Hey, Listen! My '95 S14 build

[HGs14]

Part 1: April



April 3rd 2013
I Just graduated high school going in to my second semester of college. I managed to convince my parents into going halfzies with me on a smaller more “economic” car rather than a V8 1998 Dodge Dakota that I was daily driving to school and work.
During the spring break of 2012 I went to my first drift event with my cousin and a bunch of his friends at Gulf Greyhound Park or “GGP” as everyone locally calls it. I immediately fell in love with the sport. Seeing these low, aggressive and loud cars literally throw themselves sideways and slide around the track was the coolest shit I’ve ever seen and I knew I wanted to do the same. So fast forward a year, I had done a bunch of research on what cool drift cars look like, as well as what the best and most affordable chassis suitable for drifting were. I was convinced that 240’s were the coolest looking cars while having enormous aftermarket support and parts availability so I was dead set on a 240sx. At the time I was really trying to find a decent coupe but I wasn’t having any luck finding something local.
Then this 1995 S14 zenki shows up on my local craigslist.
-130,XXX or so miles on the chassis
-Ka24de
-KYB GR-2 springs and struts
-Spec D exhaust
-cold air intake
and of course I can’t forget the homie chromies!




Car was just up I-35 an hour away in Austin, TX. talked to the guy selling it and he gave me a few more details and set a date to meet.

Sealed the deal and was on my way back home.
That first cruise back home is still one of my favorite memories. Car didn’t have a radio which was a bummer but I was still too excited to care.



About a month into owning it my friend Kyle helped me do a few basic tune ups, spark plugs, fix wonky idle, fuel filter, and even let me borrow some spare 15’s he had lying around.



I went to my first “Nismo Fiesta” with all my friends which was super cool.





It sucks to know that my car is the only one out of all four 240sx in these pictures that still exist amongst my friends. Two were sold or parted out and the other two were in accidents.




A few weeks later I managed to find some cheap replica sideskirts locally and some cool looking 16” mesh wheels for a good deal.




Me and friends were planning a trip back up to GGP and I was wanting to do something different with my car and idk what came over me but I plastidipped the meshies. Didn’t come out terrible but being young, naïve, and a broke college kid with a part time job this was the best I could do at the moment!







Me and Jerry getting his car ready for GGP since him and a few others were going to be drifting that day.



I wish I could’ve driven in the event as well but I didn’t have any spare tires, this thing still had an open differential, the motor wasn’t in the best shape due to the previous owners and it was still AUTO! (more details about that soon)


So as summer was coming to an end a friend of mine mentioned to me he was planning on stripping his interior to weld in a cage and pretty much go full retard with his car. He had some clean carpet he was selling and I wanted it. Mine was gross and had tears along the rear where the passenger seats were.

Come to find out he also had a super clean uncracked dash. He told me he’d trade for my cracked dash plus some cash on top since he was just going to run a through dash type cage. He didn’t want to ruin a perfectly good uncracked dash.
So of course with my luck, my brake booster managed to take a shit and stopped working prior to me pulling the old dash out. But it worked out since its extremely easy to take the booster off without a dash board in the way.

Installed new carpet, new booster and my crown jewel of an uncracked S14 dashboard ( which to me have always been harder to find than s13 ones)






finally all back together ready to drive again!

Car held up great for a few months before one rainy afternoon as I was driving into work. I guess i didnt realize how shitty my tires were but i started sliding right into a curb.






so instead of replacing it with some used OEM LCA and Toe rods I figured it was time to buy adjustable arms

i went with Megan Racing adjustable arms.
soon as they came in slapped on the new arms and got an alignment.

Since one of my mesh wheels got pretty bent up, i needed to fix it or replace it. But at the time my good friend was selling his Impul R5’s for super cheap. They had some terrible sizing and offsets but thats why they make spacers right?
¯\_(ツ)_/¯




found out 95 accord front lips kinda fit so I bought one from my local pick n pull for like $15 and zipped it onto the front bumper. While of course I wanted an SE Lip I couldn’t afford a new one and I was never able to find one locally for less than $100 which to me wasn’t worth paying for at the moment.




My s14 was starting to look kinda cool. But I wasn’t totally satisfied.

Started saving over the next couple of months and finally I had enough to buy my first set of coilovers. I went with PBM due to the fact that they are completely rebuildable, came with decent spring rates, were affordable and my friend had been running them on his car for months and he loved them so I figured why not.




also bought some Tein Inners a while back since one of my oem ones had a slight bend in it.

Its now the 21st of November 2013,
Literally the day they showed up at my house I called my buddy Kyle and he helped me install them.






This shit was soo low but I loved it. Idk why I let my friend convince me to see how low they went, but I was so happy to finally have coil overs that it didn’t bother me regardless of how much my exhaust was scraping on the road.


