HOTROAD Itai inspired 180sx Build ~One Eighty Style~

[hotrodjoseph]

Whats up Zilvia,

I have been a member on here for quite some time and so I figured might as well write up a build thread that I’ve always wanted to do.

Some brief background about me: I’m Joe I am 24 living in Toronto, Canada. I started getting into s-chassis when I first started getting into drifting back in late elementary school. I’ve probably watched every Drift Tengoku volume 10 times over by now. For some reason most of the cars that left a lasting impression in my mind were s-chassis, first and foremost being Koguchi’s black 180, Itoh’s red 180, Nob’s s15 and of course Itai’s 180. I knew one day I wanted to own one and build it like all the ones I saw in the videos.

My plans were when I was 16 to buy a 240sx hatch and build a black type x with Blitz 03’s (before Damon made everyone and their brother want them ;P ). Those plans got derailed when I ended up buying my first car. Which was a 1966 mustang fastback lol. My dad and I built that up to be a trans am styled 65 gt350 clone and it got featured on Speedhunters! I won’t bore you with mustang talk as this is a Japan style build.


Fast forward to October 2015 when my 23rd birthday was approaching (Oct 14 if you care lol). I decided it was time to find an s13 and on October 1st 2015 I bought my first 240! For the price I couldn’t complain. It was a 1993 red hatch, originally an auto car that was swapped over to 5 speed by the previous owner that summer. Full multilink, 5 lug conversion, 180sx brakes, carbon hood, rpf1’s, B&M short shifter and a giant sub in the trunk.

I drove the car for the next two months before I stored it for the winter and that’s where the 2001 Drift style bug got to work.




Once the car was in storage I started scouting for parts. My ideal vision of a 180 always included a hotroad kit so I knew I had to find a way to get one from Japan. As much as I loved type x cars, hot road always put the car that much more above an OEM kit. The more aggressive lines to the kit add to the character of the car and it gives it a subtle but aggressive nature to the car.
I ended up finding an imported 180sx from Alberta that appeared to have Hot Road skirts on it. I contacted the owner and asked if he was interested in selling them. To my luck he had just removed them and was intending to list them for sale. Soon enough we made a deal and they were on their way to Toronto. Now I had to complete the kit.



At this time, I was contemplating different front bumper options. In Toronto we have to run front license plates and I wasn’t a big fan on running the plate half covering the Group A vents on the standard hotroad bumper. My other option was running a GT-1 front with the rest of the hotroad kit. Upon talking to some GT-1 owners the front lip would hang far too low compared to the hotroad sides and it would not look that great.

My all-time favorite 180sx, Adam from C’s garage always ran the stock type x bumper with the plate cut out and pulled it off perfectly. I decided that was the route I liked the most and instead of running the Oem lip I would run the optional (larger than Oem) Hotroad Lip on my oem bumper to match the rest of the kit.

I called up my local importer and asked if they were interested in importing the kit for me. After finalizing the details we called up HotRoad Japan and ordered the front lip and rear valance. Onto the bad news.. This importer was well known in the area but had not been doing much business on parts importing. I placed the order (paid in full) the first week of January. I was told it would arrive 2-3 months which I was ok with. The kit ended up arriving 6 MONTHS Later!

On the other hand during this time, I ended up selling the carbon hood in place of a red stock one and sold the RPF1’s to fund my new wheels. Oh and also got rid of that pesky sub.

The wheels I ended up with were not my long loved Blitz 03’s but Blitz Z2’s! I was totally stoked on finding a set of these wheels as they were what Koguchi ran in the black phase of his 180. The sizes were 18x9 +35 and 18x10 +10 with pretty large factory lips. These were almost the exact same size Koguchi ran.



The faces were in good shape but the lips were pretty oxidized. I decided to take them apart and attempt to polish them up myself as quotes for shops to polish were +1000$. This I was doing by hand! No polishing brushes or drills for me lol (I’ll try and find some pics of that messy process)

The wheels came out pretty good if I say so myself, especially for attempting this with no prior experience.
I rolled the car out of storage and immediately put on the new wheels. With the help of 25mm spacers all around, they fit pretty well! I was stoked!

