|
|
12/08/05 |
      
|
Black Sunshine- HistoryI suppose there's a lot to be said in the saying, "How do you know where you are going if you don't know where you started?" Well, here we go (drafted from my old notes pages): Engine Bay; the engine was totally torn down and rebuild during the winter of 2003. I spent a month straight rebuilding the CA18DET engine. The head was match-ported and polished; intake side semi-polish, exhaust side full polish, combustion chambers full polish; removed enough aluminum from the combustion chambers to increase displacement from 1.8 to 1.9 litres.
The stock turbine was removed and the Nissan Silvia S14 turbine went in. Horsepower increased from stock 175 to 255 with the turbine and CPU re-chipped and dyno-tuned. Shown here is the second front-mount intercooler piping set I've been through since last year. Shown here is the aluminum piping for the TRUST front-mount intercooler, and hidden down below is an HKS GT2530 ball-bearing turbine; horsepower increased from 255 to 350 at 6600 rpm. Of course, CPU re-tuned via dyno. Like all of the polished stuff? No chrome here, my friend. The valve covers, cam sprocket cover were all polished by hand. It took me 4 months of working on them at night during the fall of 2002. Oh, compression is lowered via Tomei 1.2mm metal gasket. Since I'm talking of things around the pistons, those were each polished, and the crank arms were all deburred, flash removed, shot peened and polished. The block, which is cast iron was left alone, with the exception of deep cleaning. Also shown here is the BLITZ LM intake, and behind that is an airflow metre from a Z32. Wiring is courtesy of Essential in Tama. Boost management is courtesy of BLITZ SBCII. Notice there's no belt-driven fan? I removed it and mounted twin pull-type fans. This was donation from a Nissan Largo diesel van. Wiring for it cost me less than 1000 yen. I control the fan via toggle in the drivers compartment.
Man! Nothing like Japan during the cherry blossom season! This day was especially beautiful. Notice that I also have a love affair with wideness, hence the fender flares. The rears are from Do-Luck and the fronts are (unknown; bought from Up Garage). All I know is that they came from an S13 Silvia. I'm running SSR Full Mesh wheels. The specs are F: 16x8.0J +13 offset and R: 16x8.0J 0 offset. Rubber is 225/55R16 and 225/50R16. Front bumper is a no-name type modeled after the Type X. The bonnet is raised in the rear with aluminum square spacer with hard rubber between spacer and bonnet. To bolt it in place, I used elongated bolts. This allows for additional heat dissipation and is great during the winter months as a window defogger from the outside.
The rear lower bumper was courtesy of my friend's scrap yard. I like my stuff to stay in place, hence the bolts I used to attach the lower bumper. Exhaust is courtesy of Apexi. N1 titanium. When you're behind Black Sunshine, you will hear the ever-present whine of the Nissan R32 GT-R fuel pump! Since we're looking at Black Sunshine's rear, notice that there's no wing and no rear window wiper. This is straight from the factory. Speaking of the lack of things, Black Sunshine is about as spartan as the 180SX ever was from the factory. No electrical mirrors, no power windows, no floorboard lights, no luxury items. She is closely related to the Silvia J's. You are all familiar with the K's and Q's. The J's came from the factory with only the basics. 5 speed mission and turbo-charged. These cars were marketed to shops who would modify them for racing duty. Black Sunshine was destined to be a racer. Her previous owner never took her there. That's fine with me, because I have taken her there. If you ever get to see Black Sunshine up close and personal, you'll notice she bears battle damage on her front bumper from the turbulence kicked up from chasing down GT-Rs. These have been left there purposely to show she is not all show and no go (update- it got to the point one day that I spray-canned some of the front bumper). Well, enough of that story...
I am proud to say that I am the only guy who's ever done the work she has received, thus far. To date, I've got only a little over $3,000.00 invested in her. I don't have a lot of money (then I didn't have a lot of money; got some money now, but not playa type of money!), so combine that with old-fashioned elbow grease, junk parts, parts frankensteined from other cars (PS13/RPS13/FC3S/BNR32) and the network of friends who sold me things just to simply free up some of their work spaces, and you have what you see. As I said, I did all of the work, with the exception of dyno-tune. That was done down the street at Summit Racing (Vertex T&E). I'm a firm believer in maintaining drivability and staying within the sensible HP range. Learning from the expensive lessons of my fellow garage rats, I dare not go higher than what I already have. I had an idea of what I wanted to do when I first bought her, gathered some figures of what was relatively easy to achieve without going overboard, and went from there. I had a budget (enough for a can of brake-clean!), knew what I needed to get (more than a can of brake-clean!), and kept quality in mind, as well as sensibility. No hype stuff here. If it was old, I didn't care, as long as it was in good working condition and could work with what I had already. Hell, my first intercooler was a throw away item in a garbage can. I took it out, cleaned it up, pressure/leak checked it and gave it some TLC (switched over to TRUST FMIC when I got the HKS GT2530). It worked great! This is just one example. As I populate my blog with more pics (no longer a blog), the story will unfold about what I did (I stopped). To the present day... hence, this website... Hmmmmm...Let me see...Well the benefits of switching over to an SR20DET are numerous- parts are cheaper, plentiful, engine production was continued all the way from 1991 til just last year, support for it via tuner shops is readily available, timing chain versus timing belt, 205 ps available in stock form, and there's probably a whole list of other things too. CA18DET currently in Black Sunshine- 350 ps at 6600 RPM, internally worked (1.9 versus 1.8), runs real good, strong thru all gears, was re-built by me over a year ago (two years ago now), iron block versus aluminum block, more ps potential over SR20DET, HKS GT2530 turbine, ECU tuned, I really know this engine, can use parts from RB series engines, top feed injectors, VG30DET pistons work in CA family...Man! What to do, what to do... (I'm switching over to SR is what I'm gonna do). The SR is new ground for me. I've fixed some for friends, and have helped build a few SR-powered PS and RPS13s and helped with an S14, and it was quite easy, at least the stuff I did, but there's a lot more I need to know. Nothing like researching and then putting some elbow into it.
This site was last updated 12/08/05 This site is owned by 180SX WORLD copyright 2005
|
