy 8 catagory. I added a few things to the interior like a bost gauge and pillar pods. Here are a few pics from that show...
I had the change to get the car on the dyno at the end of the summer and here is the graph (note that this run is without nitrous)
And that is the history of my car. I have much more planned for it but like everything else it all comes down to money. I have some plans for this summer as far as the engine goes so hopfully everything will work out and it will be much faster than last year. I also have some plans for the exterior next winter as well as a front and rear brake upgrade and some suspension goodies to finnish it off.
Quoth the Raven 'Nevermore
raven@accesswave.ca
Raven Autosports
55 McQuade Lake Cres,
Halifax, Nova Scotia, Canada
(902) 850-3330
10.82@132
Cost depends on your ability to sourse all the parts needed and what kind of labour rate you can get. If you have a shop do it and they have never done it before count on 120+ hours. You can drasticly reduce that labour time if you purchase a new sub-frame/mounts and wiring harness from DoubleZ Automotive.
