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Down Under Trackday NSX

Joined
31 January 2008
Messages
541
Location
Wellington, New Zealand
Hi guys,

Well I've been watching the likes of Driving Ambition, FXMD and STMPO build trackday NSX's for years now and so I've been saving my pennies and bought myself a donor car some months back now and with the help of Ross at STMPO (Massive thanks), FXMD and Titanium Dave I've got the base of what will be my trackday car.

There's still more stuff to arrive like brakes, bonnet, front splitter, mirrors, tyres, wheels etc etc, but at least we've got the core to get started whilst the rest shows up.

Car will have it's own onboard airjacks with standalone air supply for easy access at the track or workshop without having to worry about fitting external air.

So got the car up to the workshop safe and sound and have just packed it in for the night (1.30am) so thought I'd post our progress so far.

Another full day on it tomorrow, but we got a huge amount done........ way more than I thought we would to be honest.

Got all of the panels we need to replace off the car, got the majority of the interior pulled but still a fair bit to do there to get it ideal, got the Motons in the front, but only quickly so more mounting work there for the remote reservoirs, got the old exhaust off got the new one coated with high temp covering the other day so they're all ready to go on, got the ABS and aircon to remove tomorrow and just a bundle of other stuff.

We've been weighing bits and pieces as we've gone along and we've got around 100KG out of the car so far !

So here's the pics........ sorry some are a bit blurry.

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can't wait to see it finished. Looking good. Are you going to change out the Auto Trans, for a Manual?
 
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OK so a little more progress.......... to be honest we made a real amount of progress, but it might not seem it, but we needed to machine some bushes/spacers for the lower suspension mounts for the Motons so that took a while on the lathe and then we also spent some time making sure all the offsets for the new wheels were going to be OK as they're not made yet so we can still change the offset if needed so we need to be sure.

I spent a fair amount of time transferring the mounting hardware and indicators and stuff into the front bumper also, but got a good chunk of that done....... wanted to measure twice and drill once !! LOL

Got the factory exhaust off and holy sh*$ that thing is heavy.......... !! So all in all a great weight savings. I can easily see how we could get down to that 1050-1100KG weight before the cage goes in. I pulled out the 2 aircon condensers from either side of the front bumper under the headlights and they weighed in at a pretty hefty 4KG each also.

Took a few more pics of things here and there....... again sorry some are blurry........ the flouro lights seem to upset the auto focus at times.

You can see the cabin is much more stripped now than before and we can get started making a new steering column and pedal setup.

Yeah the auto is going to be long gone very soon, was just easier to get an auto as a donor car. Have a manual box, new clutch, new tilton pedal set etc etc all sorted for manual conversion.

Have new cams etc etc also before we tune it.

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Have been working on the car again this afternoon and made some good progress again. We've dismantled the old steering column and we now have all the parts we need to machine up a new column to suit our needs.

I've stripped pretty much all of the wiring from the front of the car as we intend to rewire it to keep it simple and believe it or not the pile of wires you'll see below weighed in at 30+KG !! so there's a reasonable amount of weight out of the car too.

Also stripped out all of the ABS and will remove the rest of the air conditioning piping from under the car tomorrow and strip the original dash cover as we're going to use that as a base for the mould for the carbon interior that Carboglass have planned :D it's going to look sex........ I've got mock up pics I'll post sometime.

Remove windscreen glass and lucky me, I managed to crack it before we started removing it, so that's goneburger, but to my amazement Smith and Smith had stock and only quoted $ 450 installed for a new one when we're ready so that's awesome, well would have been better if I hadn't broke it in the first place, but awesome it's not mental money to replace.

So my next job is to complete stripping out the sound deadening and then it's time to get the cage started. Just waiting on confirmation from MSNZ (motorsport authority) about the complexities of mounting the cage to the aluminium shell and a couple of other bits.

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I think I mentioned this earlier, but Steve the guy who's making the cage and is letting me use his workshop decided to use my passenger seat from the NSX, which is in great condition to make himself what may be the first NSX lounge chair !!!

He had a spare base from an office chair, but the back was broken so it was perfect for the job. He's made up a frame to attach it and the electrics still work in it with a little rechargable dry cell battery on the bottom...............classic !!!

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Thanks so much for documenting this. I think this will turn out great. Can you please post pictures of what you do with the Moton Canisters as far as mounting? I need to do the same soon.
 
Yeah I will happily document the Moton stuff for you.

We're thinking at this point that we'll route them up through the hole in the where the shock top mounts....... we're thinking of slotting the mounting to slide the braided line into the top mount itself and then welding the piece back in.

That way we can undo the shock, push the canister through the hole, then do up the shock as normal as the braided line will come up through the hole in the centre of the shock top..........

That description makes sense to me as I can see it in my head !! LOL

I'll do a basic diagram and post it later if that hasn't made sense !

If that doesn't work out, we're just going to cut a nice round hole in the guard somewhere and then use a rubber bung like the ones in the rest of the car for running wires through so it's all sealed up.
 
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OK so we're slowly making progress with the authorisation of the cage design and they're happy with things now so we got started bending the main hoop for the cage.

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I spent some time getting the rear guards mounted properly so they're bolted in place rather than just sat on the car and up till now we've been a bit concerned that the rear guards seemed to be no wider than the guards we were taking off when they were measured, but the guy who makes them assured me when they were fitted they would be wider !!! Sure enough he was bang on and they're about 6cm wider per side than the factory guards !

