converting solid to irs?????

hey
im buying my mates s12, im not sure if its solid or irs, its an 85 gl ca20e. im guessing it will be solid, if so is it possible to convert it to irs??????
ta for the help

yes, all gazelles(aus 200sx) were solid axel if I'm not mistaken.

yes you can convert. dunno what's involved tho.

Only early gazelles in oz are solid, at around the end of 1985 they came out in IRS only instead. All IRS cars are hatches and they tend to not be top of the range models either for some reason.
The swap is fairly straight forward provided you have the complete IRS and preferably an IRS car for referance or to even cut the mounts out of.
I have done the swap myself, so if you have any questions just ask.

hey neb, were you able to get an engineers certificate when you converted it to IRS?

how hard is it to do? i guess you'd have to weld some diff mounts in as they are different to the live axle ones

i beleive cars built from 2/85 onwards were IRS (mine just missed out!!). i have seen a couple of IRS coupes though. didnt pay much attention to whether they were GLs or SGLs.

Only IRS coupes i have seen have been RSX turbos and stuff.
Yeah the IRS is easy to get engineered if the mounts you weld in a very similar to the ones that the factory used. In my case we made copies of the two front mounts and welded them in and i made a bolt on bracket for the diff hanger.
If you can fabricate with some level of skill then you will have no troubles.

Neb I've heard of the odd IRS Australian delivered coupe. I've seen a couple, they were all mk1 shape, (85-86), and are ca20e new delivery to Australia. So maybe they only sent mk1 IRS coupes here,(and not a lot), then for the mkII's they stopped sending coupes here.

Umai Naa, just one month off, I have a copy of a workshop manual with update dates in the General Information section. It says s12's for delivery to Australia, manufactured from 3/85 are all IRS, with R180 diffs. It has pics etc of the iRS in that section also. They wouldn't have arrived here till probably around July of 1985, as all Aust. Gazelles were completely manufactured in Japanese factories then imported into Aust.

About to say if it was late 85 to get IRS then why does mine say built in June 85 and it has IRS :P

I seriously do not see the whole fuss about it. AE86's have solid axle if i'm not mistaken and they are drifting old school machines....

Whats the big deal anyways?

Personally i love live axles BUT with the H190 diff in the S12 getting a LSD is next to impossible it seems so far, they used to make a Nismo centre it seems but i've yet to see anyone actually find one, i probably would have persisted if Gerrybg hadn't offered me a complete IRS dirt cheap so i went meh and got that and a long nose R200 LSD instead. If anyone does see a Nismo don't be put off by high price, an aftermarket LSD is an expensive but nessessary part if you ever want to drift.

Hugh the problem with the 4 link diff is the mounts don't take hi power torque real well. Almost everyone I have heard of with an sr20det or hipo ca18det in a 4 link Gazelle or 910 bluebird has had the problem of the mount on the floor for the link arms slowly tearing out of the floor due to the hi torque of the above motors. I know of one guy who had his car repair twice and reinforced the mount bracket, and it still happened. He gave up and found himself IRS and converted to that and it solved his problem, (to date).

Although if you re-enforce the floor (mostly by extending the left side chassis rail ful length, if you look under the car it's much shorter than the right one) than you can fix the problem before it starts. I've seen this done as well, it seems to be successfull.