Just before I pulled the car out of storage I was buying a Type x wing off a local guy and he offered me a sweet deal on Oem Type x seats. I wasn’t really in the market for seats at the time as I had already spent a bunch of money on the kit and wheel, oh and brand new kouki 180sx tails I picked up on Black Friday. But the deal was too good to pass up so I bought them.



Now the waiting game for the kit to arrive….

As the car came out of storage I started to really enjoy driving it around as it started to shape into the image I had imagined. One afternoon at work I had received a missed call from my importer. I called back and turns out my kit had finally arrived!... in July.
As soon as I had my lunch bread I headed on over to the importers and crammed the kit into my mom’s car I was driving at the time. And of course the second I got home it was time for a test fit!





I could finally see the image I was waiting for. Having always dreamed of a Hotroad kitted 180 and never seeing one in person before I was very impressed.

As for the quality and fit of the kit, it fit perfect. No trimming or forcing was needed to get the kit on. In those pictures the kit is actually just holding itself on the car.

Now it was time for paint. Over the last few months I had gotten pretty close with Damon (CamryOnBronze) and I knew of his plans on running hotroad and Z2’s. That took black off the table as I knew we both wouldn’t want identical cars. We brainstormed many colors from midnight purple, ferarri red, white and blue. Damon had an old Australian magazine featuring Itai’s car and had sent me a bunch of screen grabs of it. I’ve always loved that car but didn’t feel like I could pull it off. Especially the fact that a few guys have ran a blue hotroad car but it was never “right.” I knew if I were to do it, it would have to be done right.
The decision was made and I sent the car off to the body shop.

Little did I know how long this process would be. I initially was told that the job would take two weeks. Obviously I knew that wouldn’t be the case and expected it to be a little longer. I would visit the car once a week to see what progress was made so I could document it. Three months later and the car was still sitting untouched. Keep in mind it was the summer at the time and here in Canada that’s only about 6 months, and it had already been in there for 3. Finally, after being persistent in my checkups the car was painted.



During the time the car was at the shop I couldn’t help myself in tinkering and buying parts. One day while browsing our local craigslist I came across a genuine miracle x bar! I couldn’t pass this part up. I messaged the seller and turned out it came off an imported type x from japan. I drove over that day and picked it up. In addition, I was pondering the idea of selling the z2’s and buying bronze TE37’s to complete the Itai look. It didn’t help that a local 240 owner had kept bugging me to sell him the Z2’s and Damon had mentioned to me he had a set of 17” TE’s he possibly would sell.

I messaged the local guy asking if he still was interested. Turns out he was and agreed on a price I was happy with and they were sold! I immediately told Damon I wanted the TE’s and that deal was made. Here come the TEs! Well the fronts at least. I sourced a set of 4 18 x 9.5 for the rear and bought those. I ended up selling the extra pair of 18s to Damon lol (after I bought his fronts). As you will see later this is a trend, Damon and I like to swap parts a lot haha.



As I said earlier if I was building an Itai themed 180sx I had to do it “right.” This leads me to one of my favorite parts of the car, the “Hurricane” mirrors. There are many mirrors out there that are very close to the ones Itai ran but I had to have the exact ones. I knew they were super rare so my researching skills came into work. I knew Jesse Streeter ran them so I got into contact with him and the good guy that he is kept an eye out for me. Somehow with some luck I was able to source two pairs of brand new correct model hurricane mirrors within two weeks! I quickly snatched them up and they were on their way to me. The second pair I later traded to Damon



The weekend I brought home the car the second I started fitting on all the pieces of the kit.
The new wheels were on, kit fitted and mirrors mounted. The final product turned out great!









At this time, it was now the end of summer and fall was approaching. I wanted to drive and enjoy the car as much as I could for the remainder of the season. I have to say I was very happy with the car at this point, it looked good, the KA drove well and never gave me a problem.

