Chopped and Swapped Classic Datsun Roadster With the Cleanest N A SR20 Ever!

What's up guys, Larry Chen here. I am at the SEMA show. Welcome to another episode of Hooning and Autofocus. I am at the Fortune Auto booth and I came across this awesome Datsun Roadster. I took a quick picture of it, posted it on Instagram and all of you guys are screaming at me, hey go back, you know, do a whole episode on it. That's what I'm doing, do a whole episode on it. I'm going to do a full shoot but the owner has to leave early unfortunately. So what I'm going to do is I'm going to interview him now and then we'll shoot the car later. So we got the builder slash owner extraordinaire right here. What's your name, where are you from? My name is Chris Bishop. I'm the owner of Japanese Classics. We're from Richmond, Virginia. Awesome, thank you so much for bringing this really unique, really cool build. Absolutely, thanks for checking it out. Yeah, so tell me a little bit about it. Yeah, actually I've owned this car for 12 years now. It was not like this for most of those years. We got together with Fortune Auto, they had asked us to build them a car for SEMA. The idea kind of came around that we should use something a little bit different, unique than you typically see at SEMA. So we decided to use this car, utilize the Fortune Auto coolers on it, kind of design the frame around those and then design kind of a 60s style race car but a little bit more refined than a race car. So that's kind of where the idea came from and how you see what's here now. So we left the body relatively stock but we changed a lot of small things on the body to kind of give it a different look than what you normally see. So the front fenders are actually completely stock on the car with the exception of we removed and shaved the side marker. On the rear of the car, the rear fenders, we added a flare which Alterior Motives in California helped us build. We gave them the measurements and the specs for what we wanted to do and achieve but would basically copy the front flare a little bit wider but how it gets very skinny towards the middle of the car and then flares out towards the outsides of the car so it has a natural appearance and could look OEM. That's kind of interesting that you never really notice until you point it out and I really like the fact that you kind of kept with that OEM look. Hey, what's up buddy? I'm sorry, I'm a huge fan. I'm a huge fan of Chris Cheveny's classics. This car, for the record, he kept such good secrets. When I came to visit them in Richmond, do you know how many pictures he showed me? Zero. Would not, wouldn't show me a thing. He just said like it's going to be unbelievable. You'll see it at Fortunato. This is, do you like, this is the new bar. Thank you. This is why I know Rutt is a true car nut, car fan guy. I mean because we were literally just shooting for what like two, three hours straight and then now I'm here. I thought I snuck away and then he finds me. I'm When your friend's car is here and they tell you how excited they are. Dude, this is incredible. Awesome, man. Thank you so much. I mean now, what's so funny is that y'all work hard every day to help other people's dreams come true, to bring GTRs and cars they've always dreamed about and look at what you did for you. I'm so happy you did this, man. What a great, it's unbelievable. Thank you. All right, get back to show later. Now that we got interrupted by But yeah, let's talk about the rear end. Did you change anything in the rear? Yeah, but there's very, very minor stuff that's changed in the rear. Underneath the bumper, we added this roll pan here, which you really can't see. The only other change in the rear is the exhaust. I like to be fun when we build cars and we built a Sunny truck that had a Yoshimura exhaust on it off of a motorcycle. So we did the same thing on this car just because I think it's fun. It's cool. It's different and I like the way it looks. It's oval instead of, up and down oval instead of sideways. This is so cool. This is the first thing I noticed when I looked at it from the back. I mean, as soon as you see that red logo with the white lettering, it just looks so cool. So tell me about the paint. The paint is actually really interesting. So it's based off the Alltech green color from the 80s. The reason we did that was the engine is Alltech S15 engine, but we tweaked the paint a bit. We did about 20 different spray outs until we came up with the color you see here. And I wanted it to look kind of vintage, but also a little modern, kind of like the rest of the car. I think we came up with a pretty good solution and I love the paint. I think it's cool. You don't see these cars in green very often, especially like a lighter green like this. It's a really cool color. You know, it actually reminds me of like the original Silvia. I think came in something similar to this. Similar. Yes. Yeah. SPL 310. Super cool. Yes. Very cool. All right. So let's move to the front here. All right. I see the engine already, but I'm not, I'm not going to talk about that. But what about the front? We made a custom front spoiler for the car. Restoration guys did a phenomenal job. I wanted it to be very simple, classic. There wasn't really anything on the market that fit the look I was looking for. So we just made one from scratch. We did make a mold of it. We may, you know, have some available in the future, but that's a long ways off. The other thing is the headlights. Everyone always comments on one yellow headlight. Why do you have one yellow headlight? No other reason than I like to have fun. Like the exhaust. I think it's a cool look in a lot of vintage race cars in the sixties and even today have yellow headlights. Yeah, I actually really, I noticed that also right away. I knew that wasn't a mistake because on a lot of rally cars, modern cars that race off-road Baja yellow honestly does cut through dust and debris. I feel like probably better. And that's kind of why most fog lights are yellow on race cars. But I do like that. It's just something different, something, but it's almost like it's winking at you, you know, which I think is pretty cool. But like, where did you get all of these, like all of these parts, this Chrome and everything, is that all new old stock or you just restored? A lot of it's new old stock and a lot of it's restored. I'd say half and half. So like the headlight surrounds and the headlight buckets, those are all re-chromed. The side markers on the fenders are actually new old stock. So it's a mix. What we could buy new, we did and what we couldn't, we restored. The interior, I think is probably one of the strongest points of this car. It blew me away when I looked at it. I mean, everything about it from the steering wheel to the gauges, to the seats, everything. So like, let's just