Aardvark, my VQ35DE-engined track car with S13 suspension and custom widebody

[karotta]

Hi everyone, I’ve been a long time lurker around here, but lacked the funds to start my project. As it is often the case, the whole idea went through a series of radical direction changes during the gestation years. What started out as an all-out restoration with the goal of everyday usability has finally evolved into the current project: to build a fast, reliable naturally aspirated track/drift car, powered by a VQ35DE from a 350Z, running on a complete S13 suspension front and rear.

 

 

The picture above shows my Z nearly 10 years ago, when I bought it. It was mechanically mediocre, running OK but having issues with hot starting, with a prop shaft vibe that blurred my vision above 50 mph, and all sort of little niggles. What’s worse, the car’s front had been ruined in an accident, and – because of lack of funds or the inaccessibility of spares – was repaired with a custom made sheet metal G-nose parody / air dam combo, that turned out to be pretty frighteningly ugly, apart from adding 50 pounds of polar inertia and a propensity to scrape on every speed bump. However, this low-slung, awkward nose gave the car its present nickname, Aardvark.

 

 

Aardvark has spent the last 8 years standing still, slowly becoming part of the microflora in a friend’s backyard. It all got a kick start recently, however, as I’ve got married and realized all of a sudden that if my child was to born before I restored the Z, I’d have to postpone the project by 18 more years, by which time it’d run on hydrogen and electrons, none of which I particularly like the smell of. So it has begun. Stay tuned, more to come after the break.

Edited June 8, 2010 by karotta

[karotta]

 

The racer project begun with an advert I ran across on Ebay, for the Bob Sharp IMSA-GTU Datsun, 3 years ago. I fell in love with that shape, but as I knew that my car must be able to get to the racetrack under its own steam, on public roads, the original G-nose was instantly out. Sadly, I had to say goodbye to the idea of having 14†wide rims on the back as well for the same reason.

 

 

With a stroke of luck, I met two guys who seemed to be extremely talented at working with fiberglass. We discussed the idea of building a fiberglass body inspired by the IMSA Z, but restricting the width to manageable levels and incorporating a standard short nose section (partly because of the usability benefits and partly because we liked the butch shape even more). Roughly 8 months later the plastic body was ready, apart from the air dam. Width has been increased to 175 cm or 5’ 10†measured at the rear axle line, which enables us to run 10†in wheels - or in our case, to run 8 inchers with an S13 240 SX rear end.

 

 

Every body panel has been recreated in fiberglass, the only visible metal parts would be the doors and the roof. Later on the doors will probably have to go as well. Right now the fiberglass panels are ready, they await in the corner of the shop where the chassis work is about to begin.

 

[karotta]

Here is a brief project outline:

 

2006 EU-spec Nissan 350Z engine, non-rev-up

Factory ECU, harness, BCM, electrical everything

Factory 350Z transmission

Complete S13 240SX suspension and subframe with aftermarket adjustable arms

Driftworks CS2 coilovers

KAAZ 2 way LSD

Nissan 300ZX (Z32) TwinTurbo brakes

 

These are the ingredients I already have. I still miss two seats, a couple of brake lines, a decent fuel cell and the like, but I’ll expand the inventory as the project progresses.

 

 

This is not my engine, but one I shot at a tuning shop nearby. I posted it here because - as you must surely be aware of by now - it's pure porn. Trouble is those Jenvey throttle bodies and Tomei exhaust manifolds are more expensive that my whole engine-gearbox package.

 

 

Here is how the chassis looks after dismantling. The idiot behind the wheel is my humble self. The factory wheels give you a rough idea about the width of the front GRP fenders. Rust is not as bad as expected, and we do not mind it anyhow, as the chassis will be mostly built from scratch and the panels are plastic. The car is coming back from sandblasting tomorrow, we'll see how much structural rot are we dealing with.

[260DET]

Nice project, the fiberglass design work looks to be first class. But I prefer the front on the red Z, maybe cover the fog light openings and narrow down the grille opening, it should be better aerodynamically too.

[Jared]

You said the engine is an 06 non rev up, but the picture with the ITBs is definitely an 07+ VQ35HR. It has the four cam variable timing on the front cover.

[19762802+2]

You said the engine is an 06 non rev up, but the picture with the ITBs is definitely an 07+ VQ35HR. It has the four cam variable timing on the front cover.

 

He said that wasn't his motor, just one at a tuning shop, Anyways the body work looks amazing, except for that old ugly G-nose Thingy.

[karotta]

He said that wasn't his motor, just one at a tuning shop, Anyways the body work looks amazing, except for that old ugly G-nose Thingy.

 

That G-nose thingy is the horrid sheet metal ballast that was hanging on the car when I bought it. That's where the name Aardvark comes from. It has been mercifully chopped down since, and you can see the new fiberglass short nose in white at the images above.

[mrcheeze36]

You said the engine is an 06 non rev up, but the picture with the ITBs is definitely an 07+ VQ35HR. It has the four cam variable timing on the front cover.

 

Nope. The motor in the pic is a Rev-Up motor, not an HR motor.

[jdizzy204]

I would really like to see detailed pictures of how you are going to get the s13 subframes into the Z.

[karotta]

I would really like to see detailed pictures of how you are going to get the s13 subframes into the Z.

I'll try to document everything. The rear end is the easier part, but we'll need a fair bit of creativity at the front, as we need to keep the front steering rack layout because of the engine, while the S13 uses a rear steering setup. But we'll manage. At the rear, it's mostly about measuring, cutting and welding. We plan to recreate the same distance between the strut towers as on the S13, while installing the subframe sunk roughly 2" into the body, in order to give us decent control arm angles at static ride height with the short coilovers that we'll be using. Same at the front, where we'll raise the inner LCA and radius rod mounts by 2" I'll keep you posted. For now, I'm waiting for the body to return from sandblasting.

