been a long time in coming (car was down from sometime in january to a week ago), but it runs and drives fine. a few issues i still need to work out, and a few things left to still install (wipers, carpet, etc)
as it sat for a long time - i had school from jan-may, so i could only work on the car on weekends.
my brother purchased a front clip off ebay, and only intended on using the motorset. What to do w/ left over pieces from the clip... i got the car for only $700, i've been missing working on cars every day, so here's a good project for me. Lets make my car RHD. I have all the parts. I've learned to survive at college w/o a car. And i just want to see if i can do it.
so, here's what the process started withthat's me w/ the hat and deer in headlights look
a nice donor car. The engine bay was in imaculate condition, the dash had a minor scratch, and the A/C heater controls were there, and it came w/ a center console and ebrake
a day later
A better picture of the firewall by itselfif you seriously think that you can just cut new holes and fill others, you are wrong It will not work like that.
here's what the inside of the dash looks like
an ok comparison between the two firewalls
this is how i decided to cut the firewall. My purpose in doing it this way was to minimize the warpage of the firewall when it would be welded in place. The longer the weld, the more likely it is to heat, expand, and warp out of place, making one end higher than the other.
just another shot to show how I cut the firewall.
nearly finished on my RHD SX
fast forward to ~2 weeks later, after paying ~$250 to have the firewall cut out to match the existing holes and welded in.
fast forward thru the process of painting the engine bay and back of the firewall w/ rustoleum to make it look better and to prevent any rusting on the welds, as well as the process of applying silicon along the weld to make certain the welds are air tight.
once the silicon had cured, repaint to cover
install front body harness, brake lines, motor, steering rack and PS lines, etc
Then go inside and install brake pedal, and clutch pedal, weld accelerator pedal mount and stopper in place. install throttle cable, heater core, blower motor, A/C evaporator. weld/remove brackets where necessary.Install the metal support bar that runs behind the dash and serves as the main support. Test fit the steering column support bracket seen on the left
install the steering column to make certain support is located in correct spot. Spot weld the support to the back of the cowl. Once you have everything lined up and fitted correctly, remove everything and insulate the firewall. I had the rubber/cloth insulation left over from the clip in good condition - not dry and brittle like the one that was in the car to begin w/, but i decided that it wasn't worth the hassle of installing, so i just dynamatted the firewall to keep out road noise, and cover any remaining holes from drilling out spot welds.
Run the wiring harness along the dash support bar, connecting plugs as you go *note: to make the process simple, i used the entire front body harness from a RHD car. There was no way in hell i was going to take appart the body harness from the 240sx and cut/splice/lengthen/shorten the wires to make it work. **** that. In my opinion, what i did was FAR easier. The only things i lost were cruise control, and I may go back and cut out the wires from he 240 wiring harness and custom run it, but i have not decided yet, and the automatic seat belts. I don't like the auto seatbelts anyways, and when unplugged, they stay in the back position on the b-pillar. Potential problems w/ doing so: the door harness (i think its the speaker/power lock harness) has a different plug between the 240 and the 180. Maybe its just the active stereo my 240 had vs the standard stereo the 180 had. Also, the connector for the overhead map lights are different. Then there's also the fact that your body harness is cut about halfway down the door. That means that you have to splice in the rear body harness (taillamps, fuel pump, rear speakers, antenna, antenna amp, rear wiper,etc). Theres also the issue that the 180's body harness runs along the right side of the car, where as on the 240, it runs down the left. Originally, i was thinking of locating some large connectors (something like ECU connectors) and making a connection harness that would run across the middle of the car to the other side. For one reason or another, i decided to take apart my rear harness and rerun the wires.
There is your 240's body harness in all its glory.
what your 240 looks like w/o any wiring in the rear
I then proceeded to cut the rear harness off, right by the fuse block, and then connected all the plugs to their respective locations, and deloomed the harness. I clumped the plug wires into individual packs, and would then run then along the right side of the car to where they would meet the JDM harness. here's the cluster **** that insuedIt actually was not that bad to do. Before cutting any wires, i labeled the junction, and then placed a corresponding label on the wire once cut. For example, the Red with Blue tracer wire that is the power wire for your lights (taillights and side markers), there are several junctions along one wire. Label a junction 001 and on every wire you cut from said juntion 001. Really though, after a short while, you realize that this isn't really important. All R/L (interior light/accessory) wires go together, all black wires go together, all the R/G (stop lamp) wires go together. One difficult task is making sure you leave enough slack in the harness to accomodate later wires and interior panels, and what not. Remember to do it right, and soldier all connections. Crimp connectors are bad in my opinion, and result in gigantic buldges, especially right there at the hump in the floor board, where the majority of your connections will be made to the JDM harness. Heat shrink wrapping is a very good idea, and I wish i could have had some. I would also recommend purchasing a quality wire stripper, a quality soldiering iron, and quality electrical tape, as well as zip ties and twist ties(for temporary bundling). You also want to test all your functions as you connect them to the main harness. Its a whole lot easier to diagnos a problem right after running the wires, as opposed to wiring the entire rear of the car and testing the brake lights to find out they don't work. Once you have everything working properly, either twist tie the wires together, or tape a section of wire together, go a foot or 2 and tape another section together and so on. Once that is done, roll the majority of the harness w/ electrical tape and/or cover w/ a cover of some sort.