Along came FINAL BOUT!

I had always wanted to attend final bout and after speaking with Damon and a few local guys I had decided to make the trip out. (I had gone back and forth with driving my car down but ultimately decided a 14 hour trip in an s13 would not be fun, especially to just park in the parking lot).

The local guys I headed out there with were Trickey_ab (now jzx 100 chaser) and Martino in his white s15. The trip was great! Met a whole bunch of great people, ate, drank, had some laughs and saw some awesome cars and drifting. The main message I had in my head at the end of it was I needed more power! The stock KA was not cutting it.



So when I came back I began sourcing a SR swap. I ended up finding a complete red top SR out of a local car that had a few upgrades to it. It needed some parts that I collected to complete the setup. The new swap consisted of: Stock bottom end and head, stock intake, stock exhaust manifold that I had modded with a 38mm tail external wastegate, Garrett gt2871r 86. housing, oil filter relocation, exedy stage 2 clutch, greddy style fmic, aluminum rad, 640cc injectors and an apexi power fc. I also picked up a Kakimoto exhaust for the car, the exact one Itai ran.

Once the spring came I rolled the engine out on a dolly and gave it a freshening up.




For the engine bay, I knew I wouldn’t be able to match the exterior bayside blue paint and I had always loved silver engine bays. So I decided to paint it silver. Martino came over and gave me a hand cutting out the rusty parts and welding in fresh metal. Martino also has had some experience painting engine bays so he ended up spraying mine for me as well. It turned out pretty good for an at home job.







Over that winter I also couldn’t leave well being with the interior. I had always wanted red Bride seats so I picked up a mint red Zeta 2 and a red brix 1.5. In the meantime I had sold the ugly sparco steering wheel that came with my car and bough a brand new black Nardi classic 330mm. I grabbed some Bride seat rails and installed those together. I also picked a brand new pivot shift knob, the same one Itai ran.




Remember the trend of Damon and I swapping parts? Well.. Damon had decided to switch his car over to all oem type x last winter this included interior. Lone and behold I just so happened to have a full set of 180sx interior that needed a new home. To my benefit Damon also had a Koguchi power hood that needed a new home. We decided to come to a deal with selling each other the parts and it worked out as I also purchased a Sato roll cage from a friend of his that I needed to pick up at his house. So now this was perfect I can drop off the seats and pick up the cage and hood at the same time.

So one sunny Saturday morning, my Dad and I loaded up the van and made the 5 hour trip from Toronto to Damon’s house in Michigan. It was good to see him since I hadn’t since final bout last fall. He showed me what he was up too with his car and got to meet his family (great people). We loaded up the car, said our goodbyes and headed back home.



I also picked up some old school white face Greddy Peek gauges and installed those. The only place I could ever put those was definitely in the passenger side dash. After watching countless doriten in car videos. “Everyone” in that era had them there, and it was a must for me. It just looks so perfect. I also painted my nasty grey carpet with black spray paint. Turned out really good for spending 5$ on paint. Its not even crunchy.






Back to the engine, I finally got that swapped into the car once the bay was all painted. When the car first fired it was running only on 3 cylinders… oh no! Upon further assessment the power FC I had bought from Japan was actually for a blacktop SR not Redtop. It didn’t help that my dyno tune was booked for the next day so when I got home from work I quickly repined the harness and all cylinders fired up! Off to the tuners!






Putting your car on the dyno is always a nerve raking feeling. Being a motor with a stock head gasket I was slightly worried. I got more worried as I found out my trans had no reverse coming off of the trailer… GREAT! After a few test runs the motor seemed to hold up ok. It sounded really good as well with the old school Greddy BOV, dump pipe and kakimoto exhaust. Catastrophe stuck when oil shot everywhere on one of the runs. As we didn’t really see where it came from our guess was the oil feed line to the turbo. Back to the garage it went.