[jdizzy204]

Cool. Good luck with the project!

[driftgarage]

hi guys!

 

my name is Leslie (László) and i'm the guy who works on the car. you can check my cars in my blog, driftgarage.blog.hu

sorry, we don't have english section, there's not a minute more in my life to translate, but use google to understand.

we are a team, mostly in drift we race but there's a few more car i build over the years. not for myself, yet.

 

thats about me, Aardvark just came back from sandblasting last weekend, but we have an event that time. Karotta shoot a little video about the results, and we should be happy, the car have just a little more rust than we saw before.

i'm finishing a capri 4link suspension project, next week i get the parts i need so no big updates until.

 

bear with me, i never learned english

[karotta]

Just a super quick update: the car is back from sandblasting. Rot is not as horrid as expected after 8 years of neglect and outside storage. Basically the few areas that need attending to are the common Z rust spots: the battery tray, the firewall and lower front chassis members. There's rust at other places too, but those were destined to be cut and replaced anyhow, like the floors or the complete outer shell.

 

Some pics:

 

As for now, I'm waiting for my fabricator friend to get ready to rock.

[Jared]

Nope. The motor in the pic is a Rev-Up motor, not an HR motor.

 

It's the same thing. Nissan calls that rev up engine produced in the 07+ Z33 VQ35HR.

[RedBeauty84ZX]

It's the same thing. Nissan calls that rev up engine produced in the 07+ Z33 VQ35HR.

 

At least as far as the 350Z VQ35s are concerned people generally refer to them as the following

 

US model years:

03-04: 287HP VQ35DE

05-06: 300HP VQ35DE (Rev-Up engines)

07-08: 306HP VQ35HR (HR engines)

[karotta]

It's been a long time since my last post, but we've been making progress.

The rear S13 subframe transplant is basically finished, the front S13 strut towers are in place. Check out the video below: what could be more fun than hearing a Hungarian tying his tongue in knots while trying to explain the delicacies of a subframe transplant? So please give a warm welcome to this lousy first video of mine, showing the current state of the build. Let me know if you liked it (if you could even decode it through my accent), if you want more, or if I should rather stick to written explanations and still images in the future.

 

 

You can watch it in HD on YT.

 

[MREDDLE]

sub'n

[Snailed]

It's been a long time since my last post, but we've been making progress.

The rear S13 subframe transplant is basically finished, the front S13 strut towers are in place. Check out the video below: what could be more fun than hearing a Hungarian tying his tongue in knots while trying to explain the delicacies of a subframe transplant? So please give a warm welcome to this lousy first video of mine, showing the current state of the build. Let me know if you liked it (if you could even decode it through my accent), if you want more, or if I should rather stick to written explanations and still images in the future.

 

 

That was actually a very good video and you made it very clear what you were building. Hope you have a new video soon.

[karotta]

It’s been more than three months since I’ve shown you the progress of our Nissan 350Z-powered, 200SX-suspended Datsun 260Z build. Well, as they say around here, slow work takes time. But when it comes to transplanting the heart and limbs of two different animals into a third beast, one really must measure twice before the singular cut.Rota RBX 9,5" x 17 ET-19As you probably know, building a race car usually starts from the ground up, that is by choosing the tyres that you are likely to run and the rims to mount them to. This is because wheel/tyre choice has a profound effect on everything else, and what you may fit under the arches is usually dictated by the sanctioning bodies. No such luck/constraint here. In drifting and time attack you can nearly use whatever you find, while in any other established forms of motor racing you are disqualified by the mere idea of mix’n matching together a car from such distinct relatives. So wheel choice got down to issues of taste and practicality. As both the Datsun and the S13 use 4 x 114.3 wheels, and I have my brakes set up for that stud pattern as well, it was decided that we’ll be sticking to that. Fat 4 pots with unnecessary spacersThe current front brakes are 280 x 32 mm discs with 4 pot callipers from a 300ZX Twin Turbo, and chances are I’ll keep them for the time being. These require at least 16“ wheels. Diameter-wise 15 inches would suffice, but the fat callipers usually hit the spokes of anything under 16“. As I think that oversized rims with thin-film rubber look rubbish on old school cars, anything above 17“ was ruled out. That’s when I spotted the painfully gorgeous Rota RBX-s in the Driftworks webshop. I’m slightly worried by the immense width and the large offset, but I’ve always been a sucker for shiny fat lips (hi there, Angelina), so I decided that engineering doubts shall be cast aside. We’ll fix that screwed scrub radius later.200SX rear suspension under old Datsun While waiting for the wheels, Leslie finished the rear subframe transplant. That was the easy part: after making sure that the subframe is straight and level with the chassis, he cut and modified the Datsun’s rear chassis rails to accept the S13 mounting points, that were plasma cut from a dismantled car’s floorpan. The subframe is installed roughly 2 inches deeper (higher) within the chassis so that the rear suspension arms keep their near stock geometry while the car’s body does get closer to the ground. This way you can lower a car without making the control arms point up too steeply, which usually hurts handling.Wide waist + widened panels + flares = nearly wide enoughThen the wheels came. Then I came, for they are mind-boggingly beautiful. Then we trial-fitted them, and realised that the custom fiberglass widebody rear quarter panels were not nearly wide enough. Then I ordered a set of ZG flares, to fit over the widened over-fenders. Those finally covered the rears. Sort of. Almost. And so it happened that I ended up with a chopped up Datsun as wide as a 911 GT2. You just gotta love that.

[Supra510]

Nice work on your project and video. Look forward to seeing more.