Once your rear body harness is run and everything works, you can install the dash, cluster, etc. Not having a USDM speed sensor after selling my KA 5spd to fund the project, I just installed the Km/h cluster. This is not advised, though, as i still have yet to really decipher the related speeds (i know that 65 is ~110km/h, and 45 is somewhere around 70 km/h. This also throws off your odometer (not carfax friendly), your tirp meter (wow, i got 300miles to the last tank... oh yeah, i got 300Km to the last tank :rolleyes ).
umm.. then i guess you're ready to go for you're first rhd test drive.
It's gonna be weird. you're gonna misshift, you're gonna grind gears. You're going to hit the wiper switch, instead of the turn signal switch because its on the other side. You're going to have a big blind spot on the left side b/c the mirror will not adjust far enough in. You're going to have a problem making left hand turns w/ people on the opposing side of traffic also trying to make a left turn, thus entirely blocking your vision. You're going to have a hard time making a right hand turn out of a neighborhood b/c you're located further back at the intersection. You're going to drive outside of your lane. You're going to get strange looks. You're going to get people following you. You're going to have kids in honduhs chasing after you. You're going to get everyone's attention when you show up to your first car show/meet. Everyone is going to want to go for a ride and/or drive it. You will have 15 minutes of untouched fame. You will experience haters. You will be asked non stop "WHY" You will soon come to realize that there's no point in coming up with an explination. You will realize that any expliantion you give will not be good enough for most. You will more than likely catch the attention of the police. They will probably follow you. They don't have anything they can ticket you for (atleast not in VA, and atleast not if you are driving legally and have everything working properly on your car). I think if you went thru the entire process, you will like it. I think you will be satisfied with your work. You will have something that no one/not many around you have.
I still need to take more pictures of the near finished product. I've been busy w/ summer school and working on the car, and driving it around to get used to it and seem to forget to take more pictures of the car as it sits now.
Overall, I'm happy with what i've accomplished. Many times, i cursed myself for even thinking of doing this. It took far longer than ever expected. Wiring was far more time consuming than i'd ever imagined at the beginning. I'm glad i'm done, not sure if i'd ever do it again. But it was a massive undertaking for me, but when everything is in place and the car is repainted, i will be able to look back and say that atleast once in my life, i've done something others feel is incredibly difficult. I can look back when i'm 50 and say "ya, when i was 18, I converted my car to RHD in my driveway, with the assitance of a few friend's hands here and there, and only once did I contract something out. Never did I ask anyone 'how can i do this. can someone tell me what to do' I set a goal, and followed thru w/ it from start to end." That's what its all about for me. Doing it to impress others is dumb and pointless. I just wanted to express converting to right hand drive can be done, its not the most difficult thing in the world to do, and to give a little assitance to anyone crazy enough to do it.
anyways, thats my story. Thanks to anyone who would read it all, or most of it.
Chris
fast forward thru the process of painting the engine bay and back of the firewall w/ rustoleum to make it look better and to prevent any rusting on the welds, as well as the process of applying silicon along the weld to make certain the welds are air tight.
once the silicon had cured, repaint to cover
install front body harness, brake lines, motor, steering rack and PS lines, etc
Then go inside and install brake pedal, and clutch pedal, weld accelerator pedal mount and stopper in place. install throttle cable, heater core, blower motor, A/C evaporator. weld/remove brackets where necessary.Install the metal support bar that runs behind the dash and serves as the main support. Test fit the steering column support bracket seen on the left
install the steering column to make certain support is located in correct spot. Spot weld the support to the back of the cowl. Once you have everything lined up and fitted correctly, remove everything and insulate the firewall. I had the rubber/cloth insulation left over from the clip in good condition - not dry and brittle like the one that was in the car to begin w/, but i decided that it wasn't worth the hassle of installing, so i just dynamatted the firewall to keep out road noise, and cover any remaining holes from drilling out spot welds.
Run the wiring harness along the dash support bar, connecting plugs as you go *note: to make the process simple, i used the entire front body harness from a RHD car. There was no way in hell i was going to take appart the body harness from the 240sx and cut/splice/lengthen/shorten the wires to make it work. **** that. In my opinion, what i did was FAR easier. The only things i lost were cruise control, and I may go back and cut out the wires from he 240 wiring harness and custom run it, but i have not decided yet, and the automatic seat belts. I don't like the auto seatbelts anyways, and when unplugged, they stay in the back position on the b-pillar. Potential problems w/ doing so: the door harness (i think its the speaker/power lock harness) has a different plug between the 240 and the 180. Maybe its just the active stereo my 240 had vs the standard stereo the 180 had. Also, the connector for the overhead map lights are different. Then there's also the fact that your body harness is cut about halfway down the door. That means that you have to splice in the rear body harness (taillamps, fuel pump, rear speakers, antenna, antenna amp, rear wiper,etc). Theres also the issue that the 180's body harness runs along the right side of the car, where as on the 240, it runs down the left. Originally, i was thinking of locating some large connectors (something like ECU connectors) and making a connection harness that would run across the middle of the car to the other side. For one reason or another, i decided to take apart my rear harness and rerun the wires.
