Post by CHRMCX on Feb 2, 2018 6:05:58 GMT
Greetings everyone!
I'm Casey, and this is my dream car.
Yeah, my dream car is an early 90's entry level Nissan sports coupe/liftback, that was originally intended to be purchased by office workers, hairdressers, and old people.
Man, that sounds lame. Oh well. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
Here's where we start, back in April of 2013:
Damn. What a pile of junk.
I bought this car as a running, driving, rust free 1992 240SX, from a high school age kid, here in Central Illinois. I get it, you're asking me, "What the hell Casey, why would you buy that piece of scrap?!"
Well I'll tell you why. Most of the S-Chassis Nissans you see in my area, look like this:
(Shoutout to my friend Jared, who made me drive this bucket for 45 minutes on the interstate so he could get it home. I just about fell through the floor.)
Well obviously I don't want anything to do with that.
Here's the other reason I bought it:
Ahh, the venerable S13 SR20DET. That plus the chassis being from Florida originally, meaning no rust, made this purchase entirely worth the asking price.
To be honest though, the car was in a pretty sorry state. It had been spray painted army green, over what appears to have been a single stage blue paintjob, over the OEM paint. (DH0 Color code, "Juniper Green Metallic")
I won't bore you with the boring details of this car, other than it used to be dark green with tan and brown leather interior, and at one point had the junk KA24DE engine (Yeah, you heard me KA bois) and an automatic transmission, and was owned by a little old lady in Miami, Florida for the first 73,000 miles and 12 years of its existence.
Here's some pictures, progressing from old to new:
(Previous owner's photo of the car when he first bought it. I still have no idea what possessed him to spray paint this thing army green.)
Day after I bought the car.
Interior right after I bought the car.
After some initial cleanup
Swapped in black interior, major upgrade. Too bad I took most of that back out later on. That was a dumb idea.
I bought this car with the intention of learning how to work on cars. Boy did I learn. Here I am replacing leaking coolant lines under the intake manifold! Up until this point, the most I'd ever done to my own cars was change the oil, rotate tires, and MAYBE do spark plugs or other basic maintenance stuff. Never a repair that involved removing a lot of components.
One of two times this car has seen snow. It was terrible having to watch this thing sit under a snow bank for months, waiting to be loved again.
After being removed from the snow, I got to work taking the car apart to ensure there weren't any major issues, and to straighten up whatever I could.
I also started the impossible task of cleaning up the engine bay. This is still an ongoing effort.
This is basically how the car looked for about 2 years. I added the Xenon front lip, lost the Carbon Fiber hood in an unfortunate incident involving me forgetting to put the hood pins back in, and painted the core support a cool red and white color. I also did a lot of overdue maintenance and cleanup to the drivetrain, cleaned up and repaired a lot of very poorly done wiring, and made small improvements where I could.
I also drove the crap out of it. Thanks to Jared for this cool photo!
At some point I picked up a better looking (and fitting) front end.
Then I put the rear bumper back on, and the front lip, and added some side skirts that didn't match at all!
Then I tore the whole thing apart.
Short of removing the subframes and fuel tank, I removed every single piece that bolted onto my S13.
It sat for a few months in this state, while I collected funds and parts to put it all back together, better than it was before.
I started sanding through the many layers of paint that coated the poor car, and repairing some points of the bodywork, including the giant dents that my (now destroyed) carbon fiber hood's vent left in the roof.
I had absolutely zero experience with bodywork up until this point. I still wouldn't exactly say I have any experience with bodywork actually. I'll definitely be paying a professional to do this the next time around.
The aforementioned collection of parts continued growing too, including some stuff I'd always wanted since I was just a daydreaming kid, reading import car magazines.
The time finally arrived to start laying down a new layer of primer for my forthcoming vinyl wrap to adhere to.
I'm not exactly sure what happened with this photo, but this is probably one of the first times the body and paint (or primer, in this case) looked fairly straight.
I didn't neglect the engine bay during this process either, since it was just as much a mess as the rest of the car.
I decided to go with a nice gunmetal color for the engine bay. Dark enough that it decently hides dirt, but light enough that if something major is leaking, you'll see it right away.
Then I started the vinyl wrap process. The wrap material I chose is 3M 1080 Series G12 Gloss Black
Wrap completed, awaiting reinstallation of all the components!
My stout little SR20, completely refreshed, and now with a Pulsar GTiR T28 hanging off the side!
In a feat I'm still fairly proud of, I reinstalled the engine and transmission all by my lonesome. And managed to not damage the core support or firewall!
Everything mechanical reassembled and in its place!
And the car returned to a drivable state!
The re-assembled engine bay:
This is how the car looked for most of the late 2016/early 2017 period. I later added some interior upgrades that I'd always wanted since I was a kid, namely a Defi VSD-X Hud, and a Greddy E-01 Boost Controller.
Most recently, I've made some appearance changes. I swapped in 5 lug hubs, changed out my 17" 5zigen ProRacer ZR+520s for a set of 18" SSR Agle HPs, and added some OEM Aero, consisting of Middle-Term (Chuki) 180SX side skirts, and a Canadian market 240SX Super HICAS model rear valance. I also recently added a Kenwood hideaway Sat/Nav/DVD headunit.
Here's some current pictures:
Thanks for coming to check it out! I'll update this post as I upload more photos and continue to make changes to the car!
