FINALLY!! page 2!

anyways, i've been really busy the last couple weeks and haven't had much time to update the project log or actually work on the sil40 vert. i've been really busy at work doing inspections in the field for a windfarm that john deere is putting in the thumb (that's what we call the part of michigan that looks like the thumb of the mitten). i had a lot of 10-14 hour days on that. now i'm back in the office though and have some time to update.

outside of work, i spent a lot of time helping my teamates get zach's car ready for driftbattle that was last weekend. i've got some pictures of the event here. zach's car is the primered widebody s13 hatch. so yeah... i've been really busy.

i did get some time last week to work on the car though. last tuesday i got out of work early (because i went in at 4am), so i picked up my new intake manifold gaskets from napa. then i went to get some more dy ice and finished removing the sound deadener in the floor pan. i'd like to get some type of thermal insulation to put on the driver side of the tunnel because it gets hot there, but i might get some header wrap for that area instead... i'm undecided. any thoughts?

then i spent some time cleaning the intake manifold and removing the transmission and driveline parts from the s14 ka. the clutch wass pretty worn out, so i picked up a new disc from advance auto for $24. i dropped the flywheel off at the machine shop and picked it up yesterday. i also picked up a new pilot bushing/bearing (whatever) to replace the auto one that we ground out from the s13 ka.

last night we got some more work done. michelle, curt, and i put a few hours in. michelle started by removing the rest of the sound deadener from the tunnel. then she went back to the white vert to remove the carpet. she pulled all the interior panels, and then the seats. with all of that out of the way she pulled out the old carpet. we're going to use it to try to trim the hatch carpet a little better before we toss it in the silvert.

here's michelle, hard at work getting the carpet out of the old vert:

michelle and i also bolted up the header:

curt and i spent most of our time on the engine. we finished installing the intake manifold by running necessary vaccum and coolant lines. i bypassed the coolant lines that go through the intake manifold and the throttle body. it seems to me that it would actually heat the intake and throttle body rather than cool it... :roll: i deleted all of the other vaccum lines and just ran one from the throttle body to the fuel pressure regulator. it really cleans up the intake side of things.

then we installed the pilot bearing, flywheel, clutch, and pressure plate. with those on, we torqued all the bolts to spec. before we were officially "finished" curt cleaned up the oil pan and painted it to match the valve cover. afterwards, we sat around listening to talk radio and looking at car stuff on the laptop.

ready to bolt up the tranny:

curt painting the oil pan:

oh yeah, yesterday my grill came in the mail. it ended up being the wrong one! they sent me an s14 kouki grill instead of the gtr grill. so they sent me a message back saying if i sent them $30, they'll ship me the right grill and i can just keep or sell the other one. i think it seems like an ok deal. i'm not thrilled with it, but they're in japan/china so i don't have a lot of good options other than to hope they come through.

also, i spent some more money recently. i ordered the "origin" tail lights a while ago but paid for them yesterday. i've also got an aftermarket antenna that i just ordered. both of those should be coming within a week or so. now all i need is paint.

Modified by DeXteR at 10:38 AM 7/18/2007

michelle spent almost all of her time cutting and installing the new carpet. she did lend a hand when we bolted a few more parts to the block too. started off with the freshly painted oil pan, then the transmission brackets, and then attempted to put the two intake brackets on. the bolts from the s13 intake didn't fit because they were too small. i don't know if this is a manufacturer thing or if at some point in time the holes were re-tapped because someone was retarded. :?

michelle gave up on the carpet after a few hours and fady and i wrestled with the transmission for most of the night. the thing just wouldn't slide into the crank. once we got it on far enough to stick some bolts in it we forced it in with the other bolts. a lot of time was also spend tracking bolts down. i dont' know how or why, but it seems as though i misplaced a bunch of nuts and bolts... i think the shop is just getting too crowded. i might have to spend an evening tidying up again soon. i finished the evening by bolting the motor mounts onto the brackets.

so here's the half-installed carpet:

in this picture you can see the oil pan and motor mounts installed:

transmission FINALLY in place:

i have a few pictures of some of the goodies that need to be installed at some point in time.

silvia wheel that zach hooked me up with:

the trunk lip spoiler:

the wrong grill:

anyone need an s14 kouki grill?

oh, i tested my electric fans the other day too. i was thinking about fabricating a shroud for these. for now, though, i think i'll just mount them through the radiator.

