Ben's two tone s13

[gbaby2089]

When will the FK go on?

[BenRice]

Whenever my painter gets it done. He's a mate and doing it as a cashie. He's notoriously slow but his work is some of the best in the country as he's won a number of awards.

I'm hoping he will have it done when i go past his place on my way to the test day this Sunday. "Hoping" being the operative word.

Realistically it may be next month

[BenRice]

Just sourced a secondhand FK rear bumper, locally too! Pick it up next Monday.

So stoked, was expecting to have to buy new but one has come up for sale from one of the local Pro-am drivers. This kit is going to be fitted for track work and the Vertex for road use - the sides are still fine and the rear can be fixed easy enough, just need a new front.

Am thinking i may have a go at getting some more width out of my rear fenders to ensure the wheels dont look sunk with the wider, lower kit. I am worried about compression dents though so will start research methods. I thought about cutting the inner wheel well, pumping, then filling the gap with new steel. That would allow the outer skin to move easier without the inner putting tension on it.

The front should be ok, but i will keep a lookout for S14 LCA's. I'd only need an extra 10mm to make it look right, so the extra 20mm the s14 LCA's give over the S13 LCA's means i could reduce the front space down from 25mm to 15mm and reduce my scrub radius. I'll just have to check if i am currently fouling on swaybars or castor arms.

[BenRice]

Bought some S14 LCA's on the weekend. They came with hubs and knuckles too, so they will go into storage for my cousins S14 PFL for when he is ready (ie has money) for modded knuckles. Getting the ball joints swapped over as soon as i can pull the S13 LCA's out of the car.

I split the knuckle from the S14 LCA last night. I put the knuckles lower strut mounts in the vice, removed the castled nut then figured i'd put the butane torch onto the knuckle area around the ball joint. This worked brilliantly, all it took was one strong blow with the mini sledgehammer on the tip of the ball joint. I know i ran the risk of mushrooming it, but the heating obviously worked a treat and i didnt care about ruining the thread on the S14 ball joints, plus i didnt have to hammer LCA and run the risk of denting it. I've replaced the ball joints in the S13 LCA before so hoping they come off the knuckle by hitting the LCA as it will be the other way around with these as its the ball joints i want to preserve on them, not the LCA's.

I also did more research and apparently its only 7.5mm added per side by the S14 LCA's over the S13 ones. With the strut top rotation i am going to do (to pull the top forward to improve contact patch on lock) i will be sacrificing strut top camber, so combined with the slightly longer LCA's my guard-tyre clearance is going to reduce. I havent hammered the lip flat yet and have ~5mm clearance at the moment so will see what happens when it's back together as i may be able to get away without reducing the space.

Drove it 530km (~330miles) on the weekend. Managed to do 310km to 3/4 of a tank so around 10l/100km touring which i'm happy with, especially considering most of the tuning was done on full throttle and it sits at 3,000 at 110kmh.

And if you've still suffered through reading my Red Bull fueled drivel here's a pic of it filling up on my way home:



Graded a few bridge transitions with the cross memeber / swaybar and think i hit the gearbox or gearbox mount at one point plus the usual fibreglass impacts but no exhaust impacts. Pretty darn happy.

Next post should be a mock up of the FK rear and S14 wing.

[Nategreat923]

I love this car so hard.

[BenRice]

Thanks man, yours is awesome. Always wanted to do the CA swap into a small Toyota or MX5.

The colour scheeme reminds me of one of the 4A-GZE 86's we had here, run by a guy called Tim Harris. It ran a hybrid 4age and SC14:



Can't seem to find any exterior photos when it was beige/tan and black. He has the blog SLPERY | SLPERY When Dry –. Worth a look if you're interested in all things AE, he's owned heaps of them and always makes them look amazing.

[BenRice]

So did a test fit of the FK rear last night. Navan S14 wing still hasnt turned up. Couriers in this country are shite.

Because the FK is designed to work with widebody and stock metal, it needed a bit of trimming. The sides that wrap around the rear quarters and into the rear wheel arch had a step in them. Note the "had". After cutting this out it would fit pretty well, but needed tension on it to hold it in.





It needed a bit of finishing to fit snug, flapper sander disc for a grinder is sooooooo good for this. Will need to massage my wheel arch to pinch it in a little more but i'm very happy with its design. At the wheel arch it hangs only 25-30mm off the ground. Gotta love running 17's for low!




