Post by Ben Taylor-Fuller on Sept 4, 2018 15:53:11 GMT
Hey guys!
So I thought I’d quickly introduce myself first, I’m Ben and I’m the founder/admin of ModNutz. As likely the case with most of you, I have loved cars from an early age but I didn’t properly start delving into them until I acquired my first one in 2016, once graduating uni. This was a 95 Laguna Blue Mk1 MX5 which was great until I started to quickly catch the modifying bug and visualised how I wanted it to look, white with black accents. As a result, I decided to purchase a white 96 Eunos import and started to take it down the route I had envisioned. This involved repainting a number of panels, painting the windscreen surround and hardtop black, smoothing the ducktail, flocking the interior, new wheels, fabricating a few custom parts and some other odd bits. I finally got the car to how I wanted it and loved how it looked for a while but decided the paint could have been a lot better so decided to look into professional resprays. I wanted to keep the car white and was going to go for Honda S2k white but with a fair few clean, white MX5s out there already, I didn’t want it to blend in so wondered how I could make it different. All of a sudden a Pit Crew Racing front bumper came up for sale and despite the price, I knew this would allow me to build something different so I snapped it up!
The build then snow balled from there with blending the bumper into fibreglass wings, acquiring a GV rear panel and blending that into the rear quarter panels and smoothing the belt line. Due to a lack of space, I then passed the car onto Tim Cross at Cross Auto Restorations to finish off the bodywork and paint. Tim did such an incredible job, I ended up taking it back to him to get the bay smoothed and painted. The car was almost where I wanted it but the XXR wheels let it down so I purchased a set of SSR Star Sharks from Malaysia, restored these, sent them off to Tim to paint and fitted them. The car then reached a point where I didn’t want to change it! I never thought the day would come but in my eyes, the car was finished. I soon realised that the reason I loved the car so much was because I was learning so much whilst working on it. It wasn’t long until I started getting agitated and wanted to take on another project. I looked into a number of different cars and after proposing lots of options to myself, I decided I fancied a classic pickup truck!
I looked into a number of different trucks and thought the Mazda B2200 would be a good cheap project to continue to learn new skills, with needing lots of custom fabrication but after realising the amount of work needed to make it how I wanted, paired with the weight of it (around 1300kg), I decided to look into other options. This is when I stumbled upon the Datsun Sunny. I had previously seen a couple of these at shows with the Hakatora front end and with the Hakosuka being my dream car, I loved the look of them but thought they were just a little too much for what they were. However the more I read into them, the more I wanted one, with a huge amount of information available and a weight of only around 700kg, I knew this was the next project for me!
At the time, the Pit Crew was up for sale but with little serious interest, I decided to advertise it on Datsun Club UK, on the off chance of a swap, asking any Sunny owners if they would be interested in a deal. Ross Hancox then messaged me proposing his bare shell Sunny project and after some consideration, I decided to take it on! So here it is, the build thread of the next project! I hope you enjoy!
Sunday 2nd September was D Day! A day of very mixed emotions! We had just come back from JAE that morning and were anxiously waiting for the truck to be delivered. Seeing all the parts as we unloaded was super exciting but seeing the Pit Crew being trailered off was a little heart breaking! But anyway, enough of the Pit Crew, this is about the Sunny! We unloaded the shell and a number of parts into the newly cleared and painted garage, with other parts overflowing into the house and then drove back up north for my last week of work. The next update will come when I’m back with the truck, ready to start work!
So I thought I’d quickly introduce myself first, I’m Ben and I’m the founder/admin of ModNutz. As likely the case with most of you, I have loved cars from an early age but I didn’t properly start delving into them until I acquired my first one in 2016, once graduating uni. This was a 95 Laguna Blue Mk1 MX5 which was great until I started to quickly catch the modifying bug and visualised how I wanted it to look, white with black accents. As a result, I decided to purchase a white 96 Eunos import and started to take it down the route I had envisioned. This involved repainting a number of panels, painting the windscreen surround and hardtop black, smoothing the ducktail, flocking the interior, new wheels, fabricating a few custom parts and some other odd bits. I finally got the car to how I wanted it and loved how it looked for a while but decided the paint could have been a lot better so decided to look into professional resprays. I wanted to keep the car white and was going to go for Honda S2k white but with a fair few clean, white MX5s out there already, I didn’t want it to blend in so wondered how I could make it different. All of a sudden a Pit Crew Racing front bumper came up for sale and despite the price, I knew this would allow me to build something different so I snapped it up!
The build then snow balled from there with blending the bumper into fibreglass wings, acquiring a GV rear panel and blending that into the rear quarter panels and smoothing the belt line. Due to a lack of space, I then passed the car onto Tim Cross at Cross Auto Restorations to finish off the bodywork and paint. Tim did such an incredible job, I ended up taking it back to him to get the bay smoothed and painted. The car was almost where I wanted it but the XXR wheels let it down so I purchased a set of SSR Star Sharks from Malaysia, restored these, sent them off to Tim to paint and fitted them. The car then reached a point where I didn’t want to change it! I never thought the day would come but in my eyes, the car was finished. I soon realised that the reason I loved the car so much was because I was learning so much whilst working on it. It wasn’t long until I started getting agitated and wanted to take on another project. I looked into a number of different cars and after proposing lots of options to myself, I decided I fancied a classic pickup truck!
I looked into a number of different trucks and thought the Mazda B2200 would be a good cheap project to continue to learn new skills, with needing lots of custom fabrication but after realising the amount of work needed to make it how I wanted, paired with the weight of it (around 1300kg), I decided to look into other options. This is when I stumbled upon the Datsun Sunny. I had previously seen a couple of these at shows with the Hakatora front end and with the Hakosuka being my dream car, I loved the look of them but thought they were just a little too much for what they were. However the more I read into them, the more I wanted one, with a huge amount of information available and a weight of only around 700kg, I knew this was the next project for me!
At the time, the Pit Crew was up for sale but with little serious interest, I decided to advertise it on Datsun Club UK, on the off chance of a swap, asking any Sunny owners if they would be interested in a deal. Ross Hancox then messaged me proposing his bare shell Sunny project and after some consideration, I decided to take it on! So here it is, the build thread of the next project! I hope you enjoy!
Sunday 2nd September was D Day! A day of very mixed emotions! We had just come back from JAE that morning and were anxiously waiting for the truck to be delivered. Seeing all the parts as we unloaded was super exciting but seeing the Pit Crew being trailered off was a little heart breaking! But anyway, enough of the Pit Crew, this is about the Sunny! We unloaded the shell and a number of parts into the newly cleared and painted garage, with other parts overflowing into the house and then drove back up north for my last week of work. The next update will come when I’m back with the truck, ready to start work!
