dean's KA24DE powered s13 build - Lone Star Drift/Daily Driver

[drifter92]

Background story:

I bought this car completely bone stock 3 years ago. Automatic, SE, non Hicas.
Swapped it to 5-speed a month later, then swapped in an S13 redtop SR20 after a couple more months, then traded the SR20 for a 1JZ engine alone. Got the 1JZ running 8 months later and after one year of drifting with the engine overheating 24/7 and dozens of attempts to solve the overheating, I sold the 1JZ setup and parted out the car. I bought a 350z, drove it for 2 weeks and realized that the grass wasn't greener..... The 350Z just could not replace the s13 in my heart. So I did what any dedicated 240sx owner would do.... I traded the stock 350z for my old s13 which now had a stock KA in it. The value of the 2 cars were similar, and my old car is worth ALOT more to me than to anyone else, so the trade was not as bad of a deal as it sounds... My Z had transmission grinds and smoked a bit. Anyway my old s13 had been massacred a little bit by the temporary owner during the KA swap so now I had to go over the car and fix some major issues. I pulled the KA to do all of the work I needed to do to make it more reliable and ready for boost, because my plans are to boost it later using a simple S15 T28 setup on low boost.

I pulled the KA and I have been waiting on parts for a few weeks and tonight I just assembled some of the engine. I went through and cleaned everything, sand-blasted some parts and painted things to make it all pretty.









The other guy murdered this s14 KA swap into the car and was using the s14 harness, ECU, MAF, intake, etc. everything
The timing was WAY off, IAT sensor wires were cut, multiple vacuum leaks, oil leaks, power steering leak, transmission fluid leak, etc. No gauges worked because of the s14 engine harness. These aproblems are not something I was going to try and fix the hard way so I started looking for S13 parts so I could just remove all the s14 stuff and swap in stock S13 things everywhere and keep the long block and transmission.

Luckily there was an s13 at the junkyard and it still had all those parts on it so I pulled it all and it was super expensive but I had the parts I needed. One problem, the engine harness was chewed through by rats. I was planning on relooming the harness anyway so this wasn't that big of an issue. Only a few wires were damaged and none were completely cut.

Initial damage & condition


cutting out the damaged wires


this is such a dirty job


damaged area all repaired & pretty


full harness redone