Been too long between posts here, finally have time to sit down and post a build thread of a 180SX I picked up February last year and have poured way too many hours into! This is the concept we started with, a cool pignose 180sx!
Picked it up in a pretty sad state, De-registered in 2008 and been sitting around ever since. Some guy had pulled the Original CA18DET engine/trans out and pulled the manifolds etc off planning to rebuild it. I put the engine back together and got it all running again.
I have been crewing for Vinnie for the past 2 season’s of D1 Pro. The opportunity came available when we were all at Zak Poles leaving party in town a couple of years back and Vinnie had just won the Pro-am championship. He had told me of his plan to completely rebuild the car including the RB26DETT and seeing how dedicated he was I was instantly in. He is a funny character to help out. Even if he really needs your help he will still be too stubborn to ask for it! After the week just passed and the number of people asking what the real stories on the road were, it was a no brainer that I needed to write this article! This is how it happened through my eyes from my office, the passengers seat.
It all began for me exactly one week from when we left, Tuesday 22 November. He asked me to come around and help him lift the bonnet back onto the car. He then dropped the bomb that he was going to drive it down to Dunedin and compete, asking whether I’d be keen to come help. At this stage there was still an enormous amount of prep that needed to be done. It had no wof, a diff that was about to collapse, a few parts that needed installing and a bunch of other maintenance to be completed. After a bit of a push he got the warrant on Friday, all it failed on was a couple of bulbs which was a relief. Our friend James Williams took the car into DKM on the Monday to get a pre-event safety audit and again it only failed on a couple of small issues. It was on!
Time for a well overdue update. Well documented through pictures so beware!
Mid last year I bought a S14 K’s manual(Nose to tail accident, written off) without too much thought, plans were to strip it to a light weight version and use it for gymkhana’s etc. Not having a place to store it turned out to be the big issue and before long it ended up at my yard getting stripped! Then finally I bought a house with an empty garage and the rest is history.
After having Max off the road for over 3 months and no return date set any time soon Owen and I decided it was time to build battle car #3.
On the 14th of December we loaded it up and lifted it up my drive
For a change of pace we decided to change the paint or the R1
A Sky Blue Marble was the colour of choice
Our latest project is a Nissan Skyline GTR. The goal is to turn it into a nice street/weekend track car.
Since picking it up and stripping it down, we have found alot of rust that needs to be repaired. Once all the rust is repaired then the fun part begins, where we start building it back up!
As it sits one side of the outer sill has been cut open to see the damage. Luckily we have a donor shell which will supply the parts needed to fix!
It will run 17×9 Blitz type 01’s all round.
The paint colour is still undecided, but it will have a complete re-spray from the ground up!
One of the next projects that we will be working on is Owens S13. We have been hunting down parts for it for the last little while, the engine is built to put out around 280kw and the whole package is designed to be a perfect competition level drift car, while still being 100% Street legal!
We have also made up a marque/Tent so that Owen can start doing more custom paint jobs. Any cars that are part of the core “Team Garage H” team will have marble paintjobs! If anyone out there has contacts in the paint industry we would love to hear from you, Garagehnz@yahoo.com
Well I thought it was about time everyone knew the faces of Garage H. We have been around since 2004, and are continuing to grow. I will be updating the blog more often now, but first up I will explain who is in our team and the assets they bring to the team!
From Left:
Nick Bourke. Nick is one of the founders of Garage H. From back in 2004 when we were building my R32 GTST in our garage, right through to this day, he has had alot of very good ideas. Nick is a qualified engineer, he does all the fabrication for Garage H, as well as some mechanical aspects. He is a perfectonist and it always shows through his work. I will be showcasing some of the products he has made for Garage H through the coming months, he now wants to work on some of our products and start selling them to the public. Some of the parts he has made from scratch include the Garage H Wheelie Rack, Garage H Deluxe Hubs, De-actuator and others which will be posted up in the future.
Theresa Knight. Theresa came on board December 2010. She proved herself by helping us build the Green Battle Car early in 2011. She is very good on the tools, but also helps out behind the scenes whether it be organising to get a whole lot of tyres changed for an up-coming trackday/comp/demo, updating the facebook page, registering us into demos/competitions and other stuff like sorting out schedules so we can get everything into place before an event.
Owen Newman. Owen came on board October 2010. He started off as our pitcrew when we were drfiting MAX in the 2010-2011 D1NZ series. He showed us that he was keen to get behind Garage H by showing up on time and helping out time after time. Owen is a Qualified Automotive painter and has completed courses in custom designed paintjobs, he is the brains behind MAX’s Marble Maroon paint and he continues to bring new idea’s to the table.
Simon Bourke(The one that writes the blog posts!!!). I have also been behind Garage H from Day 1. I generally handle most of the mechanical side of things, doing up the nuts and bolts after Nick has created the part to install. I have alot of input into the parts that Nick creates. I am the man behind the wheel of Max 80% of the time, have completed a season of D1NZ Pro-am 2010-2011, placing 9th overall at the end of the season. I have had alot of experience behind the wheel of a drift car, I have driven at over 50 trackdays in the 8 years I have followed drifting. I am a qualified builder and have spent a very long period of time working on cars, so I know Nissans very well. I also run the Garage H wrecking yard.
If you see any of us out and about we are always happy to stop and chat. Theresa and I will be found at Hampton Downs most weekends as we run Corporate Drift Days, Track days and Skidpan/Gymkhana days out there.
Simon, Nick, Owen and Theresa. Check out www.facebook.com/TeamGarageH to see what we have been up to this week!
One problem with the van has been rust. Nick has spent alot of time cutting it all out and welding patches in, then nu-teching it up and sanding/painting it!
Roof:
Headlight cavities:
The Garage H Blog 