I'm Casey, and this is my dream car.
Yeah, my dream car is an early 90's entry level Nissan sports coupe/liftback, that was originally intended to be purchased by office workers, hairdressers, and old people.
Man, that sounds lame. Oh well. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
Here's where we start, back in April of 2013:
Damn. What a pile of junk.
I bought this car as a running, driving, rust free 1992 240SX, from a high school age kid, here in Central Illinois. I get it, you're asking me, "What the hell Casey, why would you buy that piece of scrap?!"
Well I'll tell you why. Most of the S-Chassis Nissans you see in my area, look like this:
(Shoutout to my friend Jared, who made me drive this bucket for 45 minutes on the interstate so he could get it home. I just about fell through the floor.)
Well obviously I don't want anything to do with that.
Here's the other reason I bought it:
Ahh, the venerable S13 SR20DET. That plus the chassis being from Florida originally, meaning no rust, made this purchase entirely worth the asking price.
To be honest though, the car was in a pretty sorry state. It had been spray painted army green, over what appears to have been a single stage blue paintjob, over the OEM paint. (DH0 Color code, "Juniper Green Metallic")
I won't bore you with the boring details of this car, other than it used to be dark green with tan and brown leather interior, and at one point had the junk KA24DE engine (Yeah, you heard me KA bois) and an automatic transmission, and was owned by a little old lady in Miami, Florida for the first 73,000 miles and 12 years of its existence.
Here's some pictures, progressing from old to new:
(Previous owner's photo of the car when he first bought it. I still have no idea what possessed him to spray paint this thing army green.)
Day after I bought the car.
Interior right after I bought the car.
After some initial cleanup
Swapped in black interior, major upgrade. Too bad I took most of that back out later on. That was a dumb idea.
I bought this car with the intention of learning how to work on cars. Boy did I learn. Here I am replacing leaking coolant lines under the intake manifold! Up until this point, the most I'd ever done to my own cars was change the oil, rotate tires, and MAYBE do spark plugs or other basic maintenance stuff. Never a repair that involved removing a lot of components.
One of two times this car has seen snow. It was terrible having to watch this thing sit under a snow bank for months, waiting to be loved again.
After being removed from the snow, I got to work taking the car apart to ensure there weren't any major issues, and to straighten up whatever I could.
I also started the impossible task of cleaning up the engine bay. This is still an ongoing effort.
This is basically how the car looked for about 2 years. I added the Xenon front lip, lost the Carbon Fiber hood in an unfortunate incident involving me forgetting to put the hood pins back in, and painted the core support a cool red and white color. I also did a lot of overdue maintenance and cleanup to the drivetrain, cleaned up and repaired a lot of very poorly done wiring, and made small improvements where I could.
I also drove the crap out of it. Thanks to Jared for this cool photo!
At some point I picked up a better looking (and fitting) front end.
Then I put the rear bumper back on, and the front lip, and added some side skirts that didn't match at all!
Then I tore the whole thing apart.
Short of removing the subframes and fuel tank, I removed every single piece that bolted onto my S13.
It sat for a few months in this state, while I collected funds and parts to put it all back together, better than it was before.
I started sanding through the many layers of paint that coated the poor car, and repairing some points of the bodywork, including the giant dents that my (now destroyed) carbon fiber hood's vent left in the roof.
I had absolutely zero experience with bodywork up until this point. I still wouldn't exactly say I have any experience with bodywork actually. I'll definitely be paying a professional to do this the next time around.
The aforementioned collection of parts continued growing too, including some stuff I'd always wanted since I was just a daydreaming kid, reading import car magazines.
The time finally arrived to start laying down a new layer of primer for my forthcoming vinyl wrap to adhere to.
I'm not exactly sure what happened with this photo, but this is probably one of the first times the body and paint (or primer, in this case) looked fairly straight.
I didn't neglect the engine bay during this process either, since it was just as much a mess as the rest of the car.
I decided to go with a nice gunmetal color for the engine bay. Dark enough that it decently hides dirt, but light enough that if something major is leaking, you'll see it right away.
Then I started the vinyl wrap process. The wrap material I chose is 3M 1080 Series G12 Gloss Black
Wrap completed, awaiting reinstallation of all the components!
My stout little SR20, completely refreshed, and now with a Pulsar GTiR T28 hanging off the side!
In a feat I'm still fairly proud of, I reinstalled the engine and transmission all by my lonesome. And managed to not damage the core support or firewall!
Everything mechanical reassembled and in its place!
And the car returned to a drivable state!
The re-assembled engine bay:
This is how the car looked for most of the late 2016/early 2017 period. I later added some interior upgrades that I'd always wanted since I was a kid, namely a Defi VSD-X Hud, and a Greddy E-01 Boost Controller.
Most recently, I've made some appearance changes. I swapped in 5 lug hubs, changed out my 17" 5zigen ProRacer ZR+520s for a set of 18" SSR Agle HPs, and added some OEM Aero, consisting of Middle-Term (Chuki) 180SX side skirts, and a Canadian market 240SX Super HICAS model rear valance. I also recently added a Kenwood hideaway Sat/Nav/DVD headunit.
Here's some current pictures:
Thanks for coming to check it out! I'll update this post as I upload more photos and continue to make changes to the car!
