Simone - my 1996 240sx Build Thread

[137]

Welcome to my Build thread. If this is your first time here, after a few weeks after I update the build thread. I will thumbnail the full-size pictures so there is less strain on this server and my photobucket account. Here is the car when I got it, I plan on it looking completely different when I am done with it. This thread will be documenting the build of my 1996 240sx... Her name is Simone and for the most part she has down syndrome, because I spend a lot of my time driving her like this. Current/Previous modifications to the car can be seen in my "garage" Listed below are planned modifications The style for my car is heavily inspired by Nobuteru Taniguchi's Vertex Equipped s13/14/15 EXTERIOR Full Vertex Lang Aero Kit Vertex Headlights, Corners, & Turn Signals Version Select trunk lip and rear window spoiler. And Daimyo Vented FRP Hood Color will be 2008 Lexus Mica Graphite Grey paint I picked up this car from a kid who didn't know much about his 240sx but how to spend money unecessarily. The car became a headache for him so i picked it up for 8300 dollars. Granted the price was high and tons of other 240's sell for the same price. The car had about 8300 dollars worth of new parts on it (car wasn't drivable forever) so I knew eventually I'd be upside down on the car, but I knew it wasn't being beat to shit every other weekend too. Word, so the car has some goodies on it, and not so goodies. It's got wheels that shot for flushness and failed, spacers are definitely in order. A 2 way diff on it's way for a rebuild, some big brakes, some nice stance equipment and a nice little kit on it. and a half assed 97-98 front end conversion. Or had. Everything on the FSM picture on the far right is not even on the car, the bumper was held up by a makeshift tab in the middle and zip ties all around. Shit's weak! The roof is the second place of bodily interest on this shit heap... Alright story time... So this car originally is just a 240sx base model, it's not an SE... The car did not come with a sunroof, it actually had a regular sun roofless skin. The originating owner (not the ricer 2nd/3rd owner) wanted a sunroof and took this place to some fancy sunroof company in SD. Had a sunroof put in the car, and [freak]ed up the beautiful sun roofless car. Then the dipshit ricer drifter who bought the car plugged the sunroof improperly, had a shitty welding job done. Hence the warped roof, and lathered it with 2 gallons of bondo... which spidered off and well is just godamned unsafe really. So I purchased a new roof skin from Nissan and I will be welding it onto the roof with some help of a glass removal specialist and will be doing the following to the car as posted in my thread : <FONT COLOR="#FF00FF">It's not as scary as it looks...</FONT> The front end was damaged either by some street drifting or what not because the hood latch mount is bent all to shit and the edge of the rad support was broken and hanging on by the fender and not itself. Yet the owner still denies any foul play... [freak] it, my main gripe is that the hood latch cant catch the metal loop to hold it shut. So since the only thing keeping a thief out of my engine bay was two sparco hood pins. I ordered some Aerocatch locking hood pins, these things are bad ass. Pretty easy to install too, imo I need to buy a dremel, but I have mastered cutting small holes with my air disc saw. This bitch can cut through steel, so carbon fiber and glass shouldn't be a problem. Like most sweet 240's you always will run into some weird shit, my first "weird shit" experience with my car is that the godamned key cylinder fell into the door one day when I was unlocking my car. WTF BBQ??? So I had to tear the door apart to re-torque the bolts holding it on. Fun stuff. Just this last weekend I took my car to get the alarm I bought back in march installed finally, and when I got to my installers house my [freak]ing alternator died. I want to give a shot out to Mario from the 626 Drift Crew for coming through with an alternator in a pinch. As usual checking codes... still getting a code 34 for the knock sensor, gotta replace that thing... In the meantime since I want to build a KA-T I figured the best way to go about it is to purchase a spare KA. Well guess what someone was having a garage sale with a KA24DE sitting around for a year. The guy I bought it from was really cool, the plugs and everything look like normal wear and tear. <FONT COLOR="#FF0000">9/21/2008</FONT> So as you guys know I said I've been running on 3 cylinders and my knock sensor has been going off. Well turns out that I'll most likely need to pick up some new spark plug wires... Cylinder 1's plug wire head was white, while 2 and 4 were still blue and here we have number 3... Soaked in oil, the whole cylinder was filled with oil which means this thing hasn't been firing for quite some time now, but the cylinder has been getting gas in it and squishing it out. Hence the heavy gas smell. I should've pulled the plugs a while ago but I can't really work on the car at my pad. (long stupid story) So right now the car is being stored at my parents. I'll most likely pull the head in the next couple of weeks and well the block and see if the bottom end is still salvageable after cleaning the oil out of number 3 or if I need to do a hone and replace the rings and pistons... <FONT COLOR="#FF0000">UPDATE 10/06/2008</FONT> Here is the car packed away at my parents house for now, the car hasn't really been driven for a couple of weeks now. You can see the box from nissan on top of the car with my new roof skin in it. The interior of my car is just filled with random parts. I took it out for a little run however, the car seems to run fine past 1500rpm, anything before that and the lack of spark from that third injector shows it's face lol. I really need to replace that head gasket, I could make an easy 400 dollars off of this motor set. <FONT COLOR="#FF0000">UPDATE 10/20/2008</FONT> So