S15 Project Car

It has been a long time coming! In the late 1990’s I fell in love with drifting, the style of both the cars and the way they were driven (especially in Japan) stuck with me and it still does to this day. My first drift car was a 180SX, followed by my two tone S13 coupe, then the red 180sx which was followed by the Hilux build.

Now what a lot of you might not know was that in 2008 I found a black S15 for sale on eBay, it was 38,000km old, had a couple of smashed windows, some dents and was obviously involved in some form of robbery as it was covered with fingerprint dust. I couldn’t get much information off the owner but I did some digging and it was written off due to flood damage.

A week later I showed it to my friend and we went for a drive to look at it for him, after spending some time looking it over I was impressed, there wasn’t any visible water damage, the driveline seemed like new and I wasn’t deterred by a few dents and some broken glass.

My friend pulled out of the deal and we went home, but I couldn’t stop thinking about it, I was starting to design the Hilux build in my head and began thinking “if this car is cheap enough I could cut the body off it, use the chassis and complete driveline for the Hilux build.

As the weeks passed the price dropped lower and lower, I did some measuring and figured it was a deal!

I put the trailer on and went up to the city to pick it up. When I got home I rolled the car off the trailer and started marking out the body to be cut off.

Thats when I started having cold feet, the more I looked at the complexity and layers of undamaged sheetmetal the less I wanted to cut it up, I put the grinder down and started looking into tube frame structures for the Hilux.

That sealed the deal and the S15 was saved, but what do I do with it? It’s useless and worthless as it’s unregisterable but its so nice, the shape, the condition, one day these cars will be hard to find in this condition and one day I hope I will be able to build an S15.

So I spoke to my parents and they relieved me of seeing it every day. They kindly bought a shipping container and closed the doors on it 10 years ago.

Fast forward ten years and I have completed the Hilux, competed nationally in my 180SX, my two tone S13 is finished and I am happy where everything is at, I worked hard in 2019 to start ETS Fabrication School and the success of the platform has me working full time to provide content for it, but how do I put everything I have learnt with all the cars I have built into a project I am passionate about?

I head down to my parents and open the doors of the container and build the S15 of my dreams!

I drained the fuel, fitted a new battery and the car fired to life, quiet and smooth just like the Nissan engineers designed it to be. Well I have plans for that!

I fitted some fresh Falken RT615K+ rubber in 215/45/17 to the front 17×9+25 Bee R B5 rims and 235/40/18 Falken RT615K+ rubber to the rear 18×9.5 +25 Bee R B5 rims with my Corghi tyre machine (which I love) and gave it a good wash.

The car looks amazing, its the perfect start and the perfect way to take you on this ride of learning and understanding fabrication on a deeper level through ETS Fabrication School.

If your looking to learn or improve your fabrication abilities then why not start with my Motorsport Fabrication Fundamentals course available now in this link.

So whats planned? I am thinking a neat all rounder, full roll cage, exhaust, cooling package, maybe some aero and thats just the beginning!

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