The "I'm 18 and make grown up financial mistakes" s13 build

[hanzbrady]

Okay guys so another small update!

I finally got most of the parts together to start building my head and decided to take some progress pictures.

First off thanks to Bryan at work for letting me hot tank my head for free!

So if any of you haven't installed springs and retainers it's fairly simple. Just get some thick grease I used X-tra from Lucas and put it on the valve where the keepers sit and also grease the inside of the keepers so they don't just fall all over the place, then compress the retainer and either use your finger or a scribe tool to push the keepers in place. Slow and steady will win the race here, if you try to rush you'll get frustrated and take twice as long.

If you've never done this before and want a really good detailed write up on the full process look here! http://www.nicoclub.com/archives/how...0det-head.html

PICTURES!!!







And finally my cams came in! Tomei hydraulic Procam 270's


I'll be able to finish the head by next week hopefully, I'm waiting on a pair of keepers because I lost some and I also need to get new guides for the rocker arms so I can convert them to dual guide for reliability on any kind of two-step.

Anyways that's all guys!

[hanzbrady]

So I finally finished my dual guide conversion and figured I'd share the progress, I'm sorry it's not much but a speeding ticket has cut into this months budget haha.

Anyways, glamour shots!



Here's the guides installed, I used a mix of my used guides, new OEM, and some slightly ground ones to get them all to match up. For those of you who don't know all the OEM guides are 3mm thick, but you need to compensate for the difference in valve stem length so that your rocker arm can sit level. all of the guides in your head don't need to be the same height, but the two guides per rocker need to be, if that makes sense. So cylinder 1 doesn't need to match cylinder 2, but you need to make sure that the guides you have in cylinder 1 are level so that your rocker makes full contact with your camshaft, the hydraulic lifters will take care of the height difference as long as all rockers are level. Wow I feel like that was over explained, hmm it's late so it's staying that way.

Now to measure your guides you'll need a tool that can measure your valve stem height. I know that there's better tools available, and that you can make one out of an extra lifter but here's what I came up with. It's a socket I drilled out to accept a dial gauge that extends out of the bottom of the socket. You use this tool by resting the end of the socket on your retainer and this gives you your guide height per spring. Again, probably not a good explanation but I have pictures!





And here is it in use,







You want this gauge to read as close as possible on both guides, and there's no real science to it besides trying all the shims you have haha

And here are my rockers that I ground using a bench grinder



Ground side



OEM side


Well that's all for now guys, I'll be bleeding my lifters tomorrow and then I'll have my head complete, then I'll just need to grab a timing kit and a few oil galley plugs for my block, then hopefully I'll finally have a full long block!

Thanks for reading!

--Deleted--

[Cortius017]

Originally Posted by Tucker240

Such guides, much wow. Looking good!

Many power, so tolerance.

[hanzbrady]

Originally Posted by Cortius017

Many power, so tolerance.

Such rocker, much stable

[hanzbrady]

So I apologize in advance for the cell phone pics, but I forgot to take some with my DLSR along the way.

Anyways I had my girlfriend come over last night and keep me company while I worked away on the block, I got the head installed and the timing set. The motor thankfully turned over easily and no guides shot out at me. My rockers are all also wearing evenly on to my camshafts. Now I just need to clean the outside of my front cover because it looks horrible and install my timing tensioner then the rotating bits will be finished and I can seal everything up.

Also since I'm sure people will assume I just threw my old used pump back in, I didn't. I fully disassembled it and cleaned it with carb cleaner, I reassembled all of the bits making sure to pack it with a low temp grease and I also shimmed my pump by 2mm since this is a "loose" motor. I really wish I could've gotten the outside clean before installing it but you know how it is when you decide to start working on things before you realize that you don't own degreaser and brushes right? The front cover also got a new front main seal, mine never leaked, but its one of those "While you're in there" parts.

And now bad quality phone pictures!





I put the manifold on to check block clearance and this thing is big, is has long equal length runners so it'll spool a little slower, but also make a bit more torque, I'm not sure how this will work, but I'll give a more detailed review of it when I actually have the car driving.

Thank you for reading

[hanzbrady]

Well it seems that I update this about weekly now, so this week I got my hands on some cool things and tidied up some loose ends on the block.

Firstly I bought some 1000cc Precision injectors and managed to find a fuel rail that actually fit these things which was quite annoying due to them being 11mm injectors, the fuel rail I ended up going with was a JWT rail that I scored for $75 sweet!!!



I still need to sort out the feed and return fittings and hope that my block off plate for the stock FPR doesn't leak but that'll be for a later date.

I also cleaned up my heater hoses the right way by cutting them and welding up the extra nipples for things like the throttle body and IACV because I wont be using those, also if you want some cheap 180* heater hose bends a 96 v6 Mustang has 2 of them!

