Getting sick of this endless project

[Ajax]

Hey all, I'm writing this thread because I need to vent a bit.
I've had this s13 since 1999. It was a great little car; fun and reliable. After college I moved to Minnesota and started my "adult" life. Once I started making some money, I got myself a winter car (I've gone through several now) so I could keep the Nissan looking good. 2004, I decided to get the engine rebuilt so I could enjoy the car for years to come. Unfortunately, that mechanic was a d!ck- I didn't get the car back for almost 3 years, and when I did, it was burning more oil than when I brough it in. So I saved more money and sent it to AMS. We stroked it and gave it higher compression. I had also given it a new paint job and new coilovers. I got it back in a much more reasonable amount of time, but wasn't satisfied with the power- I thought we could do better. So I got a new intake manifold and got a new tune. Still didn't feel quite right. So I designed a custom header and got a full stand-alone tune. Broke 200hp. Put it in storage for the winter, and when I brought it out, it developed a stumbling problem. Unfortunately, it was thrust into daily driver duty during this time. I've since bought a newer, better daily driver (no longer a beater), so I don't have to drive the nissan daily. I've had a shop fix some of the problems, but we've discovered that my #1 cylinder is @10% low- something in the block or rings- the head checks out okay. So some amount of damage has been done and I've already spent money that I had hoped to save toward a transmission rebuild. There's plenty of other projects I had hoped to work on as well.
It just seems like everytime I try to get the engine resolved, it develops new problems. Hindsight being 20/20, I feel like I should never have started this project car, because I don't even get to drive it. And when I do, its a chore to drive anyway. Not that I ever have any free time to drive around anyway as I've been working massive amounts of overtime while doing a lot of theatre.
Selling the car would net me maybe 15% of what I've put into it, so that doesn't seem like a good idea. Parting it out isn't possible since I live in an apartment and don't have the time anyway. Driving it anyway seems like it would eventually just lead to a catastrophic failure, thereby necessitating parting it out. Almost wish that someone would hit the car so I could get insurance to recoup all this waste.
I'm probably overreacting to some unfortunate news, but it just seems like I can't catch a break here.

[pepesilvia]

damn dude, thats an upsetting story.. you have that N/A KA24 240 that broke the 200hp barrier, correct? that's quite an accomplishment.... that stuff goes down in the history books dude

[mattblancarte]

Sorry to hear that, Ajax (asynchronous javascript and xml?).

Sounds a lot like my first car, although I had a lot more luck in that it was running and I didn't allow a shop to hold onto it for more than a month or two at any given time.

I have a buddy that has been in the process of building his race car for about 10 years (no kidding) and he has literally driven it for 10-15 miles. No way in hell could I stand for that. I need to drive my cars!

[Razi]

That's how I felt about my car when it slowly started to develop issues after I turbocharged it. I regretted modifying the motor.
I even thought about parting it out and selling the car.
Later I tried to relax and made a list of stuff I've fixed, and a list of stuff I needed to fix and started getting the car back to working order.
Now I daily drive it with little problems. It does have some tiny issues here and there but I'm ironing those out as well.

It'll be worth it and a just a problem in the past once you get over the s*** slump.

[Ajax]

Thanks for the support. Its incredibly frustrating, especially since I can't really do these things myself. I take the car to shops, expecting that they can take care of all the details, but there always seems to be something that doesn't get done right, and I end up paying for it later.

[fiznowler]

I feel your pain man. I decided it was a good Idea to motor swap my perfectly running car 2 years ago. It has been down ever since. Mostly due to me losing motivation and putting it on the back burner. I thought real hard about putting a stock crossmember back in the car and buying another ka to bolt in. I decided I am going to finish this damn thing if it kills me and leaves me 100% broke. I just keep telling myself once this step is done then I can enjoy it without all the downtime. We will see how that goes.... Build her stronger and better you have had her too long to give it up.

[Ajax]

I had to drive it home for storage yesterday. She's definitely hurting. But the cost may not be quite as much as I was anticipating. So in the spring, I'll hopefully be able to have the engine and transmission pulled, new rings, and transmission rebuilt, then be done with this constant not-quite-right running.

[Slayde]

Keep it man. Drift it. Break it. Fix it. Repeat. The smile you get from driving the crap out of it, out weighs the cost of keeping it. At least for me that is true.

[95zenki man]

Drift it. Break it. Fix it. Repeat.

This.

I have honestly put my s*** up for sell at least 5 times because i got mad at it, In the end i always keep it. Way to much time and hard work to just let it go. It also helps knowing everything you have done to it, i know working on my car is 10x easyer then helping others with theres just because i know every little thing done to mine after damn near 2 years.

Keep it, work on it all the damn time and dump loads of time and money into it. Hell anything else you buy will be the same way.