Hi All,
Thought I would start a thread on here so I can keep tabs on the progress of work on my S13. I will start by saying I am an IT Technician will a basic understanding of cars, by no means a mechanic!
Starting from the pictures on facebook, I could see it was a drift missile and had been built for just that. The spec I received was:
1993 200sx
Manual
93xxx miles
Rocket bunny front bumper, spoiler and skirts
Welded diff
Stripped interior
Sleepy eyes
Possible headgasket failure
From the pictures on facebook it looked okay, so I asked him for a price and more pictures. The pics I got from him showed it was a little rougher than I had imagined, but not too far gone. It has been painted in the baby blue matte finish you will see later, and it was a bit hacked together. No disrespect to the previous owner at all, it was built for purpose, not a show car.
Times and a price was agreed and a friend of mine when and collected it whilst I was away for a week. Longest week wait ever! Once I got back, I went to see it as soon as I could and took these pictures:
My plan all along has been to pull the motor in favour something a little more special. Original plans have since changed but all that much. I managed to move the car into a workshop where I could work on it out of the elements. First job on the list was a compression test… didn’t go well!
Not the worst news in the world as I wanted to pull it anyway but I wanted to keep it moving under its own steam ideally. The car had a real issue with starting too (which I posted about) so decided that the engine is coming out regardless! Current plans are:
RB25DET Swap – switchable maps. End power 350/450 maps
Full strip down and respray
Chase Rust remove/repair
Full rocketbunny kit
Half cage
Replace welded diff
First job was to start stripping the car. I wanted everything off it. The kit, wings, engine, loom etc so started as I meant to go on!
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The loom has been hacked about to make the lights work, and the side repeaters seem to have their own special section of the loom made. All the wiring hasn’t been done well if I am honest so I am left to either chase it and repair or replace the loom
At this point I have assessed the car a bit further and other than surface rust in the bay and on the top strut it looks fairly solid! The sills need some work (quell surprise!) but I don’t know if that is surface at the moment or deeper within. The car has been undersealed in its life which is handy, unless its to hide something!
I have stripped pretty much everything I can body wise for now, so it was time to get the engine out! For someone of my mechanical skill (I can service cars and change brakes but not much further than that) this was a bit of a learning curve! I had some assistance which made it easier, but after an hour or so it was out!
So far, I am very pleased with the car, it will be a fair amount of work but there isn’t really much of a deadline other than I have said I would like it done inside two years! I have already had some challenges but nothing major in my eyes. Something that has made me laugh so far is some of the workmanship in its previous life, and the wing mirror cover shows the mentality!
Updates will be fairly frequent I hope, but depends how much time I get to work on it. Next up is to get it in the air and strip all the underseal off and see how the car looks under it. Then subframes and tank are coming down to be refurbed and refitted!
Cheers!