this weekend I took my s14 back to my house to tear off all of the aero and test fit the vertex stuff so I can determine how much mounting tape and new screws and bolts I need. Plus I wanted to swap out the Zenki headlight bumper stay for the Kouki one. Luke (JDM Booger) hit me up to come help him pull my SR from his s13, and then I got quite the unexpected text message. (do you want to take the whole car for 300 more?) And I have been contemplating on purchasing a daily, and I'll have a spare running KA that I can throw in it so it's just a matter of swapping that into the booger machine, and then swapping the SR into Simone. So that is going to be a weekend full of hell I am quite sure, can't wait. :rolleyes: Anyway I took him up on the offer, so as of November 1st I'll own an S13 and an S14. My very supportive girlfriend is now trembling in fear LOL but said that I can have the garage all to myself, she really doesn't mind as long as I am happy and my cars are safe. [freak] my girl is so rad. Who gets to have their dream car (s13) and their project car (s14) and a greenlight to mod them both. Words cannot explain how much I appreciate her support and the taxi-ing me around while my car is on stands to pick up parts, pay for parts, make appts., and hang out with car nerds as myself. Anyway it's pictures you wanted. So as you can see below I had a friend on my car for quite some time, I really didn't give it a name but it was definitely a male as females are a lot larger. Regardless it got [freak]ed up, just the thought of a black widow hiding in my aero scares the shit out of me. Call me a pussy if you want but I hate snakes and spiders, and it just so happens that My roommate has a Mojave rattlesnake that he shouldn't and now I had a poisonous spider in the way of me and one more bolt, needless to say that side skirt got kicked off of the car at this point, [freak] unscrewing it. LOL Those fenders were junk anyway. I was on a roll getting most of it off, Man this car was slammed in it's previous life, the frame rails on the bottom of the car are all scraped up and the jacking points are all [freak]ed up as if someone hammered them flat. Or the car did a lot of off tracking, if it has ever even seen a track in it's life. One would hope with all of the shit the old owner put on it. There we go, all nice and naked, my roommate came out with a beer in his hand and decided to give me his ever so old "you know Wayne if I ever won the lotto I would give you money to build your car the way you would want it." and I always tell him that if I won the lottery I'd give the money to my parents rather than invest it in a car. But that has nothing to do with building, much less is this post demonstrating much building... The point was he started shotgunning me beers and I got side tracked with drinking beer instead of working on my car. I love the fact that not only does the vertex front end have a diffuser somewhat integrated into it's design but it has mounts to bolt to your radiator support so it doesn't have flappy front end syndrome at high speeds. I would like to build a bottom bash bar for my front end regardless and mount either a street driving splitter or some carbon canards so they can take the brunt of driveways and road debris rather then the front end. Strut tower braces are not a requirement with a car that has a stitch welded engine bay, but hell they make for great hood props. And yes this carbon fiber hood is haggard as [freak] but it shuts, hasn't broken in half while driving although the bolts could use some locktite since I noticed they came loose somehow. Most likely from vibration and the fact those aerocatch hood pins minus the use of a hood release latch create like a hump in the middle of the hood at really high speeds. Blarg, I'm rambling the hood is a piece and will be replaced. Well this is what it looks like when you take the kouki headlight and bumper stay and put it on a zenki bumper support. It bolts up for the most part, but in actuality the two rear tabs will have to be sawed off and re-welded on to hold the bracket, but honestly I don't even think it's all that serious. I could jig rig some angle brackets and tac weld them in the suggested spot.... I mean you get the idea! Beer, don't drink it when working on your car, you will start doing shit like your laundry or letting your dog out to shit in your neighbors lawn rather than work on your car. I ended with putting the crash bar and bumper stay on the new front bumper, there are some very weird mounting parts which I am sure the mounting of the vertex fenders will answer. (and yes my roommates neck and arms were green, he was waiting for me to give him a ride to a Halloween party. And that was my weekend of working on my car. <FONT COLOR="#FF0000">UPDATE 11/1/2008</FONT> Well I went around the car counting the amount of bolts and screws I need to buy for the car. I am not taking chances I bought a ton of interior screws and I am currently looking for the Nissan spec grade 8 m6 bolts in the proper length to replace all of the bolts holding on the aero and then some. But I'm having a bitch of a time finding all of the parts I want. That and the Zenki Bumper Support doesn't sit out as far as the Kouki bumper support because I ended up bending the headlight bracket supports on my bumper retainer. I decided that I will try a last ditch effort at modifying this bash bar before I give up on it and Just buy a brand new one to hack up. So after my shopping trips yesterday, came destruction. I shaved off the two mis aligned bolts support brackets you see here. They go bye bye!!! To extend the bolt in area's I just took my disc saw and shaved off a little section of the mounting holes so I can pull it out a bit further. The Vertex fenders wont align with the bumper stay properly because the zenki bumper support holds it in too close to the chassis. Now I'm off to see what differences this actually made! Modified by 137 at 7:01 PM 11/2/2008

