Project Silvia is flat black. Deal with it. Learn to appreciate it. Flat black says serious. It says Mad Max. It says "you can take your shiny little show car and stuff it up my 3-inch titanium exhaust."
It also comes in a can.
The rattle-can paint job has, completely by accident, become the most striking aspect of Project Silvia, which is exactly what it wasn't supposed to do. The point of Project Silvia isn't to make a fashion statement. The point is to go fast. Porsche fast. Supra fast. 300ZX twin turbo fast. But for Civic money.
The most critical step toward this goal is creating a Silvia in the first place. In case you're completely lost, the Nissan Silvia is the Japanese Domestic Market version of our 240SX. In the Nissan sports car hierarchy, the Silvia has historically been the bottom rung, a little brother to both the Fairlady Z (our 240, 260, 280 or 300Z) and the Skyline. It has filled this role since its introduction in 1966, but as with most Nissans, the Silvia really matured in the early 90s. It's the 1989 to 1994 S13 chassis we're playing with here, but the 1995 to 1998 S14 chassis is nearly identical.
Our car is a 1989 240SX to which we've grafted the Silvia's front bodywork and turbocharged, 2.0-liter SR20DET engine. That transformation was detailed in a Hybrid How-To installment in the May, 2002 issue and can now be found on www.sportcompactcarweb.com.
The Big First Step
Before diving into any project, it's wise to take some time to ponder project car philosophy. Our S13 has been built on the cheap so far. An $800 car mated with $2,100 worth of Japanese junkyard parts makes one very inexpensive sports car. Prices on Silvia engines and front clips have spiked recently, however, so don't be surprised if it costs a bit more to build a Silvia now.
That low entry price can be a mixed blessing. Keep telling yourself it's a $3,000 car and you'll hesitate to spend much money making it faster. We're taking the opposite approach. Think of it as a $47,000 discount vs a Boxster S and it's easy to throw in a few more grand. If you aren't so easily swayed by such arguments, we've suggested some lower-cost alternatives to the ultra-high performance mods we've made here (see sidebar on page 210).
Step one is big. Wheels, tires, suspension, brakes and five-lug hubs all went on the car at once. It made for an expensive first step, but the S13 chassis inherently entangles all these parts. The wheels and tires, for example, had to wait until we did the brakes, because the brakes required a switch from the 4x114.3mm bolt pattern original to the 300ZX's 5x114.3mm pattern.
The suspension had to wait, too. The 300ZX twin turbo rear hubs require a different rear shock mount, so we had to custom order the rear shocks. Spreading out the cost on these three parts means piling them in the living room and daydreaming rather than installing them one at a time.
After our collection was complete, we had it installed at Ziel Motorsports in Downey, Calif. It's rare for us to trust our project cars to others' hands, but Ziel is a rare shop. Effectively a Japanese tuner shop transplanted to Southern California, they attacked our car with the careful, meticulous and efficient approach you rarely find here. How refreshing.
Five-lug conversion
For the amount of work and expense involved, converting to five-lug hubs offers relatively little benefit in itself. However, the conversion does give you a greater range of brake options and allows you to use the lightweight aluminum rear suspension uprights from the twin-turbo 300ZX. If you're considering a five-lug conversion, decide early in your project, because this will determine which wheels, brakes, and possibly even rear shocks you can use. We made the conversion so we could use the twin-turbo Z's rear brakes and the Brembo Gran Turismo front brake kit for the Z.
Up front, the conversion means switching to the five-lug front hubs from the S14 (1995-1998) 240SX SE. The S14 used larger front spindles, however, so you also need to use them. The S14 spindle looks like it will bolt on to the S13 suspension, but it won't. The strut bolts are larger so you'll have to use the bolts from the S14 and enlarge the holes in your struts to make this work.
Also, the ball joint is different. At first glance, the S13 and S14 ball joints look the same, and upon closer inspection, they still look the same. Don't be fooled. The S14 ball joint uses a slightly different taper. Although it will bolt together, using an S13 ball joint on the S14 spindle can lead to a very dangerous suspension failure. You must switch to an S14 ball joint. Nissan doesn't sell S14 ball joints separately from the lower control arm, and, of course, the S14 control arm is too long. Pressing the ball joint out of your S13 control arm and pressing in an aftermarket ball joint (we used Moog part number K9820) is the best solution.
It turns out we aren't the first people to ever try this five-lug conversion. In fact, the conversion is so popular, and the five-lug S14 so rare, that we wasted a month scouring every junkyard in Southern California to no avail. Eventually, we realized all S14 spindles are the same, so we could use spindles from a four-lug base model S14 and simply buy new S14 five-lug hubs. The hubs incorporate the front wheel bearings, so using new parts here is not a bad idea.
Nissan lists 13 different part numbers for S14 front hubs. After much head scratching and accidentally ordering four-lug hubs once, we found part number 40200-0V010 worked. Retail was $120 each.
