Father Daughter s13 Build Thread

[ceniack]

So... it's been awhile.

My daughter turns 16 in just over 18 months and we decided to pick up a base model 1992 coupe as a project to work on that will hopefully be her first car. The short version of the plan is to clean it up, replace all the rotted rubber and get it running again, hopefully for the RT66 JDM car show in Williams in October 2026.

We purchased the car and a U-Haul full of parts from a local friend for $1800. It looks like everything is there to complete the exterior of the car as far as any body panels I would need and Most of the interior is there (missing a back seat it seems).

While it has been sitting for about 10 years but doesn’t look like it will take a TON of work (relatively speaking) to get it on the road. The engine turns by hand easily, and when we hooked up a battery to it, most of the electrics seemed to kick on, so I am hoping that the only major harness damage is the spot I can see which seems to go to the headlights and maybe horn. The only current bad spot of corrosion I can find is in the spare tire well (some flaking) but most everything else seems to be surface rust. The engine appears to be completely stock (even has all of the emissions equipment hooked up).

The plan is to clean it up, replace all the rotted rubber and get it running again, hopefully for the RT66 JDM car show in Williams in October 2026.

Current list of needs (not exhaustive complete):

New Carpet
New Seats
Maintenance (get to Day-0)
Replace all the engine related soft rubber under the hood and to the fuel tank
Lower Harness
Rear Passenger 1/4 panel cut/patched (Currently have a donor cut from a car)
Brake Overhaul (has z32 Front Brakes)

Photos:


Arriving at home


U-Haul full of parts


Engine bay before leaf and plant debris removal





Mouse droppings



No Mouse Droppings


Photo of chewed lower harness


Patch of bad rust


Still has what appears to be a complete OEM toolkit

The weather has been pretty crappy here in Oklahoma the last few days, but we should hopefully start making some additional progress soon.

[Hijacker]

Hell yeah! I been following this build on reddit as you post. Looking forward to where you go with it

[ceniack]

Hell yeah! I been following this build on reddit as you post. Looking forward to where you go with it

Thanks, I took a look at your thread as well and am taking notes.

I’ve also decided to share a read only copy of my Google sheet that I’m using to try and keep track of everything in an organized manner. Any suggestions are welcome, keep in mind it’s a working document and resembles more of a brain dump than a cohesive plan at the moment.

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/ ... z06U_1InI/

I’ve also made the first official parts order. Nothing too exciting, just new coolant hoses. I’ve also got a cart ready to go on Enjuku with some tune up stuff, a new water pump, thermostat, fuel softlines, and coolant overflow.

I’m hoping the harness didn’t get too messed up from the rodents and it will be an easy fix. I’d like to find another good harness, or at least one I can scavenge matching wire from for the repair. I’d like to get the engine fired up before I pull it to check the engine bay and transmission tunnel for rust and do any rust repair or mitigation.

It would be nice to see if the AC works and if not, start collecting parts for that.

My daughter has definitely paid her hot car dues. When we picked up the Caravan from the Port of LA a couple summers ago, the AC did not work on the drive back and myself and the rest of the family got caught in a traffic jam for an hour just outside of Baker, CA on our way home when the outside temps were hitting 120*. Thankfully the van handled it like a champ. Which reminds me, I need to find a place on Nico to post that thing up.

What is the current recommendation around rust prevention and treatment?

I've been browsing the Eastwood catalog and looking at their rust prevention/treatment products and am curious what your all's thoughts are? Are their better products out there that anyone would recommend over what Eastwood has?

These are the specific products I am considering.
 

• This for inside the frame
• For light surface rust
• For heavier surface rust and minor pitting/flaking nothing that would need an immediate patch welded in
• For heavier surface rust under the car

[ceniack]

Can't edit my last post and remembered there was more I wanted to add.

I am somewhat torn between doing an OEM restoration and an OEM+ style Restomod. I have someone (a member here, but I'll let them out themselves if they want to) willing to hook us up with fresh hardware where needed. I just have to send the measurements of the hardware and the how much I need. Because of this, I plan to document the OEM part number, where on the car it goes, and what an off the shelf JIC fastener of the same spec would be so that the community has an easy to access a resource they can use for OEM equivalent hardware (at least for a base model coupe).

It's wild how something as simple as easy access to fresh fasteners has me extra motivated to do this the right way and not cut corners. In the past, it was usually missing or busted fasteners that were the biggest frustration, as well as hurdle to not cutting corners (for a broke college kid, going to ace for whatever metric hardware was way less expensive than going to the dealer for OEM stuff when something broke).

