89' coupe project

[Stripes]

so i bought my coupe a couple months ago with plans of turning it into a track car. before i bought it, i decided to put in an s13 blacktop with minor mods. soon after my purchase i realized that i had no clue what i needed to do besides pull the motor and take out the rear seats (yes, i realize this would not have made it a track car )thank god for nico ;D

so here is the car. i bought it for $750 from a friend. the motor had been run w/o oil and had a shot main bearing, so it was about ready to blow. he had also sold the rims that were on the car, so i got it with 1 stock wheel, 1 honda accord wheel, 1 spare and a donut. an odd combination? i think so we pulled it to my house with a rope and my dads 79' f100



then it sat in the garage for about a week

being without a cherry picker and knowing the motor needed to be pulled, we used what resources we had.



thats right, we used a tree. and it worked pretty damn good



so that was the first week or so :]i'd post up some more but... yea, im pretty tired haha

if anyone has any suggestions or tips or whatever, please PLEASE put them down. this is my first project so i'm all ears- i can use all the verbal help i can get!

ill keep you guys updated -Matty

Modified by Touge' at 7:55 PM 1/17/2008
Modified by Touge' at 10:52 AM 3/8/2008

[ThuG LyFe]

wow that car looks really clean. did you do anyting else to it yet?

[S13CoupeLover]

did i see '89 coupe? $750 u say? that's close to what my dad got my coupe from his friend for. $500 and still can't find anyone who paid lower/equal to for a nice looking coupe as i got. but u sure did get close very nice/clean low price - bad engine = not bad!

im thinking about making mine a track/autocross/weekender project car in the future!

i laughed at the tree-cherry picker, can u say GHETTO?? haha jk but good use of "natural resources"!

can't wait to see what happened to project!!

[Stripes]

wow that car looks really clean. did you do anyting else to it yet?

yea, the car was in decent shape, probably in better shape than my daily driver. it has only 1 dent and is hardly noticable. but the drivers side fender and door was all keyed up from his ex girlfriend. umm.... i'll just say that it's on it way, haha

i'll post more tomorrow, im so tired right now. baaaaaa

[Stripes]

did i see '89 coupe? $750 u say? that's close to what my dad got my coupe from his friend for. $500 and still can't find anyone who paid lower/equal to for a nice looking coupe as i got. but u sure did get close very nice/clean low price - bad engine = not bad!

im thinking about making mine a track/autocross/weekender project car in the future!

i laughed at the tree-cherry picker, can u say GHETTO?? haha jk but good use of "natural resources"!

can't wait to see what happened to project!!

yea, when i look back on it, i wish i had talked him down. he told me after i signed the title that he didn't think he'd get $750 for it. oh well.your car looks very nice indeed good deal!

yea, the tree thing was a pretty sketchy plan, but it work flawlessly. neither the motor nor the transmission made any kind of contact with any part of the engine bay when we pulled it.

[S13CoupeLover]

yea, when i look back on it, i wish i had talked him down. he told me after i signed the title that he didn't think he'd get $750 for it. oh well.your car looks very nice indeed good deal!

yea, the tree thing was a pretty sketchy plan, but it work flawlessly. neither the motor nor the transmission made any kind of contact with any part of the engine bay when we pulled it.

oh man so u could of said like 500-600 and he might have said yes to it. oh man that guy didn't really know what he had did he?

yeah thanx, my neighbor has been telling me it's in good condition and i should sell it for about $5000 and buy a E30 (BMW 325i '84-90 i believe). but i dunno i keep on telling he im never selling it and keeps on saying "****ing 5 grand u can get a sweet track car". and i still have that in the back of my head, What if I DO sell it? what car? what what what... and it bothers the hell out of me. hahahyeah sorry about that rant/expression of words.

yeah and the trerry picker, my attempt at combining tree and cherry picker, looked alittle sketchy but whatever works works.

[SeVa-S13]

We'll need a budget and (REALISTIC) goals to armchair-quarterback your project.

Grats on the acquisition.

[duffman1278]

GL on the project! So far it looks good.

[heartofaskyline]

did i see '89 coupe? $750 u say? that's close to what my dad got my coupe from his friend for. $500 and still can't find anyone who paid lower/equal to for a nice looking coupe as i got. but u sure did get close very nice/clean low price - bad engine = not bad!

man i so have you beat. i got a 93 coupe with a running 80k s14 ka in it for 350. all i had to do was replace the ignition. rustless, working hud, new carpet, and about 11 dollars in change yup you got owned

[Asmar]

Good luck on the project. Keep us posted.