Wish I lived closer.. i'd love to help you wrench. I love car projects!!! Really nice job so far.

Joshua 1:9 "Have I not commanded you? Be strong and courageous. Do not be terrified; do not be discouraged, for the LORD your God will be with you wherever you go."

the intake and exhaust is all coming off next winter anyway, so i didn't see any reason to spend a bunch of money. it's kind of hard to route a turbo from the downpipe.

last night curt, bill, michelle, and i were working on the vert. michelle worked on the carpet and interior some more. the carpet hasn't bee secured, but it fits good enough. she got the rear panels and rear seat in. it's starting to look like a car again! after that, she was done.

interior:

curt and bill spent some time working on curt's 4g63. they were cleaning and painting and whatever while i worked on the ka24de. i had bill drop the cat-back from the white vert while i fought with coolant lines for a while. then decided i needed to just hit up autozone to get some new hose. got that all done and was ready to drop it in.

here we go...

come on, bill!

almost...

FINALLY!!!

notice the gear selector...

5-speed swapped vert ftw! i'm really excited to row through the gears with the top down.

it's really coming along now.

Are you gonna go with the Valve cover color for the body color as well?!?!
That would be pretty interesting!

FS: Xenon lip pre-cut for front mount, with Canadian DTRL's and JDM Side Marker
http://forums.nicoclub.com/zer...marke

anyways, stage 0.5 is just to get it running and driveable. no paint (sort of), no aero, no power doors. it will have the HUD dash, cluster, and projector, but not the windshield. we need to either sand off or paint over the black stripe running the length of the car. for a while, the vert and zach's widebody are going to be primer grey siblings.

stage 1 will be completed once it's time to paint. so the aero (trunk lip spoiler, zenki lip, gtr grill) will be added during paint and the HUD windshield will be installed after paint. hopefully zach and i will be ready for paint before the end of august so michelle and i can enjoy stage 1 for a month or so before we put the sil40 vert into storeage.

one of the members on TCEvolution.com photoshopped what i want the silvert to look like after stage 1 paint - black top, gunmetal/dark grey metallic bottom, wildflower blue pinstripe:

now, time for some updates:

FRIDAY
we didn't get started until later on in the evening. i worked on reconnecting the engine harness and michelle worked on reinstalling the trunk. with those done, we installed some non-broken tail lights and the rear garnish.

michelle, messing with the trunk:

the engine with some wiring done:

SATURDAY
we got started in the afternoon. i had michelle swap the rear suspensions between verts. the springs on the silvert had been "modified" (that is, heated and deformed) to achieve a lower ride height. this is not a good idea as it causes the springs to deform into weird shapes and weakens the coil in these spots. i'll take my stock ride height over weak suspension components any day.

here's michelle bolting up the rear struts from the white vert to the silvert:

here's the rear struts from the silvert:

notice how disfigured those springs are! you can see where they applied the heat to the coil where it's rusty.

with the rear suspension swapped out, we bolted up the 255-wrapped 17x9's!

while michelle was busy in the car, i was busy under the car. i installed the vlsd, driveshaft, and the rest of the exhaust. everything went pretty smooth until i started tightening the bolts on the cat delete pipe. with the bolts tightened, the downpipe hits the floor pan... great. i don't feel like messing with this, so i'm just going to put some header wrap on the downpipe so it won't super-heat the floor pan and also keep it from rattling. maybe over the winter i'll adjust this so it's not bumping the floor pan.

