Van Progress

Enough S14 talk, this is where the vans at! We’re at the “while its up there” stage with the van, which in our terms means once we start pulling it apart we might as well do everything while its off the road and get it sorted at once!

Unfortunately this stage was started in late January when I blew the water lines to the heater hose, then when towing it home the diff blew bigtime(was already on the way out). I source a new diff off a similiar model van, only to find out it was 20mm shorter in width and the mounting points were about 50mm out. Now any sane person would’ve taken the easy route and modified the mounting points and run some spacers to get it driveable again. However we did not take that route, first of all I tried to hunt for an identical van with the same kind of diff, but this was not going to happen! Well it had really bad axle tramp and if I did happen to find a diff it was only going to be a crappy open/weak one(although the current one had taken an awesome beating!!!). Hmmmm after a lot of thought it was decided that we would take on another massive challenge and fit a 180sx rear subframe out of a previous 180sx that I had wrecked and retro fit it into the van! So far we have mocked it up and started modifying the subframe/mounts to suit, although we have spent twice as much time designing it as we have actually building it, it is getting there. Nick has made up the front mounts for the subframe, he is about to start modifying the rear points to suit.

While Nick is modifying the rear subframe to suit I am sorting out the front end (back to the “while its up there” stage!), I had wrecked another luxury model C22 largo van late last year which had power steering amongst many other extra’s that my van didnt have, so I will swap the front crossmember and steering linkages over to make my van a bit more responsive in the steering department! This is after dropping the steering linkages, still have to make up a few bushes for the new setup before it can be installed…

Also I have swapped gearbox’s with a better condition one. The old box had worn syncro’s and was getting a bit tired. The gear cables have also been swapped for mint ones out of the van I wrecked, and have still got to make up some adapters for the water lines before I fix them. Overall itg should be around a month before the van is put back together, but once its done it will be alot more driver friendly than previously, our aim is to be able to enter drift/burnout/grip events with it and not roll it! I should have alot better fitment in the rear with the new setup too, before it was Jacked(and soft as hell) in the rear, but we will be using coilovers in the rear to get it sorted proper!