And lastly a full resolution picture of my assembled long block! (yes it does fit throught the door... barely.)



I'm sorry the pictures are a bit grainy but the lighting in my room is far from ideal so I have to crank the ISO up.

[tricky_ab]

Are you assembling an engine in your bedroom? And is that a sharpie checklist on the wall?

Props on the quality parts though, this is quite the build

[hanzbrady]

Originally Posted by tricky_ab

Are you assembling an engine in your bedroom? And is that a sharpie checklist on the wall?

Props on the quality parts though, this is quite the build

Well there's no AC in the garage... haha.

Yeah, it's kinda how I've always done it because it's just comfortable and keeps me and my dads stuff separate to avoid any drama, and about the list, I'm a super forgetful and artistic person, one of m walls is a chalkboard and it's filled.

And thank you for acknowledging that I'm actually putting some effort in!

[hanzbrady]

Woah hey these aren't engine pictures!

So I ran out of cool go fast stuff to play with and saw my poor shell in my back yard in need of some love, so I started ripping it apart

My dash has seen better days, my AC has never worked, and 95% of the dash buttons don't do anything so why not just throw it all away? The dash was easy enough to get out due to half of the bolts missing, and sanding it wasn't bad either, just messy and of course like an idiot I did it in my bedroom.





Tomorrow I'll try to bondo the cracks up if my girlfriend allows me to being that it's her birthday weekend haha. hopefully sometime soon I'll actually get around to flocking it.

Anyways that's all!

[rawgarage]

May have to hit the cracks with a dremel first.... The edges at least

[rawgarage]

Also damn Bruh sanding a dash in your room?

WhAts on your sheets mannnnn

[hanzbrady]

Originally Posted by RAWGarage

May have to hit the cracks with a dremel first.... The edges at least

I thought I may have to, for the most part though I got the sharp edges all knocked down by hand with some 80 grit.

And I have a bad habit of working in my room no matter what lol, and that's a mixture of dog fur and vinyl dust haha

[hanzbrady]

Well I decided it would be a brilliant idea to not bring my camera home from work so you guys are stuck with more Iphone camera updates and I'm sorry!

Anyways I finally pulled all of the HVAC stuff from my dash and got the chassis harness out of the car so that I could gut it and get the necessities out.



Doing this with the windsheild and seats in the car is a bit of a chore, but doable.

I also started bondoing my dash for its upcoming flocking appointment, hopefully I'm capable of not screwing that up haha.



Today I should hopefully be coming home to some more pretty packages and the next updates should be a little more substantial, right now I'm battling my dad for shop space, and being killed by the little nickle and dime things.

[hanzbrady]

Well, once upon a time I owned a relatively stock 240sx with a mild SR20det, then I started going full race car... don't ever go full race car...

So my friend Tony came by and let me completely gut my car and decide to run all of my own custom wiring, now I'm not mad about this at all, and I've only been writing in this tone because I get bored and writing things in a story format is at least 3.789% cooler than usual.

So the bullet points are as follows

-Interior went bye bye
-The stupidly heavy factory wiring went bye bye
-And my snazzy dash finally got installed! (I'm actually not too proud of this, I should have gotten the bigger flocking kit for sure because I ran out of fibers and there's some dry spots.)

And as always pictures!











And eventually I have to finish this, I broke my MIG's gas solenoid and have just been putting off spending the money for a new welder, but the plans are to shave the holes and go with that glossy almost primer Scion grey color for the bay.



Well that's all for now, the next steps are going to be wiring, I sold my OEM Wiring Specialties harness to fund purchasing their universal one, then I also need to grab some kind of switch panel to control everything, I was thinking the ARC one, but it's still TBD. I want the wiring on this version of the build to be as simple and race-inspired as possible so that I can spend more time enjoying my car and driving it.

Thanks for reading guys!

[hanzbrady]

How about a shitty cellphone picture update???

I started doing some wiring and if I made nay mistakes please let me know, this is my first attempt at this! I'll make a proper update when I actually have more done and installed in the car.

[KAT-PWR]

I hate to tell you but that bondo is going to crack quickly.

[hanzbrady]

Originally Posted by KAT-PWR

I hate to tell you but that bondo is going to crack quickly.

I should've posted another photo of that sanded now that I think about it lol. That's also no bondo, its filler with fiberglass in it for the extra heat resistance. Anyways long story short 98% of it was sanded back and only the low spots remained and the was skimmed with putty to smooth it out. I'm not too worried about the cracking seeing how the car wont see the sun often.

[KAT-PWR]

Ah okay, I debated if that was short strand filler (which you need to use) or just some house brand blue bondo. You should be okay.

[hanzbrady]

Well I didn't get much done on the car this week, mostly it's just a financial issue and I'm trying to save up the last bit I need to finish the car.

