hi im tying to find the best swap for my 1200 coupe i keep breaking axels.. i have a 12a rotary bridge in it i live in the states in california and i was wandering what car or truck to swap with no problems.. can any one help me please email me .. bigron905@aol.com

Don't take this the wrong way. I'm not slamming you with this reply.
I wanted to get that out before I said, since keeping the car all Nissan obviously isn't important to you, I'd suggest something domestic. If you did want to stick with a Nissan rear, the truck axles are fairly manley. However they will be six lug rather than four.
My vote, for what it's worth, is a Ford 9" narrowed to fit. Can't bust 'em and ratios out the Wazoo.

There was a 13B turbo 1200 coupe drag car in Australia ( a yellow one in Fast Fours or Hot 4's a year or two ago that had a shortened Nissan TRX diff in it. But I think that it was an auto so it wasn't as hard on the diff.
My friend was building a 2 litre L18 engine and putting it in his 1200 coupe and he used a modified VL commodore turbo rear diff. Which should be the same as skyline diff roughly... Cos you wont be having commodores over there...

Toyota Hilux diffs are very strong...you will probably still need to have it shortened coz I think from memory they are around 80-90mm wider. However the axles are about the same diameter as Ford 9"...they are huge! You can swap around diffheads using Hilux, Surf etc to get the right ratio and the bonus is that most of them are Limited Slip.
Hope this helps.

it looks like you are in calif. you should be able to get 510, 610,710 station wagon rears. gears are avail from nissan comp.& a limited slip also. check it out, they are strong. as per a p/u rear, i think the axels are the same lenth & has gears in it. ck it out, it my be a cheep way to go. god luck. dfx.

Heyaz!

I have had a good look into diff upgrades as there are quite a few options.

You can practically get any diff into a 1200. Just weighing up practabilty, cost, performance, what the cars used for, what further options it has, and reliability.

My choice was the BorgWarner LSD commonly found in Skylines, VL, VN, Falcon etc.. Wheel base cut down to, from memory, 1402mm. It uses Skyline rotors, calipers and a modified tail shaft. These diffs will not break. Parts are easily swapable and available. And quite easy to fit.

There will be articles in the NSection with diff upgrades when up and working.

Niscoupe. Do u have more info on the Hilux diff swap? Like which models are best or which ones have disc brakes, LSD etc? Any info is great, and will be added to the Nsection. Anyone else have a diff upgrade?

Scott
Davo

The Skyline diff is ok, but does commonly experience problems in the Skyline which is not an overly powerful car - 117kW. I'm not sure of their torque output which would be more relevant. Just a word of caution if you are doing the conversion to cope with a powerful turbo motor. The diff rebuild to fix the probelm will cost around $900-$1000 (not including the conversion work of shortening housing, axles, and modified mounts)

my vote goes to the ford 9 incher as well.all the rotary drag cars here in australia seem to end up fitting one,so just do it now.theres also availability to think of,any large ford cruiser probably has one under it,so it should be easy to find one.hey,hot rod magazine & car craft used to have big ads for them,so i don't think you'll have a problem.(imho)((sorry,just had to say that))(((or is it in upper case to be even more h))).paul.ps dim my man,cool avatar,that dancing hobbs,way cool.

Scott, I'll see what I can find out. I did mine around 5 years ago now and can't remember what the exact configuration was. From memory I used a Hilux diff housing and axles and a Surf LSD diffhead. As I said before, the axles would be as big as the ford 9"...the advantage with the Toyota system is that there is a far better range of ratios. I needed to use a 5.3:1 and there is nothing like that in the Ford range.

As far as the brakes go I used Holden Barina (Suzuki Swift) vented disc rotors which fit over the standard Datsun 4 stud pattern and I made up brackets to mount Mazda BFMR front calipers to suit. Using front calipers can be a problem as far as a handbrake goes, but being a rally car we are allowed to use a hydralic handbrake system. I am sure there would be some more decent sized rear calipers available that could be used to overcome the handbrake problem if needed but the above setup works really well for me.

Some time ago I heard someone had done a hilux diff conversion and had to have it shortened I believe depending on the width to suit you car you can get away with only cutting one side (long side) and get another short side axle into the shortened end with standard hilux drums. This would be a budget job though. If you wanted Disc brakes I'm not sure what is required. Also I asked about having LSD and an Air locker fitted at Opposite Lock....this would be a weapon. There are so many options on this diff... Hope I made sense.