here you can see the exhaust and drivetrain fully assembled:

curt, fady, and bill came over later in the evening. bill only stayed for a little while because he had to spend some time with his ball and chain... er... uh... his girlfriend :lol: [just teasing, buddy]. i gave fady the responsibility of figuring out the wiring for the HUD subharness. he made quick work of it, but then found out it wasn't going to work anyway as the connectors were missing. i called zach and he schooled me in the ways of the cluster subharness. it's not going to work without more rewiring, so i'm just going to use his for a while.

michelle and i spent some time swapping the hood and fuel door release cable. yeah, michelle made a boo-boo. when she was bolting up the struts, she somehow pinched the cable. when i pulled the release, to install the fender side markers, the cable snapped. no more access to the trunk and fuel tank... so we just swapped the one from the white vert.

later on in the evening, fady, curt, and i swapped the front suspension. it went really fast with the three of us working at it. again, with the suspension swapped, we could put the front 962's on!

SUNDAY

not much got accomplished. i had to run to midland to get the powersteering/waterpump belt. it's a special order piece that no one in saginaw had. i ordered it from advance auto parts saturday afternoon expecting to pick it up sunday. no such luck. i have to call the manager and give him an earfull. i'm a regular customer there and they're not going to be happy that i wasn't happy.

anways, while i was out and about i made a trip to lowes to get some nylon washers for mounting the electric fans to the radiator. so when i got home, we installed the fans and remembered that i didn't have a crank pulley. we quit working and went to get some smoothies at tropical smoothie cafe.

we'll be back at it again tonight. hopefully we'll get this thing running!

next michelle and i installed the dash - the HUD dash with the projector. i've been waiting a long time for that. it's been almost a year since i put the HUD windshield in the white vert... i just need bill to repair the cluster subharness that zach gave me and i can put the cluster in and hook up the projector. i hope everything works.

here's the wife and the dash:

after that, michelle put in the steering wheel and got started on the seats. i crawled under the car and hooked up a few more sensors and connectors and the bracket for the clutch line. it wasn't long before michelle got tired and fed up with the seats and called it a night. so i picked up the slack and finished installing the front seats.

interior is really coming together:

silvia wheel and HUD projector:

then i did some more wiring and routed some hoses and things like that. i got the radiator fans wired in as well as the mass air flow sensor. i need a new one though because the connector on the maf is broken so i just have it taped there for the time being. i routed a few vaccum lines for the intake and decided to call it a night. i need to get one vaccum cap and an inline filter with larger inlet/outlet nipples for the ventilator.

the engine bay right now:

the goal is still to get her fired up. i just want to hear her running.

i had some more parts laying in the kitchen when i got home. finally got my new tail lights and also got a new antenna - i have to get rid of that flagpole that comes from the factory. i need to have zach modify the stock antena mount to accept this new antena. it just doesn't bolt on like i was hoping it would. the antenna will go on right away, but the tail lights won't be installed until after it gets painted. there just too nice to rock on a primer car.

i haven't been getting a lot of sleep because i've been putting so much time into this thing. so when i finally got home, i ate dinner and fell asleep. i got about a 2-hour "nap" and finally made it out to the shop around 9pm. i say "nap" because compared to the amount of sleep i've been getting lately (3-4 hours a night) a 2-hour nap is a lot!

so i was working solo last night. i finished up the engine harness and completed the install of my cold air intake. i installed an in-line fuel filter to catch all the crap that comes out of the pcv valve. once that was done, i re-installed my upper strut tower bar to complete the engine bay. all i need to do now is drop in a fresh battery and fire it up.

oh, and here's a shot of the radiator fans installed:

i got the gear oil put in the tranny and diff and installed the gear selector completely. after that, i figured it was time to start getting the body put back together. so i re-installed the doors, fenders, and lights.

on my lunch break, i went and put insurance on the vert. on the way home, michelle and i are going to the secretary of state's office to get the vert registered and plated. when i get home, i'm going to put my exhaust plugs in, drop in a battery, and turn it over! if all is well i'm going to toss the rest of the fender bots in, install the hood, wrap the downpipe and take it for a spin!

