I don't like updating without pictures. I've just been gathering parts still. I thoroughly enjoy the suspension upgrades on the vert. The Z brakes up front and Endura Tech coilovers really make this car a pleasure to drive! I LOVE it!

Lately, I've been gathering parts for the KA-T build that I'd like to start in the fall. I finally got some decent pistons - Wiseco 9:1 90mm slugs. They're used, but they'll clean up just fine. I might get them re-coated, but not sure yet. Most recently, I won an ebay auction for a set of Eagle Rods. So I've got those sitting in the build pile now with the pistons. I've got a used set of ARP head studs, but I think I'm just going to sell them off and buy a new set as well as a new set of ARP main studs as well.

Then I could head to the machine shop to get some of the machining started, but I want to make sure I have my crank pulley, flywheel, and pressure plate before I go to get everything balanced.

I've been extremely busy these last few months with work at the office, work around the house (still don't have our kitchen finished), and things with the car club. There's a local machinist that comes highly recommended that I'd like to go talk to, but just haven't had the time to do so.

I'll try getting some pictures for the update this weekend.

did a quick run through of your build man, looking forward to the next update.

hey man it looks great i wish i had the time and a place to do that kinda of thing right now.. keep it up

Thanks for the comments everyone.

I did finally get a few pictures of my parts collection, I guess I could post them. Here's the Wiseco pistons:They need to be removed from the stock rods they're on, cleaned and maybe re-coated.

Here's the Eagle rods:These are brand new.

Together, I spent under $600 for these. I just need a few more ARP packages, a flywheel, and a clutch. Some day when I'm not pulling my hair out because I'm so busy at work, I'd like to get out early and go visit the machinist I want to do my work... Some day...

Also, not long ago, my whore-of-a-battery finally gave out. I used the same battery in three or four different cars over the last couple years. I didn't feel like buying some fugly WalMart battery, so I just picked up a red top Optima. It will eventually be relocated to the trunk opposite of the hydraulic pump, but for now, it's just bungee strapped down. No pictures - it's just a battery.

Dex,

If you don't drive the car often, make sure you keep that redtop optima on a trickle charger. They tend to drain themselves fairly quickly and are junk afterwards. I'm on my 3rd one now and finally I've learned to keep them on a charger. I've been lucky and gotten them replaced at no charge (very lucky!). But they are wicked expensive, so take good care of them.

The vert gets driven pretty regularly.

I have a red top on my DSM. I had it out of the car for about 9 months at one point in time when it was down and it drained itself and died. It was completely shot; but thanks to the 3 year warranty, I got a brand new battery. Once the vert goes to slumber for the winter, I'll probably just stick it in the Pathfinder to keep it going.

yeah red and yellow tops both are junk after they drain. sort of sucks. wonder why they do that?

Ps dex, i have a new set of tail lights and a totaly new supension, so if you need any stock parts, let me know.

Piper wrote:yeah red and yellow tops both are junk after they drain. sort of sucks. wonder why they do that?

Ps dex, i have a new set of tail lights and a totaly new supension, so if you need any stock parts, let me know.

Haha, you are kidding right? We have so many stock suspension parts going to scrap it isn't funny.

Maybe some extra tails would be nice to smoke them though.

FINALLY replaced the front main seal as of last night. Relatively easy since I was able to squeeze my impact gun in between the engine and radiator just enough to get her loose. I'm kicking myself in the face for not doing this when I had the motor out for the swap last summer - would have saved me a lot of money on oil and the headache of having a dirty, oily engine bay.

The reason I even did this is because I'm going to drift the vert this Sunday at a local event. http://projectaspec.com/driftevents.html I'm hoping I don't totally suck. The wife gave me permission to do this in hopes that we'll finally kill the tired old KA.

