how i saved a trashed east coast vert (with bonus KA24DE issues)

[thermogod]

this is how I saved an undrivable East Coast vert from 9 unregistered years moving around random New York garages. with 0 towing experience, 0 s-chassis experience and 0 experience driving manual, I trailered it 230 miles home, then spent the world's longest 3 months running through a million KA issues until it drove.



does anyone care? who knows. hopefully this thread can be a summary for others having similar KA24DE issues, saving them from doing what I did and spending hours finding threads from 2003 with no pictures and trying to figure out how the authors fixed their KAs. I just drove this car 36 miles to work last week, which made me think this would be a good story.

btw, the shower handle shift knob, NRG wheel, ebay headers, Sakura door panel wrap, hole in the hood, XXRs, "silvia" vent cover is how I bought it. and I know, verts suck, I'm an amateur, should've replaced everything with NISMO OLD LOGO JDM VINTAGE, whatever.

so.

Step 1: decide you want to buy a 1960s El Camino.
Step 2: go to Lock City Drift for halloween.
Step 3: decide you would rather buy a 90s nissan.

so I got on marketplace, got in a uhaul with my friend, knocked out a 460 mile round trip in the rain and picked up this vert that "just needs a MAF and a back window". it ran and drove onto the trailer, so it was fine right? surely nobody would just?get on fb marketplace and LIE?



the snowball effect started with, of course, installing a brand new Rockauto MAF. Now it would start then die after a few seconds. "google zilvia KA24DE dies with MAF plugged in". check the wires, check your harness, check that you have no air leaks between engine and MAF. still no idle. could I drive with no MAF? not really. did it run and rev without one? yes. but my MAF was good so the issue was elsewhere.

next step: ask for help on FB. "Check your ECU!" so I do - and it's for a 1989 KA24E car.



i have no idea how this car ended up with a single cam ECU. the condition of the rest of the car led me to not be surprised at all.

well there's my issue. I replace the ECU; now the car actually runs with the MAF plugged in. but it runs really badly. idles at 1500rpm, runs extremely rich, dies when I rev it, and has a consistent ticking noise...?

I find the TSB telling Nissan techs to remove the upper timing chain guide, so I do, which still doesn't fix the ticking. I check that my lower timing chain tensioners move freely.

it wasn't the chain or chain tensioners. so wtf was it?
giving up on that issue, I remove my IACV to investigate the high idle. full of carbon.



sprayed it out with carb cleaner, replaced the old IACV gasket, then I realize the IACV was never plugged in ANYWAYS, and couldn't find the plugs on the WS harness. so the IACV must not be the idle issue. so I test for vacuum leaks. turns out there was an uncapped line on my intake manifold from the previous owners' EGR delete, two open ports on my throttle body, and the throttle body-to-intake coupler was very loose.

at this point I just took the entire manifold and throttle body off and every single gasket associated with it. found 114,000 miles of carbon and that the previous owner bolted on a QUARTER to cap off this hole.





cleaned the carbon, did new gaskets, capped the vacuum leaks, replaced this bent, leaking coolant bypass hose...



manifold back on, and now it won't even crank. GREAT.

the forums tell me to 1) sand down all my ground wire connections to ensure they're making good contact, and 2) jump the starter to double-check that it itself isn't bad. the grounds were my issue. I had gotten the outside of the manifold dirty after spraying all the carbon out, and the grounding areas weren't clean. sanded the ground areas down and with fresh contacts, it would now turn over, run on 3 cylinders and die.

my roommates start asking if "that thing will ever move". at this point i post it for sale, intending to move on to a different project because this one defeated me...