My 180sx
I bought this 180sx after I left my last job. I unfortunately had to hand the company car back and was in the market for a Galant VR4 but couldn't find one with less than 10million km's on it. While looking through the trading post one day I spotted this thing. When I bought it, it was dead stock. It has auto, had 53000km's on it and a nice interior and body.
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The first thing I did was put a stereo in it. It stayed virtually stock for months while I built up the parts that I needed to make the thing go better. The first performance modification I did to this car was an exhaust. I got a 3in from the dump pipe back. This made a noticable difference to the sound and the performance of the car. Ever since I bought the car though, it had this annoying squeal from the turbo that I figured was either the compressor scraping the housing, or a blown gasket. Luckily I had a T3/T4 sitting on my project car (the torana) so I decided that the 180sx needed it more. I had to get the standard exhaust manifold modified to suit the larger flange on the T3, so $200 later I had a manifold that suited this big turbo. I hadn't finished the cooler at this stage so I had to run through the standard cooler with the new turbo. This turbo transformed the car. It went from being a mid-range machine to a top-end terror. Boost now came on about 3k and full boost was about 4.5k whereas with the old turbo I was getting positive pressure and full boost at about 3.5k. I also fitted an Apexi AVCR about this time
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The next mod I did was fit the intercooler. I had made intercoolers before and had just made a batch of 3 cooler, this one being the biggest
On first inspection, it looked like I didn't have any chance of fitting this size intercooler in the nosecone of my 180sx. I actually fitted it in with mm's to spare and the only cutting I had to do was to give the cooler pipes clearance past the front bar, ant cut a hole in the battery tray. Since I had a tiny little battery from when the car was in Japan, I didn't even have to move it. All the piping was done out of stainless steel mandrel bends
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Engine Bay
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Muffler
It is a big sucker. My exhaust is 3in from the turbo back. The muffler is actually 4in inner diameter straight through. You can almost put your arm straight through it
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Brakes
The standard SR20DET brakes are OK, but I got offered a set of R33 GTST brakes for a real good price, so I decided an upgrade was in order. The installation took one night after work. Firstly I had to remove the old disks and calipers. I had to put a pair of vice-grips on the hoses so all the brake fluid didn't leak out. I then had to drill new holes in the R33 disks to suit the 4 stud pattern of the 180sx. The disks fouled on the backing plate when installed, so I then had to trim the backing plate for clearance. The only other trick was to reduce the length of the banjo bolt that screws into the caliper as it was too long. Simple. Bleed the brakes and off you go
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Below you can see the difference between 180sx SR20DET disks and 180sx CA18DET disks. There is a similar difference in size between SR20DET disks and R33 GTST disks
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Other Stuff
Below is a dyno run that I did. This run netted 168kw at the wheels. The previous run got 175rwkw but we didn't take a printout :( Both of these numbers were way clear of any other SR20DET at the dyno day
Also below is my old stereo install. I have now ditched the 12's and thrown in a single 15 to try to save weight
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New Additions
I have decided that it was time for a new exhaust manifold. The modified standard one was doing an outstanding job given the circumstances, but nothing could beat a steam-pipe manifold. I bought all the bends and flanges from a manifold making guy and started hacking and welding and hacking until I came up with my prototype. I then too this down to my welder for him to weld up. Here are some preliminary pics.
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