first of all, it's her car, so i make her work on it as much as she can. if she's going to be taking credit for the build, she needs to be involved. second, i'm the one who takes most of the pictures, so it's hard to get pictures of myself working. don't worry, i've put more time into this car than everyone else combined.

friday, i got nothing done. i had to work until 8pm then after that my wife and i went grocery shopping. we pretty much went home and went to bed. my gtr grill did finally arive though. it's not as nice as i was hoping it would be, but for the price, it's just fine.

i didn't get a chance to get to the vert saturday until later in the evening because of michelle's family reunion. we spent a few hours reading through the wiring diagrams and trying to figure out what was wrong. michelle got tired and went to bed about the time fady and bandit came out to lend a hand.

fady was telling me about what he did thursday night after i went to bed. and it seemed to me that i would be a good idea to pull the fuel pump and test it out. ended up working well. but the more we messed with the wiring, the more things weren't making sense. i was getting really discouraged until i heard some sparking and fady exclaming "omg! i knew it was a loose ground!"

turns out, one of the engine grounds was not securely fastened. as soon as that got snugged up, all of the electrical systems were once again normal! fady electricuted himself with the coil though when he was checking the spark. LOL. it got him good. so we hooked the fuel pump back up and gave the key a turn. it fired just enough to let me know that it would start. i wanted to let michelle be the one to start it. so we packed up and called it a night... at 4am.

sunday afternoon, michelle started the car and it ran! FINALLY! after months of little sleep and countless hours of hard work, that car finally started. so we backed it out to do some finishing touches, get all the tools and stuff out of it and take it for a spin.

all the vitals looked good and it was running pretty good. i need to adjust the idle get a better hose for the iac (idle air control - right now it's kind of kinked). there's a little bit of shutter when i take off from a stop, but that's probably the fresh clutch disc. also, it's got some serious ride-height issues that need to be worked out.

once we were home, it was back to work to get it ready to drive later that day. we put the rest of the interior back in (except the glove box), vaccumed the carpet, and cleand the seats. we spent some time trying to figure out a way to make the rear seatbelts work for the front... the best we could do was disconnect the lower connection and put it under the rear seat bracket for the front seat. it was ok for michelle, but it wouldn't fit around me. so, the next purchase is going to have to be some harnesses. swe slapped the hood on, gave it a quick wash and it was ready.

so we took the sil40 vert out to our club's weekly gathering/hang-out at Tropical Smoothie Cafe and it seemed to be a big hit. on the way there, one of my egr plugs got spit out. so there went $5 down the drain... and now it sounds like i have the biggest exhaust leak in the world... which, it kind of does. despite the fact that it sounded like crap, all the body lines aren't squared up, the hideous paint job, and the missing grill, it was nice to finally get it out and have some people appreciate the hard work we've put into it.

it was well into the night by the time we headed home and i must say that i'm rather impressed with the projectors. they do a really nice job. it's a big improvement over the flip-up lights. i'd like to see how well the fog lights work, but i don't know when i'll get a chance to test them out.

here's a night shot of the hood on the car:

and a shot of the projectors:

tonight, i'd like to get the body lined up (hood, doors, trunk) the grill put on, and spray bomb a new coat of primer to get rid of that hideous black stripe. i may end up putting the power doors on right now and worry about getting the panels at a later time. or maybe i'll hack up the non-power panels to fit the power doors to make due for now. the reason for this is that the driver-side door lock is broken and the passenger side window crank is missing. but with the power doors i have, the cylinder locks don't work... :roll:

Just blank out the crank holes on the non-power door panels, and you'll be good to go after cutting the switch holes bigger.

here's some pics i took last night of the car with the hood on and test fitting the gtr grill:

i didn't get much done yesterday. the wife and i had to go to her aunt's surprise 50th birthday and i was just wiped out by the time i got home. tonight, i'm hoping to test the coupe doors and see if everything works and then if all is well, try swapping the manual door panels to the power coupe doors. then i might put the old coupe trunk on and re-align the hood. this is all stuff i wanted to do yesterday, but the lack of sleep over the last month or so is starting to catch up with me.

