Post by cas on Apr 14, 2013 0:50:22 GMT 2
Way to post a project thread as she is now selling the car due to impending emigration plans etc but this is my wifes 200sx. The paint and decor is all her work, inlet, Alloy polishing polishing courtesy of John the polisher (total hero) and I put all the bits together into a car Been on the road 2 or 3 years now and I've been meaning to post a project thread for time...
No real performance mods to speak of bar exhaust and K&N but its a road car with good potential. Started out as a standard red S13 with white front end panels (cant find those pics, looked like shit anyhoo sure you can imagine it) and after a couple of weeks of driving it like that this process started:
note one of 2 donor cars behind it that we have used over the course of ownership, both of those were total rotters and ended up banger raced:
Some say bore size/backpressure is irrelevant on any turbocharged application, if you have ever driven a mostly stock CA S13 with a 3 inch system and one with a 2.5, BIG difference in low end torque driveability, nothing noticeable top end, so the beatiful custom 2.5" elbow back pipe that Sean made when the car was his stayed. Sounds about as good as it gets for a standard CA 4banger...
Roof decorated:
Yes it DID have a kroozin sticker on the tailgate from the donor car
Who let the lady loose with more of her home made stencils?
The skulls are actually UV reactive paint, the colour of jizz by day, halloween green under blacklight (and they stay glowing for a bit, will post pics of this later)
So by now you are thinking 'so what? your missus has bastardised an S13 with rattle cans, nothing new there...'
...Pretty much, that's why no project thread until now, keep reading if you are not asleep or looking at Brazilian fart sites by now...
...She added this which was noteworthy, hands she made from scratch, skull was a prop bought from a shop:
I added some LED's at her request, first bit of work I actually did to the car bar wheels off/on for paint and basic maintenance. (I didn't even help her prep it for paint
)
And soooooooo....
...the car was driven like that for a while, it didn't have a hard life as she had use of a works van, so it was used every coupla days and took out on weekends.
It had a bleed valve fitted I set this up (with the cheapo boost gauge that came fitted to the car) at about 0.8 bar (0.9 max spike) and with this in mind it used to get the odd bootful but never thrashed mercilessly as I had warned her about the joy of these:
But alas even with regular oil changes and a sympathetic driver (not me)
we began to hear that lovely telltale rattle at cold start and under warm load,
you had to listen carefully (I picked it up because i know it well) but it was there.
I told her to keep driving it until it threw a rod and just change the engine but when it got loud enough that she could clearly identify it I was told to haul the engine out of donor car #2 ;D
Anyway, this was where shit got real, with the engine out of WOB she saw the rust behind the welded mot repair plate in the engine bay:
And somewhere between her saying 'That needs sorting' and me saying 'you may as well do it now with the engine out, it wont take that long' (haha)
This happened:
My angle grinding of the old rust (repair panel was actually really good, just wish he had cut the old rot out) ad Kerry's paintwork skills yielded this:
Its like kawasaki green but its UV reactive, although when test spraying it on some old MDF we found it was like water and found some obsolete rover putrefacted mushy pea baby shit green made the best basecoat for a vivid finish. And ensured the rover color in those cans would never get used or seen as the outside finish for anything.
I got busy with the refit, removing the ABS along the way, re-wrapping the engine and engine bay wiring harnesses/looms while kerry painted and handed more bits for me to fit, along with cups of tea, emotional blackmail to keep me working in the dark and cold on the driveway and the odd verbal lashing when I had too many nights in a row off ;D
(yes I know!)
Anyways it was also decided at some point that putting a standard grubby motor in this bay would be a total travesty, so like the engine bay refit everything on the engine had to be meticulously polished, painted or licked clean. We decided for time reasons as the motor was sweet and leak free to just strip it to a long block and not disturb the sump or head gaskets. A complete gasket set was purchased and EVERYTHING else was stripped off it bar taking the cams out of the head.
Shame not to modify it but its only a chocolate CA and I didn't want to get into building a motor up or I may as well have rebuilt the original which would have defeated the object of a quick (haha) engine swap, so It *just* ended up having cam seals, cam cover gaskets, every single inlet and exhaust gasket, and the obligatory cam belt plugs and oil and filter change. water pump was checked ok and any hoses that looked or felt soft/hard/perished were replaced. Stainless steel jubilee clips were used throughout. A used but turbo techinics rebuilt turbo from the donor car was fitted (and still smokes occasionally but nowhere near as bad)
I detemined which mounting lugs i needed on the inlet and ground the others off smooth, and john polished that along with the crank angle sensor (driven off the exhaust cam at the front of the engine)
Other parts were cleaned and painted with laquer or chrome paint or finished with gloss or halfords metallic black (grey lol) hitemp paints (believe it or not the paint is still to this day holding true on the exhaust manifold even after I told Kerry it was a waste of time painting it oh me of little faith)
I was skeptical but chrome paint was a great alternative to wire brushing or sandblasting stuff only for it to go corroded and dull a week later, and it too still stands the test of time (although every part we painted was bare metalled and immediately painted to prevent early flaking)
Covers were painted gloss black as Kerry didn't like the factory go faster red.
