PRO STREET BRAWLER
13B TURBO DATSUN 1200
The term ‘stance’ is undoubtedly one of the most overused terms of the modern automotive era. And while it’s generally employed to refer to cars with nonexistent suspension travel, tyres two sizes too small, and guard gaps measured with a feeler gauge, the true origins of the term, and its use, date back to the ’70s. This was an era when if you asked about someone’s wheel size they’d state the width not the diameter, your tyres were two sizes too big, and your front wheels would always be at least a quarter of the width of the rears. Yes, my young pimplefaced social-media warriors, stance was born in the era when Pro Street ruled — a time when drag cars crept the main road on Friday nights and then stormed the strip on Saturday. It’s an era that faded off sometime in the ’90s, and one that never really took hold in the import scene, but Chopper Keen’s ’81 Datsun is rolling proof that it damn well should.
It all began as a simple dream for a young restoration expert to build a workshop hack. Nothing fancy: 51kW of A12 glory under the bonnet and a tray fit to throw parts in, and whatever else he desired, without caring all that much. Dreams of doorslammersized rear meat and the power to back it up wouldn’t come till much further on in the build. In fact, that decision came really close to the point at which it should have been back on the road and running parts. “I did a few rust patches in the floor and painted the bay. We put the motor back in, and all it needed was the final paint job,” recalls Chopper. But all thoughts of practicality went flying out the window the moment that he laid eyes on a street-legal drag project of a mate and the man responsible for screwing together and tuning the motor. Those 15-inch Welds tucked deep within the rear arches of the 323 wagon were enough to get the blood flowing — and soon, the sparks — as, inch by inch, the factory Datsun sheet metal was removed. At first, Chop was being forgiving, only removing the bare minimum on his quest to build a Pro Street 1200, but he soon came to the realization that, “If I was going to do this, I may as well do it properly.”
Nine years on, the only pieces of the original ute left are the engine bay and rear firewall. It’s essentially now a four-linked threequarter chassis, having had the floorpan from the firewall to the tailgate removed and replaced with a custom box-section chassis and countless skins of handcrafted panel steel, all with the ultimate goal of perfecting that Pro Street stance. It was no slap-up job either — with Chopper being the man behind Choppers Auto Body, the 1200 was to become his ultimate business card, one showcasing the team’s skills hidden behind just a thin layer of matte green 2K. But, as is typical of the work of most craftsmen, the true extent of it will never be seen by anyone but the readers of these pages and the WOF inspector. Skins are hidden behind skins, and strength has been built into the new chassis anywhere it was possible to do so, and it all culminates in a roll cage that ties it all together.
Outside, it’s a similar story. Although it looks factory, Chopper admits that it was in a really sorry state when he drove it home from west Auckland — complete with fibreglass canopy and more rust than panel steel, so it all had to go. Thankfully, Datsuns are well loved and therefore supported quite well in the aftermarket. Each panel was unpicked and replaced, including the roof skin, which was found locally, and a pair of genuine new-old-stock rear quarters out of Japan. Every other panel was brand new, coming out of Taiwan and requiring its fair share of work to meet Chopper’s standard — or even bolt-on in the right place (if we’re honest). Those brand-new quarters didn’t escape the grinder either, only this time it was in aid of fitting the 31x16.5-inch Hoosiers, stretching each guard gap some four inches in length. The exact number of hours spent to get it to this point is something we’ll never know, and something Chopper doesn’t want to: “I never really recorded how many hours I spent, as I knew I’d hate myself if I did. Most of it was after hours, although I’d take a day off here and there during the week. It would have been months and months of full-time work. It’s been nine years to get to this point.”
If you think this level of effort is impressive, wait till we get to the drivetrain. While the odd pro streeter might have been guilty of being all show and no go in years gone by, the Datsun firmly sits in the other category thanks to a carefully selected smorgasbord of badass components, either built by Chopper himself or by other expert hands. Take the super-narrowed nine-inch diff, for instance: a Currie Enterprises housing with big-pinion Strange head, finished with a 31-spline Eaton Truetrac LSD centre and three-inch driveshaft. It’s all proper drag car gear and capable of holding the lightweight Datsun on the back wheels should Chopper let the hammer down (on a closed road, of course).
DRIVELINE
GEARBOX: Tremec TKO 600, upgraded gearing to suit mid shift CLUTCH: Quartermaster triple-plate, Tilton release bearing, Hurst shifter FLYWHEEL: 10-pound (4.5kg) chromoly DIFF: Currie housing, Strange alloy head (bigbearing pinion support, 1350 yoke), 31-spline Eaton Truetrac limited-slip (5.67-ratio)
SUPPORT
STRUTS: (F) Bilsten shocks, modified Datsun Sunny struts (coilovers); (R) QA1 coilovers BRAKES: (F) Aerospace Components front spindles, cross-drilled rotors, four-pot calipers; (R) Wilwood rotors, Wilwood four-pot calipers EXTRA: Custom three-quarter chassis, twoinch body drop, strengthened internal sheet metal, Mad Dat Motorsport billet lower control arms, Mad Dat Motorsport bump-steer spacers, Mad Dat Motorsport adjustable sway bar, Mad Dat Motorsport adjustable castor arms, adjustable chromoly four-link with QA1 rose joints, custom rear sway bar, top wishbone
Based on an S5 block, the 13B features CNC-ported plates and Power Seals apex seals. The manifold is FD with an Xcessive lower, adapter plate, and Rotary Works billet throttle body. It’s yet to hit the dyno, but the goal is north of 450kW
The front end should handle the fall back to earth too, with a custom cross member fabricated in-house and holding a mix of Mad Dat Motorsport and Aerospace Components billet items, along with a set of custom coilovers based on Datsun Sunny uprights. With adjustment built into each component, what little steering the front wheels actually do will be precise. But it’s what mounts on the other side of that fabricated cross member that we all came to see, right? A 1320 Race Engineering–built, Series 5 (S5), 13B turbo with CNC porting, Xcessive FD manifold, six 1680cc injectors, and a BorgWarner SX300 hanging on the hot side. Boomer of 1320 is yet to tune the ute fully, which will happen around the time that you’re reading this. The dream, as Chopper puts it, would be to “add a zero to that 69hp [51kW]”. That’s some proper Pro Street wheel-standing material, especially when you consider just how light the little Datsun is and the fact that it’s backed by a manual — in this case, a Tremec TKO 600.
The engine bay, like all other areas of the build, showcases a level of detail that is nothing short of borderline obsessive. No line, wire, or bolt is out of place — or the wrong colour to mess with that military colour scheme. It’s truly show car quality with drag car underpinnings, and, before you know it, a WOF and rego will adorn the window. You see, this ute has been built to drive, and, while it will undoubtedly make a trip to the drags in the future to put those drag-esque underpinnings to the test, chasing ETs has never been the sole aim. This is, after all, Pro Street — its purpose has always been to be a seriously tough street car, and, although it might no longer be the parts-runner that Chopper first intended it to be, nearly a decade ago, we’re sure that it will make for some eventful runs to the local pie shop when smoko rolls around and the hammer is dropped.
While the cross member itself was fabricated by Chopper, he was able to make use of the large number of aftermarket offerings for 1200s, and utilized plenty of billet parts from the likes of Mad Dat Motorsport, such as control arms, and Aerospace billet brakes