After taking off the manifold the turbo line was completely intact and we determined it was oil that shot out of the dipstick, as the dipstick did shoot up when it happened. To prevent this from happening again, I routed my catch can back to the suction side of the turbo to help relieve some crank case pressure. I booked another tune and it was back on the dyno. This time everything went smoothly. I wanted something conservative so we kept boost at 16lbs and the car made 310whp and 286 tq. Not bad for me so I was happy.

Now I had to source a new trans and pull the old one out after just installing it a week earlier. I enjoyed driving the car afterwards and was getting ready to take it to a surprise skid pad day Martino was hosting for Jordie (Dolph_KYAS13). The week leading up to the event I had kept losing gears when downshifting to stop lights. We decided it was probably the slave cylinder so swapped in a new one. It worked for a day or so then it was back again. Now a new clutch master cylinder. Worked for an hour then BAM no gears at all driving home at 1 am, the night before the track day. I managed to limp the car back to Martino’s shop since I wasn’t far and now we could hear loud clacking coming from the engine bay. At this point we thought it was a broken pivot ball in the trans or rod knock .

The next morning sucked as we all met at the shop to head to the track in the morning and my car was sitting in the background broken. My luck with this car after the swap was clearly not on my side.

We pulled the trans out the next week and found the flywheel bolds had backed off almost an inch!! They were hitting the clutch and that was the loud clacking we could hear. I hadn’t touched the clutch or flywheel at all when I bought the swap as I figured the previous owner kinda knew what he was doing whenever he installed it. Lesson learned the hard way.



The flywheel was then bolted up with new arp bolts and lock tight. Trans back in and ready to roll again. But as luck serves me, it wasn’t done. As we rolled the car off the wood after the jackstands, the wood kicked up and ripped my front hotroad lip off… greaaaaat!

At this point I was so tired and frustrated with the car I just wanted to go out for a rip. The car finally drove nice and pulled hard. I enjoyed driving it around for the rest of the summer and planned on going to a drift event in August. The days leading up to the drift day, I finally got my koguchi power and fitted that on the car. It is by far one of my favorite 180sx parts out there, I've always planned on getting one.






In addition, I picked up Zestino’s for my front spare model V’s and some new evergreens for the rear Model V’s (didn’t want to mess up the TE’s on track).

My buddy Liam (Kirbz_Stomps) with the crazy cool R34 and previous 2jz cefiro, stressed to me the importance of a locked dif and not to run a vlsd. Being the nice guy he is he let me borrow the welded out of his old cefiro and helped me install it.

The next morning I loaded up the car with spare wheels and tools and headed out to the track 2 hours away. Despite having a 4:3 in the rear end the car drove great there. Once I arrived I swapped on the spare Model V’s and was ready to head out for my first drift day. Liam jumped in the car with me to show me the track and give me a few pointers.

Oh and my lip still hasnt been fixed so the front looks shitty.






Going out on track felt great! I let the car warm up and gripped a few corners to get a feel of how the car reacted on the track surface. I kicked it out the last two turns of my first lap and headed onto the final straight. As soon as I started the straight away we heard loud clacking…. OH NO! I turned my 4 ways on and coasted. Liam stuck his head out of the window trying to get a better point of view. We rolled into the pits and to our expectation it had spun a rod baring.

To say I was disappointed would be an understatement. After all the hard work and hurtles the car had given me this summer it wouldn’t be complete without this result. The biggest disappointment was that it didn’t even last one lap. I wouldn’t have complained as much if it did it at the end of the day and I at least had a day of fun.

Now since I drove the car there I would have to find a way to get it home. Lucky enough my friend’s girlfriend had CAA and offered to let me use her free tow.




I got the car home and pushed it into the garage, not wanting to touch it until winter as I was sick of the headaches and constant money I’ve been throwing at it. Not even to say I got two months of driving it this summer.

So a new motor is in the plans, more on that later.

Thanks for reading,

Joe.

[CrimsonRockett]

Always fascinates me to see such a simple formula come together with great execution.

Glad you're keeping it.