start with the thing that's kind of screaming at me, the red leather. Yeah, absolutely. So this red leather is actually from Relicate. They do a phenomenal job at, you know, the colors and, you know, having that vintage feel and their vintage line. So we picked this as the Moroccan is the color and it's a really cool vintage feeling leather. We also went with their black inserts that are kind of woven. They have a woven embossed pattern to them. And then, you know, the dash is covered, this is covered, you know, the wheel wells, everything kind of matches. The door panels are one-off. We designed them in-house. If there was smell-o-vision, like me just standing here, I can't not smell. But like, it's just wafting with this awesome leather smell. It's super cool. It's like new car smell plus. So tell me about the dash and also the gauges. So the dash is actually a factory dash. It's stock. We powder-coated it. The gauges were sent to Global Tech, which is an airplane restoration company. What they did is they took the stock gauges, pulled them all apart. They put electronic internals into them. So the stock Datsun gauges work with the SR20 engine. So everything kind of works together now that they're modernized. But they still have the classic 60s look to them. The seats actually, the seats we made specifically for this car, these are completely one-off seats. We took a vintage Nismo seat and we cut it up until we were happy with the design and shape and until it fit the car. And we wanted the seat to be at the body line so that, you know, the seat didn't stick up past the body and, you know, it kind of breaks up the lines of the car. Yeah, that's kind of the one of the most important things about this car is that the only thing that's sticking up is like this tiny little windshield. Hot Rod guys have been doing this for years, right? Luckily, this was a low windshield car, which means that it had a windshield frame that was removable. So we took the windshield out, the stock windshield, and we used the lower frame as a mold for our plexiglass or acrylic windshield. We didn't actually make this windshield in-house. We sent it off somewhere to be made, but we have the template made. We sent it out and so it bolts through the bottom of the frame and it's completely removable. So we can put the stock windshield frame back on and the hardtop on as well. I love the theme throughout the car. I love all the little things. I mean, even the steering wheel is so nice. Thank you. Thank you so much. Did Momo make that one off for you? No, that's actually a stock product. It's nice because they use like this redwood. It kind of goes with the interior. It matches for wood very well with it. Even like that horn button, I'm sure you went out of your way to source something like that. Yeah. So I'm kind of like a, a bit of a hoarder of old Nismo stuff. So, uh, you know, the horn button, the valve cover, the shift knob, all that stuff, you know, that was a lot of, uh, time, uh, and collecting over the years. So. All right, now let's move on to the centerpiece, which of course is the engine. This is such a clean engine bay. And I love the fact that you didn't have to like modify the hood at all to kind of fit it. Tell me about this motor. Yeah. So this is a Alltech S15 SR20DE rated at 197 horsepower. It's made it to a five-speed SR20 transmission. Baristo Motorsports makes a mount kit for this car. They make a jig that you bolt to the frame and then weld the mounts onto the frame. It makes it super easy. The, uh, the header, uh, the radiator and the intake, uh, were all done by Freed Engineering and buddies of ours, uh, up in Maryland. They do phenomenal work. I told them I wanted a crazy cool octopus header and, you know, they made exactly what I had in my head. You know, the rest of the bay, we wanted to keep it as minimal as possible, you know, keep clutter out, you know, keep it kind of toned down a bit. The oil cap actually is a funny story because the, the oil cap is the stock oil cap off of the stock engine from this car. Oh, wow. And it fits. Yeah. So, well, no, it didn't fit. Yeah. We might, we cut both of the, the SR20 up and we cut the stock one up and kind of made one kind of paying homage to the original engine that was in the car. Yeah. I love that. I even love the, kind of that updated, uh, plate that garnish, I guess, that two liter 16 valve. That's, so what does this rev out to then? 75. Putting down 190 horsepower to the wheels? 197. It's rated at 197 to the crank. Oh, okay. Yep. Which honestly for a two liter and SR, I mean, usually, of course you guys all know SRs, turbos all day, but for someone to use a natural aspirated one on a car that weighs probably under 2000 pounds. Yeah. Right around 2000. Yeah. That is, uh, and the reason we went with a non-turbo is just because the cars is, you know, from the sixties personally, I don't like turbo noises coming from cars from the sixties. So I wanted it to kind of sound like it could be original going down the road, like a sound you would hear from a sixties race car. Wow. I love it. Everything, the shaved engine bay is so clean. And we built a, we had a custom engine plaque made for the car. Oh, that is so cool. That is unbelievable. I love it. I love it. Really good job. Thank you so much for bringing it out. I can't wait to shoot this. I think Rutledge can't wait for us to shoot this. Oh, and I have to mention because I'm in their booth and I could feel bad if I didn't. The car is on a Fortunato coilovers all the way around. So we did a custom four link suspension in the rear, utilizing their shocks and coilovers, built custom shock mounts in the front for it as well. So you can't buy them for the Datsun Roadster, but they do make fantastic products. I had custom coilovers made for my Datsun 240Z. Did you just take the stock ones and then cut them off and weld? No. So in the front, it's actually a spring with a shock. And so we cut the shock mount off of the frame completely. And we built basically a shock tower in the front to accommodate the Fortunato coilovers. I see. That's awesome. And it's cool that it's static the way it is. Yes, it is static. And Work also supplied us with the wheels for the build. And this is a brand new color for this year. So just wanted to shout out to them and Yeah, I love this four spoke look on this. I think it fits the style of the car really well. So I think Work nailed it. And thank you for running big meaty tires on it. Absolutely. Yeah. Like that's kind of the thing with old Japanese cars. You don't want to like do a crazy thin stretch. Yeah, definitely. It looks good. I love the look so much. Really good job. Thank you so much. All right. Well, that's it for this car. I hope you guys enjoyed all the b-roll and all the photos that played over this and stay tuned for more stuff from SEMA.