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Old 11-20-2020, 10:09 AM   #1
TollieLifted
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Building an S13 Hatch in a Shoebox



So I picked up this S13 hatch on a cold, rainy day last February from some kid and his dad. I went to check it out and took it for a test drive. Brakes were soft, suspension was iffy and the car smelled like Yee Yee, Monster energy sipping Marlboro Man. After some negotiating with the kids dad we shook hands and I bought this turd. I shouldn?t have bought it but I have no self control so here we are.

Driving home I noticed the brakes becoming gradually worse and stopping more a question of IF not when it would stop. (kids dad said he would take this car to the East coast no problem LOL) Once I get home I jacked up the car and made some more discoveries.

? Motor mounts are toast
? Bluetooth tension rod bushings
? Brake line running to rear brakes is rusted through with fluid dripping out. Each press of the pedal literally squirted out fluid. I didn?t notice any fluids under the car when I was checking it out but the car had been sitting in the same spot for 3 months not being driven so I must have busted the line open on the test drive or way home.
? Frame rails are rusty in typical spots. I should have done a better job inspecting but given the weather at the time they appeared not as bad as they are. Someone has patched them in the past and did a lackluster job





The car ran ok and had its obvious issues but I was stoked to have another S Chassis in my life again. I?ve had two others before this one. The first was an immaculate 89 coupe. Old man owned, auto, like 90k miles. I regret selling this car on a regular basis. Sold it to some Honda kid who probably basterdized it or crashed it. I will have to dig up some pictures but here is one i have of the sweet XXRs I had cuz i was a broke college kid.



A few years later I got an S14 drift turd that I ended up selling to a kid who rolled up with 10 of his closest homies. Then as I awkwardly waited at the credit union with the kids dad for him to do paperwork to get the loan his dad questioned me like I was trying to date his daughter or something. Kid later blows up the car and his dad is texting me blaming me



Back to the hatch.

First order of business was to replace the rusted-out brake line. I made new lines and got that sorted which was not fun. Then I replaced the tension rods since those bushings didn?t exist. While replacing the steering rack bushings I managed to crack a rusted power steering line?.so I ordered Chase Bays lines and replaced that.

At this point the car had been sitting in my garage for about a month and decided it didn?t want to start after sitting for a bit. Upon further inspection I discovered the typical hodge podge emissions delete attempt and random things unplugged. Deleted EGR and cleaned IACV. Got it running but it idled high and didn?t want to start without giving it gas. Drove it around a couple times before it ended up sitting out at my parents for a couple months. My apartment building got bought out and dude gave us 30 days to move out so he could renovate the building. Naturally, I had just started house hunting so I moved in with the parents for a couple months while I found a place. Car sat there and the rest of my possessions waited in a storage unit. Found a house after multiple offers on other places. The market was crazy- houses selling same day they were listed, selling 10-20k over asking. Wild.

Fast forward in time and I am moved into my new place and got the S13 into the garage. I compromised with the one car garage and almost immediately decided I would need more space but oh well.



Got right to work and I started tearing into the engine bay and pulled the motor for disassembly and rebuild. Motor was making some wonky noises and I plan to build the KA because why not. This is my first time tearing into a motor outside of doing timing jobs and stuff like that.


You can see how cramped it is with that monstrous hoist.


Got the motor out and pushed the car outside so I had room to work.

I discovered someone has had the head off before and did not do an awesome job of reassembly. ARP studs were installed but they were loose and some of the nuts weren't even torqued all the way. I think this was done with a timing refresh.


Here you can see the wear on the bearings. There is some serious wear on the sides of the main bearing in the middle as well.

Rod bearings also show wear and some pitting





Cylinder walls





Got the head disassembled. After 2 attempts at getting the right valve spring compressor I ended up using the hammer and socket method to smash the springs into submission. This felt super sketchy but I guess this is the way. I'll have to track down the proper tool when I install new springs.


Also, appears as if someone used the oil pan for some prospecting....


So that catches us up to where I currently am with the car. Now I need to get the motor off to the machine shop for bore, hone, deck, valve job, etc. Once the motor is out of the garage I'll roll the car back in and get to work on next steps.

First order of business is repair the frame rails. I work at a structural steel fab shop so I will get the plates cut at work. Not sure if I wanna tackle the welding yet or not since I am an extremely amateur welder at best. We'll see.