[deolio]

sounds like you've had the same kind of luck with your sr swap as i did. sucks, but at least the car looks good

[Malik]

very nice I love the model 5's

[wolf904]

I haven't really paid attention to build threads as much as I once did, but its always nice to see the behind the scenes work behind the nice cars out there such as this one and all the stories in between.

Excellent execution on the theme of the car, things like this get me amped to get going on my own

[CamryOnBronze]

I still can't get over how quickly this car came together. Choice parts all around and excellent execution. Hope to finally see our cars sitting together at some point in 2017 sir!

[gbaby2089]

Sorry to hear about the issues you've had with the SR.

But wow does this ever look GREAT.

[austin2112]

Absolutely love it! I'm with Damon can't wait to hopefully post up next year!

[a13x.]

Originally Posted by wolf904

I haven't really paid attention to build threads as much as I once did, but its always nice to see the behind the scenes work behind the nice cars out there such as this one and all the stories in between.

+1

keep this up to date bro If something breaks you replace it twice as good, thats the way how it should be done.

Jelly on your new SR setup ^.^ Maybe I should take mine out on the track too.

If I ever make it to the US/CA I've got to see this car in person MAN. Those 2000' feels



ps upload pics in bigger res :E

[brndck]

whoa! so nice to see a well executed build! looks awesome

[Walkerbondd]

Quality build man, you'll get good luck eventually... Don't worry about it

[JesusFreakDrifter]

its instantly a different car. nice build

[Standard]

Happy to see a build for this car!! I've only seen a couple pics on here before and was very intrigued, in for more! Hope your sr woes are in the past, good luck

[Mustache240]

Me Likey! What blue is that?

[Ronald_Mcdonald]

This thing is perfect.

[a13x.]

Originally Posted by Mustache240

Me Likey! What blue is that?

Should be bayside blue (BNR34)

[Dboyizmlg]

Sweet looking 240.

Like the way you break down the description of your build!

Subscribed, to this entertaining build thread.

[hotrodjoseph]

Originally Posted by deolio

sounds like you've had the same kind of luck with your sr swap as i did. sucks, but at least the car looks good

Thanks man, ya its been a battle but I'm definitely staying true with the SR in the future. I remember talking to you in the pits after you blew the SR at Final bout last year.

Originally Posted by CrimsonRockett

Always fascinates me to see such a simple formula come together with great execution.

Glad you're keeping it.

Thanks Johnny!

Originally Posted by CamryOnBronze

I still can't get over how quickly this car came together. Choice parts all around and excellent execution. Hope to finally see our cars sitting together at some point in 2017 sir!

We will make this happen! Drive up here sometime and visit us too haha

Originally Posted by a13x.

+1

keep this up to date bro If something breaks you replace it twice as good, thats the way how it should be done.

Jelly on your new SR setup ^.^ Maybe I should take mine out on the track too.

If I ever make it to the US/CA I've got to see this car in person MAN. Those 2000' feels



ps upload pics in bigger res :E

Bigger pics as requested Alex Man I have to travel to Germany and see your car. Maybe go for a rip around the Ring!

ahah I'll have to write the second update soon.

Originally Posted by brndck

whoa! so nice to see a well executed build! looks awesome

Thanks! I try to stay true to the old school vibe.

Originally Posted by a13x.

Should be bayside blue (BNR34)

That is correct. Nissan BNR34 Bayside Blue.

[Dolph_KYAS13]

Good to see you finally made a thread. Period cars are best

[hotrodjoseph]

Here are some more pics of the process that I wasn't able to upload because of the pic limit.

These are the Greddy gauges I'm running. (Boost, water temp, oil pressure and oil temp)
I went with a black boost gauge as I wanted to run it on the steering column in front of the cluster. I thought a white one would stick out too much and look out of place surrounded by all the black plastics. So I opted for the black version of the same gauge to be more subtle.



I dont have a great pic of it in the car but you get the idea. I also swapped out the bulbs for new LED ones I bought off ebay. SO much better and brighter!