[Stripes]

man i so have you beat. i got a 93 coupe with a running 80k s14 ka in it for 350. all i had to do was replace the ignition. rustless, working hud, new carpet, and about 11 dollars in change yup you got owned

wow. thats a sweet deal.

We'll need a budget and (REALISTIC) goals to armchair-quarterback your project.

Grats on the acquisition.

budget? you better believe it. this brings me to the next update actually!ill post it all up when i get home from work. i'd like to take some more pictures before posting anything more.

[sommmatt]

You seem pretty serious. Do you already have the new engine or what?

[dodge turbo diesel]

the ka24e engine is your best friend, more happy on boost and plenty of output.

[Stripes]

You seem pretty serious. Do you already have the new engine or what?

yea, i guess it's a somewhat serious project. i've made a few goals and i plan to stick with them for the most part. gimme like 10min and ill give you guys an update :]-Matty

edit* okay its gonna be like another 30min, hahaha. sorry guys
Modified by Touge' at 6:09 PM 1/15/2008

[Stripes]

and finally, the long awaited second update!

first off, for those who don't know, i thought i'd post a pic of what a well keyed up fender looks likepretty lame if i do say so myself.

also, i forgot to mention in the first post, but the car also came with front and rear tanabe strut bars. i thought that was pretty cool

so i started searching for motors, CHEAP ones. i came across jazz pro and decided to order my black top from there when the time came.but then i decided, nah, i wanna go a little crazy and drop in a notch top then i found out about heavy throttle and now i am ordering everything from them and trying not to cheap out on anything. super cool guys btw, really great customer service. i've been talking to jeff for over a month now and he has been really great with answering all the questions i've had.

okaaayyy soooo next...i took everything i could out of the engine bay so i could get ready for some paint. well, i could have taken out more, but i didn't feel that it was necessary since i would have to hook it all back up anyway.

the brake booster isn't looking too good i haven't decided on what to do with it yet. there are no 240's in any junk yards around here so getting replacement stock parts like this is gonna be tricky.

now, before i got to painting, i had to heat up my garage somehow, seeing how its usually around 25-40F in DE this time of year. so my dad and i had a side project going on insulating the garage and getting a space heater.it gets hot as an oven in there now now while all this was going down, the UPS guy decided it was time for my fmic to arrive. what a nice young man.

this intercooler is a lot heavier than i thought it would be, but then again i've never held one before so i guess its whatev and don't worry, i was very careful when putting the tubing on the intercooler. no scratches for this kit!

and so here is the painted engine bay. in all honesty, it turned out a lot better than i thought it would.

i painted it with some primer and semi gloss black duplicolor high heat engine enamel. i hope it holds up!

and i forgot to mention, but before i got to the painting i noticed a spot in the engine bay that had been eaten away by (rust?) i dunno, but here is a pic, tell me what you guys think.i had to take the pic from the inside of the wheel well to get a better view, sorry it's so blurry but that's the best i could do :\. tell me what you guys think.anyway, im gonna get it welded up real good so i wont have to worry about it.

after i did all this shizz, i thought to myself, hmmm.... i'm putting in an s14 motor. why not upgrade the injectors!? so thanks to the forum classifieds, i got an e-mail about a set of 555cc's that someone is trying to get rid of. hopefully this buy will pull through i would like to have somewhere around 250ps on stock boost so i am hoping that this should do it.

and then............ my personal wheel came in the mail that i bought off of NoOneBetter. he gave me a pretty sweet deal on it and i'm pretty satisfied.





now i am about ready to order my wheel hub and buddy club exhaust. so i guess thats whats next as far as mods go(?) i dunno...

also, i started gutting the interior, but that's gonna make a pretty decent third update so i'll save it for later

thats all for now, lemme hear your feedback!-Matty!
Modified by Touge' at 7:54 PM 1/15/2008

[sommmatt]

Wow! Serious build with some serious money behind it. Usually it's all delusions of grandeur from 16 year old kids who are broke. The painted bay looks great. Can't wait to see what you do what it will look like with the notch top.

[smocan]

I like 89s...

Looks good so far, keep it up so i can see it finished soon

[thefro526]

Wow! Serious build with some serious money behind it. Usually it's all delusions of grandeur from 16 year old kids who are broke. The painted bay looks great. Can't wait to see what you do what it will look like with the notch top.

