hi guys im in the process of selling my commodore to fund this conversion
and im looking at buying a s13 front cut so what i wanna know is how bad
is it to use basically the whole front end of the s13 ? running gear like
crossmember, and LCA's etc.. could somebody advise why its so bad ?
and if thats not an option can i use my current ke70 crossmember if
i grind off the engine mounts of the s13's crossmember can they be welded to my
crossmember ?
cheers mate
Put simply, the car was designed to run the suspension it was designed with. You can't just bolt in suspension from another car and expect it to work well unless you look at the numbers and make the most of what you just bolted in there. I can go into more detail if you want but if you're asking the question, you won't understand it.
And Q. no 2, you can make the k cross member take s chassis sr20 engine brackets and mounts or you can make brackets to make the sr bolt to the k crossmember. There are several bolt in kits for sr into ae86, or ca18 or f20/22c. All you need to do is swap in an ae86 or ae71 crossmember. If you swap in ae86 crossmember you
might as well try and get a rack as well as they have more travel.
Look at it like this: The Silvia's suspension was designed for a 1200kg + car. The KE70 is 930kg, it's just not going to work. It can work with a lot of money and time, you may as well just use all the AE86 gear and save yourself the headache.
so would you guys keep the ke70 stuff? or upgrade to ae86 ? im trying to do this the cheapest yet most functional way, can you upgrade the front brakes without changing to a full ae86 front end ? like just use the struts and brakes ?
and also with a rear diff when i choose is a rear disc upgrade hard ?
cheers guys sorry for being annoying asking so many questions just wanna get it all right when i start
If you want brakes that actually stop the car and can be engineered with then you will want the Jap spec AE86 brakes (different calipers and larger rotors then the Aus stuff). You will need the struts, hubs, brakes, and rack ends to swap it all over properly.
For the rear end, you could use an AE86 rear with disk brakes. Just bear in mind you will have to pay the Takumi tax when buying this (I've seen them go for $1500+...bearing in mind everything had been rebuilt with new rotors and pads, diff had been rebuilt too).
The only issue with the AE86 rear end is will it stand up to an SR20? I sure has hell wouldn't fork out $1500 for a diff that may easily blow to pieces (hey, who builds a KE70 w/ SR20 to drive around like nanna??).
I got myself a F series rear end from a YR22 Tarago. Drum brakes, but massive diff. LSD's are easy to get. You gain 20mm of track? but that worked out well cos my KE70 had flares on the back so I wouldn't need spacers to fill the guards.
You can probably go to the wrecker, get a YR22 rear end for a few hundred, take it to a diff place and have them swap the old mounts off your stock KE70 rear end.
I have ae86 stuff in mine, gonna upgrade to ra40 (bigger stub axles). When you go to s-chassis stuff and lower it you totally screw up the bump steer curve, well I mean put the steering in a bad part of the curve. And there's roll centre moving down a lot faste than rear roll centre which can't correct wth RCA's. At least on s chassis te rear roll centre drops pretty quickly as well to match the front, it won't on a live axle rear end.
With the rear, I have an f series too, but I couldn't get handbrake cables so I ended up using s13 rear discs and calipers because it was cheap. Not the best but it works, wanna add another caliper for handbrake but lazy.
I'm going to address this thread in a couple of areas:
Using S13 subframe and suspension
As everyone has stated above, dont do it. Pretty much everyone who has done this regrets doing it - it doesnt work well and ruins the handling of the car.
There are far better ways to get the SR20 engine into the car without totally fucking the handling of the car at the same time.
Here's what i would do:
- get yourself an AE71 crossmember
- get yourself an SR20 conversion kit (includes engine mounts, gearbox mount, and a couple of other goodies usually)
- get some DECENT front brakes using AE86 or XT130/RT132 struts
Front Brakes and struts
With a fair amount of power you will get with an SR20DET, you are gunna need some good brakes... especially if you want to engineer this car and get it road legal. THere are a few options for front brakes... such as AE86 struts with adaptor brakes and FD RX7 4 pot brakes.... or XT130/RT132 struts with hilux/pug brakes.... or there are a couple of other options with the XT130 struts.
Either way, the KE70 struts are useless for any kind of brake upgrade.
Diff and rear brakes
An AE86 JDM lsd diff, whilst direct bolt it, is a waste of money IMO.
For similar coin, you can build a MUUUUUCH stronger diff.
Myself, im using a Volvo 240 diff, cos its similar width to stock KE70 diff, tough as fucking nails, comes with 2-pot disc brakes, and you can get aftermarket LSDs for them easily enough (being a Dana30 diff). Ive got a Detroit Trutrac torsen lsd for mine. Tarago is a good option too as metnioned above.
If you want some ideas and info, check our Rollaclub forums. I think there are a couple of build threads there for SR20 conversions into KE70s.
Last point - you are probably going to want $8-10 to do this conversion properly i rekon.
SR20DET into ke70
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