Rb Powered Gazelle

[Ruffels]

So a few years ago, a mate dragged me along to watch the wednesday night calder drift practices..

amungst the cars were some shitboxes that somehow were managing to perform what kind of looked like a drift, but hey... they were giving it their best shot

anyways this inspired me, with a small budget and limited knowledge, i too was wanting to give it a go

so off home I went in search of a; light weight, CHEAP, rear wheel drive car, that I could some how turn into the ultimate "DR1ftP1g"

on Ebay i found this car

A nissan 'GAZELLE', I had never heard of one, let alone seen one... but it fitted my criteria in every way

after basically purchasing it blind, I organised a temperary permit, so i could drive it home and get it up to scratch for a rwc and get it registered

with 20+ year old shagged out shocks, springs that you could compress by shouting at them and brakes that worked when they felt like it... this car was surely going to kill me

Who was I kiding, this car was so gutless.. it struggled to forward and backwars... let alone sideways!

This car was going to need a new powerplant!

on very limited funds at the time, and limited knowledge and tools i couldnt afford to fork out for these improvements straight away, but i had to make improvements some how

the first modifications came several months after i had bought the car, still bleeding from vicroads tearing me a new 'one' for rego and inspections costs (more then what i paid for the f***ing car!!!)

The first modifications were suspension and braking upgrades

including;

Front

* S13 lower control arms

* Cusco fully adjustable w/ camber top Coilovers

* 180sx Hubs, calipers and disks

* R31 castor rods (for extra castor)

Rear

* ford falcon lowered heavy duty shocks

* Chopped std. springs (temp solution)

the car is now dropped on its guts, heaps more track and handling like a gokart, not to mention stopping on a dime!

although great fun, the car is still yet from what I envisaged... a better engine is a must!

I had been on a few classic celica cruises when i was younger, and was amazed how neally every single old skool celica that came to the event had some sort of different engine packed in, virtually none were the same, the originallity really gave me some inspiration, however i had no idea what i was getting myself into

during the beginning of my gazelle "drift" build-up I attended an AE86 cruise with a good mate (and if he reads this, might get annoyed with me.. meh) but i was soo dissapointed and unimpressed to see all these AE86's with the same engine conversion... all of them had done the almighty rare conversion of 4AC > 4AGE .... OMG how original.. i bet they all thought they were genius's when they performed this conversion.. i mean who would have thoguht that such an engine would fit... let alone come as standard equiptment in japan *face palm*

so after learning that the popular swap of ca18det or sr20det into the gazelle was easy and common place.. i thought to myself... F*** that .. i wanna do something different

A trip to the local wreckers and a short wait for my half cut to arrive from japan left me with this ...

had i bitten off more then i could chew? as this engine conversion had only been performed twice that anyone knew of, and was not documented at all at the time

you're probably sick of reading this novel, so i'll just fill the rest with pics of the build up until the current state of the project.. its pretty much finished

unfortunatly i to this date am still yet to drift the car... but with other projects on my horizon, i feel it is time to part with this

if anyone is interested, this car is for sale on expression of interest!

pics....

And this is where the magic happens

[jonesl]

Nice work mate. Love that you've gone something unique =)

where did you get that plenum. I want one. ha.

[HEKT1K]

special thanks to your mum for helping you drop the 20 in haha!

sif your bench is ever that clean

[ali-turko]

how much you want for it man?

[Ruffels]

jonesl, the plenum might be forsale soon as im seriously considering parting the car out

ali-turko, not sure exactly what i would sell the whole car for as is, as sad as it would be for me considering the work ive put into it... i'd probably end up parting it out, although offers are welcome

and ric, my bench is usually clean... just not when you come around

[CrispyFries]

Looks good Mark, been following your build on Aus12/S12Silvia. Looking forward to getting started on my S12

[zebra]

Nice car!

RB fit in there nicely

[21AZI]

Nice car

hell yer it's so unique and rb power. love it.