One more try. S13 rebuild/restore

[SkyS14.5]

Hi guys, finally posting after lurking/having friends buy me things from here for years. I've been into drifting and 240's for about five years now and have had several of them, but things always got in the way and I was never able to do one the way I wanted. Now that I'm older and have a decent job, I've been hard at work trying to get a nice setup together for weekend events and just driving around for fun. Sorry in advance for the cell phone pics.

I started out with an sc400 that I got for $850 from a friend. It wasn't running, but I work at Lexus, so I pulled it in and worked on it for a while until I got it working again.



It was an okay car, but heavy and parts cost more on average, so I didn't really want to keep it. That's when my friend Stephen offered to trade me his '92 sr hatchback. We had a lot of fun in that car over the last couple of years, so I jumped on it.



Stephen wouldn't miss the hatch anyway, considering he now has a 1JZ s14 he competes with. (Photo credit: Caen&Abel)



The hatch didn't have much done to it, but the sr20 swap in it was very well taken care of and had a fresh turbo on it.



The car also had coilovers and a few other things I'll be using, but the shell itself has had it's day. Got to looking for another s13 shell. Didn't care if it was a coupe or hatch, as long as it was straight and had a clean title. Eventually found one in Mississippi and went to pick it up. Drove all the way to pick it up and the title was far from clean like the ad suggested. Bought it anyway, thinking I could get the title fixed later somehow.



I was wrong. Lol. Back to the drawing board. Luckily another friend of mine decided to sell his coupe shell that I'd wanted for a while.



It was stock and really clean. No dents, no rust, and best of all had a CLEAN TITLE. It was actually bought off of here back in '08-'09. My friend Jesse had already invested a lot of time tearing the chassis down and cleaning/refurbishing every piece of it. Eventually he just lost interest.

So I started saving and buying parts. First things I wanted were suspension and brakes mods. Never had any big angle cars, so I figured why not go for it. Sent my knuckles and flca's to Daniel Melvin in FL to have them modded. Cut and welded knuckles and beautifully boxed and 40mm extended control arms.



New vs stock flca's.



Isis Pro series rear arms and curved tension rods.



PBM eccentric rack bushings.



New steering rack.



Picked up a solid steering bushing and a set of 30mm z32 calipers from the guy I got the coupe from.



Isis rear brake lines and Circuit Sports front conversion lines that I got with the calipers.



Custom wheel made by my buddy Scott at Grip Royal. #dontsuck



Started actually working on the car. Jesse painted the bay a silver color with flake.



And he did a great job cleaning and repainting the subframes. Got the rear fitted with the SPL solid bushings and back in. Here you can kinda see the new undercoating we just finished as well.





Picked up some 17" rota grids and a nismo power brace.





Picked up a set of '06 maxima inner tie rods. They are the same size as the s14/z32 inners, but a little longer. Here they are versus the oem s13 ones.



Ordered a set of Gktech 64° high misalignment outers for s14 since the maxima tie rods are the same diameter/thread pitch. I'm impressed with a lot of the things they make and have high expectations for these.



That's enough for one night. Getting late.

[SkyS14.5]

My buddy Matt and I cleared the engine bay with some rattle clear kinda sucked, but was okay after plenty of coats.



Started putting the front end together. Got the pbm bushings, rack, tie rods, nismo brace, and tension rods bolted in.



Found a white Silvia garnish locally. Snatched it up and put it on with some D-max tails.



Z brake rotors came in, along with a Megan BMC heat shield.





In an effort to restore this car and make everything new or look new, I went ahead and got new ball joints. There's a thread on here somewhere about this already, but you can't just buy rear ball joints for an s13. The auto parts stores (at least around here) don't carry them and will tell you that you have to buy the whole rlca from nissan with the the new joints already in. These are way too expensive, so you can buy front lower ball joints from a '90 model sentra and they press in snug like they should. The taper is correct, also.



The only bad thing is that he snap ring sits about a millimeter off of the control arm. This, to me, isn't a big deal. The force it takes to put these in, not to mention the bolt and cotter pin will be plenty to keep these in place. And they're only $10/piece!

Decided to clean up the coilovers that came with the hatch. Ran into a problem with getting the bottom brackets off. The paint on them had almost all flaked off and left them to rust to the threads so badly that no amount of pb blaster and elbow grease could separate them. Going to have to pick up a new/better shape set soon. :/



Painted the rear bumper support and a ton of other small stuff like the rear sway bar, "D" brackets, fuel cover, and other miscellaneous things.



Only going to run a dash and bucket seats for interior, so prepped it fora few coats of paint.

[Ronald_Mcdonald]

Looks good!

[Ratpack_Chad]

Great start

[Apex Eight]

Great start man. Subbed

[JRex]

This is off to a promising start. where did you order that steering rack from?

[SkyS14.5]

Thanks guys.

Originally Posted by JRex

This is off to a promising start. where did you order that steering rack from?

I bought it from a friend. I believe he bought it from Summit.

[S-Nation S13]

so no snap ring on ball joint hm? kinda fishy dont you think, can anyone chime in my rear ball joint just popped, so i need to fix it lol.

PM me please

[SkyS14.5]

Originally Posted by S-Nation S13

so no snap ring on ball joint hm? kinda fishy dont you think, can anyone chime in my rear ball joint just popped, so i need to fix it lol.

PM me please

There is a snap ring on there. It just sits up about a millimeter. Moog part number is K9633. It was that or spend $300 for a pair of new rlca's.

[SkyS14.5]

Realized I didn't have a clutch line. Ordered a DIF one. Fitment at the master cylinder seemed a little weird when I had one of these before, but it never leaked, so I figured why not get another.



Also took a fancy picture of the splash hub.



I test shot a spot inside the car on the fire wall to see how the paint I have looks. I wasn't happy with the way it laid down, so I need to get better paint ad get the inside done this week.

Here's a list of what i have/have done so far:

Black top s13 sr20det
Isis t25/t28 turbo
Isis turbo back pipe
Isis down pipe
Isis test pipe
Isis single gt exhaust
Isis ss braided turbo lines
Isis rear ss brake lines
Isis solid steering bushing
Isis pro rear arms
Isis pro curved tension rods
DIF ss braided clutch line
DIF e-brake button
Nismo power brace
PBM eccentric rack bushings
Remanned steering rack
Turbosmart bov
Cxracing sr radiator
Intercooler and piping
Aluminum 1 piece driveshaft
Welded differential
SPL Solid subframe bushings
New '06 maxima inner tie-rods
Kazama outer tie-rods
Front and rear strut tower bars
Avenue coilovers
Wiring specialties lower harness
Newer brake pads & rotors
Boost gauge
Oil pressure gauge
Water temp gauge
Walbro 255 fuel pump
HKS Turbo timer
Works Bell splash hub
Grip Royal steering wheel
Buddy club bucket seat
Buddy club slider seat rails
Tomei rocker arm stoppers
Tomei 90mm shift knob
HKS Mushroom air filter
Raptor battery breaker switch
Energy Suspension rack bushings
Rebuilt 30mm alu z32 front calipers
Circuit Sports braided F brake lines
Relocated optima red top battery
Modded knuckles
Boxed and 25mm extended flca's
Dual electric fans
D-MAX tail lights
Entire underside re-coated with 3M
Painted interior and engine bay
Gktech high misalignment outers
Delrin motor mounts
Circuit Sports slotted front rotors
Megan BMC heat shield
OEM chuki side skirts
Streetrays delrin motor mounts
New ball joints and endlinks