There is your 240's body harness in all its glory.
what your 240 looks like w/o any wiring in the rear
I then proceeded to cut the rear harness off, right by the fuse block, and then connected all the plugs to their respective locations, and deloomed the harness. I clumped the plug wires into individual packs, and would then run then along the right side of the car to where they would meet the JDM harness. here's the cluster **** that insuedIt actually was not that bad to do. Before cutting any wires, i labeled the junction, and then placed a corresponding label on the wire once cut. For example, the Red with Blue tracer wire that is the power wire for your lights (taillights and side markers), there are several junctions along one wire. Label a junction 001 and on every wire you cut from said juntion 001. Really though, after a short while, you realize that this isn't really important. All R/L (interior light/accessory) wires go together, all black wires go together, all the R/G (stop lamp) wires go together. One difficult task is making sure you leave enough slack in the harness to accomodate later wires and interior panels, and what not. Remember to do it right, and soldier all connections. Crimp connectors are bad in my opinion, and result in gigantic buldges, especially right there at the hump in the floor board, where the majority of your connections will be made to the JDM harness. Heat shrink wrapping is a very good idea, and I wish i could have had some. I would also recommend purchasing a quality wire stripper, a quality soldiering iron, and quality electrical tape, as well as zip ties and twist ties(for temporary bundling). You also want to test all your functions as you connect them to the main harness. Its a whole lot easier to diagnos a problem right after running the wires, as opposed to wiring the entire rear of the car and testing the brake lights to find out they don't work. Once you have everything working properly, either twist tie the wires together, or tape a section of wire together, go a foot or 2 and tape another section together and so on. Once that is done, roll the majority of the harness w/ electrical tape and/or cover w/ a cover of some sort.
Once your rear body harness is run and everything works, you can install the dash, cluster, etc. Not having a USDM speed sensor after selling my KA 5spd to fund the project, I just installed the Km/h cluster. This is not advised, though, as i still have yet to really decipher the related speeds (i know that 65 is ~110km/h, and 45 is somewhere around 70 km/h. This also throws off your odometer (not carfax friendly), your tirp meter (wow, i got 300miles to the last tank... oh yeah, i got 300Km to the last tank :rolleyes ).
umm.. then i guess you're ready to go for you're first rhd test drive.
It's gonna be weird. you're gonna misshift, you're gonna grind gears. You're going to hit the wiper switch, instead of the turn signal switch because its on the other side. You're going to have a big blind spot on the left side b/c the mirror will not adjust far enough in. You're going to have a problem making left hand turns w/ people on the opposing side of traffic also trying to make a left turn, thus entirely blocking your vision. You're going to have a hard time making a right hand turn out of a neighborhood b/c you're located further back at the intersection. You're going to drive outside of your lane. You're going to get strange looks. You're going to get people following you. You're going to have kids in honduhs chasing after you. You're going to get everyone's attention when you show up to your first car show/meet. Everyone is going to want to go for a ride and/or drive it. You will have 15 minutes of untouched fame. You will experience haters. You will be asked non stop "WHY" You will soon come to realize that there's no point in coming up with an explination. You will realize that any expliantion you give will not be good enough for most. You will more than likely catch the attention of the police. They will probably follow you. They don't have anything they can ticket you for (atleast not in VA, and atleast not if you are driving legally and have everything working properly on your car). I think if you went thru the entire process, you will like it. I think you will be satisfied with your work. You will have something that no one/not many around you have.
I still need to take more pictures of the near finished product. I've been busy w/ summer school and working on the car, and driving it around to get used to it and seem to forget to take more pictures of the car as it sits now.
Overall, I'm happy with what i've accomplished. Many times, i cursed myself for even thinking of doing this. It took far longer than ever expected. Wiring was far more time consuming than i'd ever imagined at the beginning. I'm glad i'm done, not sure if i'd ever do it again. But it was a massive undertaking for me, but when everything is in place and the car is repainted, i will be able to look back and say that atleast once in my life, i've done something others feel is incredibly difficult. I can look back when i'm 50 and say "ya, when i was 18, I converted my car to RHD in my driveway, with the assitance of a few friend's hands here and there, and only once did I contract something out. Never did I ask anyone 'how can i do this. can someone tell me what to do' I set a goal, and followed thru w/ it from start to end." That's what its all about for me. Doing it to impress others is dumb and pointless. I just wanted to express converting to right hand drive can be done, its not the most difficult thing in the world to do, and to give a little assitance to anyone crazy enough to do it.
anyways, thats my story. Thanks to anyone who would read it all, or most of it.
Chris
Cool I was thinkin to do a RHD conversion too glad to see someone else do it before me so I don't mess up. Looks good! When I went to Japan my GF's Dad stoped on the freeway and told me to get in the driver's seat, I didn't really want to drive but he knew I was a car freak. I was hella scared and their freeways are way more sharper curved then ours. I hit the windsheild wipers about 20 times!
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