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[Mr.OB*GYN_Rhett]

wo I think I remember this car FS. A lot of work already but you cant go wrong with Vertex! cant wait

[DREWdabuilder]

you live up in sierra heights?

[137]

Originally Posted by Mr.OB*GYN_Rhett

wo I think I remember this car FS. A lot of work already but you cant go wrong with Vertex! cant wait

hehe, Yeah Desmon is also doing the Alarm on the car, it was at his house for the weekend (he is the one I mentioned in the part where I said I went to get the alarm installed and the alternator died at his house lol)

Originally Posted by DREWdabuilder

you live up in sierra heights?

I live in Sierra Lakes, and also Hunters Ridge out here in Fontucky, both cars will be relocated to Canyon Country (Magic Mountain) though after December, I'm moving back out to the valley


...............

It's now 6:00pm I just got back from picking up my S13 with my S14's new heart. Redtop SR20... yay! Here she is all tucked away and stored.



LOL we had to mutilate this poor pignose front end to make it home... No way it was fitting over this thing.



So I had bolted on the Driver Side Vertex fender to the car to find out which bolts fit in which holes. Looks like I need grade 8 bolts number 6 or something i really dunno how to read bolts. But i need a shitload of them.

So I got on with fitting on the side skirts on the car and broke out the painters tape.



It's not that bad of a gap but the fitment was perfect, no stretching or anything like that. I could've been a bit more careful however with the placement of the screws inside of the car. Oh well, nothing some 3mm double sided tape cant fix.

And here is my modified bash bar all ready to go. I most likely didn't take pictures but it is notched to fit over a large intercooler like the one in the s13.



Time to drill some more holes after doing the line up work, went and nabbed a heat gun so I could work the fiberglass a bit easier since it was cold out. Didn't want anything "cracking" forcing it into place.




Yeah, I need to replace this



and I'm also contemplating doing tubs as well since the previous owner bastardized the wheel arches for the intercooler piping it previously had...

passenger side.


driver side


It looks like a super hero outfit down here. I eventually want to get all of this shit painted, if you look at the LCA you can see it's saturated with oil. I have no idea where all of this oil is coming from but I shall soon find out once I take that KA apart once it's pulled. I'm sure it needs every rubber seal and hose on it replaced since it probably sat in the sun like forever and they all dried up.



Anyway... we got the driver side on



Here we go, that worked out beautifully, I really was going to just buckle down and buy the kouki bash bar and chop that one up.




Here is one of the bolts that used to hold my driver side fender on from under the car, apparently the bolt was way longer than it needed to be, something hit under the car in that area and viola! Believe you me, it was just as entertaining to unscrew as it was to look at it.



Anyway more fitment pictures.



For shits and giggles I decided to try and fit my rear wheels up front to check if they cleared the calipers. I've been contemplating buying some 18x11's for the rears with a slightly lower offset and run my 18x10's for the front... And here we go!





the camber would be perfect once the car is on the floor. I bet the wheels would turn perfectly as well since the vertex kit flares in to accentuate the wheels on the car... Will experiment with this at a later date as I don't want to run 17's up front anymore. Here is the wheel turned in...





Now Turned out



DOH!!! It would fit, but it would require me to cut up the sideskirt, even when on the ground. BOOOOO!! I'm not cutting up a 255 dollar side skirt.

Here are the wheels front and rear next to each other.



I thought this was cool that the vertex front end all works together like this, gives some play in case it gets impacted some how.




Oh yeah, passenger side fender bolted up, I never bothered getting around to the sideskirt as I got caught up cleaning up dogshit, taking out the garbage, and washing down the driveway... Then there was the whole not eating yet thing, spending time with my girlfriend, etc, etc. So I called it a day shortly after taking these last few pictures.



Here is the normal front wheels on. Fitment is perfect.






Hit's the fronts while jacked up, wont be an issue when it's on the ground though.



Oh yeah, I need to trim the driver side hood pin, now that I have fenders and stuff that will hold my headlights, no more haggard front fitment anymore. But I'll have to wait until I get my hands on an portable air tank or compressor or what not.



