Like many, I’ll never forget my first ride in a turbocharged car; a rally blue GC8 WRX. It had a bit of boost already wicked into it and as the tacho needle swung through its arc I’m pretty sure my life changed forever. What was this feeling? How could a car be so fast and relatively affordable?
Shortly after that moment I’d gone out and bought an S15 and the world of JDM car tuning was vast and infinite. Again, like many, I started throwing the kitchen sink at my Silvia before really thinking about what I wanted to achieve with that car and by the time I finally got it onto the track it was so modified that I had no idea what I was doing or where the car was at from a setup perspective.
Fast forward a few years and I’m excited to be back into S15s, always having wondered what might have been and unlike those magical international one night stands where you never got their number, a car ownership do-over is very much an achievable thing. While the Gumtree S15 is being assembled, my Grey S15 would have the task of doing some initial benchmarking.
Some motivated person has collected and posted Motor Mag’s lap times of cars into a Google Sheet and it’s recorded that the 200SX (Spec-S) set a 1:46.4 at Winton on it’s 2001 debut, so I figured that could be an appropriate target time.
Trackday #1
With the only changes to the car being swapping out the cheap something-something tyres it came with for a set of Bridgestone RE003s paired with a set of Project Mu NS brake pads, it was off to Winton to see what the car would do and more importantly, make some notes on how the car handles from factory.
Whilst a new resurface and some more modern tyres made a difference to the lap time, the standard car proved to have a very soft rear suspension persuasion, presumably in an effort to prevent killing its more inexperienced owners. While probably great for life preservation, the soft rear end made it difficult to accurately drive through the apex and out of corners, causing the rear end to almost bunny-hop about. Apart from that however, the front was accurate and more feelsome than modern electric-streer stuff and the overall package felt nicely balanced.
Fastest time : 1:44.4
Modifications – round one
Having learnt from my first Silvia and remembering that this Silvia was going to be primarily street-driven, I eventually chose a set of MCA Purple coilovers, paying special attention to getting something softer than the usual JDM-spec spring rates along with the digressive-valve sales pitch piquing my curiosity. These were matched with a set of TE37s and Hankook RS4 tyres measuring 235mm in width up front and 255mm at the rear. Performance-wise, I put together the combination of CES dump-pipe, high-flow cat and super-quiet Blitz exhaust (having the lowest dB reading I could find at the time) and with this installed the car makes a mind-altering 130kw at the wheels. The NS brake pads barely lasted the day so they were swapped out with a set of Winmax pads.
Other non-performance related modifications include having sourced the OEM Aero bar and rear pods, Spec-R one piece side skirts, a Bride Stradia seat and Nardi steering wheel for an overall more comfortable seating position…did I mention my first S15 had a sunroof and as a result I struggled to get a good seating position with a helmet on?
While getting aligned, Ray at Raceline also confirmed that both the front and rear-ends had pretty severe dynamic toe-out which gets worse the more the car is lowered, so a very conservative static toe setting has been dialled in.
Target Alignment settings;
Front toe; 0mm | Rear toe; -2mm
Front camber; -1.5 degrees | Rear camber; -1 degree
Trackday #2
The better suspension setup, tyres, alignment and extra power contributed to making the car very tractable out of corners, potentially even having a little too much grip. But the overall level of accuracy and predictability was quite confidence inspiring. At this point I think the drive out of corners could definitely be improved with a proper clutch-pack differential and working on the dynamic-toe would be a positive so the car could run a bit less static toe-in. Whilst the brake pads were holding up it did feel like progressive laps were sinking a lot of heat into the braking system, making stopping distances a little problematic but only deeper into each session.
Fastest time : 1:39.3
Modifications – round two
This time only a limited set of modifications were applied; a conversion to a slightly larger front rotor (33 GTST) with the hope that would add just enough heat capacity to last a session and a changeover to the new Bridgestone RE71-RS cheater tyre.
Trackday #3
Except for returning to challenge a long absent K-swapped Starlet, this is potentially the last Winton outing for the Grey S15 as the Gumtree S15 is just around the corner. Brakes held up nicely and the new tyres are a riot, pulling a 1:38.2 early in the day but really highlighting the car’s soft suspension, causing the front guard to bite deeply into the driver side front tyre pretty hard through the sweeper and losing a bag of time. In a desperate attempt to get the roll under control I wound the dampers down almost to maximum, which unfortunately caused the car to start skipping a little through corners so it was difficult to find a compromise, however the car did eventually go faster in the afternoon.
Fastest time: 1:37.7
And with that, hopefully the coming track days will see the debut of the Gumtree Silvia!
EXE-Crew 