Jump to content
SAU Community

Rb Powered Gazelle


Recommended Posts

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

gallery_17884_2450_37170.jpg

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

gallery_17884_2450_159610.jpg

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!

gallery_17884_2450_156863.jpg

gallery_17884_2450_114118.jpg

gallery_17884_2450_110602.jpg

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 ...

gallery_17884_2450_16003.jpg

gallery_17884_2450_37934.jpg

gallery_17884_2450_163254.jpg

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

gallery_17884_2450_94123.jpg

gallery_17884_2450_55879.jpg

gallery_17884_2450_92536.jpg

gallery_17884_2450_151144.jpg

gallery_17884_2450_80169.jpg

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....

gallery_17884_2450_130695.jpg

gallery_17884_2450_69161.jpg

gallery_17884_2450_77612.jpg

gallery_17884_2450_60786.jpg

gallery_17884_2450_59731.jpg

gallery_17884_2450_160054.jpg

gallery_17884_2450_76379.jpg

gallery_17884_2450_316421.jpg

gallery_17884_2450_307743.jpg

gallery_17884_2450_42147.jpg

gallery_17884_2450_46847.jpg

gallery_17884_2450_113098.jpg

gallery_17884_2450_660444.jpg

And this is where the magic happens

gallery_17884_2450_257949.jpg

Link to comment
Share on other sites

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 :)

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Create an account or sign in to comment

You need to be a member in order to leave a comment

Create an account

Sign up for a new account in our community. It's easy!

Register a new account

Sign in

Already have an account? Sign in here.

Sign In Now
 Share



  • Similar Content

  • Latest Posts

    • Nah, it's not the reduced knock margin. It is a direct mechanical effect of having to initiate the combustion earlier, while the piston is still rising, which starts to exert combustion pressure on the rising piston earlier, making the rest of the engine work harder to finish driving the piston up to TDC where the combustion pressure stops being a negative and starts being a positive. Your modern engine that only needs ~10° to make MBT doesn't waste the other 10 or so degrees of crank rotation. That's almost all of it. The difference in knock margin might go either way. Remember that modern engines to which you are currently comparing the long tractor engine (the RB) are now running super high compression, direct injection, tricky cam control and maybe even cylinder pressure sensors. You're not comparing apples with other fruit. It's apples and sea weed, or some other evolutionarily primitive vegetation. And remember, squish only really comes into play at the very end of the stroke. It certainly does good things, but it is not the biggest contributor to what's going on. It is quite possibly much less important in 4 valve head than 2 valvers also, because there is so much less squish available to a 4 valve anyway.
    • Food for thought, a longer stroke motor would need less ignition timing vs. a shorter stroke motor requiring more ignition timing.
    • Thanks Duncan, HART is only 10 mins from me (I did my bike license there), it'd be awesome if it ran these types of things.  Sutton Road does look good and they take fewer cars than SMSP which is good.  Surely you have enough land to lay a few million tonnes of concrete and some sprinklers D? 
    • I thought an engine that needs more ignition timing to make power is going to result in less power due to reduced knock margin? More time for the combustion to propagate -> more time for it to heat up the rest of the mix to detonation.
    • DCS, war thunder, IL2 - mostly flight sim games.
×
×
  • Create New...