5-speed... man... I'm jealous.
What an accomplishment! Props on all of you.

thanks for the recent (since i last posted in this thread) comments, guys.

Quote, originally posted by Dr.Fate »

I love your car Brother, Now all we need to is slap some Coilovers ( Megan springs will do ), oem side skirts, oem Rear valences and a PIG Lip.

i agree with all of this... i need a huge drop in the front. i'm thinking something is messed up... maybe the lower control arms or something, but i don't remember my white vert sitting this high...

anyways, i do have an update!

since it's been on the road, i haven't really felt the need to update the thread, but things have changed and i should update.

with the coupe doors, we needed to find a better way to keep us in the car if we ever find ourselves in the unfortunate position of hitting something with the vert (or getting hit by something...). since we wanted to take the vert on our road-trip vacation, i needed to find some harnesses quickly. best i could do were some mugen power, ebay knock-off harnesses from some guy in muskegon. when i got them, the one was missing the anchor/adjuster for the lap belt. whatever. i can live with that. they get the job done. they're temporary anyway. so here's a picture of them in the car:

i know, i know... mugen... i needed something! i'll have them swapped out by spring, i promise.

we did some painting and "body work"... i put my power coupe doors on. i got these from the champagne coupe i picked up from zach a while ago. since i only had manual interior panels for the coupe doors, i had to modify them for the power switches. i still need the appropriate panels, but these will get us by until then. i also replaced the trunk as the one that was on there was damaged. power windows work and the door locks aren't broken.

painted the gtr grill black and zip-tied it into place. looks great:

i also got rid of the black stripes on the sides. since i had to paint the champagne doors and the stripped/champagne trunk, i figured i might as well get rid of that ugly black stripe. i also touched up a few spots that were scraped or not painted at all (like the bottosm of the fenders). so now the car is completely primer-gray. it looks a lot better now. i just don't have any good pictures of it at the moment. i don't know if we'll get to paint this fall or not... it's kind of up in the air.

we got our super sweet plate too. here's michelle zip-tieing it into place.

i'll try to get an updated picture soon that shows the whole car. we took it to the dsm shootout last weekend and had to do an emergency alternator replacement half-way to norwalk ohio. the guys got some pictures of that i can post too. well, while i was in there i'm noticing that the front main seal is really not doing a good job of holding oil.

... maybe stage 2 will happen sooner than i was planning...

i'm the one putting in the late nights... michelle needs 10 hours of sleep, but i only need 4.

ish, i'll have to double check that and pray it's the problem. michelle's the one who swapped the struts and i'll have to ask her if she put them on the same sides or crossed them.

when it quits raining up here, i'll take it out and get some updated pictures.

speaking of rain... i forgot to mention that the top on this car is pretty much worthless when it rains. we drove it to the dsm shootout like i posted last time. well what i forgot to mention is that the shootout got rained out. it started raining late saturday night and didn't let up until sunday night. when we went to jump in the vert to drive home sunday morning, the seats were completely soaked. the seals around the windows are COMPLETELY shot. it doesn't help that the top doens't latch completely on the passenger side.

so sometime i need to get a new top frame. keep your eyes peeled.

again, so what? what does this have to do with the silvert?

the wife and i are itching to get this thing turbo-charged and ready to roll at the sport compact shootout in norwalk in may, that's what.

when i got the vert, it came with an s14 ka that supposedly wasn't any good. whatever. as you've seen, we took the s13 ka from the old vert and used it instead. since i've got two of them now, i might as well just build the ka that was as of two weeks ago just sitting on the floor.

