Didderson's 1988 daily pickup, 240sx support vehicle!

[Didderson]

Hey everyone in the trucks forum! I had been lurking around for a little while. Did some upgrades to my new daily driver already. Just looking to keep it simple, and I won't lower it because I already have a low 240sx. It'll stay truck-ish stock height With larger wheels and tires.

Some quick specs:
1988 D21 hardbody
Blue exterior, blue interior
Base model, no A/c, but small chrome package.
5spd trans
4x2 drivetrain
z24i 2.4L electronic injected TBI carb
110,100 miles upon purchase
Rust situation is very good and not a problem, respray soon so it stays nice forever!
Came with a button on tonneau cover

Here's pics from the day I bought it:




1 day after purchasing it my girl and I cleaned it thoroughly inside and out. Here's a pic of my engine bay work. Just simple soak, spray degrease and wash rinse: What really helped is not a single seal is leaking from this engine. Probably because the thermostat is stuck open. Maybe all cars should run cooler then they'd last longer yea??? We're being hosed!


Then the next day we took it on vacation down to an Ocean City Maryland beach LOL. I knew it would make it just fine and it was a blast breaking it in!


My bbgirl takes some cool extended exposure pictures:


So we were filling up to leave MD and I thought it looked great in this light:


At the beach we looked in every Beachwear shop for the "perfect" seat cover, and amazingly, we found it!
Here's some pics of the install process:



The finished look from the outside. I love it! It's softer than oem tweed too


Got some wheels planned for it. I WILL PAINT THESE GUNMETAL LOL. Need tires though. I'm looking locally for wheels or tires. Truck tires aren't too bad if you get em used!


Yesterday I was driving with my college friends, good to be back. All the engineers at psu hbg love cars or trucks in some way. This first pic looks like a commercial because of the demolition site background:



The guy (jason) who owns the s14 just re did his garage floor. So last night we just hung out and drank and painted my steelies back to black with the SS hubcap lips stayin the same. She looks great!


I have interior dodads and upgrades to install. I'll take pics when I do those. I'm also not that bad at tinting windows. Doing the rear glass in 35%, just a smoke.

I finished energy suspension 23mm sway bar bushings today, and the kit came with new end link bushings and hardware So it feels better, but not like my 240 haha!
I have ES poly tension rod bushings to go on later also.
Pics uploaded later on those.

For now, enjoi

[hbpignosePA]

looks rad dude.

its awesome to have a truck when u need to haul things.

i guess having friends w a truck is rad too

you should try and make it down sometime to see my new toy

[indomiekid1]

very nice.
i miss my truck.
putting s*** in the 240 sucks.

[Didderson]

Yes yes, the utility of this thing is and will always come in handy! I now have a dedicated mountain bike, snowboard and moped hauler!

You should have seen me trying to get up this parking trail for mtn biking this summer in the 240. I almost thought I busted the tie rod on some big rock flipping around!

If I find some truck wheels in york I might be down sooner than later!

[RT22]

if you have a pull a part junk yard near check it out, I found tons of those little parts like you said you needed and cheap. Also i found some leather buckets from a path finder for 50 bucks for both in great shape and they bolt right in with the stock rails from the path finder. many path finder parts are 100% bolt on so you can get a lot of little things with no issues.

[Didderson]

Thanks for the info man, I saw that in some other people's threads. I already have pathfinder light up mirror sun visors to go in, and a blue interior hardbody map light set .
I'm trying to get some chrome handles on the cheap to finish my 'chrome package' lol.

[jdansmith]

Nice find! Heads up, I found a bit of rust behind the tail lights on mine .
Love the seat cover.

[Didderson]

This weekend I got a lot of things crossed off the daily "to do" list.
I taped it up for painting the areas where primer is exposed, just to spot paint for a 20-30ft paint job lol. Much better than flaking paint though.
This being a daily I'm not going to stress over the paint or dents because that's what my 240sx is for! Trying to keep that nice body wise. Maybe someday the truck will get more suitable love and 4wd fenders/bed.


Another pic of when I was finished. I chillaxed until the sun went down so I missed photo shoot ops for y'all.


Polished the hood that night too just because I wanted to try and rid it of the haziness. It came out great, this was a halfway done shot.


Last update I had already done this but forgot to add it. I re routed the cooling lines while changing the thermostat so that they SKIP the throttle body, thereby leaving it mildly cooler, hopefully gaining horsepower.


I pulled a plug and checked the distributor cap and oh boy does the ignition system need a tune up. I did the both sets of spark plugs, rest of the stuff is on order from rock auto which includes plug wires, cap and rotor. Mad good pricing from their warehouse sales.

But I painted the air cleaner top while it was off during the spark plug install. I might finish the bottom half when installing plug wires.


Anddd I got a set of stickers that help nubs identify that this is my dialy, so everyone knows it's mine :P


I might finish tinting the rear glass this week but man it's annoying!

-L8

[seang]

The coolant circuit bypass on your TB might not let the idle settle down if the ambient temperature gets below 60 degrees or so--at least that's how it was with my 97 ka24e.

Air cleaner looks good, btw. Even an old wreck like a naps-z can benefit considerably from good details like that.

[longtooth]

Also by removeing the coolant hoses from the throttle body can allow the throttle plates to ice up. Life isnt fun when that happens.

[kungPOWadobo]

Nice, I need a daily like this. If only these things were strong enough to tow. That would be sick!

[Didderson]

Alright thanks for the insight on the TB stuff guys. It's really hot down there because this intake doesn't have thermal gaskets like my sr20, so I doubt the tb cooling line being removed impacts it a lot right now. If I run into problems later on (when it gets colder) I'll put the original lines back the way they were.

My high idle never really went down anyway, so I turned the high idle screw close to regular idle lol.

And sean, the iacv cooling lines are what affects your idle settling down, not the tb warmer.

I ran my sr without the TB warmer all last winter just fine, but that was multi port fuel injected :x lol

[Didderson]

Okay, I ended up putting the cooling lines back on the TB, hopefully because it's probably more efficient that way lol. Mpg isn't bad though, between 24 and 28. I got 30 once in the summer (summer gas?).


I finished up those wagon wheels with gunmetal and clear wheel paint from advanceauto. It's holding up really well. Got some nicely used 215/75/14 tires all around. Raised it a bit from the stockers
For the new wheels I used the original Nissan urethane center caps and they look great!
Also since last update of pictures I got extra button snappers for the tonneau cover from the original company so it works again.





For xmas I made a wreath for it while my gf was making wreaths for her house. She thought it was so redneck and ugg but I think it's a boss way to be festive haha...


With it being 2wd, this is how I get around in the snow. Tool box and tires in the back, and lots of snow!

It does pretty well as long as you keep your momentum up and have lower tire pressure.
Just a pic from a snowy december night. I drove it home in 4inches of snow, it was easypeasy. Snowdrifts are fun in the truck too, but more fun in the 240!


I'm finding that I like the look of a 4dr 1990 pathfinder more now, so maybe I'll sell this for one of those next year and start a real offroad suspension project, but who knows. Maybe a cap on the bed would make it look the same, but I would still be missing the cabin space lol.