project 180sx

[Chriscooke]

This is going to be mint Keep up the good work mate

[jod]

thats a pretty clean looking 180sx you've got there.

it'll be intresting to see which engine you go for

[alanjuggler]

stop press. under a blister in the underseal on the driver side chassis leg i found ... a hole!

about 1" in diameter, won't be too much hassle to weld.

to clarify, it wasn't really a hole until i started using my flap disc on my grinder to get all the rust out. then it was

oh and my order from bilthamber arrived, so last night, most of the driver side was zinc'd. i have to say, i'm really impressed with the deoxgel, even if it doesn't totally remove *all* the rust in the first pass, it loosens it enough that wire brushing it afterwards is v. easy.

[sammos13]

nice project mate car looks like it will be uber clean when you finish

[alanjuggler]

right.. some progress

driver side all electrox'd up.



after the deox gel..



after wire brushing..



welded in two plates, a small circular one in the lower chassis leg and a trapezoidal plate to cover this. not bad welding considering i'm mig welding outside in the wind (definitely an improvement over my last project ). whenever the weld has gone blobby, that's when the wind blew in and my welds went to shit so i had to weld over it.



the other hole..



hole from the other side..



passenger side electrox'd.

[Petrol]

That looks an absolute minter Glad you are sorting the most important things out first

I will drop you a PM in the next day or two

[Trotter]

i loved this car to bits when i owned it, really glad it's gone to a good home.

cheers

[arry]

to see how different the SR feels in comparison. (and i feel dirty for even considering it )

*shudders*

I can't believe you've become this weak, old man.

[alanjuggler]

i know - i think i've come to my senses now - i still want to see what all the fuss is about

i'm 90% going to use the CA but i'm going to restore all the original bracketry to the engine and sort out all the niggly loose shit on my CA - like the gearbox/flywheel cover that's sort of flopping about

lots of stuff that's been done be me, garages etc in ignorance to make things easier/faster instead of having a 'nice' engine which i didn't really appreciate before.

[alanjuggler]

right, bit more of an update.

turns out the car is a Type-G 180SX (base model - checked on the VIN) that's had someone in japan fit the kouki bootlid/spoiler, 180sx 'bride style' seats etc. doesn't have a viscous LSD either - it's an open unit. my s14 auto diff will be going in at some point.

source:
http://homepage3.nifty.com/xseo/180sx/180sx_h.htm

http://homepage3.nifty.com/xseo/180s...tm&sl=ja&tl=en

translation:

http://translate.google.com/translat...ubi/6types.htm

http://translate.google.com/translat...sx/180sx_h.htm

i'm going to try to mail the webmaster of the site to see if he'd allow me/sxoc to pull his data (i'm not optimistic, my japanese isn't great and it was last updated in 2002 ) and re-host it here & refine the translation. (it took me ages to figure out that Banitimira means vanity mirror )

anyhow - pics below

you can just see my weld patch..



same problem as the sills - two skins close together.. drain gets blocked, you can see the rest.



the worst bit of rust - i've taken the exhaust off in preparation for tackling this tomorrow



how clean is the front cross member going to wirebrush / deox / dynax this to get what little rust is on there off & the metal protected.



my working area thank god my parents like me

[johnb]

wow! i see the civic is still going
awesome 180 btw, keep up the good work

[alanjuggler]

uh yeah, the front of the civic looks a tad different - it's about 1ft shorter - going off to be scrapped soon. the engine is still living on in another EJ6 though

re: progress - stalled a bit due to the weather. have managed to dismantle the folding mirrors and grease/oil the gears, so have to test those

[johnb]

this makes me want to get rid of the 14a for a 180sx, looks cool

[alanjuggler]

update!

this has been on the backburner for a while.

onwards and upwards.. no progress on the car, just shiny bits have been bought...

how the car looked with weak wheels..




and then i picked up some 4 stud buddy club racing wheels .. 17x8 & 17x9 - offsets are pretty good as you can see - i've wanted a set of these for a while, so was glad when they came up





apologies for the angle of the pics, due to the crashed civics and neighbour's car, i couldnt move it to a nicer location or get any side shots further out..