Obviously being designed for widebody the sides hung around 2" out from the wheel arch on each side. So with some warm weather coming up i thought lets put it to use



I may need to cut a notch out of the fibreglass on the underside to hold. If i do i'll get it reglassed when it gets repainted as i don't want weak points in it.

And another couple of pics from the gas station stop last weekend. I need a new Vertex front stat.

[soundboy]

Spot on fitment

Sent from my GT-P3110 using Tapatalk 4

[BenRice]

Thanks man, appreciate it.

Navan wing turned up finally but it was a bit of a let down. The seller hadnt even packaged it and stuck stickers straight onto the (crappy) paint. This pissed me off from the get-go. Next was some person had finger painted "Boss" and "fuck" into the top of the wing with thinners. Real winner there.



But I soldiered on. After painstakingly peeling the stickers off and getting rid of the residue with aerosol CRC degreaser (amazing stuff) i got to work on making it fit. It needed around 2-3mm taken out of the outside half of the base. Cue the sander flapper grinder attachment. 30mins with this and it was as good as it was going to get.

Two bolts were left in the wing and i wanted to use these to mount it. It will need another couple to secure the front of the bases but I'm thinking of just use a self taper screw and a lot of sikaflex as there isnt much left on the underside to bolt to.

I played around with positions. A mate (another Ben with another S13 Silvia) had just mounted his but pushed it as far back as his mounts allowed. While it looked good for him running Origin overs and BN kit i was hesitant to do do the same on Vertex/FK and stock metal as it wouldnt look as wide.

I trialed both positions: as far back as possible and in a normal position, as well as trialing both the Vertex and the FK rear bumper. These were the results:













I settled on the forward position. The rear position just looked to "Fast and Furious" style with the Vertex. It kind of went with the FK, but would need overs to make it really work and I'm not an overs kind of person: i like running tyres to the bitter end and don't want to worry about belts blowing my guards to pieces. So I marked out where the holes needed to go, drilled, then clearanced the framing on the back with a holesaw to allow the nuts to spin on.

Finally, got word yesterday arvo that my FK front and sides are done. I'm off to Aussie this weekend for a week to visit my father and have to drive a couple of hours to get to the airport to fly out of the country, so on my way back home i'll swing past my painters place and pick them up.

My painter is mad busy (obviously) so will pick up my paint at the same time and get the FK rear and boot+wing all done locally. The boot has a few scrapes as well so a good time to fix it up. Once that's painted the whole car will only need the front guards, doors, roof and rear quarters repainted. I'm holding off doing this until i do the necessary guardwork to the front and rear with the coming reduction in camber, plus some rust needs to be removed around the sunroof and windscreen.

To keep me going this week i'm going to grind the lock stops off my S14 LCA's in anticipation of transfering my adjustable lockstops over from the S13 LCA's, and will pull the S13 LCA's out of the and get my mate to swap the ball joints while I'm out of the country.

[Ruff]

Hi Ben, I stumbled upon this thread at lunchtime and was pleased to see the old girl getting still going strong. I hope you don't mind me posting a couple of old pics here.


This is the first iteration of Ben's car in early 2004, not long after it was finished. This chassis had a close encounter with a lighting column during a storm and the parts had to be swapped into the current shell.


And here it is with the rest of the family in 2005 (C33, WGNC34 & S13s).

Keep up the good work!

[BenRice]

Hey Joe! Thanks for the pics, stumbled over some others on car domain a while ago too.

You wouldnt believe it but the old girl is still on the same turbo, engine, gearbox and clutch. All untouched and unopened. On the dyno the tuner said the engine sounded really strong through the headphones too.

Probably jinxed it now :P

[Ruff]

Ah yes I did put a few photos on car domain, had almost forgotten.

I remember that engine being a real gem, never missed a beat despite being called on to work hard from time to time. The oil used to come out slightly golden and clear each time I changed it, usually around 4,500mi. Glad you've had such a good run.

[BenRice]

Currently finishing off installing S14 LCA’s. Ball joints are swapped over, just need to tighten ball joint bolts and give it an eyecrometer toe adjustment and it can get dropped down. Have just ground off the lock stops for now, but will get the adjustable stops transferred over from the S13 LCA’s and gusseting added soon.