The car already has z32 front brakes (Plan to rebuild the calipers and replace the master cylinder and soft lines before it goes on the road). It also came with a set of z32 wheels so I would just need to do a 5-lug swap and put some fresh tires on the z32 wheels and would be good on wheels and tires for a while. believe it or not I have a full set of OEM hubcaps, just no steel wheels. I also have a full set of s13 SE wheels, but not the ones that will clear Z brakes.

I plan to replace all of the suspension bushings, but I am not sure if I should just buy new arms with the bushings already pressed in, or having new bushings pressed into my control arms, and how those prices would compare to all adjustable suspension arms. I hesitate to go all adjustable fancy arms unless I need to do it to correct the alignment when it gets lowered since they tend to be the strongest part of the car at that point, if it hits a curb or something, instead of a bent control arm, I'm now possibly looking at fixing frame and subframe damage.

Decisions, decisions...

[Hijacker]

What is the current recommendation around rust prevention and treatment?

I've been browsing the Eastwood catalog and looking at their rust prevention/treatment products and am curious what your all's thoughts are? Are their better products out there that anyone would recommend over what Eastwood has?

These are the specific products I am considering.
 

• This for inside the frame
• For light surface rust
• For heavier surface rust and minor pitting/flaking nothing that would need an immediate patch welded in
• For heavier surface rust under the car

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TABWPHutk-A
Fast forward to 43:09 to get his test results. I personally use POR-15 on my truck frame and haven't had any issues. Eastwood definitely makes a good product

I am somewhat torn between doing an OEM restoration and an OEM+ style Restomod. I have someone (a member here, but I'll let them out themselves if they want to) willing to hook us up with fresh hardware where needed. I just have to send the measurements of the hardware and the how much I need. Because of this, I plan to document the OEM part number, where on the car it goes, and what an off the shelf JIC fastener of the same spec would be so that the community has an easy to access a resource they can use for OEM equivalent hardware (at least for a base model coupe).

It's wild how something as simple as easy access to fresh fasteners has me extra motivated to do this the right way and not cut corners. In the past, it was usually missing or busted fasteners that were the biggest frustration, as well as hurdle to not cutting corners (for a broke college kid, going to ace for whatever metric hardware was way less expensive than going to the dealer for OEM stuff when something broke).

Having access to new hardware or even restored hardware is a game changer. I've been using Amayama to get brand new factory hardware when I can't restore what I already have. The shipping can suck, but it's still cheaper than going to the dealership. For my Ford, I use a lot of Auveco replacements since they're OEM. You can never beat a good factory bolt

[ceniack]

Thanks for the info, I’ve used Amayama, Megazip, and Nengun to get stuff for my van with good luck, as well as Buyee for hitting up Yahoo Auctions.

[Hijacker]

Don't forget about RHD Japan and Blackhawk

I only called out Amayama because their hardware prices are reasonable. Usually around 1 USD per bolt rather than Nissan USA's 5+ USD. I usually slap hardware orders on bigger orders to justify the shipping costs

Barring that, I can't recommend enough to get into electroplating. Even though the exporters have great access to a wide variety, there's still a lot of discontinued body hardware. For instance, the little shoulder bolts that hold the bumper cover to the underside of the bumper support. Since I started zinc plating and chromating for my engine rebuild, I've saved a ton of money on hardware and the restored bolts look better than factory

[PapaSmurf2k3]

What is the current recommendation around rust prevention and treatment?

I watched Project Farm's youtube channel for a couple different options and landed on Seafoam deep creep as a penetrating lubricant as well as rust preventor. I treat the cars every fall.

[ceniack]

I watched Project Farm's youtube channel for a couple different options and landed on Seafoam deep creep as a penetrating lubricant as well as rust preventor. I treat the cars every fall.

Sweet, its funny that right after I saw this, he showed up in my feed doing a comparative test

I still have not had a chance to do more teardown. Instead spend the last couple of evenings trying to get the garage in a better place so I can work on the cars without feeling cramped or like I'm going to lose a tool.

I am also deep into reading about rust repair and chassis restoration (things like chemical dipping, and media blasting). Part of me thinks it will likely be overkill for this particular car considering how clean the rails, rockers, and floorplans look. But I also haven't gotten under the car or pulled the rest of the interior to start poking at metal so there is a chance I could still find some surprises. Considering the car had spent most of its driving life in Texas, and not all that long driving in Oklahoma before it was parked, I'm pretty confident I won't find much, if any rot (especially considering its a slick top).

That said, the car is more or less going to stripped down to the chassis as I go through and inspect, clean, and replace things as necessary and if nothing else to deep clean everything the rodents made a mess of.

