Roman's 180 - Less Than A Daily Now...

[180Roman]

So I thought I'd finally post up my build thread on here

Name:

Roman

Model:

180SX Type X

Colour:

White

Engine Type:

SR20DET Blacktop(Non-VCT)

Engine Mods:

Pod

ARC Sidemount Super-Intercooler

Power:

123.8kW(When I first got it, maybe 130kWs now)

Exhaust:

3" Nismo Catback

3" Dump and front pipe

Gearbox:

5-Speed Manual

Extreme HD Organic Clutch

Extreme HD Preasure Plate

Diff:

4.1:1 Weldy

4.3:1 Weldy(spare)

Brakes:

R33 GTS-T 4 pots front, 2 pots rear, drum handbrake

Motul Brake fluid

TRW Lucas brake pads front

Project Mu handbrake shoes

Suspension:

5 Stud conversion

S14 front LCAs

S14 tie rod ends and rack ends

Whiteline swaybars front and rear

Stock Swaybar front

adjustable camber, toe and caster

BC RM Coilovers 8/6kg(with 5" 10kg Swift front springs)

Solid subframe risers

Wheels/Tyres:

BBS LM 17x9 +5 set

BBS RS 17x8 +/-0 front pair

BBS RS 17x9 +20 rear pair

Work Equips 17x9 +18 set

Autostrada Monza 17x9 +21 set

Regamaster Evo 17x9 +18 set

BBS RS 17x9 +20 set (on the way from Japan)

Ultra rare set of Panasports (on the way from Japan)

BBS RS 16x8.5 +14 rear pair

Interior:

Cobra Imola 2 Bucket seat with Bride Low rail

Sheep skin seat covers(luxury spec )

Fire extinguisher

GReady Informeter

Blitz i-D Power Meter

Blitz i-D Boost Gauge

Stripped interior painted white

Jap half cage (needs to be replaced for next years change in VicDrift Regs)

Other Mods:

Zipties

Stereo:

Pioneer

Build Period:

Forever

Cost:

NFI

Future mods:

Paint BBS LM centers Diamond Black + polished lip

lengthened LCAs ormodified front cross member

bent toe arms

new camber arms

Custom exhaust tucked close to the body

Tub the front guards

ABS delete with new hard lines

Brake caliper rebuild

Fuse box relocation under the dash/in glovebox

and here is the visual timeline

bought it like this

then bought some wheels

then bought more wheels

bought coilovers

slammed it

after 2 month of dailying, maybe a tad too low...

wiring loom relocated

then it looked like this

and bought more wheels

did some drifting

washed the car

fitted rear pods

driveway is the height limmiter

broke a dump pipe

got some photos done at a SAU meet

got bored and decided to see how low the coilovers can go...

tucking

car sees a lot of this

bought more wheels..

baptised them with some drifting

stripped all the sound deadening

masked everything off

the fridge

did the boot a week later

bought more wheels

and that pretty much brings this up to the current time.

I've broked 4 studs off the back of my turbo from the exhaust having no flex what so ever, so there is a whole lot of work that will be getting done over the next few months, as I do not plan to drive the car until November.

Sorry about the long photobomb post

Roman

[180Roman]

small update, got this brake line splitter today, so I can remove the ABS and still run my ABS master cylinder

need to measure up the lengths for the new brake lines and order some during the week

[Mohsen]

are those the slant lips?

[Tai1or Made]

Other Mods:

Zipties

Got this done the other day.

Good for 15kw.

[180Roman]

are those the slant lips?

yep, 1.5" slat lips on the RSs

i have another 4x1.5" slant lips sitting in the garage waiting for me to paint them

[180Roman]

Measured up some lengths for the new brake hard lines today

Hoping my calculations are correct, ordering them during the week, so will see if they fit next weekend.

