NZ RB25 two tone S13

[BenRice]

Have been lurking here over a year and you guys tend to like most things NZ so figured i'd put this up.

I originally built an SR20DET powered C34 Laurel which was crap but it meant i had twins as my daily looked identical but RB25 powered.

I quit both and bought this in 2010 with the hard yards done.

It came with the following:
S1 RB25DET
RB25DET gearbox
Unknown paddle clutch
R32 GTR radiator and 3x fans
S15 seats
3" exhaust and Apexi filter
Audi intercooler
R33 brakes
R200 viscous LSD 5x1 rear end with pineapples
Tein HA coilovers
All these modifications were certified for road use so it can be driven on the road

All i've changed in the driveline from then is a locker, cut-and-shut plenum, new cold side intercooler piping, radiator ducting, oil cooler, Walbro 255lph fuel pump and a Power FC. Still running standard injectors and turbo (8-9psi) it made 216rwkw on a rolling road dyno.

Instead, I focused on suspension upgrades:
BC Gold coilovers
12kg PSM front springs, 8kg BC rear springs
Cusco castor arms
Chinese rear camber and toe arms
S14 FLCA's
Modified front knuckles (Garage H)
GKtech extended wheel studs

And looks
Street kit: Vertex
Track kit: Final Konnexion (type 2)
Origin roof wing
BN style bonnet
Stainless 3.5" twin tips
S14 Navan boot wing
Rolled guards, rears flared 15mm
17x9 and 17x9.5 Work VSXX road wheels
17x9 +38 Advan SA-3R's spares (8 of)

And the interior
Racetech fixed back drivers seat on Bride super low rails
Recaro reclining passenger seat on custom rails
4 point harnesses
Autometer oil temp, water temp and oil pressure
Bolt in half cage (powdercoated gold)
Nardi woodgrain 360mm

I bought a C35 Laurel as a daily, but only being a 2L it wasnt going to be a great tow car. So after researching a bit i had an a-frame adapted to fit the front of the Silvia by a mate, using the factory tow points with inserts and high tensile bolts. I wired trailer wire into the rear lights and fitted a plug on the other end to plug into the C35 when towing so as to use the Silvia's rear lights.

My mate and I fabricated up a bumper mount to store the front bumper on the a-frame during towing.

I've done around 3000km of driving like this over the past 3 years and it's worked pretty good, a few other people have taken up the idea now as well. The 8 spare wheels and jack all fit into the Silvia during transit.

At the moment it's off the road waiting for the front crossmember to go back in now Adam @ C's Garage has modified it to push the rack forward. The plan is to get it powdercoated gold to match the cage and the Advan's then throw some new poly rack bushes at it.

I also have PSM subframe risers to put in to try and reduce some of the camber gain I'm getting on throttle. Am hunting for some adjustable traction arms too but nothing reasonable has popped up yet. I only run 215/45 tyres but am now using new tyres, and despite only running -0.5deg camber and zero toe they are wearing on the inside pretty bad.

I've just bought a pair of RT5 Retro VSKF-lookalikes as they were silly cheap. Am hoping they will fit under the rear guards as they are a 17x9 @ 0 and my 17x9 spares sit pretty close spaced out to +10

It's been a pretty good car so far, still on the original clutch, gearbox and engine after 5 years and around 25 track days. I've only binned it once but I like how i seem to keep up with other drivers with lots more power. Will throw some action pics up in the next post and vids when not at work.

 

[BenRice]

Action pics

The tuner said the engine sounded nice and tight through the headphones when it was dynoed last year. Am trying to track down an AVC-R and bump the boost to 12psi and try get a little more midrange. The injectors are only at 62% duty cycle and i have a SARD FPR if we need a little more line pressure.

Have a few more things to tidy up during the winter, namely installing the subframe risers and traction arms, redoing the ducting due to a few hits, making some oil cooler ducting, new steering rack and bushes, new handbrake shoes, selling the S14 wing and getting an Origin boot lip spoiler, and finally get the crystal blue window tint on.

I can't compete in this as we need a full weld-in rollcage to enter competitions, and a weld-in cage would mean it would be very tricky to keep road legal. I'm getting older and already help out a mate in the D1NZ Pro series which is enough for me, especially when i can drive this to D1 rounds and have a great racetrack only 1.5hrs drive away.

Let me know your thoughts guys.
Ben

 

[CrossOverPics]

Awesome looking car, NZ never fails to disappoint!

 

[1N5_N15]

I love it! So tough!