Test fitted the painted FK front and a side. Looks so cool, and the extra track on the front from the S14 LCA’s (now effectively 9’s @ -10) will mean the outer lip of the wheels will still be wider than the outer edge of the kit. The side skirts will need a little bit of stretching so I’m going to mount them as solidly as possible and hit them with a heat gun.



And the subframe for transporting the bumper on top of the a-frame when towing is finished. It was all TIG’d up by a mate Mike Dalton (Zerofighter guy) and is nice and strong. It uses a section of A31 Cefiro bumper iron and can be removed from the a-frame by undoing only 4 bolts. I’m tempted to get it and the halfcage powdercoated matte gold but that can be something for later on.



This pic doesn’t show the side stays welded on yet but that’s all done now, and once the car is back on the ground again I’ll mount it all up and snap off some pics. The stays have plates added on the end that the ends of the bumper sit on. The plates and underside of the bumper will get a couple of holes drilled through so I can secure the bumper during transit. Another couple of tie’s on the bumper iron section and she’s good to go.

Next I think I’ll investigate how hard it will be to fit a removable 4-wheel tyre rack on top of the a-frame. Logic says no as it’d put too much downward pressure on the hitch bolts, and would need to be braced rather heavily as the wheels would sit 600mm above the a-frame. But solutions seem to present themselves after a few beers and a bit of staring so will see what happens.

[BenRice]

Finished off fitting the S14 LCAs, adjusted toe, hammered lip flat on guards, solid mounted the oil cooler and put the FK front and sides. Just need to drill holes and mount the kit properly now.

[BenRice]

Couple of wider angle shots of the new front and sides all mounted. Really like the look of the kit, makes the car look a lot wider.






And some shots of the a-frame and it’s new bumper-subframe all mounted up. A mate turned up with some of his homebrew last night as i was taking these so understandably got distracted from drilling the mounting holes on the stays.









And got a call to say the rear bumper and wing are already done! Amazingly fast work, done in less than 24hrs. Am picking up tomorrow morning so fingers crossed the quality is passable.

So tomorrow arvo it should all be able to go together, complete FK kit painted plus Navan S14 boot wing. Then put up on axle stands so I can pull the rack out. Will try and re-seat the LHS seal and see if it will fix the leak.

[BenRice]

So the old girl got a bit of a spruce up on Sunday. New rear bumper, a new boot wing and a thorough clean inside and out were the order of the day.












But if I’m completely honest I’m not 100% convinced this looks good. The front looks how I wanted it too, apart from my shoddy guard work of course, but the rear just isn’t right.

For it to work I’m thinking the roof spoiler is too “abrupt” and the rear edge needs to taper back towards the front rather than go straight down. So it’s either remove and alter the existing one or buy a new one.

The rear guards will get a bit of treatment in the next few weeks, but thankfully by some much more experienced hands than mine. This will happening once it’s had a wheel alignment to setup the front toe correctly and reduce the rear camber down to -1deg. I’ll reduce the space to allow this to happen and then get the guards flared to accommodate 9.5′s with 215/45 @ +6 or at the least the current +11. Maybe these changes will help tie it in.

Either way, when it only had the roof wing, FK front and sides and Vertex rear it looked pretty cool, and it’s easy enough to go back to this.

[sleepyS14se]

how come the hood alignment looks high on the drivers side?

i love this two tone it has a timeless look that i am really diggin'!

[BenRice]

Because china knockoff parts are crap.

The bonnet is quite warped. After this i removed the passenger side rubber stop at the front and build the drivers side on up. It kinda worked but still fits like infected camel cock.

Thanks for the kind comments!

[sleepyS14se]

i notice almost all s13 silvia noses look like the hood never lines up


man your car looks like a boss. lol

[BenRice]

Yeah the guards have been removed and installed a few times, and rolled and hammered so that won't be helping. And the RB plenum touches a little too.

I think if i slot the holes on the hinges i could get it a little straighter.

Trying to organise hiring our favourite track for my 30th birthday. Its not until Feb next year but bookings are disappearing fast.

[BenRice]

So drove it to the first round of our national drift series. The idea with getting it all legal for the road was so i could do this. It then occurred that the organisers wanted to run a hard park and a bunch of mates decided to enter for shits and giggles and we got 2nd place and $500 worth of booze as a prize.







My mate James' 180sx won lowest car. It's running 18x9 and 18x10.5 Equips. The rears are Joel Hedges' old Equips and have an offset of -44.