This is the Kakimoto Exhaust I picked up for super cheap off yahoo auctions. The canister and tip were really burnt up but cleaned up very well with some wd40 and a SOS pad.



Some more details on the motor cleaning. I pulled all the accessories off and went at it with a scrub brush and a lot of degreaser. It worked decently well but not to the degree I would be satisfied with, so I decided to paint the block. I used Engine Enamel Cast Aluminum. I think it turned out awesome.

After scrubbing:



After paint:



Here is also a detail of the turbo side of the motor. I wanted a clean look as I wasnt a big fan of nasty looking stock manifolds after they get heat cycled. I sprayed the manifold with a high heat charcoal color and found a not rusted out heat shield. I had that sandblasted and painted it with the same cast aluminium as the engine. I obviously couldn't mount the heat shield with the wastegate installed so I cut a circular hole just big enough to clear the gate and set it down. It turned out neat.



I got an alignment before the first track day attempt (the day the flywheel almost fell off)




I also lowered the car a bit after final bout. Since I saw how low Damon and Tony (Midwest_Myraid) were lol. This pic is from this year after the KP hood. But you get the idea of how it sits. One finger rule!!




As far as the motor. I picked up a built longblock that I have been putting together over the last few months. I'll write a detailed update on that soon.

Thanks again,

Joe.

[jlchron]

Love the build. If you don't mind me asking what color blue is that?

[OutlawLui]

Super clean build Bump

[tricky_ab]

Always hyped to hear about what you have cooking up in your head. Big things for 2017 my dude, can't wait to see it all go down!

PS, I photo bombed the crap out of your car at Shannonville

[rawgarage]

Proper build thread... that 2017 comeback

[bataangpinoy]

C'est vraiment magnifique

[ehhhregartless]

Can't wait see its next stage

[a13x.]

thanks for that res update haha, much better.

In the last pic it really looks like you could add some more caster. What are your alignment specs anyway, if you dont mind asking?

lemme know if you plan to come here

[hotrodjoseph]

Alrighty, time for update round 2!

So we left off with the SR deciding it hated life after one lap at the track. Well I got the car towed home and into the garage it went to be neglected until the fall.

I started taking the motor apart in September. A few buddies of mine had suggested it might be a broken rocker arm, being such a loud clacking. With not much hope I pulled the valve cover off and everything seemed to be ok. Now I headed to the oil pan. I removed the oil pan and found shavings as expected, but no indication as to why it failed. Nothing seemed lose or falling apart.
Digging deeper I pulled off the oil pickup and found a huge hole in the mesh….. how did that happen?



I peered up in the oil pickup gallery and I couldn’t believe my eyes. I could see a washer sitting right inside the oil gallery loose.





There is my suspect that caused the malfunction, restricting oil through the pickup. I know I hadn’t dropped a washer in the motor bc I had yet to work on anything internal. All I had done was stripped and added the accessories and cleaned up the block.
Upon further analysis and direction from some knowledgeable SR friends. I was told the washer was a 10mm factory washer and they are old used in two places on an SR. On the bolts holding the oil pickup and its baffle and the caps holding the cams down. Well I had already taken the pickup off and all the hare wear was there so that left one other spot. I removed the valve cover again and instantly I saw the problem. All the cam cap washers appeared the same except one. One washer was a bright gold color. Clearly this one had been changed.



My suspicions are whoever owned this motor prior had done some or on the head/cams and dropped the front washer down the timing cover and just replaced it with another one, not to be bothered to search for the missing washer. It is still unclear to me how the washer broke through the pickup mesh but I also suspect that was done before I owned the motor, since I had only been driving it for 2 months on weekends or sunny days.

This gets even better for this motor as I found the oil filter relocation that the previous owner had installed was on backwards… Therefore the oil feed out was the block was going into the “exit” side of the filter and out the “feed” side of the filter block.

