Marcus’ Datsun 510: In His Blood
Marcus Fry grew up around it. His dad, now 84, still builds race motors and doesn’t look like stopping anytime soon. “Dad started with undercover cop car motors, then moved into racing; building domestic V8s for Trans Am racers and dragsters, as well as a few cigarette boats,” he said with pride.
Having Chevrolet in his blood, Marcus was destined to put a big motor in his project car. Before that, however, Marcus picked up his first Datsun 510 and proceeded to swap a Nissan SR20DET into it. “I’d been building it into a drift car without knowing it,” he began. “The motor never failed me, and I found the limits of what the stock ECU would handle as far as injector duty cycle was concerned.
“The Nissan ECU has four injector drivers on the board. They’re not supposed to go to 100%, and a factory ECU has no protections, so the actual circuit on the board would pop a fuse and burn through the board’s resin finish. So, I opened it up, repaired the board with an external wire jumping past the damaged section, and kept pushing twelve pounds of boost, which was good for about 220 horsepower. Running a tiny tire made it feel like it had 1000 horsepower.”
Eventually, Marcus got used to the power output and started looking for a realistic way to double it. He found his first LS1 for $1,800, completed the swap in backyard, and then then added his own custom rack and pinion conversion to modernize the aging platform somewhat. Unfortunately, that steering system came with a few quirks he had to learn about the hard way. “I wasn’t prepared for how it would work, so I ended up hitting an embankment and putting it on the side,” he recalled.
After a few years of courting danger on Santa Cruz’s backroads, he realized he should take fewer risks by taking the 510 to the track. “At the time, I was going to the ThunderDrift Pro-Am competition, dived into drifting, and won my Formula D license a year later.”
The car was meant to be the oldest car in Formula Drift. To make it competitive, he stripped the shell down to the bare bones, media blasted it, and began installing his own parts. “It was a great test to build my own suspension components; the entire rear end is my own design. The front end is strut, but I added an AE86 Corolla’s power steering rack.
Then he installed a mildly cammed LS3 with a Hillborn 8-stack ITB intake. While it made an intoxicated 455 wheel horsepower – plenty for a 2,000 pound car — he grew tired of the regular tire changes and limited seat time in drifting.
As if the gods wanted him to take a break, just as he’d finished putting his monster together, FD changed their rulebook so dramatically that it would make the car impossible to finish without totally rebuilding the rear end. That coincided with a realization and a corresponding career shift.
Fabrication was a fulfilling but tiring way to make a living. Fortunately, Marcus Fry Racing Enterprises had taken off, but building custom parts stretched him thin, he sought out a more stable source of income. He closed his shop doors and soon took on a job at Tesla.
Having a 9-5 job also gave him the free time to focus on his own driving. When he could allocate a spare half—hour, he would focus on social media, which introduced him to Annex Suspension, who were interested in building him a custom set of coilovers.
“Annex made me a set of coilovers which worked with my custom rear design. We corner balanced the car, measured the unsprung weight, and they gave their guess as far as what spring rates should be, then sent me a set of dampers he believed to suit those rates.”
“It worked well; the car started doing exactly what I wanted it to. After getting petitioned at one Optima Ultimate Street Car event, I decided to get into time trials.
The repurposed drift car started showing its shortcomings on the road course. “The rear trailing arms didn’t work well and one broke under the load. I realized it needed an overhaul to become a road course car, and I removed the secondary rear calipers, then changed castor and camber to a normal setting. Drift castor settings made tire temps uneven across the width of the tire, which cooked the outside shoulders and caused too much push. After that, I copied everything Troy Ermish had done with his championship winning Datsun and, with the suspension sorted, looked for a better motor.”
With a high compression 404ci LS2, complete with a full titanium drivetrain, he found a powerband that begins at four and carries until eight-five. Somewhere along the way, it makes 630 horsepower at the wheels. The wide powerband makes the current NASCAR-sourced Jerico’s four speeds more than sufficient.
The added power necessitated a Winters quickchange rear. At first, Winters’ track differential worked well enough, but it had a tendency to work in an on-off fashion because it wouldn’t engage without high torque loads. When he could manage the cost, he went to OS Giken 1.5-way with much more progressive and predictable engagement.
All this power and very little weight at the rear required he add aero. “It’s just undriveable over 100 without a rear wing,” he added. “The wing often gets referred to as an oversized Ikea table. That, and the front splitter assembly/canards have helped tremendously. The front end could still be better, but it’s fine for now.”
The current aero package keeps the car stable at speed and doesn’t cause excessive drag. At PIR, he hit nearly 170 mph at PIR along the back straight, and the big bumps there didn’t cause him much concern.
More grip and much more straightline speed put real strain on the binders, so, through his growing social media presence, he partnered with Wilwood and tested several different models of their brakes. The best fitting set uses a larger master cylinder, sealed and ducted rotors, and Wilwood caliper pressure gauges to optimize the six-piston fronts and four-piston rears. The front uses a thick 14” rotor, while the rear rotor measures 11 ¾”.
“In the future, I might add a floating rotor setup. The small issue I have currently have had is pad knockback,” he elaborated. Other than that, the monster has been running flawlessly and without any noticeable shortcomings.
Everything you see here is evidence of me wanting to keep going faster. I’m pretty bad with money, and I’m much happier building things, which is why I’ve done so much of this little car myself. I always liked the 510 – not the easiest car to make fast, but that’s part of its charm.”