Then the plan is install the suspension components I have been accumulating:
-BC Super Low coils
-ISR Pro arms
-Tie rod ends
-Moog ball joints

Goal for the car (as of now) is just a street car with maybe some track days. Going to work with what I have and build the KA and stay NA for now. Been toying with the idea of ITBs but we will see if that comes to fruition. Maybe I will go full Zilvia and wait 6 months then part out the car. I have a million projects for the house as well so time and money will be stretched all over the place.

I think that about does it for now. Thanks for sticking around if you've made it this far.

Last edited by TollieLifted; 11-23-2020 at 12:59 PM..
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Old 11-23-2020, 08:22 AM   #2
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Over the weekend I got a decent amount of work in. Removed the rear arms after copious amounts of WD40 and leverage. Think this car is from the midwest?


Rear struts are in poor shape and driver side was only secured with one nut at the top mount...




Also got the interior mostly out. Dash included. Passenger seat is still in due to one bolt that goes through the floor and is rusted to Hell and back. Currently soaking in WD40.





Carpet needs to come out for a thorough cleaning cuz it is stained with dip spit and smells effing terrible. Removing the dash was made that much worse crawling all over the nasty ass carpet. It was painted at some point but it appears as if they did it with the seats still in the car..

Overall a pretty boring update but making progress. I need to find a good way to organize all the interior bits instead of sitting on top of the car like they are now
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Old 11-23-2020, 12:12 PM   #3
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I will be keeping an eye on this, I enjoy seeing little updates addressing the sketch stuff from previous owners.

I'd recommend a proper penetrant. Rusty bolts will always be rusty bolts, but WD40 doesn't really work as a penetrant.
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Old 11-23-2020, 12:56 PM   #4
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I will be keeping an eye on this, I enjoy seeing little updates addressing the sketch stuff from previous owners.

I'd recommend a proper penetrant. Rusty bolts will always be rusty bolts, but WD40 doesn't really work as a penetrant.
Always a surprise waiting when I head to the garage.

I have no shortage of rusty bolts, that is for sure! Unfortunately, WD was all I had on hand at the moment. I need to pick up some PB Blaster when I go grab sockets to replace the ones that magically vanished. Not 10MMs surprisingly. I found 3 of those when I pulled my motor!

I may just take the recip saw to the seat bracket bolt and be done with it since it'll need replaced anyhow. A good excuse to break out the power tools.
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Old 11-23-2020, 03:55 PM   #5
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I fucking love seeing stuff like this. Keep at it man
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Old 11-23-2020, 08:02 PM   #6
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Old 11-25-2020, 06:31 AM   #7
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Spent a couple hours in the garage last night working on labeling connectors. I should have done this as I disconnected plugs initially but no big. It was good to get more familiar with how everything is routed.





I think I will relocate the fuse boxes to under the dash and clean up the the harness where able. I love a clean bay. Battery is going to trunk and I might delete A/C also.
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Old 11-30-2020, 11:17 AM   #8
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Over the holiday weekend I got a little work done on the ole shitbox.

Harnesses out of the engine bay and began to think through what needs to be extended and such with the tuck.


Removed the blower to get better access to the hole in the firewall and holy shit that was annoying. I am NOT looking forward to getting that back in.

Obligatory, "look at all this change" picture after I pulled the carpet.




Found some rust that needs addressed. Looks like someone tried patching/repairing the floor previously and it is in terrible shape now. However, they ignored the 2 holes that are present. I haven't much experience in body work/repair so this will be a first go at it on this project.




Also, got the rear LCA out and knuckles. Plan is to take care of the surface rust on the knuckles and press in new bushings. Same with the LCAs. Figure I may as well finish the back end before moving to the front so I have added the following to my shopping list:

-Ball joints
-Wheel bearings
-Knuckle bushings
-LCA bushings
-Subframe bushings
-Rear sway bar bushings and links
-Diff bushings too, I guess

Really wishing I still had the ES master bushing kit I bought for my first S13. Lost it somewhere along the way with all my moves since then.