Before you say it......... no that's not a crack in the second picture..... just white scratch :)
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Yeah I will happily document the Moton stuff for you.

We're thinking at this point that we'll route them up through the hole in the where the shock top mounts....... we're thinking of slotting the mounting to slide the braided line into the top mount itself and then welding the piece back in.

That way we can undo the shock, push the canister through the hole, then do up the shock as normal as the braided line will come up through the hole in the centre of the shock top..........

That description makes sense to me as I can see it in my head !! LOL

I'll do a basic diagram and post it later if that hasn't made sense !

If that doesn't work out, we're just going to cut a nice round hole in the guard somewhere and then use a rubber bung like the ones in the rest of the car for running wires through so it's all sealed up.

I think I understand what you are saying. But please post pics anyway. You are talking about the fronts, right? this way you have access to the canister through the hood (bonnet to NZ'ers)?
 
Yeah, am talking about the fronts, but the rears would work that way too, but they'd be under the engine hatch to adjust so no more hassle than them being in the boot....... so we'll see how it pans out.

Will post pics for you when I can get time to draw something up that won't look like a 5 year old............. well actually not sure I can promise that even with time !! LOL
 
I call it hood, then change to Bonnet, and you call it boot? LOL....

Whose wide body is that?
 
This looks like its gonna be awesome!

Defiently looking forward to seeing how you mount those reservoirs.

I also see fenders and quarter panels that I know some of us Americans with JDM fever would love to have:biggrin:

Good luck and god speed on the build!
 
Funny you should say that as I heard that the US front guards are different to the USDM ones for some reason so I'm shipping the front guards (fenders) to the US to be sold if it's worth while cost wise.

Got a couple of other bits too like the little 4 button switchunit which goes down by the gearstick.

The rest of the stuff from the car found it's way to the local tip !! There's only a few NSX's here (maybe 20) and the local suppliers have parts on the shelf that have been there for ages so no point holding on to parts as far as I see it.

Kept the headlights, but they're of no use to anyone in the US......

Rear quarter panels went to a local guy that has a car and wanted them just in case and I gave him a good deal :)........ all money from old parts is going straight back into new parts anyhow !! LOL
 
Awesome. Cant wait to see more results!
 
Well managed to do a little bit of work on the car today and finally got the front guards and rear guards as well as the rear wing all bolted in place.........not their final place, but better than just being sat in place.

Also removed some more unwanted wiring from the engine bay for some of the throttle control stuff that's no longer needed and a few other bits.

Finally got the car back on the ground too, as it's going to go away this week to just have some things measured up on a chassis machine to make sure everything is perfect before we start putting the cage in it........ last thing we want is to have anything out and then not be able to adjust it so just checking it all before jumping in.

It sits pretty low, but not rediculous with the new suspension in place and it went from looking awesome to looking gaaaaaaaaaayyyyyyy when we put the factory wheels back on with the offsets all up the shit........ !!! LOL

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Very detailed build. car looks amazing! I want to get Motons for my X too. I can't wait until everything is put together and I can post my build as you have.
 
OK so it might seem like we're going backwards, but it's all in the plan :)

I've stripped off all of the front and rear guards as well as the wing just to make sure they're not damaged and also to make it easier for the next stage of things.

Steve (cage maker) was kind enough to load the car onto the truck this morning so we could ship the car off to a chassis alingment place as I want to make sure that all of the mounting points and important parts of the car are where they should be. We needed to take the car away and get it stripped as we've done and then return it so that it's easy for the guys with the alignment machine to see everywhere they need to.

It's a quick process so it should be back with us early next week so that I can continue taking the roof off and getting a whole load of other things sorted also whilst Steve is on holiday.

This stage is really just to give us a true baseline for the car so that later on down the line when we're setting up suspension and the like, we can be confident that everything is where it should be. Even on some production cars things aren't 100% straight and given that I don't know the full history of the car, there's always some tolerance so we just want to know exactly where we stand. Also of course once the cage is tied into the car it'll mean nothing is really going to have chance to be modified easily relative to doing it now.

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Nicely documented build, thanks for sharing!

Are you keeping the automatic transmission, or converting it to a manual?

Brian
 
Nukem had already asked the same question, so I'll just quote from post#3.

"Yeah the auto is going to be long gone very soon, was just easier to get an auto as a donor car. Have a manual box, new clutch, new tilton pedal set etc etc all sorted for manual conversion.

Have new cams etc etc also before we tune it."

Ideally I'd like to get a Hewland box for it in the end, but the up front cost meant it was easier to go this way till we get the rest of the car sorted.
 
Yeah so OK, maybe I'm no Photoshop wizard, but in place of the real wheels arriving I thought I'd photochop some onto the latest pics to give me an idea of just what it might look like and I'm happy that I really like them..........

Perspective and size might be a bit off here and there, but gives you the idea !

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Hoping to have the car back in about a week as the guys with the measuring kit have been held up for a couple of weeks so hoping we'll have it back soon and then I've got to cut the roof off !!! So we can start making the cage in earnest.

Second package is on it's way from the your part of the world with all my race tyres, wireless scales, cams and cam gears, bonnet, gearbox and a few other little secret squirrel parts :)
 
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