[stufeet]

Looks sexy broman... Shattered i sold my s13 and am now going to the dark side with the 33..... When are you pulling this off the road and just using it as a dedicated tracker? Lol

[180Roman]

ha ha Stu, hopefully never

I want to keep this streetable for as long as I can

[180Roman]

Took the turbo off on the weekend to fix the broken studs

This is going to be a PITA

Also clean the motor a little

The block is not actually painted black, thats just all the carbon from all the exhaust leaks I had due to broken studs

[180Roman]

So I'll update my progress

Removed the ABS shit

also took off the callipers and started re-building them

Ordered some custom brake hard lines to be made up to suit my non-ABS setup, and they took 2 weeks of f**king around to make them

I kinda got borred of waiting at that time and shit got real all of a sudden

Decided to go a bit crazy with a mild wire tuck and fuse/relay box relocation as well as a new in-bay intercooler setup to go with the S15 turbo.

This is just the begining

Looking pretty messy(should probably give the engine bay a good scrub/clean to get it back to it's original shiny white paint

About to turn this into a spider web

Removed the ABS wiring from the engine bay and there is about 6 more meters of ABS wiring throughout the interior loom

What did i get myself into... trying to make sense of this mess

The new fuse/relay box mock up..(tried to separate all the headlight stuff into a separate loom, so they can be independant off each other

Plenty of soldering and chopping to do still, but the fusebox layout seems to be all planned out now.

Just need to remove the engine loom now and see how the 2 will mate together, so I know which parts will need to be chopped or extended to meet the new fuse/relay box location

Also picked up a set of S15 injectors, so I've now collected most of the neccessary parts to bolt everything together once the wiring and brake lines are finished.

and i'll leave you with this

Low life problems

[180Roman]

Have not spend much money on this car as of late since I've been saving heaps to go to Japan at the end of October, but I'll get to that later

So what has been happening is i made up the new brake hardlines to convert to non-ABS brake system setup.

Then i decided i did not like the stock location of the charcoal canister, as it will get in the way of my new intercooler setup. I did not want to get rid of it completely

This is the photo of the final location with a custom bracket i made up for it and painted flat white primer.

I also polished up some bolts... because racecar...

This is a photo about midway through, as you can see by the middle one some had some serious rust on them

Also chucked the S15 T28 BB turbo on, to see how everything fits up, but still need to get braided water lines for it to fit it.

The weather outside turned out to be awesome on this day, so i took the wiring outside to enjoy the sunshine

Just mocking up the new headlights wiring loom

As you can see the interior is a nightmare atm as i had to unwrap the whole loom to completely de-pin any traces of ABS wiring.

Onto more recent events, i baked my brake calipers after painting to cure the high temp paint, so this weekend i should hopefully get a chance to drop in some new seals in them

Finished rebuilding my brake calipers

nice and Fresh with new seals, cleaned housings and pistons, fresh paint and polished logo

Now as I mentioned earlier, I am heading of to Japan at the end of October for 2 weeks of madness. I'm going there with a few mates and we are staying at the Ebisu Circuit for over a week.

Which brings me to my latest purchase...

This is my new car for the Japan trip that I will be thrashing all week long

It has an extensive list of mods and pushes out around 250kWs at the wheels

This is almost double the power level of my car at home, so it will be a whole new experience

[Mohsen]

[180Roman]

SO, I just got back from Japan Thursday afternoon after spending just over 2 weeks over there and OMG was it amazing fun.

I'll try to do a bit of a write up about my trip.

Day 1 Wed 31st

We left Melbourne on a flight to Gold Coast at 6am.

We were flying with Jetstar, so I was prepparing myself for the worst, but lucky we randomly got exit isly seats, so I did not have any problems with leg room.

Arriving in Gold Coast, we had 3hrs until our flight to Japan, so after collecting our baggage and checking in for the Japan flight we had some breakfast of Red Rooster and kicked back trying to pass the time.

For the Flight to Japan I have pre-booked exit isle seats, so i could stretch out and try and have a sleep on the flight.

But because the flight was durring the day time I was stuggling to get a decent sleep, maybe a couple of 1-2 hr stints of sleep.

We got to Japan at 7pm and the first thing we did after collecting our luggage and going through customs is get some BOSS Coffee

We then got out hire car and the hire car man assured us that the GPS was set to English.

At the airport we picked up one of the hotel brochures, as we did not have any accomodation arranged in Tokyo.