She did experiment with glitter in the paint on the spare engine covers but it looked like a ten dollar hookers fake designer handbag, so that idea was dropped like a pissed rattlesnake...
Viscous fan was also painted UV reactive, check out Kerry's attention to detail on the hub too:
How far is too far? John polished the turbo inlet housing and pipe and The turbo elbow was also given the hitemp treatment:
Engine was then (very f*ckn carefully) lowered into the bay and bolted up. I'm a stickler for making sure everything is ready just to hook up, as I am too lazy to be trying to fit stuff in awkward places when access is bad.
Normally I fit the motor and trans together for the above reasoning but that usually results in unintentional paint removal from the bulkead, which could in turn have resulted in divorce proceedings (before we were even married.)
-Ignore my man-camel-toe, tank suit a size too small will do that for you when you bend over.
In and no damage; as this photo was taken I had a glass of neat whiskey and a huge blunt in my hand, and I was still shaking for a half an hour ;D (joking, kinda):
This pic the color looks odd for some reason, but gives you an idea of it all fitted up. The breather pipes got UV green paint too, another thing I said wouldn't take and did as it is still on there and not flaked off yet:
I'll try and get a better pic of that. Here's one of my awesome thumb fitting the crossover pipe for now. Thrilling shit.
Anyways, whilst on the axle stands with me fitting up the motor Kerry got even more carried away with the wire brush on the grinder and the hitemp and UV reactive paint:
I finally convinced her to spend some money (more than £80) on wheels as stockers are gash. Your wheels should at least be worth the same as what you paid for your car in the first place (aussies and mexicans are masters at this, but not normally in a tasteful matter)
(15)x8.5" wide rims with this kinda offset require wide arches, so thanks to rangerbob on the Retro Rides forum we got a set of very sensibly priced nice quality GRP arches (fenders):
They took a bit of work to fit (S13 arches are big, apparently)
Kerry said it was a ballache but to be fair I left her to it so don't know the details, it involved careful strategic cuts with a junior hacksaw to the lip, then glassfibre reinfocement and filling and elastic bonder reinforcement as a precaution.
We didn't mess with the stock arches underneath them yet, rubs on the rear lips if you hit a dip in the road hard, but thats partly because the stock rear dampers were too soft when they were new let alone 20 years down the line!
After deciding tape was a cool look but not over 40mph she opted for black self tappers which we knew would go rusty and look badass. Or shit if you are the sort of person to drive an immaculate BMW mini/1 series/other trendy fag car.
Final look:
Sorry about the picture quality some of them are Kerry's using my old phone,
I'll get her to take some better ones with the digi in the next few days!
Thanks for looking anyways, if nothing else it at least shows part of the reason for why my cars are still in bits ;D and that I am capable of putting SOMETHING back together!
No real performance mods to speak of bar exhaust and K&N but its a road car with good potential. Started out as a standard red S13 with white front end panels (cant find those pics, looked like shit anyhoo sure you can imagine it) and after a couple of weeks of driving it like that this process started:
note one of 2 donor cars behind it that we have used over the course of ownership, both of those were total rotters and ended up banger raced:
Some say bore size/backpressure is irrelevant on any turbocharged application, if you have ever driven a mostly stock CA S13 with a 3 inch system and one with a 2.5, BIG difference in low end torque driveability, nothing noticeable top end, so the beatiful custom 2.5" elbow back pipe that Sean made when the car was his stayed. Sounds about as good as it gets for a standard CA 4banger...
Roof decorated:
Yes it DID have a kroozin sticker on the tailgate from the donor car
Who let the lady loose with more of her home made stencils?
The skulls are actually UV reactive paint, the colour of jizz by day, halloween green under blacklight (and they stay glowing for a bit, will post pics of this later)
So by now you are thinking 'so what? your missus has bastardised an S13 with rattle cans, nothing new there...'
...Pretty much, that's why no project thread until now, keep reading if you are not asleep or looking at Brazilian fart sites by now...
...She added this which was noteworthy, hands she made from scratch, skull was a prop bought from a shop:
I added some LED's at her request, first bit of work I actually did to the car bar wheels off/on for paint and basic maintenance. (I didn't even help her prep it for paint
)And soooooooo....
...the car was driven like that for a while, it didn't have a hard life as she had use of a works van, so it was used every coupla days and took out on weekends.
It had a bleed valve fitted I set this up (with the cheapo boost gauge that came fitted to the car) at about 0.8 bar (0.9 max spike) and with this in mind it used to get the odd bootful but never thrashed mercilessly as I had warned her about the joy of these:
But alas even with regular oil changes and a sympathetic driver (not me)
we began to hear that lovely telltale rattle at cold start and under warm load,
you had to listen carefully (I picked it up because i know it well) but it was there.
