Slowly, slowly...making some headway.

Well, seen as it's been over a month since the last update I thought I'd update everyone on the current situation.

Basically we're making slow progress. Mainly because of the christmas period with people taking holidays, parts taking longer to get delivered etc etc. A few things that have come in though include my Recaro's and Nissan Aero Sports rear pods (aka Nismo rear pods).

The Recaro's are in pretty good condition and as mentioned out of a Honda Integra Type-R. They're extremely comfortable and have a good amount of under thigh support which is a must for long distance travel (such as down to Collie). The rails are from a Honda, so will need to organise new rails for fitment into the Silvia, hopefully they won't mount the seat to high in the cabin.

The pods I managed to find through a 'wanted' ad on NissanSilvia.com. dannydriftking sent me a PM, we agreed on a price and he sent them across. No dents or tears in the plastic, so they'll make a good addition to the body kit. You may ask why I'm not going for a brand new rear bar, and the simple answer is I don't really like the shape of the current ones available. I wanted more of a 'race car' type look where the line at the rear goes up, as opposed to the 'drift' type rear bars that flick out at the back if look side on. I'll get Tom who's doing the body kit fitting to possibly modify the rear pods slightly to match up with the M Sports side skirts, but keep essentially the same lines.

Now the engine progress. Over the Christmas break it's been hard to get parts in a timely manner so that put a delay on it. Not that it's a real problem considering I have no car for it to drop into, but I do want it complete before I get the body back so it's as simple as dropping it in and getting it going. We are having to sleeve the block though due to one of the bores being a little larger than the rest, and we're fitting new rings to the forged pistons. The short block should be fully balanced and blueprinted within the next couple of weeks. Then it's just a matter of rebuilding the head with new springs, cams and the obligatory Rocker Arm Stoppers (RAS) kit from Tomei and we're ready to rock. The HPI manifold has been dumped as an idea mainly due to the number of half-decent china knockoffs going around. Also the fact that Derek (Yorik) has sent me his exhaust manifold to be checked out and it's already been ceramically coated, something that I would have had to do anyway.

So really, as for major parts to get now, there's the new oil pump which is on its way, need to find a HKS (or knockoff) front pipe (which I may get from driftshop.com.au). There's also the Trust sump and GReddy intake plenum, fuel regulator and some lightweight pulley's.

Once the body is finished, it will be off to get sprayed in the beautiful Yamaha R1 'Lava Red' which should look tops. Target for finishing the project is prior to Cabin Autosalon, but there's a lot of work to do before then.

Feel free to post comments or questions, would like to start getting some discussion going about what I'm doing.

Cheers
Brendan
(aka Grandpa on SilviaWA and sillbeer on NS.com)