hey just wondering when fiiting the stumpy box into the 1200 ute do you just plate the floor and fabricate a custom crossmember to suit? if so can they be engineered like that? any help from anyone who has done it would be appreciated.

It depends on what motor you are running and what type of stumpy box you are using. If you are talking about a R30 skyline box then there will be some issues but with a stanza stumpy box there shouldn't be any dramas. What donk is it?

yeah im putting ca18det in the ute with the r30 box. the engine has been upgraded a little and i am mainly worried about torque issues, stress, cracks and vibration issues. i have seen it done like this but i would like to spend more time in the car driving it rather than underneath it welding it all back up.

from memory Maddat does a good quality gearbox cross member, but its pretty easy to fabricate on yourself, just do a search on the left hand side there should be a heap of pictures and threads to help you in your pursuits.

yeah thanks steveo that helped alot looks like im off to the steel shop and into the shed for the rest of night thanks

your running an R30 box and your worried about the torque hurting the crossmember and mounts? pretty sure the box will be the first thing to go

the 2 stumpy boxes ive had behind my L series have both gotten fair noisy, one had new bearings and lasted about an hours driving with only one good stab and it got noisy
and the 2nd to 3rd gap is rather annoying

much better off running an 71c instead in my opinion

but heres how i did my crossmember

well mate now you say this some things make sense, i bought this gearbox from a fella who used to be on this site (ca18detman) who had an awesome 1200 coupe. he rebuilt the box after it failed on him and was putting the silvia 5 speed in.......hhmmm.

the pics are really helpful and was wondering is that a solid plate welded to the chassis rail and the floor? hard to tell if its solid. thanks again for your help

nah its not solid plate, its just like 2mm pannel steel with a plate inside with 6 nuts welded to it
its just stock 180b gearbox crossmember mounts cut out of the 180b and shortened slightly

and a standard 180b gearbox crossmember

yeah it definately looks a bit more professional than what i had in mind

the 71c gearbox is that from the vanette?

71c is found behind CA20e CA18de CA18det SR20de and SR20det

so its the silvia/180sx gearbox

apparently the strength changes in them...but im pretty sure that the CA18det and SR20de box is the same thing and the SR20det box just has a taller 5th and supposedly double sincros on some gears
but externally they are the same(apart from bellhousing) and all will go well behind a turbo CA
obviously you will need to change the bellhousing if you get an SR box