Is this a 4-Door S13 Silvia? Not Your Usual Nissan Build...

[DJ8684]

So you probably clicked on this thread, scratching your head , thinking,

"What in the world do you mean a 4-Door S13?"
"Who in their right mind would ruin a Silvia by adding an extra set of doors?"
"What are you smoking bro?"

Well, fear not... I didn't buy an S13 and ruin it by adding extra doors... INSTEAD... I picked up something rather hard to find Stateside.

Before I get into what I got, let me give you a brief backstory...

So, I moved to Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia about 1 year ago to teach and have enjoyed every minute of it. The car scene out here is crazy! You have everything from S15 Silvias, R34 GTR Skylines, and every other JDM Fan Boy's wet dream could imagine. When I first moved here, I was geeking out like anyone else would probably do. It made me miss my JDM S2000 I had when I was living in Panama City, Panama previous to this. I started attending local meets, then car shows, and started meeting the locals... but there was one chassis in particular that caught my eye that I had never really known much about until now.

That chassis is none other than the A31 Nissan Cefiro...

Now, if you're like me before I moved here, you might be thinking, what the heck does a Nissan Cefiro have to do with being a 4-Door S13 Silvia? Well, I'll answer that for ya.

The 1988-1994 Nissan Cefiro shares the SAME suspension setup as the S13 chassis. I mean, it's practically identical! All of the suspension arms are interchangeable, the differentials are identical, aftermarket strut tower bars are interchangeable, hell, even the subframes are the same in the rear!

What's really cool about it is that whatever you can do from the S14->S13, like the 5 lug swap, will ALSO swap over. Z32/R32 Brakes swap... almost anything you can imagine will swap over. Now, don't get me wrong, there are of course some differences, such as the drivetrain, motor, exhaust, etc. but essentially, it's basically a 4-door Nissan Silvia.

In Japan, and other eastern Asian countries, the Cefiro actually comes standard with the SAME engine as the R32 Nissan Skyline GTS-T... the RB20DET. A lot of the same engine components are interchangeable with the R32 as well as the chassis itself so things like seat rails to even the dashboard will swap over into the Cefiro (with some minor tweaks).

Ok ok... enough of the history lesson of what a Cefiro is... this isn't Wikipedia, it's a build thread so let's show the damn car already!

Fast-forward to May of this year from when I moved to Malaysia 11 months ago, I picked up this lovely specimen of a Nissan Cefiro. It's a 1991... BUT... and this is a big BUT... it's not the cool RB20DET drift machine... instead it's Grandpa's grocery getting n/a RB20E... that's right... no turbo... no 5-speed...

The good news is... it's not all beat to hell, it's COMPLETELY stock, and it's basically screaming for a complete makeover. The bad news... well, the engine has seen better days. Let's start off this build story with some photos of when I picked her up...





To when I got her home...





As you can see from some of the photos, the body is in great shape. The wheels are rather 'meh' but will be changed in due time when my 5-lug swap comes in. The motor runs, but runs like crap. Granted, I've already been tinkering with this car for the last month and a bit since I bought it so it's been cleaned up a bit.

First thing I did was rip out the old spark plugs to see if I wasn't getting spark. This is how each of them looked when I pulled them out of the motor:


Cylinder 1:

Cylinder 2:

Cylinder 3:

Cylinder 4:

Cylinder 5:

Cylinder 6:


They looked pretty fouled up and smelled badly of gasoline. I've heard that's not so uncommon with the RB motors with the blow by issues they have but I still felt it better to swap them out along with a new set of spark plug wires (since the RB20E runs off of a distributor and now coil packs.

I ended up replacing them with a set of NGK Copper Plugs (Part # BCPR5ES-11) and a set of NGK Spark Plug Wires (Part # RC-NX81A).



I ended up going with copper plugs as they were a lot cheaper and good for up to 20,000km which I don't plan on putting on this motor anyway before I swap it out. I figured while I was at it, I'd swap in a new PIT WORK Nissan Fuel Filter too (Part # AY505-NS004).