A mate flared the rear guards for me the night before, meaning i could now pump my rears out to an effective offset of +11 on the -1deg camber



Then Adam and Joel and the S-Club guys ran a Meremere day so a bunch of us went along as it had been a dry spell for track days

In the days leading up i fitted my new harnesses



And got my halfcage powder coated to match the Advans





I fitted the FK back on and towed up to my mates for the night



Chris Smith @ Freshly Whipped snapped some cool shots again





After the day i took some shots of the rig as she is transported







Theres a vid on Facebook of one of my runs where i came as close as humanly possibly to the wall without touching.

The strut top rotation and the reduction in rear camber really helped put grip into it.

I need to get a mate to make up a custom fixed seat rail to mount the new SR3 i bought as it sits way too high. Then the windows are getting the blue film i had brought in from China applied. Finally the rocker covers and front of engine covers are going to be redone to get rid of the green, but i'm undecided on silver, black or gold.

[BenRice]

So I'll get this up to date. I think it was late last year when i left off.

Well a few mates of mine had been asking to come for rides, so i booked a skidpan day. As usual, most piked and left me negotiating newbs for the day. I ended up finding a couple of guys to do a bit of tandem but was still a waste of a day. A few pics:




And since then i've just done two days but a few improvements.

The first day was a day at Taupo Motorsport Park, but run by the managers of the track. As a result they allowed me to take passengers out but no tandem stuff with passengers in the car. Pretty good of them considering my car only has a bolt-in halfcage, expired harnesses and the passenger seat is a reclinable Recaro.

My mate Mike offered to tow me down in his LS1 powered Holden Commodore ute (i think it's called the Maloo over there), made the hills much easier. He also fabbed up some rad 3.5" twin pipes for me to replace the twin 2.5":




Fills the hole nicely!


The day at Taupo was run over the entire track, using the new section (Track 2) in the morning, running normal direction, then reverse. Reverse is what our competition series runs and I was keen to see how this setup would go as quite a few of our ProAm drivers have issues with the 4-corner section.

Well i did it without any real issues, hammering out 7-8 laps in a row with no spins and baking a pair of new tyres in that time so felt pretty good. In the arvo they run full track normal direction and a dicky handbrake sent me shooting off and i munched my nice, mint front bumper:



That made me angry, so it was out to kill that pair proper and a mate got a bit of footage from behind, coming out of the dipper and up the hill



Then we hitched up and towed home



The rack had started leaking, and i was also keen to get it moved forward. So out came the crossmember. Only trouble was, no engine crane. Cue kiwi ingenuity:



I dropped the crossmember off to Adam @ C's Garage to move the mounts forward, then ordered new poly bushes. Once all done i squished it all back together with a replacement steering rack:



Next it was onto the rear and trying to reduce the camber wear i was getting on compression. I went for PSM subframe risers and sourced GKtech traction arms, but first i picked up a pair of wheels as they were too cheap:




17x9 @ 0 RT5 Chrome (essentially Foose knockoffs but look like chunky VSKF's). Rear camber is -0.5deg so was going to be touch and go, more on that later.

Then out came the subframe and up to Mikes to burn the bushes out




And done


New handbrake shoes were fed into her and then off to get aligned. I also sourced a fresh FK front and got it painted, then the final thing was to add a v-band instead of the rangi (read: pikey) slip on + D-shackle for the new twin pipes:



My mate James then suggested a low-key drift day that was coming up, only thing was it was at our national dragstrip: Meremere. The facility can be hired and the second half of the strip and return road used. However, concrete barriers have been added lately so it's been a bit of a missile-haven sadly. We thought we might as well as the tyre bill wouldnt be huge as we could use all our half worns, and it would be a good chance to get a few of us driving together again.

So the Saturday just been i was up at 5am and on the road for a 3hr tow across the island. A couple of mates helped me sort the brakes (needed bleeding) and i adjusted up the handbrake.

I threw the RT5's on and it was a right laugh. Huge amount of rubbing but left them on and ran them till the tyres died.




I also sold the S14 wing as it didnt look right with big kit, steel guards and only 17's. Have an Origin boot lip coming from Japan to replace it.



More pics are on the Ambition Works FB page.

I also took Shaun (Ambition Works) for a run and he video'ed it and put some of the incar in this vid:



Apologies for the amount of shit heaps in there and lack of 3rd gear, those barriers be unforgiving.

