Suspension and Wheels
M2 DT-05R wheels 8.5 x 17 fronts and 9.5 x 17 rears 
235/40 ZR 17 Toyo T1-S tyres front and 265/40 ZR 17 Toyo T1-S tyres at the rear
D2 racing coilovers with seperate preload and height adjustment and 36 way damping adjustment
7 kg/mm front coil springs 5 kg/mm rear coil springs.
Whiteline front castor adjustable tie-bar bushes
Whiteline adjustable anti-roll bars front and rear
Whiteline rear camber adjustment bushes
Whiteline rear subframe locking bush kit
Powerflex front lower arm bushes
Nismo steering rack bushes
Aluminium strut braces front and rear
300ZX twin turbo 4 piston front brake calipers
315mm x 28mm front brake disks
Ferodo DS2500 front pads in special 'PTS pattern'
Skyline 2 piston rear brake calipers
298mm Skyline rear vented disks
Ferodo DS2500  rear pads

Body Modifications
WRX style rear spoiler
Top Secret front bumper with JDM Kouki bumper light units
JDM Kouki rear lights with Kouki upper and lower trim panels
Trust Gracer side sills
Battery re-located to rear
Screenwash tank re-located to rear

Future plans
...up our sleeves

22nd March 2004

Its done....the UK's first twin turbocharged RB25 engined 200SX conversion has been created by PTS   !

The Skyline....

The Nissan Skyline GTS-T donor car was delivered to the workshop in August 2003.  It was a 1995 Series 2 car which was imported from Japan by its previous owner.

The engine rebuild....

The engine and gearbox were removed from the Skyline and we started the engine re-build.  The pictures below show the work in progress.  

We decided at an early stage that the engine was going to be left fairly standard internally. 
The engine was stripped and the block and components were thoroughly cleaned before being checked and measured to ensure that they were within the correct tolerances.

The GReddy inlet plenum....

We are using a GReddy inlet plenum on the project car.  Apart from the obvious airflow improvements this helps with the front mount intercooler installation and also means minimal bonnet modifications to clear the engine.

The Twin Turbos....

We decided early on in the project that we were going to have  to do something a little unusual with the turbo setup. The standard Skyline GTS-T turbo is a ball bearing unit which flows enough air for 300 to 330bhp. It spools very quickly but cannot run high boost pressures due to its ceramic exhaust wheel.
Its possible to high flow the turbos to provide enough air for around 380 ish bhp but we were after a bit more than that.
We decided to use a GTR twin turbo setup on the RB25 to make a RB25DETT....the first of its kind in the UK we believe !

The twin turbo conversion is not a simple bolt on and it took a fair amount of engineering to get it to fit. It should provide enough airflow for around 450bhp with the standard GTR turbos and of course being a GTR setup we can easily fit a larger pair at a later date for a suitably large power increase.
The turbos have been fully re-built and fitted with PTS adjustable wastegate actuators.
The turbo dump pipes were custom built from stainless steel and have a seperate wastegate outlet. The 2.5" front pipes and front section of the 3" exhaust system were also custom built by PTS and the turbo manifolds, turbine housings, dump pipes and front pipes have all been ceramic coated.

The clutch....

We looked at various clutches before settling on an ORC (Ogura Racing Clutch) twin plate clutch assembly which comes with its own lightweight flywheel and is rated to 700bhp. Its beautifully engineered and fully rebuildable and gives us a bit of headroom for future upgrades. The clutch has sprung plates and has, so far, proved to be very drivable.

The drivetrain....

The choice of gearbox for the RB is a no-brainer. The standard GTS-T gearbox is immensely strong and is much beefier than the gearbox used in the S13/S14/R32 GTS-T. Its rated to around 650bhp.
The propshaft was custom made. Its rated to 650bhp and is a one-piece design which is much lighter than the standard S13 and Skyline two-piece propshafts.
The driveshafts are larger diameter than the standard S13 shafts, up from 28mm to 30mm and the differential has been re-engineered to take VLSD Skyline internals with a 4.1 to 1 final drive ratio.
Redline Heavy Shockproof oil is used in the gearbox and the differential

The engine bay....

The 200SX engine bay looked to be in fairly good condition originally.  However once the engine and gearbox were removed it became apparent that it was pretty rusty in places. The lower front crossmember had to be completely replaced (arrowed below) and the strut tops were plated as they had holed where they commonly go on S13's.