In the rear, we simply pulled the entire rear hub, spindle and brake assembly from a twin-turbo 300ZX. This whole assembly bolts in with the exception of three complications. The most daunting is the fact the rear shock mount is different.
There are two options here. Either switch to a twin-turbo rear shock, or ditch the aluminum. The Z brakes can be used with a 240SX steel upright. Simply unbolt the rear hub (four big bolts on the back of the upright) and the drum parking brake (one giant nylock nut) and bolt them to the 240SX upright. Using the steel upright adds 7 lbs of unsprung weight per side.
The Z parking brake is a small drum brake in the center of the rotor. This design reduces the chance of warping the rear brakes if you set the parking brake while the rotors are hot, but it also means you can't use 240SX parking brake cables. The Z cables are shorter and use different mounting brackets. If you trim off all the mounting brackets and pass the cable between the subframe and body as shown in the photos, the Z cables can be made to work by either clamping them to the stock locations with some homemade clamps, or drilling into the floor and bolting the Z cable's mounting tabs in a new location. Finally, the Z rear brake line attaches to the caliper with a female double flare fitting, while the 240SX uses a banjo fitting. Z brake lines will solve this problem, and Goodridge braided steel Z brake lines will give some added firmness to the brake pedal.
Springs and Dampers
The S13 Silvia and its 180SX sibling have been two of Japan's favorite tuner cars for nearly 15 years. In that time, Japan's healthy and fiercely competitive aftermarket has tweaked, tuned and dialed in their parts to near perfection. The desire to use Japanese suspension parts, then, should come as no surprise.
We turned to JIC USA for the suspension. This is our first project car to use JIC components, but our experience so far suggests it won't be the last.
The JIC FLT-A2 suspension features extensive adjustability that should allow us to dial in exceptional handling. The front struts and rear shocks are both high-pressure monotubes, a design that allows a larger piston diameter and therefore better low-speed damping compared to a twin-tube shock. Low-speed damping controls body motions like pitch, dive and roll, and results in better turn-in and a more responsive feel, usually at the expense of some ride quality. The FLT-A2 shocks are 15-way single adjustable, which basically means you get a 15-position knob to change rebound damping. Compression damping does change slightly as well, but you can't adjust it independently.
The biggest problem with Nissan suspensions of this era is limited compression travel. Lower any Sentra, Maxima or 240SX from the '90s and you'll get to know the bump stops. To work properly, a 240SX suspension will either have to sit at nearly the stock ride height, or have shorter shock bodies that allow more compression travel. The problem with shortened shock bodies, however, is the amount of compression travel you can actually use depends on the size of your tires. Suspension travel is useless if the tires just bottom out in the wheelwells.
This is where the JIC suspension stands out. In addition to a threaded spring perch that allows you to adjust ride height, the lower shock mount is also threaded, so you can adjust the position of the shock body. This allows you to position the shock so the bump stop stops the wheel just before the tire bottoms out, maximizing travel no matter what size tire you have.
The JIC coil-overs are remarkably complete, including all the factory-style mounting tabs for brake lines and ABS wires. The front struts also come with camber plates and the rear shocks come with precise spherical bearing upper mounts (pillow ball mounts, if you're from Japan). Front springs are 8 kg/mm (447 lb/in) and rears are 6 kg/mm (335 lb/in), though different rates are available in 1 kg/mm (56 lb/in) increments.
All the quality and craftsmanship in the world is worth nothing if the product doesn't work. Luckily, the JIC coil-overs work remarkably well. Despite the stiff springs, the suspension is exceptionally well damped, even on the softest setting. The generous low-speed damping and high spring rates make the car very responsive and help keep the suspension off the bump stops.
On the track, we never turned the adjusters past the 8th of their 15 positions, and found the car to be perfectly damped and balanced. With the stock anti-roll bars, we did find that body roll used up much of the front suspension travel, forcing us to raise the car about an inch compared to how we photographed it. We'll try stiffer bars and spending some quality time with the generous adjustability before the next installment.
Brakes
These brakes were half the reason for building this car in the first place. Last year we tested a freakishly fast Sentra that later came to be known as the Disco Potato for its groovy paint and tuboresque styling. Two aspects of that car's performance were so impressive they cried out for a rear-wheel-drive chassis to be housed in. First was the violently responsive 270-hp SR20DET. Second was the seatbelt-stretching performance of its Brembo brakes.
The Brembo Gran Turismo kit we used was designed for the Z32 300ZX, but any brakes that fit the Z or Skyline GT-R will fit the 240SX as well. The contrast in size and braking power compared to the stock brakes is laughable. Stock S13 brakes are frighteningly small 9.9 x 0.8-inch rotors with single-piston calipers. The Brembos are a massive 13.1 x 1.25 inches and use the same giant, four-piston calipers as the Ferrari F50.