now the weathers perking up, i'll be finishing breaking the civics (only a gearbox to split off now), getting the scrapman to remove them and then it's full steam ahead (i hope )

last thing i picked up yesterday from docwra was a ca18 head to replace mine - valve stem seals are leaking it's been port matched with valve seats recut etc - so i made a quick job of cleaning up the chamber..



oh and if anyone wants some weak momo 17x7 ET35 with brand new tyres (sunew YS618s ) let me know - they're now for sale

[alanjuggler]

right, update! the nice weather has got me going at full tilt again.. so here's the results.. this is 2 weekends worth of work

subframe comes off...



not looking that bad underneath.. some wire brushing should bring most of this off.





nissan in shitty welds on subframe.. when i get it blasted i might have to sort this out..



and then the pyromaniac in me was let out - and shortened my life by 5-10 years, rubber smoke





i did all 4 and got the metal sleeves out too - i'm just trying to decide at the moment whether to use my old poly bushes from the 200sx or go for apex uprated rubber ones. rubber would be more in keeping with the road car feel but it's money that could be spent elsewhere..

the next problem..



now you see it, now you don't..



ahhhhhhhhh, it feels so much better here.



woops.. i was taking the engine out on my own and hadn't noticed the gearbox was too tilted - i might pop to pirtek and get some flexi hoses sorted to replace them so i can't do it again



it looks as though there's been a brake fluid leak from the master cylinder at some point - the master cylinder is pretty heavily rusted below the bolts and then it's pretty bad down here too. i'd probably wager that's why this area on my 200 is totally knackered too.



worst bit of rust on the front end now..



then i dropped the fuel tank, it's nothing too bad here, all mostly surface apart from above the exhaust, that will be dealt with in the next instalment i think









and that's it folks - if anyone has any tips for trying to retain air con while having a rather large turbo and the need for an oil cooler, i'm all ears - i really do want to keep it

i've got a feeling though it might have to come out just due to space requirements around the turbo/n/s engine mount area but i'm going to try and see if it's possible to retain it.

[MapBoy]

I've had to replace those PS pipes too. Mine where mangled in japan...the total price new from nissan......wait for it...... around £5 lol.

[alanjuggler]

is that it? crazy, bollocks to it then, ill just buy new

[MapBoy]

Yup that was it. I have the invoice in my folder. I'll dig it out and find you the part no's. That price is with sxoc members nissan discount through a guy up here though.

[alanjuggler]

don't worry, was going to PM Kris about them anyway

[alanjuggler]

right, the next instalment has arrived..

as i pulled open the seams at some points, i tack welded the seam to make sure i didn't lose any strength and hopefully, add a small amount without adding any chassis resonance.



got the driver's side tiger sealed up, pass side zinc'd.



the worst rust. I went a bit OTT getting the structural rust out but probably for the best, the remaining bits will be deoxed to get as much out as possible.



found this the other day, was opening the seam and it all pulled away - glad i found it, is messy to fix when it's any worse. deox goes in - driver side in the same place seems to be fine so am hoping that dynax will stop the rust getting any worse.



now for some photos of clingfilm





got the passenger side sealed up. need to get some nice paint on it



battery tray done - ill take a pic of what was going on below the battery tray - suffice to say it was a pretty bad mess, even though the battery tray itself looked spot on.



i only had the deox gel on about 4-6 hours, amazing stuff, loosened the vast majority of it.

to be clear, i'm not going back to completely clean metal ala petrol, electrox is ideally used on the swedish metal standard 2.5 which is ~5% of the surface with discolouration/surface stains. i'm going for something lower than this - i.e. leaving just black marks in the pitting but not leaving brown rust, which i think is about equivalent to standard no. 3

if i was going the whole hog, this would be much more than a summer protection job and if i were going that far, i'd just get the shell acid dipped and zinc'd that way.

some of the zinc going on.. i'm hoping to have the rear rust removal finished tomorrow with the welding done too. Once that's done, I can concentrate on getting some seam sealer on the bits that i think need it and then re-assembly