I am guessing that I will have a better idea of which path to take once I get things torn down and get a better poke on the underside. But let's assume I wanted to have the chassis taken to bare metal. I know the options are media blasting, or a chemical bath. I've watched videos, read articles. I have also seen advertisements for mobile media blasting. I am guessing I wouldn't want them doing that in my driveway and it would be better to take it somewhere to have that done but, I would be interested in hearing from anyone with experience on the boards.

[PapaSmurf2k3]

I've always just spot-treated for rust... never taken a full chassis down to bare metal.
Greg has done that so maybe hit him up to pop in to this thread. I know he's a big advocate of the dry ice blasting. Do you have anyone around that does that?

[IanS]

This is going to be an awesome project. My Daughter just turned 12, and I've already been lurking some of the FS places and auction yards looking for a good candidate. She really wants a Civic Si, but we'll see. My plan is to find her something sporty with low miles and body damage, and we can put it back together. That way she'll understand how much work is involved in fixing a car, and she'll be more emotionally invested in it and hopefully that leads to taking better care of it.

All in all, you're doing the Dadding thing right.

[AZhitman]

Go Terry!

So far, you're on the right track. Only thing I'd skip is the undercoating. It tends to capture moisture unless applied from the factory.

POR15 is great for the frame, but other than that, just keep it clean.

I don't have much S-chassis stuff left, but I'll keep an eye on this thread. Anything I have left is yours for the asking.

[ceniack]

I don't have much S-chassis stuff left, but I'll keep an eye on this thread. Anything I have left is yours for the asking.

Thanks Greg!

The main thing I know for sure I need is a new main harness. Once I get some space cleared out in the garage to organize all the bits I take off I plan to pull the dash and the rest of the interior to assess the rest of the harness.

The weather has not been cooperating, and the last few nice evenings we had, I had to do the brakes and wheel bearings on my wife’s Impreza.

Speaking of cleaning out the garage, I need to remember to drop that package off with my car show raffle donation.

[PapaSmurf2k3]

Does wiring specialties have the harness you need?

[ceniack]

Does wiring specialties have the harness you need?

Theirs doesn’t control the pop-ups from what I could see on their website. I had looked at them initially.

[Hijacker]

If you end up wanting to repair your factory harness instead of trying to swap in one, I have a source I've been using for my color coded wires and I have a running list of the connectors and terminals Nissan used. For the most part, I'd say 95% of the connectors and terminals are still purchasable today

[ceniack]

Sorry for the delay in updates. Not much progress as we are still trying to get the garage cleared out and the weather has been very uncooperative here in central Oklahoma.

We also adopted 3 kittens from a litter that our neighbor found in the basement of one of their properties.

That said, I did collect some parts in a nice Facebook haul which happened to also be the person that we got the car from. Needs a bottom end rebuild for sure as there is 0 compression on one of the cylinders. I scoped them and saw some scoring on one so I'm guessing it lost a ring land. Either way, we aren't in a huge hurry to rebuild it since as far as we know the KA that since in it will run once we change the fluids and hoses, etc...

Picture of the listing.

Original listing

I feel like $850 was a good deal for everything. This particular SR20 has a bit of local car scene history as it was the first SR20 swap in the state of Oklahoma and is also a part of a core memory from my first local Nissan meet when I witnessed the car it was in embarrass an old Chevy Nova from a roll. We were at our monthly meetup spot and it pulled up, rattled off a list of mods, the only mod remember something about "highway gears" that made us all roll our eyes when, we'll call them J, said he would. They left and you could hear them rip on the interstate and then J came back, and the other guy didn't. The chase car that had followed them showed us all the video on their camcorder when they got back. I believe the car was pushing about 350whp at the time on a T3/T4 setup on the stock bottom end.


s13 blacktop with a custom top mount manifold. The person I bought this from is an engineer that I believe was in college, or had recently graduated and participated in the Formula SAE team and custom fabricated this back in the early 2000's. I believe at the time a similar manifold from some place like Full Race was $1000 or more.

s13 blacktop with a custom top mount T3 manifold

Manifold collector

Welds

Welds

It also came with a couple of spare transmissions. I believe one of them has an SR bell housing on it.

2 spare transmissions, not sure if they are KA or SR bell housing

When they came to drop it off, I gave them an extra $50 bucks as they had no need for the hoist since they were cleaning out their parent's old property.

$50 engine hoist

I have a bore scope, so I took this video. I am not entirely sure what I am looking at but can see some debris in one cylinder and some scoring on another one. Regardless the engine is going to get a rebuild. The interesting bits are at 2:40 and 8:05.

[PapaSmurf2k3]

Nice score! That manifold looks sweet and clearly its withstood the test of time.