it was the first car i bought when i moved to australia in 2004. It was a 1979, red, paint was fairly poor, not original and it had evidence of a small front end impact at some point. it had a poorly fitting motorsport front bumper as you can see from the pic
mechanically it had a 2.7 bottom end with a 325i head and small cam, the engine was fantastic , best bit of the car. it had a 4 speed manual and a non limited slip diff so traction was poor especially on 14's
E21's were abundant in australia back tehn so i got this car for a bargain price of 1400. i thought it was a pretty good deal then but when i look back now it was a fantastic deal !! I liked the engine that was in it but i always wanted more power, i had plans to fit nitrous to it and i actually had it all installed but before i was going to use it another e21 owner wanted to but the engine, i think i sold the engine alone for 1800 , at the time this made sense because i thought i would fit an m30 3.5.
I wish i never sold that engine.........
I bought a m30 3.5 cheaply but the motor was destroyed, the cylinder head was seized on and everything was in poor condtiotn so i ended up scrapping the engine using some of the money to buy a car i could daily and the rest got wasted. throughout this time i was an apprentice mechanic so i was very poor. I had an e21 with no engine and i was driving around in an old suzuki sierra
I was quite upset, i also had a fling with some mk1 golfs,, with plans to build a 2.0 G60 engine for one, an idea that i may come back to some day.
I got a big loan out and bought the 300zx in 2006 that you have seen in the other threads, was driving this as a daily for along time but it was not ideal, went through fuel, brakes and tyres very fast and i couldnt drive it slowly, lots of speeding tickets !!
Throughout the ownership of my 300zx i began to understand Nissans very well, i like their engines and turbos. I discovered that the RB20DET was very popular adn quite unloved by the nissan community. This meant i could buy one cheap. I picked up and entire RB20 engine conversion package for 700 dollars, the catch was the cylinder head needed to be overhauled.
I started fitting all this stuff to the red e21, i initiallly made good progress but overtime my enthusiasm and finances ran short, i was spending alot of time and money on my 300zx and other things. The red e21 needed alot of work even on top of the engien conversion
so i was looking for a daily driver e21, had to be a 323i manual. So i found this one on ebay
to the untrained eye it was horrible but for me i could see the potential ane value. BBS 15x7's , BBS front bumper. Sporty seats and a straight original body. Teh seller wanted 1600, i paid 850
repaired hole in roof
replaced steering wheel
prepped for paint
you can see my old red e21 in the backround that i had started painting matt black
it already started looking good in primer
paint on
Done
this was my daily for a long time
I dailyed this car for a long time, then eventually i went back to my 300zx full time as i had built a new engine for it and it was very powerfull, my e21 was not being used and one friday my young apprentice asked me to borrow the car so he could pick up a date, long story short he destroyed the engine, over heated it so badly it was beyond reasonable repair.
i was quite upset, and realising i coudltn do 2 major e21 projects i took teh engine and all the work so far out of my red e21 and fittied to the silver car, with a heavy heart i scrapped my first e21 and the damaged m20.
fitting the RB20 to the silver car was easy adn quick as i had done all that work before. I then parked the car up and didnt touch it for a year or 2. I finally revived teh project when i had a little more money and a clear head. Moving house gave me a larger shed to work in. Here is the moment when i cleaned out the shed and revived the e21 rb20 project
looking at the project i realised there was not much to do, i plumbed eveything in, wired it up and it started almost first try
then i went on the hunt for my dream e21 wheels, Borbet A
i found a set in great condition in Germany, but the centers were painted, i got a good deal and figured i could paint them silver myself
fitted a genuine nardi s line wheel from an Audi s4 i think
some day i will change the audi badge
I got the rb20 running perfectly after a bit more wiring work, the engien was totally standard but ran well and very smooth , power was only 180-200hp though
i ran it like this for a while and did important stuf flike rear subframe bushes, exhaust etc.
The economy diff ratio was not good for the rb20, 3.5 :1 i think witha rev limit of 7800, it was doing 120kph in second gear, i wanted a ratio more like 4.1 :1
i also wanted LSD, lookeing for a bmw diff was expensive, and least 1000 dollars and i was concerned it wouldnt be strong enough, i already had a spare diff for me 300zx which is a 200mm crownwheel, 4.1:1 and LSD
so i started to fit this, it was a big job
subframe removed and both diffs together
the axels were different of course, in length adn diameter
custom axels were expensive so i wanted to make my own,
many hours on a lathe got me to here, you can see i trued them up, drilled a hole through the nissan axel, and turned down the bmw axel, machined them very finely and extremely close for an interference fit
then using a diamond bit i drilled a hole through where both shafts join and pressed in a hardened steel pin, plug welded both ends of that.
then back to the lathe, i preheated, welded and post heated about 30 mm of the bmw shaft to build it up to the larger diameter, turned it down super smooth, then made an interefence fit tube 6mm wall thickness to press over the top, i preheated the shaft, welded both ends and let cool in a bucket of sand for 6 hours
finished item
this is the nissan dif fon bmw subframe test fititng before axels were welded
almost finished, the rear mount was temporary
had to cut the boot floor and make a strong mounting point for the rear of the diff
the rear end works great, but it was alot of work
Then i set about doing the front mounted intercooler. I bought a cooler nearly new from a ford falcon xr6, australian made, very good quality for 45dollars ! for the falcon owners they are too small, but perfect for me.
The e21 is a difficult front end to fit an intercooler and make it look nice so i mounted it low and thought i could modify the bbs bumper around it to hide it a bit.
did a turbo upgrade at the same time
here it is now