 

[BenRice]

Couple vids. First is of me and a mate mucking around with a couple of gopros and a mates swivel mount. Track is called Taupo Motorsport Park, and its track 3. My handbrake wasnt working that day and the outer tyre wall has claimed a few cars over the years if you dont thread the needle at 120kmh properly. Was my first time editing so is pretty shit sorry.

[video=youtube;8aUIfFVh5Uc]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8aUIfFVh5Uc[/video]

This was a day a bunch of us went to, my good mate jimmy features heavily with his green 180 on Equips. White JZX100 is driven by a chick (Mel).

Vid is done by a mate Max who now does all Mad Mikes stuff here in NZ. The on-track stuff is shot from my car at the end of the day.

 

[Benwalsh91]

Awesome!

 

[bigdave z20]

2 tone FTW!!!
This is class. I love the vsxx on it.

 

[nathanielro]

Perfect!!!!!

 

[1N5_N15]

For interests sake what was wrong with the sr20 laurel?

I've got a mate with an sr20 c33 and it's a fantastic car

 

[BenRice]

Thanks guys

C34 was just done shoddily when i was earning bugger all. Engine mounts were cack so engine was on the piss, secondhand teins had seized collars and knackered shafts. Could have spent another $5k on it but after the amount i learned about RB's from my mate i knew it was the better route. 200rwkw in a RB25 is nothing, especially with the big box and i wanted reliability. And i got it.

Also the s13 is much more nimble compared to the C34, and looks a ton better. Never regretted the decision.

 

[Street cefy]

Nice car man ive seen it in tauranga a few times, looks tough on the street.

 

[BenRice]

So I'll get this up to date. I think it was Jan when i left off. Here's another shot that popped up from the skidpan day in early Jan:

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.

 

[1N5_N15]

I'll miss the s14 wing it looked so right on there

Good work so far man love your work

 

[zombie]

This is badass!

 

[BenRice]

Thanks man

Here's a shot from a 2 and a half years ago with the Vertex and VSXX, very similar to what yours looks like!

 

[toffep0pz]

Love this car, and it's good to see a tidy s13 that gets used and abused! I remember it from the DMNZ day in 2013 and also the dude who owns the blue 180 is a good dude who gave me tonnes of advice! good shit!

 

[BenRice]

Cheers man. The guy that owns that blue 180 is Dave Matehare, an ex D1NZ competitor so worth listening to.

 

[S14LF]

This is mad! Makes me want to sell my S14.

 

[BenRice]

A few other shots from the above day

 

[BenRice]

Right so last time I left off I’d done a low-speed day at Meremere and all went well.

Since then it just sat in the shed until a drift day popped up about a month ago at my favourite track: Taupo. So I organised another four new Tri-Ace tyres to go with the pair I had already, and grabbed another pair of 215/40 Goldways to go on the RT5’s – the 40 profile to help with guard clearance. A large number of our ProAm competitors run the Goldways tyres so I figured why not.

As luck would have it I went through no tyres as it ended up raining. Shots from the day:

My mate Chris @ Freshly Whipped also now works for Performance Car Magazine and put together a cool feature of a bunch of cars from the day, mine included. I wasn’t game enough to run the front bar out there, but no biggy:

Also threw a vid together from the day using a Rollei:


We weren’t supposed to manji the pit-straight but I did it once and didn’t get told off, so did it again

Then parked her in the garage again until yesterday when I started getting her ready for another Taupo day this Saturday. I’ve got to adjust the handbrake and trim down a new mount I made for the camera:

The idea was to get a better shot of the car. Most of the footage only shows a small part of the car and where you’re going / been. It does vibrate a little so I’m going to trim 150mm off it and anchor it to the door lock using fishing twine. Eventually I want to weld in a couple of nuts and use my 3 suction cup mounts to anchor it instead of the boots holes. I also made up a storage area for my Vertex street kit, keeping it out of the way nicely:

It's just steel strapping screwed into beams in the ceiling, spaced 600mm apart, then with 1200x600 sheets of 7mm ply cable tied to it.

And have just purchased a AVC-R off a mate, I just need to get a solenoid and will be getting it retuned on 13psi to try get a little more midrange torque out of it.

Weather is looking much better as we’re coming into spring now so temperature is up to late-teens / low twenties degree Celsius with loads of sun - here’s hoping I can finally get some dry driving in.

Am hoping to use the camera pole and run two Rollei’s and get some in-car and outside footage synced together, if the old warhorse survives another day that is.