That seemed to help out a bit. The car was able to turn over but the idle now was pretty high after it warmed up but I figured I'd tackle that one later. I took advantage and took the Cefiro out for a quick photo session with my buddy Dev's Cefiro too:
















Fast forward a week later and the alternator decided to take a crap on me. In all honesty, it was something Dev and I suspected was wrong with my Cefiro from the get go. We were diagnosing potential issues that could have been wrong with the car and when we were checking the voltage on the fuel pump, we noticed it wasn't getting enough juice. We figured it was down to either a bad pump, bad wiring, or a bad alternator. However, the battery was replaced by the previous owner in February so I didn't think it was that.

Luckily, my buddy Dev has an RB25DET ser. 2 motor in his Cefiro and a spare RB25DET sitting in his garage. We hypothesized that the alternators SHOULD be interchangeable since the blocks are basically identical being RB motors...



We took a look at the part numbers and the RB25DET ser. 2 one comes up as: 23100-59S01



and the RB20E one is:
23100-85L00



Sure enough, the bolt patterns are identical and the connectors as well. Everything was all plug and play. However, I did have to pick up a slightly larger accessory belt as the pulley is just a tad bigger on the RB25 alternator. A nice little upgrade too as the RB25 is quite beefy next to the RB20E one. Once we got it on, the car cranked right up, still had the high idle issue but it was certainly better than before.

The car was finally driving comfortably. I felt confident that it was ready to hit the streets. So, in the mean time, I had been looking into alternative dashboards for the Cefiro. Since mine has a nice crack on the top, much like where the S13 ones crack on the instrument cluster hood, I figured it was time to see what else was out there. Here in Malaysia, it's quite common for owners to swap in R32 dashes or R33 dashes. With the R32 ones, they pretty much bolt up no problem and almost all of the accessories are plug and play. However, I'm not a fan of how the door cards line up with it. For the R33 dashes, the owners tend to go that route since it makes the RB25 swap wiring pretty much plug and play but again, it doesn't line up too well with the door cards. Now, I could have gone the route of getting another Cefiro one but they're really hard to find in good shape here. So... I stumbled across a dash swap set for sale locally here that I HAVE seen done twice... Once online in New Zealand and another local guy here.

In the end, I ended up electing this swap as I actually am quite pleased with how well it lines up with the door cards:










This particular set came off of an NA 5-Speed S15 front clip. It came with most everything I will need to make the swap. From what I read from the guy in NZ who did the swap, it only requires a bit of trimming around the pillars in order for it to fit so fingers crossed! I still need to give it a good scrubbing as it's been sitting for who knows how long. It's not in perfect condition but for now, it'll work. I can always replace some of the scratched pieces later with newer ones.

Fast forward to where we are now. The car was driving nicely for a few days until out of nowhere, it started to bog really badly and lose power. I first noticed it on the incline of my parking garage. It's not the gas level as I had filled the tank a few days prior to the bogging issues. It's not the MAF (not that I think) as I also replaced it with one the previous owner gave me. I also used MAF cleaner on it to clean it out before I swapped it over.

This leads me to my previous thought before I changed the alternator. Either the wiring is bad or the pump is bad. So, I went ahead and pulled the pump. I fully expected to find the dirtiest fuel pump ever. To my surprise, I found out that it was already changed with an aftermarket Bosch fuel pump. I compared it to the OEM one that I bought when I initially thought it was the pump to compare the size difference:










As you can see, the pump is quite a bit smaller but probably flows better than the OEM one. In fact, I was checking some other threads on S13/S14 owners that hard wire their aftermarket pumps because the wiring just can't maintain the constant amount of voltage required to power those pumps. THAT could be why my voltage was off when I checked it initially... well that and the crappy alternator it had. I'm thinking the guy put in an aftermarket pump because it was readily available but the wiring isn't able to maintain the constant power it needs to power it.

As it sits right now, the pump is about ready to get swapped in. I just purchased everything I need to hard wire the fuel pump to a separate relay. I'll be swapping it in on Sunday so if all goes well... the Cefiro should be alive and running!

Stay tuned for an update!!