As we left the airport in the direction of Tokyo, we decided that we should try enter the phone number of the hotel into the GPS, so we could go there.

This was the point we lealised that the GPS buttons and the menus are all in Japanese. After poking a prodding the GPS for a while, we eventually found the correct page for entering the phone number and we were on our way. Lucky the GPS at least spoke the directions in English.

We wanted to stay off the tollways as we have heard that they could be rather expensive, so we took the "scenic" route.

On our way we came accross a few car dealer yards with some interesting cars in stock, Chasers, Mark 2s, S15s, S14s, 180sxs, AE86s.

We also stopped by our first Mos Burger where we used our finger pointing skills to order the food from the menu.

The burgers are good, but damn they are small.

We also stopped by some random shops, to check them out and see if they have free WiFi.

One shop had a large selection of Hyper Rev mags and I bought a Sivia/180sx issue.

We continued on to the hotel, arriving at which we have found that it was already closed for the night... this left us somewhere in Tokyo with no accomodation...

So we proceeded to drive around Tokyo trying to spot hotels or find WiFi where we could search for the hotels on the internet.

We did find an area full of hotels, but none of the reception clerks spoke english and did not want a bar of it...

At this point it was around 12am and we had to make some kind of a decision...

[nick_7g]

n'then?

[180Roman]

So after having a discussion we decided that we shall start driving in the direction of our first destination for our trip, R31 House.

As we set off driving we kept a look out for any other hotels on our way, albeit not having much luck we tried to stop in a carpark at Maccas to have a sleep in the car, but were woken up by a staff member who from what we could guess was telling us to move.

We continued forth with our journey stopping at Royal Host for a 2 or 3am snack(the chicken pieces I ordered were so damn delicious), then we finally came accross a carpark where we were able to get a decent 2-3hr sleep.

This whole journey we were staying off the toll ways and taking the 'national' roads.(bad idea)

Our breakfast was a stop at 7/11(7 and 'I' holdings) for some bouritos and hot BOSS coffee

We countinued along and realised that our current pace was way too slow to get to R31 House by mid-day, as most of the roads we have been traveling had speed limits <60 and the roads themselves would have made for some great touge. We took the next avaiable entry onto the toll way and were finally making some progress.

We were hovever surprised when everyones kept flying past us when we were doing 100 down the freeway, so we picked up the pace to move with the rest of the traffic.

It apears that everyone in Japan travels at 20ks over the speed limit and some even more.

As we have finally made it to the area that R31 House was in, we stopped by a large supermarket where everything was ridiculously cheap.

A friend bought a slab of BOSS coffe for a little over $20, while I stocked up on some beers.

As we were nearing R31 House, I spotted a nice looking R32 in a convenience store carpark, so we pulled over to check it out, as it was one of the first nice cars we have seen driving about on the street. The owner has just walked out of the shop and got in the car with his friends when we pulled in. He saw us taking a photo of the car as he was leaving the carpark, so he stopped in the middle of the road with traffic lining behind him and did a burnout. (Who said Japs don't do brakies?)

The people lining up behind him did not seem to mind at all.

We continued on and R31 House was just 500m or so down the road. You couldn't miss it, as there was a sea of R31s everywhere.

[ssxRicho]

lols, Shepparton of Japan?

[180Roman]

So about time to chuck some updates

R31 House

A few might recognize the orange car that has competed in Aus in Drift Australia some years ago

R31 House was simply amazing, as we parked up there was a lot of about 20 cars just parked next to the building and as you walked onto the property right across from the workshop was another lot, tightly packed with another 50 R31s. We approached a man who was working inside the workshop and asked if we could have a look around as we came all the way from Australia.

Of course this conversation was not as easy but with some hand gestures and a few tries he understood what we meant as he spoke very little english. He started showing us the cars inside the workshop which were all highly tuned making from 500hp to 800hp. He said he particularly enjoyed the sound of one of the cars that was making 600hp, so he proceeded to start the car and revv it hard.