Thanks in part to a lightweight aluminum mounting hat, the Brembo rotors are only 5 lbs heavier than the tiny stock rotor (16 lbs compared to 11 for the stock rotor). The enormous F50 caliper is only 1.1 lbs heavier than stock (Brembo is 10.1 lbs, stock is 9 lbs). To cope with the violent temperature swings and the different rate of thermal expansion between the cast iron rotor and the aluminum hat, the two are not rigidly mounted to each other. The rotor bolts to the hat through oval-shaped holes to allow the two pieces to expand different amounts when hot. The mounting bolts have some slack in them when tightened, and every other bolt uses a McLaren spring (so named because it first appeared on the McLaren F1) to keep the rotor and hat from rattling against each other.
The Gran Turismo kit comes very complete and is beautifully packaged in a giant box that could easily double as a display case. Rotors, calipers, mounting brackets, Ferodo FM1000 brake pads (same as the Ferrari, again), Goodridge braided steel brake lines, even Loctite and a brake bleeding hose are included. Though simply bolting them on and driving will work, some adjustments should be made when using this kit on a 240SX. First, the pedal effort is too light and there's too much pedal slop when using the 240's 7/8-inch master cylinder. Second, with the 300ZX rear brakes and Porterfield R4S pads, the rear brakes actually lock first. Not only does this make for some eye-opening behavior if you threshold brake into a corner, it doesn't take full advantage of the powerful front brakes.
A larger master cylinder and adjustable proportioning valve are in the works.
Wheels and Tires
Choosing wheels and tires has been an ordeal, the details of which I already griped about in the September, 2002 "Technobabble." In short, we wanted to use Falken Azenis Sport tires, but couldn't conclusively determine what offset wheel would allow this tire to fit. It's important to note that a wheel and tire that fits with the stock suspension may not fit with coil-overs. The stock spring sits above the tire, while the spring on most coil-overs sits beside it, possibly causing clearance problems.
Now that we've actually tried it, the 225/45ZR-17 Azenis Sport will fit in front with a 38mm offset wheel. We actually used a 43 offset Volk CE28 with a 5mm spacer. The spacer takes up 5mm of thread on the wheel studs, leaving only about four turns of thread engagement for the lug nuts. As a general rule, you should have at least one bolt's width of thread engagement (in the case of a Nissan 12x1.25 stud, that's 12mm, or 9.6 turns) and many sanctioning bodies require more. Nismo makes extra-long wheel studs that are available at any Nissan dealer.
Tire clearance in the rear is abundant, so we used the same wheels without spacers.
We went through the spacer ordeal just so we could use the CE28. As a successor (but not a replacement) to the ubiquitous six-spoke Volk TE37, the CE28 is actually slightly lighter, uses strong, forged construction, and with the even rim support of its 10-spoke design, should be quite strong. The 17x7.5 inch size we used weighs only 14 lbs, and the quality of the finish is simply amazing.
Surprisingly, even with the lightweight Volks, the wheel and tire together weigh 41 lbs, which is exactly the same as the stock SE-R Spec-V wheels we had been using. Grippy, long-lasting and inexpensive, the Azenis Sport also appears to be quite heavy. Twenty-seven lbs, in this size, is a lot for a performance tire, but we suspect this has something to do with the very deep, very large tread blocks and the stiff sidewalls. All that rubber and sidewall structure has to weigh something.
The First Test
With the suspension, brakes and tires bolted on and adjusted to our first guess settings, we immediately took the Silvia on a 1,600-mile road trip to the annual All-Nissan meet at Mt. Shasta, Calif., and, more importantly, to that meet's open track day at Thunderhill Raceway. Our initial setup was -2 degrees of camber up front, -1.5 degrees in back, and just over an eighth of an inch toe in at both ends. Both front and rear shocks were adjusted to their 8th (of 15) stiffest setting. The handling was exceptional.
It's easy to see why the Silvia is such a popular drifting car. It's perfectly neutral at the limit, and thanks to the JIC spherical bearings in the rear suspension, it transitions to oversteer slowly and predictably. With the stock open differential, these slides usually ended in frustration, with the outside wheel finding grip, the inside spinning, and the slide coming to an abrupt, glory-free end. In higher-speed corners, however, even the open diff couldn't stop the fun. Spring and damping rates are perfect for the track, with enough surplus compression damping to encourage clipping apexes and bouncing off curbs.
At the test track, this setup yielded 0.92g on the skidpad, but felt like more grip could be found with some slightly less tail-happy settings and the added control of a limited-slip diff. Slalom speed was 69.6 mph, which is faster than a Miata or MR2, but we still think we can make it faster.