This is inside of the vertex grill. It has notches so it can bolt up to the bottom of your radiator support so your bumper doesnt flap around in the wind.



Rear shot



and last one before I called it a day. I'll fit the rear bumper and other side skirt next weekend while pulling the exhaust off to get that repaired, and hopefully I can rummage up the cash to get my hands on the replacement radiator support. I would also like to add that the vertex fenders for some odd reason don't make any use of the right or left fender stays. They're pretty rigid and what not, so maybe they don't need it. I don't know.



And that's all, tune in next time.

[DREWdabuilder]

Originally Posted by 137

I live in Sierra Lakes, and also Hunters Ridge out here in Fontucky, both cars will be relocated to Canyon Country (Magic Mountain) though after December, I'm moving back out to the valley

oh whoops, got lakes and Heights mixed up. got a lot of friends that live up there. gluck with the build.

[137]

[alexisthemovie]

wow i remember seeing that s14 up for sale for months!

[JRSC EM1]

Damn dude, you are putting in HELLA work on that car. Looks good. Keep it up.

[137]

Originally Posted by alexisthemovie

wow i remember seeing that s14 up for sale for months!

Yeah, kid didn't get what he wanted for it anyway, about 2600 less than his asking price. I felt it was fair for all of the stuff the car came with. 5 lug conversion, 1000 dollar brake upgrade (pads are still new, because I ended up bedding them) 1000 dollar differential, front end conversion. I could've done without the paintjob lol.

The seals on the engine all just finally shit the bed... Going to pull it this weekend and get it on an engine stand and prep it for it's new home.

Originally Posted by JRSC EM1

Damn dude, you are putting in HELLA work on that car. Looks good. Keep it up.

I got's ta do it, it's embarassing rolling up to a 240 meet and having people ask if I am running a 3 rotor in my car LOL! Plus setting off all of the alarms when I park my shit at Roscoes!

[137]

<FONT COLOR="#FF0000">UPDATE 11/09/2008</FONT>
Well I got done [freak]ed up and got Gears of War 2... LOL so yeah I am still on a deadline to get things done here but anyway it was hot as [freak] today, I didn't feel like working in the heat so I didn't I waited until 11pm to start work on my car. Lets see what we have here...

I started off by removing the fan shroud, and I tried to drain the radiator traditionally and that little plastic drain thing stripped on me...



bugger, so I decided just to take off the bottom radiator hose and drain it into my bucket. And it started to come out green, and then it magically changed colors like that old kool-aid. It was pretty weird because at first it was just a little bit, and then bam oil started coming out of the radiator. Which is quite funny because the oil (from the engine) itself isn't "milky", the car runs at normal temps while driving. Which leads me to believe all of the rubber seals for the water pump and shit are all corroded and have probably wasted away like most of the gaskets on this engine. (Well at least that's what yahoo answers said.)




All empty.



If this isn't reason enough to justify why I want to do wheel tubs, I dunno what is. It's more of a cosmetic mod than anything but seriously it's almost like this wheel well has no integrity at all.



Some myspace angles, unfortunately it doesn't work for a [freak]ed up wheel well.


OBLIGATORY SLURPEE PORN!!!


Well I have determined, that really there is no point in progressing any further with taking anything in the engine out, I have little to no light right now and I didn't snag my brothers engine lift, I don't have any spare clamps to wrap on the fuel filter to keep gas from shooting all over my engine bay... did I mention my battery is dead... should've unhooked it two weeks ago... godamned trunk light. So anyway I went under the car to look for rust, luckily for me the undercarriage is pretty clean, it's just soaked in oil or other fluids. FROM MY PENIS!!!




IT PUTS LOTION ON THE SKIN!!!

haha sorry I had to.

Anyway... So many people have been wondering why my car sounds like a rotary, it's pretty much a combination of a janky ass cat that broke somehow and is just swangin (that's not a word.) And well obviously I got a lot more wrong with my engine than I anticipated. I've ordered some goodies, I'll throw a list of that shit at the end of the thread with my new bumper and fender bolts!

DAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAMN!!!




CAN I HAS DUH EXHAUST LEEKZ?


I figured since this is off we might as well can take a look at everything else janky under the car, I remember I noticed the passenger tie rod boot needed to be replaced, but also noticed this hook of wiring obviously in case if I buy a wing for my car I can safely land on battle carriers with this hook catch!




Lets play a game called... NAME THE LEAKING LUBRICANT?



[freak] gasket sealer, I'm going to buy 10 boxes of tampax super + tampons and zip tie them to the bottom of my car. It will either fix all of the leaks or make it seem I am flying on a cloud.

This is a transmission... rad, it's coming out.