Next up for the rear end of the car is disconnecting the calipers and stripping those and giving them a new finish. Can't have all new arms and then crusty old calipers.
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Old 11-30-2020, 05:04 PM   #9
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Hell yeah man. I?ve done this enough times myself it gets easier but the first time is always fun figuring everything out. Also, you shouldn?t have diff bushings unless you have a different subframe (like an s14 or something etc.) but other then that it?s all realistically pretty straight forward. Good luck dude and keep at it. If you got any questions/need help feel free to dm as I?m on here I think more frequently then some lol
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Old 12-01-2020, 11:43 AM   #10
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Hell yeah man. I?ve done this enough times myself it gets easier but the first time is always fun figuring everything out. Also, you shouldn?t have diff bushings unless you have a different subframe (like an s14 or something etc.) but other then that it?s all realistically pretty straight forward. Good luck dude and keep at it. If you got any questions/need help feel free to dm as I?m on here I think more frequently then some lol
Ope! Thought there were bushings for the mounts on the diff -good call.

Appreciate it man :cheers:
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Old 06-03-2021, 02:24 PM   #11
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Been a minute. Projects around the house have kept me busy and taken up a bulk of my free time.

Anyhow, little update.



Since last time I have picked up another KA to swap in because I want to drive the car while i SLOWLY rebuild the motor. Spins freely and the oil looked ok. Came out of a an auto car with supposedly like 50k miles (not sure i believe that). Every connector was cut so thankfully i have all that laying around from my original KA.

Got the driver side motor mount cut off which was a PITA but good to have that done so the bay is "ready." Still not where i want it to be but oh well.

Took my rear control arms and hubs to work to press out the ball joints and wheel bearings that desperately needed replaced.

I put the rear back together and swapped out all the rear arms so i could get the damn thing off stands and rolled out of the garage. This is when I came across an interesting issue- after measuring the OEM arms and adjusting the new to match I cannot get the coils to line up on the perch...the OEM strut slides on just fine but the BCs would be bound up if i bolted the top and tried to slide them on the perch or vice versa. Maybe an arm was mismeasured or something? I double checked each one but I guess it could happen. It's like the knuckle needs to move back. I threw the OEM struts back in to get the car out of the garage. Any ideas? Once the motor is in i will pull it apart and investigate further. I just needed it out of the garage so I had room.

Edit: It occurred to me last night as I was walking through the grocery store- of course the coil wont line up when it is adjusted like 5" shorter than the OEM strut. The geometry of the suspension is different when lowered like that so OEM specs would go out the door. I think I will adjust the arms as needed to get the coil to seat properly and check alignment after that. Sounds reasonable, no?


Last edited by TollieLifted; 06-04-2021 at 06:00 AM.. Reason: dumb person doing dumb things
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Old 06-04-2021, 09:47 AM   #12
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Yeah the coilovers are just like that. Every s-chassis I've put coilovers on is like that. They have some flex in the upper mount for that very reason. The shock shaft is not binding at all, you're just flexing the upper bushing. Leave the arms alone.

Also, when you go to adjust the upper control arm for camber, extend the traction rod the same amount to optimize bumpsteer.
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Old 06-04-2021, 11:40 AM   #13
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Originally Posted by PoorMans180SX View Post
Yeah the coilovers are just like that. Every s-chassis I've put coilovers on is like that. They have some flex in the upper mount for that very reason. The shock shaft is not binding at all, you're just flexing the upper bushing. Leave the arms alone.

Also, when you go to adjust the upper control arm for camber, extend the traction rod the same amount to optimize bumpsteer.
Interesting. I could have sworn on my last S13 they mounted up perfect... I know in the front the tophat swivels but i guess i didnt realize the rear allowed movement of the tophat independent of the shaft.

Thanks for the tip.
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Old 06-14-2021, 01:52 PM   #14
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Small update:

Got the "new" motor set on the mounts on Sunday and began to get it hooked up. Pushed the car back in the garage to stay out of the heat and cicada swarms. Stays fairly cool in the garage with the door shut since I added insulation. Still needs to get covered up to be code compliant but shhh



Plan for the week is get the wiring tuck and battery relocation finished up for a first start this weekend. Going to finish getting things in the bay squared away tonight then move on to the interior/wiring.
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Old 06-15-2021, 11:39 AM   #15
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Monday night I knocked a couple items off the list-

Got the rad and coolant and fuel lines hooked up.

Started breaking down the harness and planning out routing for the wiring in the engine bay. Plan to complete this tonight and move to the fuse boxes/rest of the wiring that was in the bay.

I need to go get some 0GA end terminals and a distribution block for the battery relocation then that will be complete.

Here is a boring photo of wiring mess and crusty ass engine bay. I'm going to move the power steering resy to a less conspicuous spot but for now it will stay there.
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