Walshed up
Many of you will recognize this rust-wrapped C35 from nationals. It may have looked like a completed project from the outside, but lurking beneath was still a fair amount of work to be finished — what project is ever truly complete, anyway? Since then, the car has been living at Key West Fabrication, getting a hearty dose of what looks to be a hectic wiring job. Dan Walsh openly admits, “I’m pretty lost when it comes to electrical — the wiring side of things.”
The C35 started out as a daily-driver, and splurging piles of cash on it was never part of Dan’s grand plan. These days, you’ll find a RB25DET NEO heart lurking underneath the bonnet. That is what is currently being wired in by Key West — ripped out of a R34 Skyline. It’s been tickled up by a Luxury Sports frontfacing plenum and uses Subaru 550cc injectors, Yellow Jacket coil packs, and a respectable-sized Garrett TA3410 — the manifold it sits on was made by Dan, and it incorporates a Turbosmart 50mm Progate. Dan’s also fabricated his own tube-frame front, along with an eightpoint roll cage.
The drivetrain runs a BNR32 fivespeed, which has been converted to rear-wheel drive and runs an Exedy single-plate five-puck clutch with a billet chromoly flywheel, through a custom one-piece driveshaft to the R33 R200 limited-slip diff (LSD) and axles. On the suspension side of things, the rear end is straight from the GKTech catalogue, with drop knuckles, arms, locking collars, and the rest, and BC Gold S15 coilovers at all four corners. Dan’s even gone and converted the power steering to an electric unit. BNR32 six-pot calipers have been used on the front, along with the corresponding rotors, and down back are the same in two-pot form. All lines are custom Goodridge braided options, and, because it is a drift car, a Nameless Performance hydraulic handbrake has been installed.
The majority of this is hidden from view, thanks to a custom set of 18x9.5-inch (-15) and 18x11-inch (-20p) ‘“Wolf replicas” aka genuine Work Meister SP1s. The exterior sports a BN Sports kit, along with N-Style four-door over-fenders and Origin Labo canards to top it off. Once the wiring is done, and whatever ideas pop into Dan’s head between now and then are finished, the C35 will head off for a proper lick of paint — as Dan said himself, “That vinyl wrap was never going to stay.”