The 260SX Style, Suspension, and Braking Enhancements
Welcome to the "Style, suspension, and Braking Enhancements" part of our webpage, which is devoted strictly to highlighting the intricate details in our project vehicle; details that you might not even be aware exist because of their excellent execution. In this portion of our site, we will clearly and contemporaneously reveal every last nugget of information on how this car was developed in a frame-up "restoration" and build-up. In hindsight, the styling enhancement required much more creativity and expertise than was originally anticipated; melding body work, welding, structural modifications, cosmetic modifications, engine compartment body shaping, and late-model chassis and body shape upgrades required more than a typical "prime, sand, and paint" mentality. The styling of this vehicle is our self-admitted "time dump"; estimations of how much time it would take to make the car look the way it does today were seemingly off by an order of magnitude. We'll also sprinkle into the mix the efforts put toward suspension and braking. We think that after you read this section of the website, you'll agree with us that this is, by far, the most comprehensive S-chassis buildup ever.
So where do you begin to explain how 3,000 hours were spent building the visual appeal, suspension, and braking package for this vehicle? Well, if you're the one typing this website, you take a deep breath and just get right into it...
We'll begin with a bit of a caveat emptor: no photograph, nor any buildup feature could give the car its justice from a styling perspective. If you have seen an S14.5 conversion before, have witnessed first-hand a beautiful molded body kit, have seen metalwork performed to shave body features, or have seen some extensive engine compartment body work, and thought they were executed well, you really, really need to see this project car at an event sometime soon. We're not into self-giving gratification, so we'll leave it at that, but YOU REALLY NEED TO SEE THIS CAR IN PERSON!
BACKGROUND
Some have wondered if this vehicle is the old Expert 240SX. The answer to this question is "kind of." We did recycle portions of the original Expert 240SX, the biggest reason of which was so that the vehicle could be legally registered in the State of Georgia with its USDM VIN codes. The original Expert 240SX was reduced to nothing more than a framed unibody chassis in January and February 2003. Every part that could be removed from the frame (and the list is very long), was removed, and was sold on various Nissan forums or eBay. Before long, we were left with an empty S14 shell with no doors, hood, trunk lid, front or rear bumper, windows, engine, transmission, suspension, brakes, wheels, tires, or interior. Many people around the country and Canada own portions of the old Expert 240SX now! The interior, however, remains complete and is in storage in Scott Buwalda's attic, just in case someone expresses an interest in the Expert 240SX's interior. The final result you see now is the melding of several different Nissan vehicles on the original USDM S14 frame: Fairlady (300ZX), 240SX, Skyline GT-T, Skyline GT-R, Holden Commodore, Silvia S14, and Silvia S15; thus our use of the word "hybrid", as the vehicle really is a hybrid of several different Nissan models.
ENGINE COMPARTMENT STYLING
It seems the most logical place to start in this section of our website is with the engine compartment styling work, as this was the very first work done on the vehicle. By late February 2003, the entire car had been stripped down to nothing more than a metal frame, and the laborious work began to begin building it up to be one of the world's most complete show cars. With the engine empty now, we saw an opportunity to do something really cool---fill all of the OEM and aftermarket holes in the car's unibody engine compartment, stitch-weld the vehicle's seams, and do a significant amount of body work to radius every engine compartment seam, fill every spot weld, and smooth the lines of the engine bay.
Hole Welding
With a wire-feed welder in toe, 372 holes were filled in the engine compartment (you would have never known that there were so many holes in the engine compartment). Every last wire-routing "Christmas tree" hole, OEM piping hole, component mounting holes, abandoned screw holes, and aftermarket holes were filled. The larger holes were backed with 22 gauge stainless steel and welded in place, and the smaller holes were just filled using the wire feed welder. The majority of the work concentrated on the fender wells, and the front radiator core support, but we didn't stop with just the holes visible with the engine in place. We filled *every* unneeded hole in the engine compartment, even those on the side and underside of the frame rails, and the bottom and underside of the firewall. You could never see about 50 of the locations we welded with the engine in place, but we would have known they were there, so we welded them shut just the same. It was a complete project, and a massive undertaking, but the result was well worth it: a completely smooth and straight engine compartment.
Seam/Stitch Welding
With the holes all filled, we then tackled a popular technique to strengthen the car's unibody structure for AutoX and Drifting: welding all of the unibody seams. All of the OEM seam adhesive was grinded off of each unibody seam area (such as the fenders to the strut towers, along the top firewall seam to the cowl, etc.), and we welded a solid wire-fed welded seam at each panel junction. Once a good solid seam was welded in, we grinded the seams to ensure that the one-piece engine compartment theme would be continued. The result is a rock-solid platform for a high-horsepower application, where we wouldn't have to worry about seam flexing under hard acceleration and cornering.
Fire Wall Conversion Welding
We had established above that the frame was from a USDM 240SX. In early March 2003, we had chosen our engine set, a twin-turbo charged Nissan Skyline RB26DETT, and knew the only way the twin-turbo power plant would fit the correct way, without compromising the downpipe or steering rack, or having to "hammer out sections of the firewall", was to convert the firewall to right hand drive (RHD) operation. We cannot underscore enough that the RHD conversion was done only for performance reasons, and there were no cosmetic reasons for doing the conversion. Doing the conversion so your engine set of choice could fit in its JDM trim (twin turbo chargers with an 80mm downpipe) is reason enough to do it, and we had the capability to do it right.