Exhaust is out... poor exhaust is beat like that Benet Ramsey kid... I need more exhaust hangars, someone buy me some. I don't want to spend 60 bucks on super stiff hangars CRY!



ooooh, my favorite modification to my car is the self destruct battery to the trunk modification. If my car had an alarm this would be great because it's almost impossible to sever this cable and I would never have to utilize my back up battery for my alarm. Unfortunately there is a catch 22. The only place the previous owner decided this wire should go is zip tied to all of the exhaust breather lines... I'm not really a math wiz (this shows smartness, if you caught it I commend you.) but when you put sparks next to gas fumes in a worst comes to worst (oh any cut metal I'm running through isn't grommeted btw) type of sit-chee-ation (situation with Ebonics) It's safe to say I can guarantee movie sized explosions!!! AWESOME HUH?




Well... not much building, I may do work tomorrow son! depends on how [freak]ing hot it is... But hey look shiny new toys arrived. I had mentioned in a previous update that I needed to get all new mounting bolts for the front end parts. Lights, bummer, fenders, and other stuff that use these bolts. Well I decided instead of spending money on some gay password jdm shit I bought these instead. Non Rusting stainless steel allen bolts and allen seats. BLING BLING!!!





now I am typing this post.



slurpee's all gone... before I go and hop on Gears of war... oh if you play add me o137

I have purchased for the SR motor.
A new pilot bearing (but the actual nismo bearing) and not the solid bearing. A new throw out bearing, a nismo thermostat, and that's it so far...

Pretty neato............

I have purchased for the KA
new valve cover and spark gaskets, oem plug wires, oem spark plugs, front main seal, rear main seal.

looks like I will have to buy a new water pump, a radiator, and some other shit to get it running in my s13. Hopefully that car wont be down for long. I really want to drive the s13 around asap! I love those cars.

well that's it until tomorrow.

Thanks for looking again.

[ek four]

this thread is so homo... btw, you could get those stainless steel washer n bolts at the boat store.. theyre dirt cheap there

[137]

Originally Posted by ek four

this thread is so homo... btw, you could get those stainless steel washer n bolts at the boat store.. theyre dirt cheap there

meh, I don't need anymore than the ones I have anyway, it was only 16 bucks for all of the shit I bought anyway. It's just the 5 dollars in shipping which I would've spent on gas anyway. So bam!

[FF-Greg]

Cute

[137]

this weekend it's motor swapping extravaganza!!!

[137]

Originally Posted by 137

Pretty self explanatory Saturday. Saturday I pull the SR and hopefully will be able to knock out the wiring as well.

[ChadB]

keep us posted on the updates..

[moe.]

Nice build you got there Wayne. I have always wanted to do this one but shit always comes up. GL with the 240... oh and BF2> Gears of war

rcdawgs

[137]

Oh My ****ing God...



A few things... Solid Engine Mounts are cool, until you have to yank an engine off of them. Then they become, uncool. Also why on an s13 do I have to remove suspension pieces to get to the bolt on the bottom of the mount's, I think that is unacceptably gay. Especially since one of them is stripped. Guess my s13 is going to have solid mounts period, I'm not dropping any suspension pieces to get to that driver side bolt. Guess I will have to order some stiff mounts for the s14 with my next check.



Secondly, why is my transmission missing bolts to the bellhousing. ARG I mean it's not like it makes a big difference, but I am Anal Retentive like that.

Third driving your car around on the alternator only is fun, lol well it's completely bad for the car but it was kinda funny going down the street in it to get it warmed up...
I drained the tranny but left the motor oil in the car, no reason to take it out I suppose right? RIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIGHT!!! Looks like the tranny oil was some kind of synth blend or it just completely was done for because it looked like dirty seperated fluids full of air.
Now that I think of it there wasn't a good reason to take out the tranny fluid either, but **** if the plug wasn't covered in metal spikes... Ouch... I guess all of those bolts missing will make it less of a headache for me to get the tranny off to install the new pilot and throw out bearing when the time comes... Coolant was fresh and new but oh well, disposed of, waiting for my Thermostat to get in at west co.

I was going to put the KA in the s13 but then I realised I need to take off the tranny to get to the rear seal which I need to replace. So it stays on the floor for now.



I would also like to say pulling an engine out of a drift duty car sucks ****ing ass. I cannot tell you how many times I had mud and dirt fly into my face, eyes, and mouth today because this car has done some dirt drops during it's time.
I want to get it on a lift and power wash the undercarriage of the car!!!

Hrmn... Well I am sure I am going to add some more later, there were a few questionable wires I was not sure belonged with this motor or the headlight harness of the other car so they were snipped. Lots of the wires were exposed and covered with electrical tape... Going to be fun figuring out what they were.

Welp off to get some food. I'm ****ing beat!

rest of the pics are self explanitory.





Thanks for checking back in.