I told her to keep driving it until it threw a rod and just change the engine but when it got loud enough that she could clearly identify it I was told to haul the engine out of donor car #2 ;D
Anyway, this was where shit got real, with the engine out of WOB she saw the rust behind the welded mot repair plate in the engine bay:
And somewhere between her saying 'That needs sorting' and me saying 'you may as well do it now with the engine out, it wont take that long' (haha)
This happened:
My angle grinding of the old rust (repair panel was actually really good, just wish he had cut the old rot out) ad Kerry's paintwork skills yielded this:
Its like kawasaki green but its UV reactive, although when test spraying it on some old MDF we found it was like water and found some obsolete rover putrefacted mushy pea baby shit green made the best basecoat for a vivid finish. And ensured the rover color in those cans would never get used or seen as the outside finish for anything.
I got busy with the refit, removing the ABS along the way, re-wrapping the engine and engine bay wiring harnesses/looms while kerry painted and handed more bits for me to fit, along with cups of tea, emotional blackmail to keep me working in the dark and cold on the driveway and the odd verbal lashing when I had too many nights in a row off ;D
(yes I know!)
Anyways it was also decided at some point that putting a standard grubby motor in this bay would be a total travesty, so like the engine bay refit everything on the engine had to be meticulously polished, painted or licked clean. We decided for time reasons as the motor was sweet and leak free to just strip it to a long block and not disturb the sump or head gaskets. A complete gasket set was purchased and EVERYTHING else was stripped off it bar taking the cams out of the head.
Shame not to modify it but its only a chocolate CA and I didn't want to get into building a motor up or I may as well have rebuilt the original which would have defeated the object of a quick (haha) engine swap, so It *just* ended up having cam seals, cam cover gaskets, every single inlet and exhaust gasket, and the obligatory cam belt plugs and oil and filter change. water pump was checked ok and any hoses that looked or felt soft/hard/perished were replaced. Stainless steel jubilee clips were used throughout. A used but turbo techinics rebuilt turbo from the donor car was fitted (and still smokes occasionally but nowhere near as bad)
I detemined which mounting lugs i needed on the inlet and ground the others off smooth, and john polished that along with the crank angle sensor (driven off the exhaust cam at the front of the engine)
Other parts were cleaned and painted with laquer or chrome paint or finished with gloss or halfords metallic black (grey lol) hitemp paints (believe it or not the paint is still to this day holding true on the exhaust manifold even after I told Kerry it was a waste of time painting it oh me of little faith)
I was skeptical but chrome paint was a great alternative to wire brushing or sandblasting stuff only for it to go corroded and dull a week later, and it too still stands the test of time (although every part we painted was bare metalled and immediately painted to prevent early flaking)
Covers were painted gloss black as Kerry didn't like the factory go faster red.
She did experiment with glitter in the paint on the spare engine covers but it looked like a ten dollar hookers fake designer handbag, so that idea was dropped like a pissed rattlesnake...
Viscous fan was also painted UV reactive, check out Kerry's attention to detail on the hub too:
How far is too far? John polished the turbo inlet housing and pipe and The turbo elbow was also given the hitemp treatment:
Engine was then (very f*ckn carefully) lowered into the bay and bolted up. I'm a stickler for making sure everything is ready just to hook up, as I am too lazy to be trying to fit stuff in awkward places when access is bad.
Normally I fit the motor and trans together for the above reasoning but that usually results in unintentional paint removal from the bulkead, which could in turn have resulted in divorce proceedings (before we were even married.)
-Ignore my man-camel-toe, tank suit a size too small will do that for you when you bend over.
In and no damage; as this photo was taken I had a glass of neat whiskey and a huge blunt in my hand, and I was still shaking for a half an hour ;D (joking, kinda):
This pic the color looks odd for some reason, but gives you an idea of it all fitted up. The breather pipes got UV green paint too, another thing I said wouldn't take and did as it is still on there and not flaked off yet:
I'll try and get a better pic of that. Here's one of my awesome thumb fitting the crossover pipe for now. Thrilling shit.
Anyways, whilst on the axle stands with me fitting up the motor Kerry got even more carried away with the wire brush on the grinder and the hitemp and UV reactive paint:
I finally convinced her to spend some money (more than £80) on wheels as stockers are gash. Your wheels should at least be worth the same as what you paid for your car in the first place (aussies and mexicans are masters at this, but not normally in a tasteful matter)
(15)x8.5" wide rims with this kinda offset require wide arches, so thanks to rangerbob on the Retro Rides forum we got a set of very sensibly priced nice quality GRP arches (fenders):
They took a bit of work to fit (S13 arches are big, apparently)
Kerry said it was a ballache but to be fair I left her to it so don't know the details, it involved careful strategic cuts with a junior hacksaw to the lip, then glassfibre reinfocement and filling and elastic bonder reinforcement as a precaution.
We didn't mess with the stock arches underneath them yet, rubs on the rear lips if you hit a dip in the road hard, but thats partly because the stock rear dampers were too soft when they were new let alone 20 years down the line!
After deciding tape was a cool look but not over 40mph she opted for black self tappers which we knew would go rusty and look badass. Or shit if you are the sort of person to drive an immaculate BMW mini/1 series/other trendy fag car.
Final look:
Sorry about the picture quality some of them are Kerry's using my old phone,
I'll get her to take some better ones with the digi in the next few days!
Thanks for looking anyways, if nothing else it at least shows part of the reason for why my cars are still in bits ;D and that I am capable of putting SOMETHING back together!
