In the summer of 1988 restoration
began on Silvia number CSP311-70231. Unfortunately 231 was not in
great shape, years of neglect had taken it's toll and nothing short of
a full restoration would be needed to return her to her former glory. 231
had been sold new in Papua New Guinea in 1965 and had been brought into
Australia in 1986. The previous owner had started to restore her but only
got as far as dismantling the car. When I bought her she was just a bare
shell sitting on her chassis, and about 40 boxes of parts. The body was
fairly straight, she appeared to have had a small accident at some stage,
with obvious repairs to the driver's side front guard. A new guard had
been fitted but it had been poorly aligned, and the panel gaps were a fair
way out. This guard was later removed and fitted correctly. But the big
problem with the body was rust, major surgury was going to be needed. The
other concern was the depth of paint on the car. Amazingly the car had
had seven re-sprays in it's life, it was originally painted Silvia Gold,
then over the next years it had been painted white, then black, then red,
then blue, then black again, then yellow, and finally a metallic bronze
colour. That much paint was going to cause problems, the body would have
to be stripped back to bare metal. The boxes of parts seemed to contain
everything but I wouldn't know for sure until the restoration had begun.
In December 1988 restoration was started, I estimated the work should take
around six months to complete. I was wrong, very wrong!
How she looked the day I got her home.
After starting to strip away some of the paint her
true condition was revealed. Large amounts of plastic filler covered the
body, evidence of at least seven re-sprays also.
Her chassis. (note the cross ply tyres)
Initial plans were to restore her to 100% original
condition but after searching through the boxes of parts I discovered several
bits were missing. After cheching every source of Silvia parts I could
find I was still unable to locate the needed parts. At about this time
I decided to change my plans and restore her the way I wanted to rather
than keep her original.
Suspension components were stripped and re-sprayed.
The chassis was in quite good shape and only required
stripping back to bare metal and re-painting.
The plan was now to build a show car, now that originality
was not an issue I decided to go completely overboard. Anything that was
made of metal was chrome plated.
The original 1595cc Silvia engine was replaced with
a H series 1883cc engine from a Nissan Cedric. This was bored out to just
over 2 litres. Only the block and internal components of the Cedric engine
were used, all the original Silvia components were bolted onto the Cedric
block, including the Silvia's cylinder head, manifolds, carbs, timing chain
cover, distributor, etc.
The body was sand blasted inside and out, then primed
with red oxide which was later removed a section at a time as work was
started on that section of the car.
.
Several new panels were made including new door skins
and sills.
Once the chassis was complete and the suspension
components were fitted, the mechanicals were then installed into the chassis.
Panel work nears completion and the body is sprayed
in a rather unattractive yellow undercoat. No filler was used on the body
during restoration, the panels were all file finished. All the original
lead joints in the body were removed and re-leaded.
The only panel on the car that was in any was altered
from it's original design was the rear panel. Originally they have a recessed
number plate section that is the same size as the Japanese number plates.
(This recess is visible in the 4th photo on this page) Unfortunately, unless
you have number plates that are exactly the same size as the Japanese ones
the back panel looks terrible. On this car the number plate recess was
cut out and replaced with a flat section.
This is the end of part one of the Silvia restoration,
click here to go to part two.