Another nice modification was the removal of those crappy, haggard, Mugen/ebay 4-point harnesses. I replaced them a much nicer and much safer set of Sparco harnesses. Zach got a great deal on them and passed them along to me. I had to pick up some anchors for the snap-in passenger harness to install them properly. The swap was a breeze and I couldn't be happier with the new harnesses. They're much more comfortable and hold a lot better. My wife, on the other hand, doesn't fit very well in the driver side anymore. The harnesses are a tad too big for her. When she's in the passenger side, she can just slide the seat forward and it's fine; but she can't do that on the driver side as it's uncomfortable for her to drive that close to the steering wheel.

Yes, the picture police has once again failed to post his own pictures... I'll have pictures from the drift event for sure.

Wow no pics. That is amazing. someone needs to write this down in the NICO history books! The pic police doesnt post pics. WOW! lol well untill you are done with the belts your using now why dont you give me the ones you had so i have something. I gave up on that one last night, it just wont work. And you better take tons of pics of you driftin. I cant wait to see this!!! Your gonna love it.

It's ok, I've been subjecting myself to harsh punishments of 60 hour work weeks, 4 hours of sleep at night, and a pissed off wife...

Not to mention my camera is on it's way out the door. Notice how my pictures keep getting worse... yeah.

Anywho, I'll send you the old flea-bay harnesses.

Well when you come down, ill give ya my good camera, and the charger and such, we have 3 now and i dont really need all them. Did you get a date yet or still up in the air?

So, I haven't updated this in a LONG time.

Well, it's a new season and time to freshen some things up and do some more upgrades. I don't think much is going to happen this year due to my current financial situation, but we'll see what we can do.

I finally got enough junk out of the way to pull it out of storage the other week. Took it for a spin and it still runs strong, but it still has that poor tracking in the rear.

First things first, I have to get this thing streetable again. Most of you saw the rear tires from our ridiculous negative camber last summer. We wore those 255's well into the steel belts. So Zach and I entered into some more bartering and I ended up with his 225/50's. So When I went to pull his wheels and tires off the back of my car, I noticed that there was a LOT of oil on my driver side rear dampener... So I thought to myself, "Hmm... this is probably the problem with my poor tracking in the rear, and not the differential."

So I got in touch with Endura Tech and they're sending me a new dampener since I'm still within the warranty period. I need to swap all the hardware over and send my blown dampener back. While I've got the car back in the shop, I might pull a few things off and do add a few pieces I've had laying around.

I'd like to pull my RUCAs and get those powder coated since they're all ready rusty - good ol' ching ping ebay garbage is effective but cheap. Some CPK ought to give them a little more quality. They'll also match the Suspension Techniques front and rear sway bars I acquired and had powder coated last year. I'm going to need some new bushings and end links for the sway bars and they can replace the whimpy factory units. The other cool little piece I have is that aluminum "skid plate" that will go under the engine bay.

That will probably be the extent of work on the car this season. If I come into some cash somehow, I might continue gathering pieces for our KA-T setup. I'll also be keeping my eyes peeled for good deals on suspension upgrades too... Maybe get that 6-point roll bar done too. We'll see.

One thing is for sure, we're going to continue enjoying driving this car. The new sway bars should make this thing carve the corners even crisper and make for an even better driving experience. A not blown dampener will help too...

Pictures will come with progress.


Modified by DeXteR at 5:17 PM 4/3/2009

Well good luck with everything Dex, I hope it all works out for ya! If I don't get a job down here soon, I will be back up there and be able to help.

Keep me updated, and about the wide body, my little bro is taking the HB for a DD until i get some money to get stuff done on it. So if he wants them back, thats cool if he can sell it. But if he would like to hold on to it for me, I'd really appreciate that too.

Dex, I got enduratechs for my vert too. You said you blew out the damper, or was it just bad? I am a little worried b/c i set the car down on the rears without cutting into the support/sheet metal below the top thats right above the adjustment screws, I dont think I damaged anything but how do i know this is my first coilover setup...

I would imagine that if you set the car down without cutting out the bracing for the adjuster knobs that the knobs would bend or break. If they're still straight, you're probably fine. If you damaged the valving somehow, you'd have hydraulic fluid (or whatever they use in there) leaking from the top whenever the ram pushes into the dampener.