Whilst the engine was out, the front of the car was seam-welded before being de-rusted, zinc painted, primed and coated in lovely gloss black paint.

The installation....

The lights and electric fan were first installed in the shell and then the new custom wiring loom was attached to the RB25 and it was lowered into the engine bay.  The new front mount intercooler was then installed and we constructed the intercooler pipes and the cold air intake pipes from 3" bore stainless steel pipe.

The wiring was finished and the car was started for the first time.  

Whats it like then ?....

Early impressions are really excellent. Its very torquey low down compared to the old CA. At the moment maximum boost has been set to 7psi and even at this level its quicker than the T3'd CA running at 23psi.....in fact quicker than a BMW M3 3.2 that picked on us during the running in process !!

Traction is amazingly good as the power delivery is so smooth and when the NVCS switches off at 4500 rpm the engine seems to pick up again and really howl around to the rev limit. The turbos seem to spool earlier than they do on GTR's, aided by the higher compression, NVCS and ceramic coating.

21st October 2003

A fair bit has happened over the last few months with the 200SX project.

First of all a bit of bad news.  Unfortunately, after months of being buggered about, we've been let down on the second-hand coilover kit the customer had secured for the 200SX so the suspension upgrade has been put back untill next year whilst we concentrate fully on the engine conversion.

On a positive note the conversion is going well and the engine rebuild has begun in earnest.  

In early July we drove down to Devon one evening after work to inspect the donor car.  The owner had bought the car as a damaged/repairable and then decided to break it for spares.  The engine ran very sweetly so after a nice mug of tea (thanks Paul) we agreed to buy it straight away.  We arrived back home at 2.30am the next day, a marathon round trip of around 8 hours which had given us plenty of time to finely tune the low boost map on the 200SX !

We arranged to have the car picked up by a colleague of ours, Mike,  who handily lived in Devon just a few miles away from the car, but unfortunately the car was a bit too heavy for Mikes trailer and after a few hairy miles through the rolling Devonshire countryside Mike wisely decide to return the car back to the seller so that we could arrange another way of bringing the car to the workshop. The donor car finally arrived at the workshop in late August on the back of a flatbed lorry.

When we bought the car we were told that the engine had only covered around 40,000 miles but for safetys sake we decided to open it up and check the internals anyway.  The cylinder bores still had a lot of the original honing marks on them and were well within standard tolerances so we have just fitted new standard sized rings to the pistons.  The standard cast pistons should be fine for our 450bhp target.  The conrod bearings showed slight signs of wear and so they have been replaced with new, carefully sized bearings.  The main bearings were unmarked but have also been replaced.  No re-grinding was deemed necessary as the crankshaft is perfect.

The cylinder head has been treated to a full port and polish and then painstakingly cleaned and re-assembled.  The compression ratio has been left untouched as we're keen to retain good off boost driveability.  We will use water injection to suppress detonation.

We are now waiting for the last of the engine parts to arrive and then it will be time to  tackle the inlet and exhaust plumbing before the engines fitted.

Heres a little teaser, in the words of Rolf......can you guess what it is yet ?

29th June 2003

Big change in our plans for the 200SX, after a lot of consideration we will  now be performing a full engine and drivetrain transplant.  As the car is a daily driver it was decided that a fully blown 450bhp CA18DET would be too unreliable and more importantly the large turbo needed to achieve the  level of power we were looking for would affect general driveability to an unacceptable level. 

Can't give too many details away regarding the conversion at the moment other than saying that it will be well worth the wait.

20th May

We've had a few problems with the JIC Magic suspension kit which we had planned to fit to the car.  Its actually a  second-hand drift setup which the customer sourced and unfortunately the front dampers are leaking and need to be rebuilt.  They've gone back to the seller who is arranging the re-build at no cost to the customer.  

As we're not certain of the current spring rates we've decided to change them to our own specification coil springs which should be great for fast road use and trackdays.

20th April 2003

PTS will be undertaking the re-build of a new engine for this car.  The re-build will include forged JE 84mm pistons, steel con rods, wedged crank, ultralight flywheel, competition clutch, ported head with port matched inlet manifold, high lift cams, very large turbo and a tubular exhaust manifold.

Suspension will be changed for a full height adjustable coilover setup from JIC Magic.