Supposedly the story behind the car is that the previous owner broke a timing belt, pulled the head, and somehow the head got stolen while it sat for who knows how long before he finished the job. So the guy I bought it from acquired the car and bought a complete second motor for it with plans to rebuild it and drive the car, but as usual he didn't have much time for it and it sat in his yard for over a year (the second motor torn apart).
I looked the car over and it seemed about what I expected. The car was fairly straight, paint was crap, interior is eh. But here's the good part:
I reckon that's actually a crappy picture for what I'm trying to show, lol. But anyways, I have a complete 1988 SE drivetrain. It still has power steering and all the A/C stuff. The bottom end in the engine bay looks pretty good right there, so I'm hoping the crank and rods are good.
I didn't really look through all the boxes to see what all is there, but I will once I have some time. I don't know how well some of it will clean up, so some may be scrap metal but I guess I'll find out soon enough. Here's a complete head and upper FWD intake:
A few boxes of parts. The block and crank have a bit of rust so they may be scrap now. We'll see. (I like how I was just making a thread about water-to-oil coolers and there just happens to be one in the upper left box
) :
211,xxx miles. Irrelevant:
More parts:
Pretty good dash. Only a small crack or two:
A few pics show how rough the car is:
And here's the kicker. I scanned the engine bay and looked at the frame rails for rust and it all looked pretty good. We started pushing it and I can't remember why but I looked under the back of it for some reason. Dee, you thought you had it bad with your last purchase:
I literally could ever so easily pull chunks off it and I'm pretty sure if I take the stuf out of the trunk I could stomp out the rest of the floor, if not stomp, then just stand in it and it'll fall out (from just in front of the rear tires is actually in pretty good shape, but behind that is horrid). I showed the guy that and got him to come down to $400. I couldn't get him any lower, sadly. But then again he could almost get that in scrap if he separated the aluminum. I thought about it and decided to go for it. At first I figured I'd just take the stuff I want and send the rest to scrap. I have $550 in it because of gas to get the car and tow dolly rental. So I'd probably have $350 in the drivetrain I need, maybe two bottom ends, a head, extra coil packs and a CAS with miscellaneous FWD CA stuff. After a while on the way home I thought with all the crazy stuff I had planned for some lucky Pulsar, what's cutting out and welding in a new floor pan? Hell it may even be fun if I build one myself and I could make it to fit a fuel cell and exhaust more easily. I know it'll really be a b****, but it all depends on how long it is before I pull parts off it, how much time I have, and just how I feel about it when the time comes.
The left rear drum brake was seized on the car. I'm pretty sure the e-brake cable is seized. It took us a while, but we finally got it to rotate basically free.
Well, that's pretty much it. This could be the start of a very special and intriguing build, or just a bunch of spare parts (like I need more
). We'll just have to wait around a see.
Even my own sentra is suffering from a bit of trunk-rot, so I'll be cutting and welding until it's right. Mostly in the area of the spare tire, but other than that, this sentra is ready to go to a paint shop.