What's wrong with broke 16 pear old kids. J/k. Nice usage of the tree as the cherry picker. If I were you I would spray some kind of a rust stopper on that spot until you decide on a permanent solution. I sprayed some on my car in a couple of spots and the rust hast come back after two months of kinda crappy weather. And my dad used some on his CR-X and I hasn't rusted and it's been over a year. I wouldn't recommend you use it for more than a month or two but as a short term fix its great. Your best bet for a long term fix might be to weld a plate in.

[Stripes]

Wow! Serious build with some serious money behind it. Usually it's all delusions of grandeur from 16 year old kids who are broke. The painted bay looks great. Can't wait to see what you do what it will look like with the notch top.

thanks im pretty stoked on this build myself. the motor kit and parts package was supposed to be ordered last month but there has been a few delays. i am hoping to have it all ordered by this weekend.

i'll try my best to keep at it, but i can only work as fast as my parts come in :\

and yes, i am planning on having a metal plate welded up, as well as on a few other spots. i don't wanna take any risks as far as the rust thing goes.i did however blow off the rust on my battery plate because from what i understand i will have to make a hole for the fmic piping anyway. so i just painted over it.thanks for the info though!ill make a post of whats going on with the interior tomorrow.

[Stripes]

We'll need a budget and (REALISTIC) goals to armchair-quarterback your project.

Grats on the acquisition.

okay, so i'm not gonna lie. when i first read this after you wrote it i had no idea what you meant. i had just woken up and was totally not all together in the head yet

so now that i've read this again i guess i can tell you whats up.

ummmm... as far as a budget goes, im not exactly sure. i've got a pretty good list of parts already set for order with heavy throttle. my order with them including the motor kit is gonna be a little over 5kthen there are the parts i've already got or have ordered, including the fmic, buddy club spec II exhaust, personal wheel, steering wheel hub, jdm gauge cluster, magenta street glow lights, rhinoceros hood ornament, hibby jibby, and some trail mix.i'm not planning on doing much to the motor as of now, other than the 555cc injectors, so i am pretty sure that the swap will be under 6kthen of course i've gotta get a new seat, wheels, tires, and then move on to the suspension (which i have a pretty good list made up for)when its all said and done with, i'd like to keep the whole build under 10k. i think i can do it!

mmm.. as far as my goals for the car. well, i honestly would like to compete with it, but i have no idea how far i'd have to go to get there. so i guess you would have to be the judge of whether or not that is a realistic goal.but i would definitely like to take it to scca events and possibly nasa. i'll look into that stuff more when the time comes (i know for a fact that registration gets pretty costly). I think VIR is the closest track to where i live, so i would like to go there sometime before the car is done to see how things go down out there.

[keith0486]

looks good so far man im loving the tree cherry picker lol

[Stripes]

thanks everyone and now... whats going on with the interior!?

here we go...

okay, so i decided that if i ever wanna make this a track car, then just about everything needs to go. then i got to it!

here is most of the stuff i took out so far:

i found some receipts in the car and the guy that owned it before me put like $400 into the sound system. here is the kenwood head unit it came with.sorry about the blurryness, i couldn't get the camera to focus. anyway, i'm guessing there are some nice speakers in the car, so i'll check that out later.i know this sounds strange, but i can't decide on whether or not to keep the sound system. i need to get it tagged at dmv once it is drivable, so i figure if i'm not taking it to the track RIGHT AWAY then maybe i should keep it for a while? crap what am i thinking, if i didn't have a girlfriend i'd pull that junk out of there so fast! just kidding. no but seriously i don't think you'd be able to hear anything over the motor anyway. my friends told me i should just leave an ipod and some headphones in the passengers seat, haha .

the passengers seat was torn to shiznit and the seat rails were rendered useless; completely stripped.

the drivers seat and rails are useable, but i'd rather not put that seat back in the car. i was thinking a buddy club racing bucket. whata you guys think?

i also need a new lock/latch for the glovebox because mine is completely broken. but i dont think i'll be putting the glovebox back in anyway, so that shouldn't be an issue.

and here is the inside of the car:

as you can see, i've taken out almost everything. i wanted to ask if anyone would happen to know what this is and if i need it:it looks pretty important so i didn't mess with it. i'm pretty sure it has to do with the seatbelt and door sensors and whatnot, but if i don't need it then it's coming out!

after i pulled up the carpet and whatnot, i found 2 holes in the floor, one on the passengers side and one on the driver side, both where the rear outer most seat mounts should be.passenger side:

drivers side:

looks like i might have to get someone over to do some serious welding this weekend i guess thats all for now. ill keep you guys posted!-Matty
Modified by Touge' at 5:40 PM 1/16/2008

[Aworkinprogress]

I believe the piece you mentioned controls your automatic seat belts. Good luck! It would be nice if i could work on my 240 but my 69 Galaxie 500 has put holes in my pockets.