picked her up, put her on the stand and started stripping it down.
all i did was remove the head and oil pan. i did pull one of the rod/piston assemblies out because someone wanted to take some measurements for some scheme about getting some forged rods made. in all honesty, that's why i started this project back up.

however, last week, the wife got the itch to start working on the car again. all right then, get to it!

so she pulled the rest of the rods and pistons out, removed all the remaining brackets, and kept everything in order by bagging and labelling everything - just like i taught her! now she just needs to get a pully remover to take the crank pully off and then she can remove the crank girdle and pull the crank out.

things are going to be busy in the shop in the next few weeks as i've got a couple DSM projects going on right now, bill is working on the mir3vo again, nate has a turbo shadow over here, and michelle is going to be working on the vert a little. on top of that, i'm doing a water pump, timing belt, and lash adjuster job for a guy on his 2g DSM.

dsm1, dsm 2, and the shadow:

mir3vo


Modified by DeXteR at 2:37 PM 1/15/2008

I thought my wife was cool cause she's into sports.. and I could probably get her to help me work on my car.. but she'd sure as hell never take the initiative and actually work on it herself..

Your wife rocks!

story: bill called me last night - upset because his mom called the mir3vo a "piece of crap" because "it doesn't run". i told michelle this.

her reply: "i used to think all your cars were pieces of crap too until i started working on them and got into the whole car-thing."

so she wasn't always so cool. back when we were dating and i was in college, there was a few months that i came home to wrench on my car every weekend - out of necessity. she got pissed because i wasn't spending much time with her. so she ended up coming out to help so she could see me when i was home. she actually started getting into it. after she got the white vert, it was all down hill from there.

now among other automotive enthusiast things, she dissassembles engines too. she also used to hate the idea of me racing. now she wants to build her own race car.

is that new carpet you installed? if so where did you get it from?, thanks.

JIC RUCA??????????????
http://forums.nicoclub.com/zerothread/298109

IN NEED OF BUMPER SUPPORT!!! HELP ME OUT!!

ok, no pressure...

let's rock and roll

i'm going to take this as a sign that i shouldn't finish my dsm right now and should instead finish my vert.

here's the latest story: a fellow TCE member and niconaut, zach (aka prodigy) has had his eye on my white vert since it was killed by the dear last october. I'm running out of space in my shop with the dsm project taking priority and bill's mir3vo project a close second. so i finally broke down and offered the white vert to zach - which he jumped at.

a few days later he comes back to me with a "horse trade." he tells me he'll trade me his best paint job plus body work if i give him the white car. done deal. so the car will be getting paint at the first crack of spring. this means all of the interior is going to have to come back out, along with the engine and drivetrain. we wanted to pull the windscreen anyway to complete the HUD swap, so that's nothing extra.

zach is plenty capable of doing a great job. he did the body work and paint on fedor's car:

video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v...lated

and he also painted/flaked marcus's car:

i'm sure the vert will look great when he's done with it.

as far as the engine goes, i got the crank pulley removed, so now i just need to get my wife back out there to finish dissassembly. since i'm in the limelight, i might as well get the block cleaned and painted right away and start shopping for some pistons with a lower compression ratio.

i do have some HUD wiring that i need to finish and get the cluster swapped over. there's other little odd's and ends that can be buttoned up while waiting for turbo parts. expect some more updates and pictures in the next few weeks as i'm going to be dedicating more time to this project now that i's featured on the nico homepage... wow.

thanks everyone!

zach is a good friend of mine and a fellow tri-city evolution member. i've seen his work and i trust him with my car. he will be doing my body work - end of story.

even though zach is a big fan of big flakes and wild bodies, my vert will stay relatively mild. i'd still like to score some oem aero pieces and am still planning on doing that 2-tone scheme i posted a while ago.

expect a nice update at the beginning of next week. i still need to get my dsm project out of the shop. i've been putting a lot of hours in at work. it's really cold outside. so that's why i haven't been working on the vert much recently.

i think i'm going to find some pistons... i'm thinking somewhere around 8.5-8.8:1 CR...