We sourced a Silvia S14 front clip and brought it back to our shop. We put the S14 Silvia clip right next to the S14 240SX frame, and studied the structure of each vehicle for several days before proceeding. The only difference between the two frames was the orientation of the firewall. Every other structural featured was identical between the two S14 models: a-pillar structure, frame rail structure, inner fender and outer fender structure, radiator core support structure---it was all the same. We carefully removed a section of the Silvia firewall along the transmission tunnel, into the unibody frame of the cowl, and up along the cowl line, and back down and around to the base of the transmission tunnel again. The same area of metal was removed from the 240SX frame. The metal is double-thickness, with a viscous asphaltic damping between the layers to provide fire retardation and noise abatement. The firewall was placed into the 240SX's frame, and was welded from both sides, and a heated asphaltic compound we recreated using supplies sourced from McMaster-Carr. The damping was injected into the interstitial spaces between the firewall, using OEM steering shaft and pedal holes for access.
With the firewall converted to RHD operation, all of the final metal work was completed by grinding the stitch-welded seams. The result is the flawless integration of the firewall into its new surroundings; even S14 experts have trouble identifying if the car is a converted USDM S14 or a JDM S14.
S15 Conversion Radiator Core Support Modification
One of the biggest misnomers in the on-line forum world is the notion that you must use an S15 radiator core support to accommodate the "Strawberry Face" S15 front-end conversion on an S14. This is completely untrue. The only notable difference between the S14 and S15 core supports is headlight projector body access from the engine compartment (yep, the only thing that separates these two core supports is a nice big hole on each side so the projectors clear the core support).
With the OEM S14 core support in place, we set about to cut the needed holes in the core support to accommodate the deep S15 projector headlights. Using an air saw, and some mighty steady hands, the cleanest and most linear cut-outs were made in the metal, and they were finessed with some hand-sanding. The headlights bolted right up to a few of the OEM core locations, and just needed to be secured to the top of the core with some stainless hardware!
Front-Mount Intercooler Frame Rail Modification
The OEM front bumper metal was unbolted and removed from the vehicle, as we needed to make room for the large FMIC. Once removed, the frame rails were trimmed back about 4" using the crudest of all metal-cutting tools, the handy Sawzall. Each side was trimmed back, and the FMIC test-fit to ensure clearnace.
High-End Stereo System Metalwork (Firewall)
The audio system "front stage" happens to be one of our most guarded secrets, but we are compelled to tell at least a portion of the story. About the same time as the firewall conversion, we made significant structural modifications to the windshield cowl and upper kick panels area to accommodate our future stereo speaker installation at a later date: the purpose of the metal work for the future audio upgrades was to ensure optimum pathlength difference between the front stage speakers, and to ensure that all physical and mechanical optimization for the speaker system could be done before we proceeded with other work. Additionally, since all of the speakers in the vehicle are "infinite baffle" use, meaning that they don't require the use of an enclosure, a total of four aluminum louvered vents were installed; two in the upper firewall and two in the kick panels. The vents in the firewall allow the Legatia-3 3" wide bandwidth transducers to "breath" to the outside of the car, while the vents in each kick panel area allow the Legatia-8SW 8" infinite baffle subwoofers to "breath" to the outside of the vehicle.
Engine Compartment Body Molding
The final exercise in the engine compartment make-over was the body molding and edge filling that was done. If you look closely, there are no right angle edges in the engine compartment. Where one body panel ends, and another body panel begins, there is a rolled edge fabricated from body filler. Some call this "radiusing."
The radiusing required, by far, the most labor in raw hours in the engine compartment. In fact, it took the better half of the Summer in 2003 working on it. The result is the most inspiring engine compartment you'll ever see. Every little body dip or valley was finessed with body filler, and every seam was radiused. This was accomplished by using the highest quality body fillers, such as Z-grip, made specifically to adhere to bare metal. On every surface, Z-grip was applied and sanded by hand, as there is no tool made to radius to 3/4" of an inch along body panels. Literally hundreds of hours were spent hand-sanding the radiuses. Even seams and body panel junctions that you can't see, but can still feel were finessed, such as under the inner fender ledge, which attaches to the fender. The firewall transition into the transmission tunnel was also finessed; even though you cannot see this area with the engine in place, we knew that a job done 100% of the way would include completing the body work well into the undercarriage of the vehicle. The frame rails were finessed and radiused, and the radiator core support was radiused from both sides, so that irrespective of where you look in the engine compartment, there has been significant body work.
Engine Compartment Completion and Painting
Once the engine compartment was complete with its welding, fabrication, and radiusing, high-build primer was applied, sanded to 500-grit, and the engine bay was shot with Sikkens AutoBase Plus dark blue (Nissan color code "Midnight Blue.") Dewayne Stiles, the local Atlanta Sikkens rep did the paint work, after all of the body work was completed in house.
More details are coming soon, so hang tight!