[137]

Well I've never really wrenched on a 240... I'm going to have to make a list of tq values for certain things, and apparently some lock tite is in order for other things since my rear axle is missing 2 sets of bolts. And the aforementioned bell housing bolt issue!

I also forgot, I sent my wheels off to Jack to be ruined...

one of volks two options on their GTU's is gunmetal face or Gold face... I saw some Candy Apple CE-28's on a japanese car at tokyo auto salon and have vowed that if I ever owned a set of volks I would have them made candy apple red.... And I hate polished lips on wheels, it's so ****ing played out. I like my wheels all one solid color, but since this is a two piece wheel I am going to keep the two tone theme by getting rid of the red pinstripe and making it a black pinstripe. Which I most likely will be applying myself since the red one is only just a sticker from volk.

I'll also have to get some black volk racing stickers for the wheels as well.

I'm very excited and I cant get them back... Just so you can see the vision I have I photoshopped a picture of my wheels for you. Picture these...




on this...

(not my car taken from the paint thread, pretty much how my car will look without the front canards and using vertex front fenders dur)

[137]

11/29/2008 - Saturday
Crikey mates, we awe heya with anuva updayte on dis spectacular Nissan 200 sx. lets begin shall we? - 137

So i ordered some goodies from this place called skycraft surplus, engine wire loom, heat shrink, electric tape of multiple colors.



I still need to buy copper ring terminal connectors, shit ton more heat shrink I'm thinking red and black heat shrink here and there just to indicate hot wires and ground wires. I still need to pick up some 0ga, 2ga, 4,ga and maybe some 8 for my new power set up. I really like lightning audios battery terminal connectors and equipment in general so I shall be using most of their stuff. But regardless I'm just trying to let you peer into my mind. Instead of posting pictures I will just add a link to the thread's I made about my power set up and design and see what others had to say about it.

Originally Posted by 137

Battery Relocation Preparations on Honda-Tech
Battery Relocation Process and Recommendation! on Zilvia

Fun reading to keep this post short so I don't go off the top about that... actually before I continue writing shit, I'm going to be right back and hit up Panera and the pet store.... Taking the harness off I noticed my number one coil pack was loose lol, guess the bolt that holds it in snapped into the cover previously. I was curious as to why the original coil pack cover was on the valve cover, hopefully that isn't too much of a bitch to drill out as I am going to be running a titek coil pack cover and I will need access to that hole later. (no homo)

OK so I'm back sippin a venti white mocca and eating a souffle or however you spell that shit, cheese spinach and artichoke... not bad. Anyway after about an hour of carefully slicing away with the razor blade.



Pulled the positive power cable out of the lower harness configuration completely since I don't want that tied up with the engine harness. Then I taped the harness (lower = speedometer, odometer, yada ya) up so it was still in it's original configuration just without all of the crap on it so I can see what wires I will be replacing (ground wires, anything with ring terminals on it) with higher quality wire.

some cool rad tools I got from sears last night, pocket knife folding razor blade joint. Some stripped bolt removers and pretty much the next harness I'm breaking down, the top engine harness.



I love electrical tape as much as the next guy, just not when it's covering braided copper wire that wasn't previously soldered. UGH!!! lol oh well I will fix all of this later.



There is also two other big gummy ass bulges wrapped in electrical tape, almost like someone put rubber cement over a solder area, I dunno if that was Nissan or the previous, previous owner of the engine who did the initial wiring, shit was jank so I just cut it out since I couldn't remove the cement. Didn't look like there was a resistor under the gummy shit much less have I looked at the schematics for the harness but I am sure there are no resistors in the harness itself.




More unraveling... GODAMNIT it's not like the engine didn't work before I bought the car, shit like this just gets on my nerves since I'm a tech geek and build computers. So my nerd temper was at an extreme Fahrenheit level lol.



oh yeah, this stuff is great to clean electrical stuff, you can spray it right in the connectors and on the wires and wipe the grease and oil off. And what the hell is this lol, I can't even point a finger at this one, this is all Nissan right here.



And we're done for now with the lower harness until all of my stuff comes in.



Drove over to walmart to pick up a respirator or some madness, one of those sars masks, some neoprene gloves that come up to your forearms, and a brush so I can get buck wild a little later with the engine bright and my engine bay. I'm multi tasking like a mofo!

till later.

[137]

12/2/2008

Alright back again, man this is like uber gay, maybe I should've left the harness in the mess of electrical tape, I'm finding a lot of things that make me want to cringe, but I guess for longevity reasons it's good I discovered these things sooner than later. I just want to re-iterate that the car had no electrical gremlins before I pulled the motor so this was completely unnecessary. Just me making that extra step for the build for experience purposes!

Before I started, the SR harness is on the left, and the KA harness is on the right.



1996 KA24DE upper engine harness



S13Redtop (sr20det, redtop) upper and lower engine harness.