Picked up some RUCAs to help with the natural camber that was added after slamming the car.








got used to driving around with such a low car over the next few days because a week after I was going to drive back up to Houston with some of friends to go check out Wekfest TX.


saw some cool cars, ate some good food, and had a bunch of laughs with my friends.





well the weekend was over and it was time to head back. Then around 11:00pm still about an hour away from home, my water temp starting rising, which was odd at first because the whole way home prior to, the needle was sitting below where it usually would mark. So I just assumed it would slowly climb back down since it was about 35 degrees outside, but I was wrong. A few miles further down the road and I started to see smoke coming from the hood. Killed the motor and started to pull off to the shoulder on the highway. My friends immediately pulled up behind me and started to help me figure out what was going on. Sure enough my water pump pretty much seized up and was useless
Thinking back on it, I don’t remember why we thought we could fix it on the side of the highway in the middle of the night in freezing weather. But I called a tow truck, which took like 3.5 hours to show up -________- but my friends stuck around with me and we waited til about 5 in the morning to get this thing loaded up and on the way back home.



ordered a new water pump and got this thing back on the road.

Drove the car as much as i could, whether it was to local car meets or just cruising with friends.






test fitted my cousins 15's





I could barely even drive down the street without scraping subframe...

quickly realized it was a bad idea and took them off.


Soo earlier I mentioned this car was still automatic, well over for the past few months I was slowly gathering parts to do a five speed swap.
Managed to get a drive shaft, transmission cross member, clutch pedal and lines off of my friend parting out his s14, found a KA Transmission for under $100 and a slightly used clutch and pressure plate for a good price as well.

I had done the research online, found countless threads and I was finally ready to do a 5 speed conversion on this car.

Luckily my cousin was kind enough to help me and let me do the swap in his drive way.
Drove over to his house with literally every part for the swap in the trunk of the 240… yes I had a spare transmission in the trunk…

Got the car up on jack stands and started to get to work.
Started to follow the steps according to the “how to” threads and everything was going smoothly until I got to the pilot bearing. It just wouldn’t come out. So I said whatever and kept it in there.

Wish I would’ve take more pictures this night.
But I was way too busy trying to make sure I was doing everything correctly.


the weekend was quickly ending and I was running out of time.

I managed to only get as far as pulling the old transmission off, cutting the hole for the clutch master cylinder and installing the clutch plate, pressure plate, and flywheel. I would have to come back next weekend to finish.

As the weekend came along I immediately drove over to Jerrys house as soon as I got off work on Friday and tried to get this swap done before the weekend ended.

With the help of my cousin, uncle, a few friends, and a bunch of beer. We managed to get everything back together. Added some new fluids, made sure all the wires were connected and lowered it off the jack stands.

Tried to turn it on but nothing was happening when I turned the key.


Turns out I simply overlooked the starter wires and forgot to bolt it down correctly.

Tried it again and it turned over first try.

I was in shock. I couldn’t believe it was working. I didn’t know what to feel in that moment. I was nervous and happy all at the same time. It was such a cool feeling knowing that I managed to get it running with the couple of tools and basic mechanical knowledge that I had back then.

Well here is a good time to mention I never really drove a standard vehicle before.

I mean… I knew how it all worked and understood the concept of shifting gears but I never had a car to practice on… until now.
So since that was the case I let my cousin drive it around first to make sure everything was in working order. We climbed in and took it around the block.
The transmission was shifting smoothly and the clutch was engaging properly. So now it was my turn. Got in and started her up. It was a little shaky at first but within a few minutes I managed to get the hang of it. Drove it around the streets for about 30 minutes with my cousin and then came back.

This is where it gets shitty.

I was finally ready to leave back home in what felt to me for just a moment, a new car, as I get on the highway im shifting up through the gears and as I was going to put it into fifth gear, I guess I miss the gate and throw it back into third. The motor only revved up to about 6300 rpms but I guess that was enough for catastrophic damage.

The motor blew out a loud bang and I could hear metal shards jumping around the engine bay. I drove it down the road another ¼ mile before eventually a cloud of smoke started emerging from the hood of the car. I pulled over and turned the car off and got out to a trail of oil leading back to where the bang first happened. i just remember looking at the poor KA and thinking “Well, it was fun while it lasted.”
my dad was just up the road in front of me so I called him and had him tow me all the way home.









PART 2: A New Heart





Well, I blew up my fucking motor…

It was time for an SR!

The KA had developed a knock shortly after I bought it but it ran longer than I ever expected it to, that's why I didn't really mind doing a 5-speed conversion on it, i figured it would've lasted a little bit longer, but oh well...


I started to consider an RB25 but after doing some calculations I realized it was much more cost effective to do an SR20. I wanted the car back on the road as soon as possible.
So I started looking around the interwebz for an S14 SR20DET. I got a few leads on ebay and a few others with some local engine importers. Just shy of two months of looking I finally found a shop in town, that imports motors and had an SR that fit all of my requirements.

Met up with the shop owner, he was kind enough to do a compression test for me as well just so I can have that peace of mind.
While they went to lunch I pulled out cash from the bank and brought home April’s new heart.





so due to previous water pump failure with the KA, I didn’t want to have to go through that same process of towing it home so first thing I did while the motor was out was install a new water pump.





Job was simple enough.
so I was too excited to get this car running again I didn’t really bother with changing out any other components on the motor so I just ordered the rest of the parts to complete a swap.

I bought the standard stuff for the swap
-3in turbo elbow
-front mount intercooler and piping
-Wiring specialties harness
-Redline MT-90 trans fluid
-3in down pipe, went with “ISR formerly Isis” since my buddy said it pretty much sits above frame rails which was convincing enough for me

cleaned up the bay a bit, found a bunch of metal chunks from the KA, scraped out a bunch of old grime and gunk that had accumulated over the years.