ON PATROL
HOW A HUMBLE SKYLINE EXECUTIVE WAS TURNED INTO A REPLICA OF A RARE COP VARIANT
The first time I saw this car it was covered in fingerprint dust. I had another car in at the repairer, getting some paint done. Being a Skyline enthusiast, I asked about it and apparently it had been broken into and had some damage and the owner wanted to get rid of it. I contacted him and we worked out a deal.
The family has other Skylines – my GTS has featured in Unique Cars in the past – and this seemd a good opportunity to do something a little different. The basic Executive isn’t the prettiest thing and, like a lot of people, I’ve got a fascination for old police vehicles.
Nissan Special Vehicles made six of these for the Victoria Police. They also did a number of cars for the Metropolitan Fire Brigade, and I’ve seen those before, but I hadn’t seen
any of the police versions getting around.
These were a Highway Patrol car, non-turbo, but otherwise a lot in common with the pursuit cars. They were lowered, had Bilstein suspension, 15-inch wheels and were a standard-looking car with a lot of the GTS bits in them.
This was a great car to work with. It only had 75,000km on it, so it was still as tight as a drum.
While this wasn’t a big top-to-toe restoration like my GTS, there was still a fair bit to do. When I first got it, I couldn’t tell how it drove as all the locks, including the ignition/steering, had been smashed. We replaced all of them as a starting point.
The airbox was gone and had been replaced by a pod filter, so I reversed that modfication – it didn’t look right.
We went to replace the headers and found out – as is common with the RB30 engine – it had a number of broken exhuast studs. And when we went to remove them we found out someone had previously
“THESE WERE A STANDARD LOOKING CAR WITH A LOT OF GTS BITS ON THEM”
“CHANGING IT TO GTS HEADERS MADE A BIG IMPROVEMENT IN PERFORMANCE”
carried out a repair and they had gone into the water jacket in the head.
At that stage we decided to pull the head off and get everything fixed properly, including new head studs. If nothing else, it meant we had some peace-of-mind when we put it back together, knowing it should last.
Changing it to
GTS headers made a big improvement in performance.
In contrast, the transmission was fine. It had done very few miles and really just needed a service.
The cosmetics were mixed, but overall it wasn’t too bad when we got it. But there were a couple of issues.
Under the fingerprint dust, it looked like the front of the car had been washed with a scouring pad! We took the scratches out and sorted the inevitable minor dents you find on a car this age.
Inside it’s very eighties. Being a down-market model, it didn’t score velour seat trim, which is probably a good thing. Instead it has pretty straight-forward cloth, which is much easier on the eye.
There are some issues to watch for with the interior on these. The poor old R31s don’t really like the sun, so the tops of the door trims tend to shrivel up. I pulled them all off and got a local trimmer, A&H Trim, to replenish them.