Alright here is the wiper plug (F7) from the KA harness.



unloomed


The other two plugs you need from the KA harness, F2 and F3 and the F9 plug



The F9 plug still attached to the harness, I tried to cut into the harness as deep as possible so I would have a healthy length of wire to work with.



So after all is said and done, these are the plugs that are all needed from the KA24DE upper harness for your SR20Redtop harness.
(fyi i'm putting sr20redtop, or s13 sr in the post as much as possible in case anyone needs to search for this stuff in the future.)


With the help of the Tasmanian Devil I came up with this concoction... lol



Now after taking off at least 3 pounds of electrical tape and cleaning off the wires there are a lot of joints in the harness that are like this.





I've pretty much determined that I will have to go through the sr20det manual to find out what each and every one of the plugs on the harness do now, mainly because this had most of its' ends soldered to (EACH OTHER) and was just taped back up and separated from the harness completely. It's not even attached to anything, wtf!!!





I was tired and had a bitch of a runny nose this weekend, and I am miserable when I have a runny nose so I didn't accomplish much this weekend because of that. Hopefully my junk from skycraft gets here this week. Also the how to on the 240sx forums talks about taking bits from the body harness on the s13 like the instrument cluster plug and what not so I can just plug the sr harness up to my instrument cluster. But I kinda need that shit for my s13.... SOOOOOOOOOO!

I guess I will have to pull the instrument cluster plug from the ka24 harness and de-pin the s13 male plug and re-pin it to the ka24 male instrument cluster plug. Should be pretty easy to follow and figure out. Not sure if any of the how to's or crap I'm using even cover it. When I get a chance I'll re-host all of the stuff I used for reference. I know I saw a post with a layout of the sr20's engine harness from the engine manual somewhere on the web but I cant find it again. These pdf books really aren't the easiest things to sift through you know.

anyway till next time, any suggestions please throw em my way.

[137]

12/08/2008

Alright... loooooooong day.

I think I spent most of the day cleaning my garage and re-arranging all of the trash and shit stored in there so it will make my life easier to work on the car.

Anyway the goal today was to get the transmission off of the engine so I can replace the throw out bearing, I wasn't aware I had to get the input shaft collar pressed into it. Guess I will take that to a machine shop or read on how to do that myself without destroying the new throw out bearing.

Yeah I think I'll have it pressed.

This care package came in from ups.



Thanks Performance Nissan of Duarte (mynismo.com) for taking a month to get me a stock throw out bearing. WTF! I could've drove down the street to clutch masters to buy this.

Friday night I was in the garage and got the engine bright, my neoprene dish washing gloves, a scrubbing brush and let my ocd have at it.



I did not enjoy wearing this but at least I wasn't lightheaded when I was done lol, and that's what's important.

This is how it looked when I went to sleep, pulled out the ac, the fusebox, and all associated wires. **** my life =(





Ok well not all of the wires... Gosh I feel I should spray some rust protectant on the car... It would make me feel better, I didn't have to worry about that before because the whole engine bay was covered in oil lol. So the metal was well lubricated and protected from the elements, now that it's clean there isn't much protecting it from nothing now.

Doesn't matter much I guess since i'm tubbing those fenders eventually.

parts storage.



voila! ... sonovabitch there's my tri-pod.




then well I just put the block in the car so I can plot out the wiring since I have to shorten the harness about 4-5 inches from the firewall to all of the accessories.



Gotta replace the gasket, might as well clean the sides of the block a bit, already cleaned the front of the block earlier. **** all that fancy painting bullshit.



omg myspace!



All holes taped off, time for some more engine brite



No time for progress pictures, hours fly by when you're scrubbing a block with a toothbrush sized wire-brush, any recommendations on speeding that process up? I have to take the intake manifold off sooooo! LOL!

You can see from the right, to the left the progress...



uh oh girlfriend wants to watch movies and cuddles, guess I better wrap it up. I've been out here since 3


scrub, scrub, scrub, scrub.



Well, **** it, threw a couple of bolts on the manifold and the turbo to hold it all together so I can drop it in and put my lift away.



LOL My roommate made a comment about me getting all that grease on his non running ford trophy next to my car. So I'll have to buff that shit out eventually. Until then it remains as tool storage and a support wall in case I slip in anymore motor oil.



welp, I'll have more updates after I get started on this wiring mess.

kthxbai.

[137]

Oh yeah wiring crap, before I threw it all in a box to be dealt with later...

Here is all the crap off of the harness, this is almost 5lbs of electrical tape.



Harness looks a lot friendlier unloomed.





I was going to do a detailed set of pictures of the ecu pin out's until I realized they're not all going where they're supposed to be. Since this harness came from a swapped car, it's pretty much had most of the modifications I need to do to it done already. The problem mainly will be tracing those junctions, so rather than deal. We shall re-wire any problematic area's and get rid of any tripple junctions in the wires i've found.



