Nissan s14a SR20VET Drift Car

Hello,

My name is Jack Pagano and I’m from the UK. Been following HP Academy for some years now and since the sr20 engine build was added i decided to buy it as the build was very similar to my build.

I have owned my Silvia for 3 years now and have drifted it for 2 years. First year of ownership was just lack of funding after buying the car. Only been driving 4 years now (7 years on motorcycles, 2 of which was racing previous) and really do like the car. It’s far from perfect with usual rust and terrible wiring but that is all about to change this year as I have taken the plunge and build my dream engine the SR20VET.

I will quickly go through the last couple of years of drifting for me in the next few posts.

First year of ownership

Unsure how to upload pictures so i have done a link to my google drive ^^

Hey jack look forward to seeing progress. Just started drifting but with an e36. Hopefully a Sylvia at some point.

Alright Kevin. Got many pictures and progress to upload just trying to work out a way of uploading pictures easier and il get everything up to date quickly.

e36 great chassis to learn In. Please fire any questions away you have about drifting the car and il try and help as much as I can

My second drift day. Got rid of the red vinyl and paint the car blue.

At this point the car was very basic. Stock knuckles on the back. Driftworks geomasters on the front. Horsham chip, 555 injectors and tiny intercooler.

pretty much spent the entire day spinning

After this I was very committed to my apprenticeship in aerospace engineering so took time away from the car to concentrate on work and college. I was able to save up some money and get some proper bits for the car.

750cc Injectors, proper size intercooler off eBay, second hand gt2871r turbo which I ported as I fancied giving it a go and most importantly a link g4+ ecu.

bone stock engine the car made decent power and torque at 1.2 bar. I told the tuner at the time around 300bhp is fine for me for learning to drift and he delivered exactly what I wanted.

Port and Dyno graph. I asked for a high and low boost setting as I was still street driving the car to and from drift days so 0.8bar for road use and 1.2 bar for track use

Previous owner had claimed 300bhp when I bought the car which was a complete lie.

The difference in the car from before the tune and after was night and day. The car was so much more alive and free revving and it really transformed my driving and progression. So after this I went to Santa pod. Had an amazing day until after 45mins before the end of the day I started noticing a slight whine from the gearbox.

I had heard 3rd gear in standard 5 speed sr boxes are pretty rubbish and that’s where the noise was coming from most.

Turned out I semi stripped half the gear!

Cautious drive home to then decide what to do.

This led to me just going all out on the gearbox so I didn’t have to continuously worry about it blowing up.

bought a 350z gearbox, HKS twin disc, conversion plate and single piece prop.

I am someone who wants to learn and do things myself and a local garage wanted £1300 to do the conversion...sod that. Time to do it myself .

With the car out of action for about a month I also took the plunge and bought some proper coilovers. Driftworks cs2’s. Hands down one of the best things I’ve bought for the car and just transformed the way the car felt and always my learning in understanding what I want from the car and how to change it to what I want.

The video shows me started to get the self belief of actually being able to drift.

The next step for me was changing the knuckles. Driftworks coming in again here with their new at the time geomaster v3 knuckles by wisefab. I simply couldn’t afford the wisefab front and rear kit as for the S chassis it’s around £3500 and the Driftworks knuckles were £900. I’d already got all the adjustable arms front and rear so was a no brainer

I got very lucky and was able to drive the meihan style of track at rockingham in the Uk 3 times in 2018 and it is by far the most fun track layout I’ve driven on. Top of 4th gear around 80mph entry against a wall. What a buzz.

At this time I gained abit of weight and didn’t really fit in my seat so I bought a new in date sparco circuit 2 which I absolutely loved as it is much more a proper seat than the cheaper basic sprint seat.

Also this was a time where I thought of starting to do my own wheeL alignments. I’d spent £500 in 2018 in constant alignment changes to try new things. Got so fed up with wasting money that decided to do it myself with my dad and haven’t looked back since. Learnt so much from doing it myself.

Towards the end of 2018 I bought a recovery vehicle as I decided it was time to stop driving the car on the road and concentrate on track driving with no worry on my mind of getting the car home.