Besides the cars inside the workshop, the parts storage area and the hoist/work area, there was an RC drift car track right inside. We then went outside and were shown the car lot across from the workshop. He described the special stand out cars, some which had RB26 swaps and one that had a rare NA RB26DE from a limited edition Autech 4 door R32. There were rare genuine Nismo edition R31 GTS-Rs, and even a Tommy Kaira Edition R31 GTS-R. The whole 50+ car lot was owned by R31 house and the 20 cars that were parked outside were their customer's cars.

Beyond the building was a fenced of grave yard/wrecking yard with 500+ cars(as the mechanic described). There was another 100car wrecking yard on the other side behind the building and as we were told another 200 car yard not too far away. We were told we could walk around on our own and explore the rest of the property, so we took a walk through one of the grave yards that was unlocked.

The cars there were amazing, old crashed demo widebody R34 with dished wheels, the donor Autech R32 4door that served as the heart transplant for the R31 mentioned earlier, a few AE86s, many GTS-R R31 skylines, a couple crashed highly modified S13s and loads of other car, just sitting there gathering dust and turning back to iron oxide. Most cars had aftermarket wheels we would all love to get, but there they just sat with no use..

After we explored we had a look at another building next to the workshop, which was like an old service station. it had a canopy out the front, but instead of fuel browsers you got another RC drift car track and inside the R31 House RC shop was full of shells and accessories. Behind the shop though, there was another workshop belonging to R31 House that had 4 hoists and mechanics working away on customer's cars.

We came back and asked the man that was so helpful to us earlier where we could find Shibata-san, the owner of R31 House.

We were directed to the 3rd building on the property, where we went up the stairs and knocked on the door. What happened next was an attempt to make some sort of communication. after we were invited inside, we tried to explain that we were from Australia and that one of my friends wanted buy some merchandise and parts from them.

They were still not having much luck and they tried to call someone who spoke english. Coincidentally enough the man he called was actually the man that my friend was talking to over email when planning our trip there. So after a quick conversation over the phone he spoke to Shibata-san and explained what we were after.

Shibata-san's wife spoke a little bit of english, so we were finally getting somewhere. As we got talking more her english practice got better and we were now communicating pretty well without any major stumbles. We were given 2 shirts each as a present from R31 house, some key rings and R31 House bags. We also purchased R31 House sticker packs and a friend bought a whole load of parts for his R31 back home, most of which were sold to us for huge discounts over the retail price. Some parts were sold to him for as low as 70% off discount.

After getting the parts and discussing his plans to come to Aus in the future we asked for 1 more favor... Since we had nowhere to sleep the night before, we still had no where to sleep for the next 2 nights either. So we asked if he could call us a hotel in Tokyo and book us some rooms. He was an absolute legend and booked us a hotel not far from Akihabara where we were planning to go the next day.

We thanked them so much, got a couple more photos and went back to our car to get on our way back home.

While drifting in Japan I seemed to have gotten myself into a Drift Tengoku magazine in my blue 180

I ordered a copy of the magazine from Japan

I also recently bought a spare SR20DET motor for no particular reason.. I think I have a problem with impulse buying things...

I also bought a Ford G6 dual fuel for daily/towing... You can see my spending trend here...

I also bought this ridiculously expensive Vertex steering wheel...

As for the 180 back home I have almost finished the wiring, put the brakes on and should start on getting the turbo back on the car.

And I will round off this post with the photo of my car in Japan

and the video to go with that photo

[BakemonoRicer]

MOARRRRRRR stories and moarrrr pics etc please!!!

[180Roman]

I might post some more stories later, but for now some car updates..

Well not really car updates, I just bought some more wheels LOL

Bought this rare set

OZ Futura 17x9 +24 (made for the GTR Skylines)

And then I bought another set of wheels....

OZ Racing Pegasus in 17x9 +24, to match my newly acquired OZ Futuras in the same specs above

2 of my favorite OZ wheels ever made

[180Roman]

a bit of an update, I actually finished the wiring on the car and put it back together

got the exhaust modified

and she started up first go



Just need to re-bleed the brakes as the pedal is a bit soft, change a worn tierod end and get some tires with tread for the back....