The motor was doomed since the beginning with the washer and oil filter relocation. Not to mention the flywheel and trans that the owner messed up on as well. I guess this explains why I would get poor oil pressure on idle on my gauge. I always assumed it was a faulty gauge as I bought used old Greddy gauges from japan with used sensors. The gauge would read normal on startup then fall low and would peek up and down with the Revs. The stock light didn’t come on either so I thought it was a faulty gauge.

I decided it would be more costly to rebuild this motor when I had a line on a built long block (with very low mileage, max 2 summers) for sale locally. This motor was built by a friend’s good buddy and I had personally seen the car running and driving. It’s always sketchy to buy an already built motor but a lot of my s-chassis friends vouched for the motor as they had ridden in the car so I felt comfortable. It was a cheap price so I couldn’t pass it up.

The spec list for the new motor includes:

- Stock head fully rebuilt, cleaned, polished and decked with factory cams.
- ARP head studs
- All ARP hardware throughout the motor; main and rod studs and bolts
- ACL race bearings all around
- Tomei connecting rods
- CP 87mm 9:1 pistons
- Greddy oil pan
- Cometic 1.3mm head gasket

Everything was of course honed, cleaned and polished and balanced the rotating assembly.

I picked up the motor one Friday night and saw that it had been sitting for a while in his garage and had collected a good amount of dirt. He had mentioned to me that the timing cover had been sweating causing the front of the motor to be caked with oil.



I couldn’t put the motor in the car being this way so I gave it a blast with the power washer and a bunch of degreaser. It came out decent but still wasn’t happy as my other motor was spotless.


[


I decided to paint the block and all the accessories like I did to the last one.



Much better! Now it just needs my Candy blue powder coated valve cover.

During the downtime of not driving the car I had debated selling my turbo setup. I really liked the 2871r and the power it made. But as most builds go I figured, “I’m here now, I have a built motor might as well have a cool turbo setup.” Lol



Staying true to my Japanese style I’ve always wanted a TD06. Although this is old tech when it comes to modern turbos, I wanted to keep that Japanese 2000’s drift aura and run one. Hardly anyone in North America runs one let alone Canada. It’s something cool to me when you open the hood and see a TD06 rather than “sick precision or Borge Warner turbo bro!” All the old school JDM turbos like Greddy, HKS etc have something awesome about them and sound so cool.

In addition, I’ve always wondered how the Japanese guys had such nasty sounding Sr’s. They sound so raw and absolutely scream! I found the key, TD06 and midmount! True iconic Japanese SR sound.

Being that Greddy hadn’t produced a mid-mount manifold in over a decade I was having trouble finding a decent condition one. I had stumbled upon a Australian shop that made an almost exact replica of the original so I decided to go for it.

Original:


New replica:


The only problem was that the dump pipe goes right through where the steering column is on a LHD chassis. Time for me to think of a clever way around that…

In the meantime I kept my eye out for a TD06 turbo in good condition. I ended up finding a complete kit on Yahoo japan randomly one morning before work. The buy now was super cheap so I quickly messaged Jesse Streeter to jump on it. A week later and I had a giant package at my door!





I scored a low km (3000 km) TD06-L2, Greddy 50mm type r wastegate, greddy turbo elbow and a Greddy Top mount manifold. I really wanted the L2 version as it is made specifically for a 2L motor and supposed to be great on an SR. I also have the 8 cm rear housing version of it.

Unfortunately, the manifold was cracked due to the massive type r waste gate. But that was fine as I wasn’t using that manifold anyway. Looks pretty cool tested out on the new motor.



In the meantime I sold my old turbo setup to cover the cost of the new purchase. I was now waiting for my new manifold to be made in Australia. In the next update I’ll show you my clever way of fitting the massive type R waste gate and hopefully bring the thread up to date to where I am now.

Thanks again,
Joe.

[tricky_ab]

Ah the old "I might as well since I'm already here" has struck again (in a good way!). Hyped that you didn't let the engine blow keep you down.

[bataangpinoy]

fwiw a magnetic oil drain plug is very cheap insurance against stuff like that. live and learn i guess!