Alright, about a week passes and im ready to tow the car back home from nowhereville nj back to staten island. autopsy revealed failed oil pump and compression numbers of 130,105,40,90 on all 4 cylinders. steering rack bushing is torn to shreds and my steering rack was off center by more than an inch and a half and passenger front coilover is oozing.
last but not least this is what caused the fire. a rust hole that was not there when i purchased the car, and since the header was so flush the floor of the car the sound deadening caught fire and burnt some of the carpet.
fire extinguished engine bay, that stuff got all sticky lol
next order of business is i have 3 weeks and counting to source a motor, get it in, trouble shoot and be ready for school.. so glad the week before i didnt pick up a nardi wheel and bucket seat. and DRUMMROOOOOLLLLLL!! .. engine of choice will be... -akward pause- a ka-t t25 setup! i figured the only way to go is up and finished what i intended to start
my good buddy 180sxdrifter had a spare back up long block with 100k on it and since he knew my situation he hooked it up for $20(+billions of dollars of tolls & gas) he reccomended to be safe was change the head gasket but other then that the motor was pretty clean internally. so i brought it home, scrubbed off the block and started piecing together a kit. for another 100 he gave me his intercooler kit and i got a free type s knock off bov from a friend since the intercooler had a greddy flange on it.
from there the following day i ordered a full gasket kit for the motor, lines for the turbo, water pump, thermostat, isis v2 manifold, and all misc. gaskets for the turbo. later during the day i met up with another friend to pick up a t25 with inlet and outlet pipes attached. basically all what was pending was a tapped oil pan which my friend will had laying around at his shop... just a matter of the waiting game.
i met up with another set of friends at my house and my one friend carl (had ride of the month in import tuner about a yr ago for his grey s13) was talking to me about some nonsense car stuff and how the car caught on fire.. yadadyadayda.. stupid stuff.. and a few minutes later he had just blurted out.. "damn man i wish i had my s13.. im about to build another right now.. this kid (forgot his name) is selling a complete turn key swap for 1000 bucks!"
O_O W T F ??????
quickly asked who and the kid wound up living 10 minutes from me and i had no idea this kid existed! quickly got his phone and told him ill pick it up first thing in the morning. it was obv a s13 sr blacktop with apparently 50k from the importer(yeah bullshit) and he put another 15k on it before his strut towers collpased when he was driving. he wound up parting the car except for the swap and was planning on keeping it for another car. a year and half passed by, the motor sat and he was building a mustang instead.
with the motor i got all the accessories, ecu, harness already wired for a 90(sweet), brand new oem water pump, brand spanking new exedy stage one clutch with less than 200 miles on it, trans, aftermarket elbow, downpipe and test pipe. i canceled my payment for the ka-t stuff and scooped it up.
spy pics!
i wasted no time. for the first time in forever i had absolutely $0 in my pocket so before i could do anything i had to make some money. i parted the ka quickly to my suprise. i sold the long block, radiator, header, 3 ecu's, harness, trans, and my beloved purple valve cover.. which recently was part of another blown ka lol. now that i had some money to comfortably play with, i stripped the block down to make sure this motor was true to what he said about. turns out he was correct, no signs of oil neglect, waterpump was new, turbo was in good shape and the clutch was brand new. the only thing that took some time to confirm was the wiring harness. i never wired up a sr harness so i made sure everything was done correct and traced everything back to where it was. no crappy connections, all looks good here. except for this obnoxiously long maf cable that ill trim after the motor is in the car running good( thats gonna come back to haunt me)
just because i have 3 weeks to put this motor in doesnt mean im going to half ass and cut corners. i like to take some pride in what i do. at the time i wish i had funds to stitch weld the bay and reshoot but i didnt, so sadly it has to go back in the same bay but i cleaned up all the extinguisher residue and oil and other gunk that built up over the months.
the goal was to put the sr in but have it look like nothing ever happened. so just like the ka, i resprayed everything and made sure everything was clean again
i had to wait a few days for a hoist so there the motor stood under the tarp that i would have thought would have protected the motor.. but we had some pretty bad storms during the month of august and it was cutting alot of progress time.
and some videos to get you entertained
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THIS DAY SUCKED ASS. i had a tarp over this motor and there was so much weight on the tarp it fell over and all the coil pack covers were unconvered.. the valve cover wasnt tightened and all the spark plug holes over filled with water and spilled out into the head. basically i was sucking oil and water out of the sr head with a straw for over 20 mins.. SICK! not. btw if someone knows how to embed the youtube code so all these videos can be viewed and played without leaving the forum please show me how thanks :]
and then there was light! back to business. reassembled everything back together.. hoist is working good and in we go! shortly after this was in my friend came with a spare valve cover to slap on while mine got sent off to powdercoat from my friend.
like i said the goal was to pretend like nothing ever happened. and this was the result.