With the season over for 2018 I decided 2019 I was going to try and compete in competition for the first time.

This meant a full strip down of the car as for me reliability is number 1 in drifting.

Compression test was first which yielded the results of

145

145

140

142

Which was fine and I didn’t need to open the engine, just clean it down and replace seals, gaskets etc.

Decided to get a new subframe with rack relocation built in as I feared that my subframe with the street miles it had been through was battered and bent.

Quick re spray of the engine bay before the engine went back in also.

At this time I’d also done the unthinking and bought a p11 VE head which I’d been looking for for a year

The VE head that I’d bought had been ported on the inlet side, supertech dual valve springs, valves and retainers, two sets of cams, 1mm oversize valves and had been freshly skimmed. Got it for £1300.

At around about the same time HP academy started posting about their 350z sr20vet project so I was getting well excited about the spec of engine and content they’d bring out.

Car lives in a council garage about a mile from my house and storage is limited

Just before round one on a practice day I got so fed up with having the foot brake and hydro in line I decided to sway to a Twin calipers set up. Made my life easier and better. Bit fancy but the geomaster v3 rear knuckles had twin mounted already built in.

So I got a ticket into drift cup and the first round was at three sisters. Never driven their until Friday practice and instantly loved the track. Had boost issues all day which turned out to be the high/low boost switch being faulty and constantly switching between them on runs. I bought a laptop to specifically log data and begin learning about what is going on ( really enjoy this aspect of cars )

Qualified something like 25th?

Won my first ever top 32 battle and then proceeded to through it away in the top 16 which really showed my lack of experience

Round 2 at norfolk arena was a complete waste for me and really disappointing.

car just had either too much grip or too little grip with the constant changing of conditions and also boost piping coming off which hadn’t been an issue the previous 20+ events Iv driven up to this point.

Qualified something like 27th and just got out done in the top 32 as yet again a boost pipe came off in my lead run. I was hammering the clutch constantly trying to get the car to slide

Inbetween round 2 and 3 I went to teesside. Round 3 was at teesside so needed the practice. Fell in love with the track instantly and just had an amazing day. 40+ laps under my belt easily.

Exactly why I my car was simple. Seat time city.

2 weeks after teesside went to rockingham as it had just started to open again and it’s like a home track to me as Iv been so many times now. Finally started to get happy with positioning the car where I wanted lap after lap.

Round 3 teesside. Already know the circuit from my previous drift days and instantly get in the groove. Qualify 23rd I think and first battle is up against a v10 supercharged 700bhp e36 on semi slicks....shit!

Sadly I just got out paced in the top 32 and got sent home early...this is were the VE project in my mind was coming to the forefront of priorities for next year.

Back to rockingham for more seat time and tandem practice!

Round 4 of driftcup was at three sisters and was slightly a different lay out to round one.

This was the first weekend that I was going to try out semi slicks in my case zestino 07rs hards and this was only in practice on Friday as I didn’t want to break anything. Sadly it was wet all day but the difference between my budget tyre and the zestino in the wet was mind boggling.

Onto Saturday and qualified mid 20s again but sadly lost my top 32 battle.

I really thought it was going to be a one more time but I lost abit of ground coming out of the last corner and that in my mind sealed my fate.

I didn’t compete at round 5 in Scotland because of budget and I really wanted to started stripping the car down for 2020 as I had big plans. Which I’m finally getting onto now.

Compression test was first on the cards and the results were

130

128

132

130

quite abit down from the previous year but I had done another 20+ events in 2019.

after stripping the engine down more I was very happy to not of gone to round 5 as I started seeing excessive bearing wear and also the cylinder wall liner in #3 was starting to wear away badly. The bearing damaged pictured is the best of the rest.

After much debate among myself on what to go for for the VE conversion I totalled everything up and the mazworx stuff was within budget and not to dissimilar to what else was on the market.

so I bought their

inlet and exhaust manifold

full conversion kit

ati damper and trigger system both can and crank

Id1050x

cp pistons

wiseco boostline I beam rods

moroso sump

Bundle of new Nissan parts like chain and tensioner

Yoshio water pump pulley

Tomei can gears