So am now itching for more proper track stuff, but before then I'll be fitting an RB20DET actuator to safely get a couple more psi boost out of her (only at 8-9psi at the moment) and a bit more mid range torque to help with the competition section at Taupo. The backlash in the diff is also a little loose so will need adjusting too.

Then i have a couple of fresh Vertex front and rear bumpers to get painted in preparation for getting her road legal again and drive around for the summer as usual.

Let me know your thoughts guys.

[BenRice]

Well 5 years and I'm back. Been pretty active on Driftworks but thought I'd peep what the US is up to (forums in NZ/Aus are dead)

As of ~3 years ago the car ticked off it's 38th event. Still on the same engine, clutch and gearbox that was in the car when i bought it. Don't believe the internet when they say RB's aren't reliable

I guess major things since the last post were that I fitted a PSM hydraulic handbrake. Now, i know the whole thing these days is "stock works fine" but 5 years ago I was battling overheating brake shoes and adjusting it constantly. For a price of Project Mu brake shoes i could buy a PSM HHB kit.

Did something a bit different and hid it





Drifted it some more, added an Origin bootlip and bought Joel Hedges @ C's Garage old Eastbear mirrors







then changed up the kit a bit and got rid of the FK and went BN for the track








That was the car's last full event ~3.5 years ago. I then started as an instructor at beginner events. But before my son was born i wanted to get the car tidied up and resprayed, it certainly deserved it






Then, faced with no events and a year of home life I made the move to up the power finally. I contacted Luke @ MMP back in 2017 about a recored RB25 turbo, but ended up going for a rebuilt HKS GT-RS with 0.64 RB exhaust housing (less fab work). It's sized & specced the same as a GTX2871R, with billet compressor wheel and dual ball bearing cartridge. Since then MMP's supplying Animal Style, Pink Style & a host of other grassroots team which is kind of cool tbh.



Add in a Z32 MAF, 6x Spec R S15 injectors (direct fit to factory RB25 rail and plugs) and it was retuned on 1 bar, making 263kw at the wheels, holding 1 bar from 3200 to 7400. Somehow the clutch is still holding up

(Will throw up rest of the update tomorrow)

[tuzzio]

Stock body + kitted two tone. Such a win in my book. Car is awesome, and looks good after the respray.

[brndck]

good lord this thread is WIN

[BenRice]

Originally Posted by tuzzio

Stock body + kitted two tone. Such a win in my book. Car is awesome, and looks good after the respray.

Originally Posted by brndck

good lord this thread is WIN

Cheers guys! Working on bringing it up to date now...

[S14rebuild]

2 thubs up, 2 tone is sweet

[BenRice]

Dyno of the retune:



Green is the original tune done 7 years earlier on stock injectors/turbo/8-9psi
Red is the tune done with no VCT a couple months earlier (power feed to the VCT died)
Blue is with VCT on


Then faced with even more free time i set to the interior. The trunk got custom panels as factory are impossible to find.






Then the stereo & HVAC was relocated to the glovebox (and eventually arm rest), the AVCR recessed, USB charging ports added, the gauges remounted, the DIN slot fitted with 1/4 turn fasteners to access the HHB.











Made a 50mm ammo can into a battery box for the boot, 6 round mortar box powered sub box, LED strip lighting for foot wells and trunk and S15 carpet & rear seats fitted to match the front seats

[BenRice]

With the event organiser of the beginner events giving me free reign i decided to put the car back into road-spec and show people you can still drive a car to the track, drift it, and drive home.








Earlier this year I added a set of 17x9 Enkei RP01's my wheel collection with a view to start using the car in local autocross events for a bit of a change. I nabbed some ex-front, half worn AR1 semis in 235/40 off a mate who competes for them






Then gave the rest of the collection a bit of refresh. The gunmetal Advan set were done a few years ago, with mates helping realise my dream of turning them into imitation V2's. So first up were the gold Advan set, then the VSXX

[BenRice]

Recently i've replaced the intercooler piping for alloy and made each side 1 piece, rationalised a lot of wiring from the engine bay, found an imitation Battle Mode grill and replaced the horrible vented BN copy hood with an Origin Type 2












I've also started taking my now 3 yo son out to local coffee & car events and he's as bad as I am now lol



So it's now a nice weekend car that can drive to the track, swap a few things around, go out and kill a pair of tyres with ease, swap a few things back and drive home in comfort, all the while bumping tunes. Or clean up and go to a car show