Body

Body

Of course, you can do this swap with the stock bodywork, but we preferred the look of the Silvia front end, and especially preferred the 24 lbs. we removed from the nose of the car. Swapping the bodywork is very straightforward, but there are a few things you need to note. You need to remove the pop-up headlights first to access all the bumper mounting bolts. Several bolts on each side hold the bumper and front fenders together. Once the bumpers are removed, the fenders come off easily.

When installing the Silvia parts, there are two vertical headlight support brackets in front of the radiator that need to be replaced with Silvia brackets, so be sure you get these with the body panels. Our front bumper came from a non-turbo Silvia, so we also had to cut an intercooler duct. Luckily we were able to trace the stock duct shape from a damaged turbo bumper, cut out a template, and trace the shape onto ours. To cut the holes, we used a hole saw and then ground away the plastic with an electric die grinder.