[Chris28]

I have holes in the exact same spots in the floor of my coupe. I just cut out all the stuff around it and am in the process of welding metal over it. Looks like you got a better deal than me though cause I have a lot more rust than just that and i payed 1500 for mine. Oh well, you win some you lose some. Nice project btw, it looks like it will turn out really nice

[S13CoupeLover]

man i so have you beat. i got a 93 coupe with a running 80k s14 ka in it for 350. all i had to do was replace the ignition. rustless, working hud, new carpet, and about 11 dollars in change yup you got owned

U SON OF A BISCUIT EATER. my god u suck, y'd u just... do that to me? man that sux. cuz my HUD no work, Radio sux (plays CDs and that's all), gauge lights work once a year, rust on the a pillars and the back of the sunroof, huge *** dent driver side rear fender, dents on the skirts (dad and i think it's from someone trying to use the skirt as a "lift point"), automatic, gears slip, engine leaks from the valve cover (replaced it like twice and "glued"/sealed it and still leaks, dunno whats up), got it with a bottomed out shock, fuel pump didn't work, 198k miles on engine still runs strong, hmm man that's about it. but besides those "things" it's straight and true, runs, engine vibration (i guess cuz of the unbalanced cams i dunno), and more. still after all that i love my car, it has it's own characteristics.

[S13xCrazy]

U SON OF A BISCUIT EATER. my god u suck, y'd u just... do that to me? man that sux. cuz my HUD no work, Radio sux (plays CDs and that's all), gauge lights work once a year, rust on the a pillars and the back of the sunroof, huge *** dent driver side rear fender, dents on the skirts (dad and i think it's from someone trying to use the skirt as a "lift point"), automatic, gears slip, engine leaks from the valve cover (replaced it like twice and "glued"/sealed it and still leaks, dunno whats up), got it with a bottomed out shock, fuel pump didn't work, 198k miles on engine still runs strong, hmm man that's about it. but besides those "things" it's straight and true, runs, engine vibration (i guess cuz of the unbalanced cams i dunno), and more. still after all that i love my car, it has it's own characteristics.

LOL and you think you got a good deal? and can sell it for 5000? wtf.

i got a 91 coupe for 750 in amazing condition.a 90 hatch for 700 in good condition.a 93 hatch for a xbox 360and a 93 vert for 500

to the OP, its lookin great!

[S13CoupeLover]

LOL and you think you got a good deal? and can sell it for 5000? wtf.

i got a 91 coupe for 750 in amazing condition.a 90 hatch for 700 in good condition.a 93 hatch for a xbox 360and a 93 vert for 500

to the OP, its lookin great!

well **** i think it is. it doesn't seem as bad as i made it sound. no joke it may "seem" bad but it's not. and the dude who told me i could sell it for 5g was my neighbor who's been tuning/fixing RX-7 FC bodies for like 10-15 years. but he never really "looked" at my car.

the rust it simple no cutting or nothen just grind and weld. the dent might be easy but im no auto body repair shop. the radio that's easy. but eh it's my first car and u know what it'll teach me allot and i'll keep it as long as i can.

[Stripes]

gauge cluster came in from Malaysia the other day. i might post a pic up or something tomorrow.

*edit- SARD 555cc injectors are now in the mail
Modified by Touge' at 3:56 PM 1/21/2008

[Stripes]

sooo its been a while not a whole lot has been going down other than more parts coming in, which is always good but i'm still waiting on the motor.today my friend came over and started welding up a couple rust holes in the engine bay/floor panels, which is also good but i was poking at a small rust hole in my floor and it was super soft around it so i pulled up some more of the floor and the rust hole is a lot bigger than though. my floor panels are effing jacked, which is not so good BUT! i'm planning on using fiberglass on the big holes since there is no point in welding all that jazz when it's on the inside.anyway, here's a pic of the hole:its the passengers side right up by where your feet go.
Modified by Touge' at 1:05 AM 3/1/2008

[Stripes]

fiberglassing has gone pretty good so far.not the best pic but here is an idea of how it's turning out

i've also had a bunch of parts come in while i haven't been updating koyo radiator, autometer gauges, fuel pump, jdm gauge cluster, hoses, bunch of other stuff haha. i'll post pics tomorrow!!!