Some sweet pictures of my feet.



Now we want to take the redtop plugs and pull them through the grommet to wire up our f3 plug on the inside.





i'll push your shit in!!!


I'm not even going to attempt this one... I'll snip the connector pull the wires through and tape it to the wires for easy identification later.



You will need to do one of those plugs at a time while doing the f3 power plug so you don't get the wires mixed up as they both have brown wires. So all of the how to's out there tell you which one to plug into the next by color identification. Snipping both plugs and going by color may **** things up unless you know where the wires are going.

I think I do but **** if I want to take any chances. There is already a lack of information out there on the net.

Alright, so in a nutshell I just need to get the wiper plugs into the mix and start soldering. My shit from skycraft should be here today, so I'm going to get crackin right away on this harness.



Ugh... power and accessory wire from the fusebox... one battle at a time, get the car running first and worry about re-locating this later. I will be seperating the power wire's (battery) from the harness and running all of that stuff separately.



K, should have more updates this week as I start assembling junk again.

[137]

Alright, since i'm a visual learner and I need to find out what the **** everything is and where it's going I decided on the bright idea of taking the harness and laying it down in the engine bay so I can mark all of the sensors. I have this nice diagram on how to lay the harness out (for cleanliness and nothing more.)

This is a scan of a print out I have, so please don't ask for a better picture lol.



Basically I checked off what I found, everything else at the moment seems to be a mystery. I apparently don't and never did have an eccs plug on my harness, and well I have a couple of other problems at the moment... I don't think they're that major as I have a spare harness I can use for extra connectors and what not. And I still have everything on my s13 in case I need to pull plugs, since I do believe I cut stuff from a relax box on that car to pull the harness due to janky wiring.

So here is my AIT (Air Intake Temperature) wires, which if I am correct this plugs into the downpipe elbow on the back end of the turbo, which has a bolt holding a penny in place. Apparently that is some trick to block that plug as it's not used and was not used before on my engine.



They kept the wires in-tact, but if I am not using this system I may remove it from the ecu pin back. Doesn't look like it was tied into a relay for signal, I'll read up more on this later.

Um, and this gem is my power steering wire, wonder where the **** the plug for this is *shrugs*



much less why in the hell was it extended....

Oh I found out what the mystery plug was.... ghetto fan controller and gm/ford fan and shroud on the big radiator. I may re-do this wiring or just buckle down and get a fan speed controller and do this over from scratch, cause that shit is not going on my car.



Now to lay the harness out. I took out my passenger seat, and wow there is a shitload of room under the dash, you could stuff some illegals in here comfortably, I dunno weather to move my fuse box up in here or to install a cot.



Alright, F3 plug inserted where it goes, separating the wires for tidyness and to make my headache a little less annoying with that plug.



F7 and F9 plugs in place and doing the wires up where they should junction and then run back to the power plug.






Alright, got that ziptied up for later.

See, not so intimidating now that it's all in place, just need to start splicing and dicing.



Since I was pulling this mess apart to see what is what, it still boggles my mind why in the **** the knock sensor wire is almost 5 feet long when it's one of the first things that you can plug up straight from the grommet, and already has that stupid extension from the knock sensor itself... going to have to make this WAAAAAAAAAAAAAY shorter.



Barf....


Alright, I cannot fault the guy for electrical enginuity here... but honestly. I think I found my power steering plug, my ac plug I'll have to re-wire, and probably another accessory plug I couldn't find earlier.




Hrmn... I'm stumped and kinda need my ignition chip and ecu, time to head over to the rents to go treasure hunting on my s13, guess I should snag those solid motor mounts while i'm here...



ugh...



Godamn drift cars... (note to self, run engine under covers on both cars. I am not going to enjoy cleaning that shit. But needless to say the motor mount thing fell short once I realized that the bolts were stripped, I seriously thought I had knocked it loose, and instead I just I was just running my wrench along the round part for 5 minutes like an idiot... lol Now I remember why I bought stripped bolt removers... mine are stripped on the s14 too. Apparently this is a problematic bolt to get back on your car. (when you don't tq it to factory spec and over-tighten aka strip it.)

And yeah while i'm talking about bolts, all of the bolts on my exhaust manifold are different, and the washers are all different sizes or doubled up home depot washers, that kind of bothers me, then I looked at new bolt and stud and washer kits... 150 bucks... yeah it doesn't bother me that much anymore. *sigh*

*shudder* I forgot I have to take you apart too... I just want to drive already, does anyone else feel like this when they have project car's or a CAR!





welp time to leave quasimoto, and head back over to the house and call it a night.

[Akadem1kONE]

Zilviaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa.