Olly

So I thought I would put up a build thread on Zilvia as I still enjoy forums and it's probably one of the most active ones out there.

I used to own this:






Which was the car I was going to have for a long time. Then it was stolen and recovered and I parted it out.



Looking back - I should have kept a few things from the above photo. Oh well. I actually didn't do badly out of the part out.. Not compared to today's ridiculous s-chassis parts prices, but not bad. Then I built a JZX110 IR-V, which I really enjoyed, it was a cool chassis, fast enough and just looked great. I probably should have kept it.. althought the fake Vertex was a pain in the ass.





4 year's went past and to be honest i missed having a car throughout that period.. my son then hit 3 and started to really get into cars & anything with wheels.. I would take him to a track day and he would want to sit in any car he was allowed to.. this lead to the inevitable "Dad we should get a race car" comment.

Unfortunately in that time Silvia & 180sx prices in NZ have gone through the roof, a fairly average condition 180sx Type X is now $20,000 - $27,000... JZX110 are slightly cheaper but most of the ones in NZ are either high km or just average condition and you can't import them anymore. Most of these cars are modified, either in Japan or poorly in NZ, I didn't want anyone's problems, I wanted to build a car from scratch again.

JZX100 however are cheap as chips in NZ! Especially automatics. I knew I wanted a Mark II so started collecting parts whilst keeping an eye out for the right one to pop up.. all my builds have been pretty simple, this one is no different. This is not a drift car, it's a weekend car and I might do an occasional grip day once it's manual.. unlike the 180 haha.



In the meantime I picked up a genuine Vertex Lip Kit from Toyota NZ which I found funny.. There is one Toyota Dealership in NZ that sells Genuine Vertex products as well as Cusco and a few other genuine brands. This kit hasn't been cut in half or anything like that.. the quality is amazing, it's far better quality than the hotroad kit I had on the 180. I also managed to find facelift tail lights and a boot for cheap as well.




I was stoked on the boot; no spoiler, no badges apart from the Toyota emblem and the whole lot was in ''as new'' condition. Check out the back of the corner lights:

I looked at 3 different Mark IIs, a rose red one with 170km, the colour was insane but it wasn't that tidy and had high km (178km), then another silver one with 168km which wasn't that tidy, regardless - I was about to buy that car for nostalgic purposes (Silver / Non-sunroof like the 180) and then this one popped up. Almost the same car but in great condition, certainly for a 22 year old car I couldn't complain at all. When I compare it to the 180sx when I got it, it's far better.






vs.




It's 1996 Tourer V, so 1JZGTE VVTI, One Japanese owner, 90,000km, full service history in the glovebox and overall condition was 9/10, interior is 10/10 not a mark anywhere.. the only modification was a full Kakimoto 3" exhaust (I've always wanted one, score!) and the rear boot was missing the V badge, not that I cared.

I jumped on this right away and then chucked it in the garage and continued to collect parts.

Handling wise I bought BC coilovers with 18kg / 12kg springs (wishing i went higher), Greddy Intercooler & Cusco front and rear camber arms. I want to get an air cup kit later and they work with BC coilovers which is perfect, although - one thing I didn't realise being out of the scene for so long is Stance do a really nice coilover setup for JZX now.. doh. Oh well.



Then I refreshed the whole front end buying parts off Yahoo Auctions with Jesse's help. GX100 grill, Dmax corner lights and I modified some standard indicators (removed the orange inner plastic using a Dremel and then bought some orange bulbs)



Then I needed some wheels, I wanted XT7.. basically to build a Mark II version of the 180.. Silver car / Matte Grey XT7.. anyway, I couldn't find any in NZ, since they've been discontinued they've become quite rare which sucks.



It wasn't the end of the world, I did manage to pick these up, they're re-lipped (threepiece.us) Work VS-KF, 18x9.5+18 square so pretty much perfect sizes, and the centres are close the MGS colour.. I got them balanced by a wheel shop and checked over and then refurbished the inner barrels..

Then it was off to a mates workshop to install everything





We lipped the guards in the rear and I've actually got away with keeping the inner guards up front but this will probably have to go as I do want to lower it a bit more. Tyre sizes are 225/40 & 235/40.

Then it went to paint to get the kit sorted, it took 2 times to get the paint right which was frustrating (silver sucks to paint) Anyway, got the car back and was stoked, we are going into summer in NZ so the timing is perfect.






Couple of weeks later I grabbed a new R154 (again from Toyota) and a second hand Torsen LSD, I was thinking about going for a 1.5 way but in all honesty I think this is going to be fine.





Right now I've just been working on the interior.. I'm halfway there. A Nardi Classic I got of Keisuke which was basically as new condition, but a lot cheaper than buying a new wheel...




& replaced the JDM double din with a new Alpine headunit.



The car is booked in to get the manual conversion and the diff installed early next month, the only other thing I'm keen to do before the end of summer is larger sway bars and maybe a subwoofer in the boot.

Will try to keep this updated as I go.

Thanks for reading.