However I did snap one interior picture while my girlfriend was helping me run new wires for my lights and accessories. Finding a girl that doesn't mind working on your car with you is probably one of the best feelings ever tbh.



It's slowly coming back together piece by piece, The mismatched gauges bother me just as much as everyone else, and Broadfield wouldn't be proud of my tach install, but in time I'll build a nice all in one cluster with a spare body I have.

End 240 stuff, on to Saturday

MY co worker Manuel finally got his Mustang back together after going through a bit of a shit show with a tranny swap and we went to the IHRA bracket event we had at OSW. After just a few passes the brand new tranny started leaking fluid and we had to make a make shift diaper to hold everything in, it's amazing that you can go 10's with a car held together with shop rags and duct tape.

Anyways I took some glamour shots!









Unfortunately we ran too fast in the second round due to the new converter slipping causing the car to not engine break and rather act like you push a clutch in, not slowing it down.

Now on to mothers day, I made my mom and my girlfriend some roses out of some scrap sheet metal I had laying around because I was bored and wanted to get some TIG practice in since I'll be doing a lot for my car.



Anyways that's all the relatively "cool" things I did this weekend, I'm sorry it wasn't much on my car!

[hanzbrady]

Mini update!

So these passed few weeks I've been working solely on the chassis and mostly the engine bay in particular, It used to be beat up, scratched, rusted, have some janky ass holes punched out for intercooler piping, and a lot of other hack job BS that I didn't want to sit a new engine in to.

So let's start with a before picture


I planned on shaving my bay as stated in the beginning of the thread but never finished due to my MIG breaking but I ended up repairing it so I finally got around to finishing up filling of all the useless holes, I also made some patch pieces for where the IC piping and battery tray used to sit and zapped them in.



My factory radiator support also went bye bye and I'll be fabbing up something removable and simple to take its place. Here's some in process mock up pictures, you can also see where I started to use some short strand filler to smooth everything out, bondo is coming today!







And the poor engine waiting for its home to be ready


And lastly I just wanted to congratulate my girlfriend on her graduation!





As always thank you guys for reading, more updates will be coming soon!

[tuzzio]

Price on barely legal shipped to 01077?

[95_S14]

Originally Posted by tuzzio

Price on barely legal shipped to 01077?

Looks like she can suck start a lawn mower

[feito]

[hanzbrady]

Well after a pay raise at work I've found some motivation to finally pull the trigger on some hotboi paint! I finished the high build primer today, and tomorrow the bay will be sprayed in a candy purple. Hopefully I can get everything done by tomorrow because after that it's going to rain for about a week straight (I hate Florida) .

The exterior will eventually be Scion IH5 grey, but that'll be after the car is running. Sorry for this being kind of a slow build, this is just my 3rd time building the car and I'd like it to be done right.

Anyways pictures!





And here's just some quick throw back pictures that I found laying in my photobucket that I'd like to share. I may have only had my car since I was 17, (I'm 19 currently) but I feel like it's really come a long way.

Excuse the mess and quality of these, they're from the day I got my car and my excitement came before my quality control lol. For anyone who didnt know I got my car as a shell with a bucket filled with 95% of an SR swap and built it myself over the summer before my senior year. It may be corny to say but this car really means a lot to me and owning it has helped me grow as a person and made me into the individual I am today.

/end rant













Well that's all, thank you to everyone for reading!

[KAT-PWR]

Remind me of myself when I was your age.... Touching.

Also congrats on the sex.

[hanzbrady]

Well. NEVER trust your local weather forecast, 10% chance of rain my ass.

I managed to get the bay sprayed and cleared then a fucking torrential downpour set in and even snapped the pop up tent I had set up around my car. So basically I have sand everything back down, re-prime, and re-shoot.

This is the only picture I got (Just base no clear)

[R3b]

Just found your thread and the amount of similarity between our cars and situation is crazy! Bought my 240 when I was 18 last year, turned 19 in January this year. Also live in south fl by fort lauderdale so a bit away from you. Drove my hatch everyday to school and work after sitting for months replacing things and redoing stuff from last owner. One day motor started knocking from driving home from work on a miss. Bent two rods and now im almost done piecing everything together.

Im ka-t with will all the internals goodies wiseco, manley, arp etc welded my holes and did a sorta a shave on the bay that finished paint today. This weekend is our monthlyish south fl meet so I dont think ill get everything together in less than 4 days with working two jobs. Maybe next week drop the motor in. Nice to see another local teenager doing the same thing with hopeless 240s

[R3b]

Sorry to thread jack but had to comment fully agree with you on the sentimental value of the car. Spent and learned a lot doing this and has shaped me more than I like to admit. BUT after this I think im done with a lot of mods, spent a lot of money and will probably buy a daily end of the year then have this has a weekend car. My biggest fear is some asshole driving and wrecking my front end or my perfect rear panels.

[KAT-PWR]

Hanz-E-Brady