*Note – this post was from November 2019. At the time, I was trying to figure out what to do with the Project Leopard M30. This was in the draft section.. I figure I would share to give my mindset at the time.
Personal: Sorry, been busy trying to buy a house and typical work/family/school stuff.
A few months back, Jon R contacted me. He had re-acquired the Project car M30. He originally bought it from Koji and had it for a few years. Since then, the car had degraded and changed hands multiple times. Before Jon, Cameron had it and he used it as a drift car. He eventually blew the motor. So Jon picked it up with intentions to rebuild it to what it used to be.
Just as life, things changed and Jon couldn’t support the project anymore.
As of this posting, the intention and verbal agreement is I will pick up the car.
I’m kinda of excited about it. As you know, my Blue M30 is my main car and I wanted to show it as an F31/M30 at it’s purest. Of course, nobody really cares for a stock M30 except people that can appreciate it as such.
With the PCM (Project Car Magazine) M30, it’s been modified in such a way and professionally done. If you go through the pages of the build, they did an amazing job of documenting the swap. You don’t see these professionally done cars as much and why there are very few quality builds with these type of cars.
Cameron sent me this picture of the car:
Jon got the car and cleaned it up as much as possible.
Jon said the bumper covers need to be changed out. I do have a spare front, but I started to think….
If I buy this car, what is the intention of this car?
That is when a lot of pieces started to fall into place. I planned to follow Jon’s idea of bringing it back to it’s former glory. But the really interesting thing is that, I can put my touch to it.
So all the ideas that were gonna go to my Blue M30, can be put to the PCM M30. As I mentioned, I have showed my blue M30 at RADwood and I was super happy to do it. But again, let’s be honest, people don’t really want to look at a stock car! LOL.
The PCM M30 WAS a show car and it had all the ingredients that intrigued people. Obscure chassis, MT conversion and RB25DET. It is simply that. As mentioned, Jon wanted it to bring it back to it’s former glory and I was on board with him on that. This car has also been track proven too with Cameron sliding the car for awhile.
In it’s current state, it does need a refresh all around. The RB25 is taken apart. Most of the custom pieces are there such as the transmission mount and drive shaft. The wiring harness is all in place and the R31 subframe and crossmember as well.
Since my Blue M30 was gonna be the show car, I planned on repainting it and doing all the lowering it, but to keep it as my daily and comfortable. Now I can keep it the way it is!!
My idea of old cars new comes to play again. I would get the RB25det block redone regardless. So I think that is what is gonna happen. I definitely DON’T need 800hp. I want to make some good power, but nothing super extreme. So I want to strengthen the internals.
I’m hearing the RB25DET S2 is better than the S1 because the there was an oil issue going on. Additionally, there is something about the oil pump gear breaking. As I descend into RB stuff, I will try to address any common issues before putting the engine in the car.
I really need to do some research on the RB engines and re read the Project Car magazines to get a better understanding of what to do.
My plan is to have it towed up here (hopefully I have a house by then) and slowly build the engine. I unfortunately don’t have resources or hook ups. I’m tied to no community (like drifting)…so I gotta either attempt to do the work myself and just go from there.
I’ll probably do a slow build as mortgage is priority.
Let’s see what happens.