When I say my coilover was blown, I mean the seals for the valving went bad or blew out. I'm still in warranty and they sent me a replacement dampener free of charge. I had to swap the spring, spanners and lower mount and need to send my blown one back. Since I had to pull one of them, I figured I'd pull them all off and clean them up. Living on a dirt road really makes things nasty under the car, especially if the road is wet. So I spent quite a few hours dissasembling my coilovers and cleaning them up. They look almost as good as new now.

I also ordered the hardware I needed for my front and rear sway bars - they're not going to be in for another week and a half. Also picked up the nuts and bolts and spacers fro my underbody plate that I got from Nemo. Lastly, I picked up some nuts, bolts, and washers to replace the factory toe control bolts in the rear. Since I have the adjustable RUCAs on the car I don't need that big clunky thing anymore. And speaking of RUCAs, I dropped my ching-ping, ebay RUCAs off to the powder coater.

I'll post pictures of everything when I start putting the car back together.

OK Dex, its been 11 months, I are demand update NOW.

The silence has gone on long enough, quit holding out on us.

This off season has been a total fail because I got laid off. I also don't have internet access but every once in a while.

I'm back to school now, and expecting a job by August if all goes well. So that means not a whole lot coming this summer. I did just upload some pictures of my latest, but I have to go to lab for the next few hours. If I get out of lab at a reasonable time, I'll try to get back online and upload the pictures.

Just a teaser: Sway bars installed, coilovers back on, open diff FTL, toe control arms coming because rear toe-out is dangerous.

Sorry for the wait everyone, but there isn't that much excitement and I've been dealt a not-so-pleasant hand for a while. I'll catch up though.

Random "car on jackstands picture":

So, firt things first, I pulled all four coilovers, dissassembled them and cleaned them up. I also pulled my RUCAs since I wanted to get them Koted before I installed them, I figured this was a good time to get them done since I had some down time. Here's what my suspension looked like after I pulled it:Notice the bottom right dampener is all wet looking? That's they hydraulic fluid that used to be inside the dampener.

I spent a lot of hours cleaning up the dampeners. Why? I don't know, they're all ready fithly again. Endura Tech sent me a replacement dampener pretty quickly and I got all the other parts switched up pretty quickly. Here's a picture showing how clean they were: The top one was just cleaned, the bottom one was the dampener that was replaced. I had to use my old spring, perches, and collar.

Jim got my RUCAs done pretty quickly too and they turned out pretty well. I cleaned and greased my hime joints (sp?) before putting everything back together.

So I got the coilovers put back in and adjusted.Front:Rear:

Then I got my sway bar hardware and pulled my Koted swaybars off the shelf and dusted them off. Here's an overall comparison between the old sway bars and the new ones:Here you can see the big differences between the old bushings and endlinks and the new ones:

The installation of all the suspension stuff was pretty straightforward. It took me a while to get everything adjusted to where I wanted it. I tried to get zero camber front and rear. Once I got it pretty square, I dropped her down (which was HARD - I'll explain later) and had Michelle take it for a spin. She said it was still squirly in the rear so I pulled the VLSD and tossed the open diff in. Took it for a spin and it was still squirly. In fact, it was worse than the first time I took the car out.

I finally figured it out! Rear toe-out is bad. After some close inspection, I noticed that when I push the camber back out, it pushed the toe out also. So I had to order some adjustable toe control bars and had them sent straight to Jim. In the mean time, it's back to the JDM tyte negative camber.

So my diff was fine... or not. I drained it to change the fluid. When I pulled the drain plug, there was a LOT of metal stuck to the magnet.After cleaning the metal glob, this is what was left:

Yeah, weld chunks. In a viscous LSD... I can't figure out how or why. So I'm going to try to find another VLSD or maybe try shimming it like I posted in the Tech Section.

