Project Nissan 240SX S13 Silvia Suspension - Tech Project

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.

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.