Martino

I though originally I would make a build thread during the process of building my car, but my laptop crashed and I lost most of my pictures so I lost motivation to start it. However, with the end of this season coming close to an end I figure now's as best of time as any.

I'll be documenting, hopefully, what's new during this winter for next season.

For now I'll start with when I first got my 180. I've had other 240's prior to this but they weren't important. One went through 2 KA's, 2 KAt's and an RB20, the second was my winter beater...

I actually can't remember how many years ago I bought it but this is it the first day I brought it home. It came straight from the importers like this.




I cleaned it up a bunch and took some...better(?) photos of it






I drifted around on the street/parking lot, fucked up. Wasn't anything I couldn't fix. My pops laughed when I brought it home, his only words were "Fix it."




Threw a silvia front on, painted it all nice, then shortly realized I hated it...so I went back to popups. Drifted a few local events quite frequently.







I undoubtfully hated the way my car looked, but I was broke so I didn't really care that much.

Did some nose to nose burnouts with a friend and his 180.








Did a rain track day with some friends



Video here (skip to 2:00 for track day drifting):




Did some more local days (Canadian Sport Compact Series :: Index) which I know ironicly run the drifting portion.
















And a few other random photos throughout it's time.









This one is of a certain other car a lot of you know of.



And then, I put it away where it sat for a while as I travelled for work throughout the states.

This picture has more history then most people would even know.




The "build" started when a friend I found a unit a friend and I would later rent. Another car a lot of you know.

Brought my car to the unit after finally getting back from a friend (Centerline Motorsports) who built the cage.







It sat like this for a while until I found some actual motivation and money to work on it.

Got my motor back from the builder with a fresh rebuild so I put that back together (somewhat)





After seeing some work Liam had done to his Cefiro I decided I was done watching and attempted to attack my damaged tubs. Originally I was going to fix the stock tubs, however they were far past my liking of original....so I cut them completely out and basically mirrored what I had learned from watching Liam.

This was legitimately my FIRST time ever fabricating anything and every welding something so my nerves were through the roof. But I had some determination at least. If it wasn't for him I probably wouldn't have learned what I did, which I'm incredibly thankful for.

I even went as far as cutting way high for some extra clearance.









After everything was welded in I threw on some sealer and coated the underside in rocker guard (rubber coating).





Basically after that it was all about putting everything back together and making/mocking up what needed to be done.

Paul ended up sharing the unit with me for a while since Liam had finished his car.





I ended up buying Pauls old turbo setup (GT2871r .86).



And my management



Positioned my custom high mount intercooler (no, its not PBM...I get asked that all the time)



Made adjustments for piping and rad clearance.



During which time I needed to decide on power steering, so I went and did some research on a custom setup.

I have a FULL AN power steering setup and cooler...again, first time ever doing something like this so I was a little impressed with myself on the end result.



I later decided I didn't want to run the setup Paul had so I had my friends at Centerline fab me up a nice top mount manifold to accomodate my new tial wastegate and turbo



After everything was manily assembeled in the engine bay I pulled it out for paint



What was a heap of a mess, turned out to be quite something I was incredibly proud of.

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IG: @vsMARTINO