The Brembo/300ZX brakes, when mated to the 240SX master cylinder, feel ridiculously strong and more than just a bit touchy. The small master cylinder generates too much fluid pressure, and moves too little fluid, making pedal effort light and not as solid as it should be. We were also surprised to find the rear wheels locking first. A larger master cylinder and adjustable proportioning valve should improve both feel and stopping distances significantly. Meanwhile, the car stops from 60 mph in 130 feet, 8 feet shorter than it did with the stock brakes.
With all the dialing in that has to be done, our next installment of Project Silvia will focus entirely on how to sort the suspension and brakes. This next step is what separates the standard bolt-on queens from the rare and exceptional cars we call "sorted."
Goodbye, Rubber
Suspension design is a constant battle between precision and ride quality. That battle was obviously hard fought on the 240SX. The rear suspension was state-of-the-art in its day, and is still seldom matched for sophistication or capability. Based loosely on a double-wishbone concept, the 240SX's rear suspension incorporates anti-squat geometry and multiple toe-control links for a passive rear steering effect. All this is compromised, however, by eight rubber bushings that add a surprising amount of slop to this precision design. Stop a 240SX from about 5 mph with the parking brake and you'll feel the car oscillate on these bushings.
Up front, the ride quality engineers clobbered the handling precision team by using giant, pillowy-soft liquid-filled bushings in the T/C rods. These sloppy bushings allow the wheels to move backward when encountering a bump, greatly reducing impact harshness, but simultaneously hurting steering precision. Swinging this battle back toward precision can be accomplished with harder rubber bushings from Nismo or, if you're really hardcore, with these heim joint-equipped control arms from JIC. The JIC arms also add alignment adjustability where there was none before. The front T/C rod allows caster adjustment, while the rear links add camber adjustability and a wider range of toe adjustment.
The big question, of course, is whether the added precision and adjustability will be worth the compromise in ride quality. We plan to try a few different options in search of the best solution, but so far the JIC links are not nearly as harsh as we expected. The distant, isolated ride quality is gone, but you can drive for hours without the suspension feeling overly harsh. Hit just the wrong kind of pavement seam, however, and it can be brutal.
Sharp impacts like botts dots or pavement seams are far harsher, but not enough to be jarring. But when we finally hit just the wrong 5-mile stretch of Los Angeles freeway, the heim joints were a very bad idea. Stay away from downtown.
On the precision side, however, the rear links seem especially useful. Silvias and 240s love to slide, but too much slop in the rear bushings can make it difficult to recover gracefully. The last S15 we tested would try to fling you into a clumsy tank slapper as the bushings unloaded after a slide. Drifting sideways out of Thunderhill Raceway's Turn Two at the top of third gear, we were glad our car powered out smoothly.
Doing it on the Cheap
The lower cost (and lower performance) alternatives
The price of duplicating the modifications in this installment is admittedly high, but that's the cost of chasing Porsches. If you're only chasing Mustangs, here are the best ways to reduce the cost:
1: Skip the five-lug conversion.
This not only saves the cost of hubs, spindles and ball joints, it also saves you from having to change wheels. The same brakes will fit if you have a machine shop re-drill the rotors with the appropriate 4 x 114.3mm bolt pattern. The Brembo brakes we used could easily be made with this four-lug pattern, but Brembo won't produce them unless it gets enough requests. Luckily, 10 requests will do the job. Brembo's phone number to is to the right.
2: Use cheaper brakes.
If you aren't planning on making 300 hp, or plan on using it only on the drag strip, Brembos or even 300ZX brakes are overkill. 10.9-in. '90-'96 Infiniti Q45 brakes use 10.9-in. rotors with large, two-piston sliding calipers, and bolt on if you re-drill them for a four-lug. The 11.6-in. brakes from the '97-'01 Q45 should fit as well, be we haven't tried that.
3: Give up some precision.
The JIC adjustable suspension links are track-bred high-performance overkill. If you're budget conscious, proper damping, spring rates, and suspension travel are far more important. Save the heim joints for later, or substitute Nismo (or Energy Suspesion in the front suspension) bushings.
SOURCES:
Suspension
JIC USA
(562) 803-6122
www.jic-magic.com
Coil-overs, adjustable control arms
Jim Wolf Technology
(619) 442-0680
www.jimwolftechnology.com
Nismo hard rubber bushings
Brakes
Brembo North America
(714) 641-0104
www.brembo.com
Gran Turismo front brake kit
Goodridge USA
(310) 533-1924
Rear brake lines
Porterfield
(949) 548-4470
www.porterfield-brakes.com
Rear Porterfield R4S brake pads
Wheels/Tires
Mackin Industries
(562) 946-6820
www.mackinindustries.com
Volk Racing CE28 17x7.5 in, 43mm offset
Falken Tire
(909) 466-1116
www.falkentire.com
225/45ZR17 Falken Azenis Sport
Service and Installation
Ziel Motorsports
Downey, California
(562) 803-6122