Anyways, I'll update again when I get the new toe control arms in. I have to take some pictures of my under-body plate, my "new" boot, and my 4-point harnesses that I still havent posted pictures of. Also, I haven't had a chance to push the vert with the new sway bars, but my wife said she likes them. We've got an S-curve near our house. She said, "Last year, I could take them at about 60mph easy, but it felt scary. Now I can take them at 60mph and it's not scary anymore." It's not because she got used to it. I'm looking forward to testing it out a bit.

Perhaps someone welded an open diff, then stuck a vlsd sticker on it and sold it to you? just my hypothosis.

Good work as usual.

Weird on the diff.

I just had to get adj toe and traction rods on my coupe as well. Its still not back on the ground to get an alignment though.

s13beast wrote:Perhaps someone welded an open diff, then stuck a vlsd sticker on it and sold it to you? just my hypothosis.

No, it's definitely a VLSD. I know the difference.

I know the weld chunks must have been in the housing somewhere when I got it. I drained it and refilled it before I put it in. One way or another, the weld chunks found their way into my VLSD and probably did some damage. It looks fine, but it doesn't lock up like it used to.

DeXteR wrote:
No, it's definitely a VLSD. I know the difference.

I know the weld chunks must have been in the housing somewhere when I got it. I drained it and refilled it before I put it in. One way or another, the weld chunks found their way into my VLSD and probably did some damage. It looks fine, but it doesn't lock up like it used to.

ORR maybe you dont know the difference because every vlsd you have driven has been a welded one with the sticker causing you to think you know but in reality...you dont. its possible.

s13beast wrote: ORR maybe you dont know the difference because every vlsd you have driven has been a welded one with the sticker causing you to think you know but in reality...you dont. its possible.

I don't say this here much, but you've earned it.

You're a f***ing idiot.

I've driven s13's with welded, open, and visous diffs. I've put the diffs in these cars and had the covers off. I know how they behave and what they look like inside and out. Stickers don't mean s***. In fact, none of my diff covers have stickers anyway.

WOW!!! Dex getting pissed!! Thats a first!!

Btw, keep up the good work Dex.... hopefully I'll be able to get up there some time and help out/ hang out.

So I finally got the rear toe control arms installed last night and dialed in my RUCAs and TCAs close to what I want them. They still need some fine adjusting, but I was tired of screwing with them last night.

Once I was done, I realized that I had left the key in the on-position since Saturday, so the battery was dead. So I pulled the DSM over the jump her and she fired right up. So I took it out for a short spin to see how the rear end felt. On my way back home, the car just died. Nothing - no power, no electricity at all...

Fortunately, I was on my road and about a 1/4 mile away from my driveway when she finally came to a stop. So I pushed her off to the side of the road and popped the hood. My first thought was that the negative terminal had become disconnected because the terminal ring is all whopped out. However, when I popped the hood, the terminal was still connected. So I walked home and loaded up the DSM with a tow strap and the jumper cables and drove back to the car.

When I hooked the jumpers up, the lights came back on and everything seemed fine, when I went to start it, there was a big spark at the battery and then everything was dead. When I got out, the teeth on the negative end of the jumpers was glowing... Great.

So I figured that this thing is more than just dead now. So I hooked up the tow strap and tried pulling it home. Well, when the steering won't lock (you know it locks when you don't want it to and never will when you actually need it to...) it's hard to pull a car by yourself.

Now it's 3:00am when I got back in the house to wake up the wife. She was a good sport and we had the vert back in the shop in no time. I looked at things for a few minutes and decided to call it a night. It was 4:00am by the time I got to bed.

I'm thinking I'm going to be spending my free time doing that wiring harness swap that I've been trying to put off. I think the shady wiring has finally gotten too bad.

Any one else have any thoughts?

yeah, good luck and keep us posted!

Sorry to hear. Sounds like a short somewhere, but I suck at wiring and stay away from it when possible.

Found the problem. It was a short like I thought.

Stupid intake manifold bracket...

Pictures tomorrow if I get a chance.

Awesome car