Well honestly that's what it started out as. Little by little the plan has evolved to get progressively more involved and in-depth. At first I was hesitant to go all out with the chassis and rear due to cost and build time plus the loss of streetability. But as one proline employee told me "what do a 500whp street car and a 1000whp street car have in common? 11 sec time slips." He was obviously exaggerating but his point was clear, if you can't put it to the ground you may as well not push the engine that hard.

I've enjoyed the build tremendously so far and watching the chassis come together has been surprisingly more enjoyable for me than even the engine stuff(although I suspect that will change on dyno day) thanks for the comments and hopefully it will get alot more interesting soon.

Jimefam wrote:Well honestly that's what it started out as. Little by little the plan has evolved to get progressively more involved and in-depth. At first I was hesitant to go all out with the chassis and rear due to cost and build time plus the loss of streetability. But as one proline employee told me "what do a 500whp street car and a 1000whp street car have in common? 11 sec time slips." He was obviously exaggerating but his point was clear, if you can't put it to the ground you may as well not push the engine that hard.

I've enjoyed the build tremendously so far and watching the chassis come together has been surprisingly more enjoyable for me than even the engine stuff(although I suspect that will change on dyno day) thanks for the comments and hopefully it will get alot more interesting soon.

I feel like you have sold the 240sx's chassis a bit short and took the easy route to lay down big power. There have been a handful of people who pushed 700-800whp with the factory suspension setup with ET streets and were able to hold traction at the track. They make aftermarket drag coilovers now at a reasonable price ~1200 dollars that will get you 1.3-1.5 60ft's (hell people do that on factory shocks).

A appreciate the quality of work being done, but at the end of the day your going to have a car that's only good at one thing that you can only drive one place.

Looking forward to seeing the engine setup dyno. Good luck making the power your searching for.

While your right the S13 chassis is very good I really wanted reliability and an ease of tuning the suspension that I'm not aware of currently being done with the stock IRS. There are certainly some incredibly fast 240sx's out there but really if I'm cutting 1.3-1.5 60' times I'll be WAY off the pace of the class I'm wanting to run. My 60' times need to be around 1.15 and I need to be able to do that consistently. If you look up the world cup event that was just run this weekend at MIR people in my class were running 7.5x's in the quarter and the fastest pass was 7.47. There may be stock suspension S13's running those numbers but personally I don't think I could do it. The fastest S13's I'm aware of is the HKS one and the import DPS and they are both way more cut up and tubed chassis's than what I'm running.

I don't know how this could have been the easy way though? It's more expensive, time consuming, restricting and heavy. I went this route because as I said earlier in the thread I'm commited to getting the most I can out of the car and being competitive in this series. As for a street car I've got another car I'm hoping to make a fast street car/mile run car and I just got it in the 12's recently. Thanks for the feedback though and your right the 240sx is a badass and proven chassis that is popular in all types of racing.

What I meant with "easy way out" is you know its a guarantee and will be very repeatable once you dial it in. Its just what most of the old men run in their small/big block sat afternoon drag race cars that all do the same thing again and again that's all. If your searching to compete with the guys running 7.50's in the MIR world challenge then I suppose it will do it. I would like to say quite a few IRS records were set last weekend at the event...

I think really its just my personal preference, I like the harder route that makes it more fun. I think I'd get very bored with a car that does exactly what I wanted it to do ever pass (even though I think a 7.50 car will keep you on your toes most of the time). Thats why I rock a 5 speed, DR's , factory driveline, and getting busy at 80mph street car.. if your building a fun street car like you described you might end up enjoying it more than your drag car.

How long until you think its running?

Well what was the determining factor for me was the use the car was gonna get. If I just planned on attending the local friday night TNT and see if I can get one or two decent passes occasionally then keeping everything stock might be a fun challenge I guess. But I'm gonna be competing with it either in the X275 series or for cash and neither of those lend themselves to having a clean pass every blue moon. For example say I had my car ready for last weekends race, that would mean I'd have to take 4 days off of work, drive the 26 hour round trip to MIR with my truck and trailer so probably 1k in fuel, pay for 4 nights of hotel plus all the supplies to run the car. Once I get there I'm not looking to make a few bad passes and not qualify and have to turn back around after two or three qualifying runs because I didn't hook or worse because I broke something.

I guess at my ripe old age of 26 I've joined the other old men who are there to actually compete and I've lost my sense of adventure, but in organized class racing consistency and reliability are the name of the game. For me the fun is gonna be in competing against cars with usually 2 or 3 times my displacement and running much larger turbos and trying to hang with them and occasionally take them out. Not to mention that having a drivetrain or suspension component break at the level those cars are running at usually results in an accident. Dont get me wrong all I've ever done is take cars to local TNT's and that is alot of fun but in reality there is not much challenge or pressure. If it runs good great, if I dont get a good pass all night well so what no biggie. Here the stakes and competition make it much more interesting for me, the first big race of 2012 will be for 15k and this october it had a field of 90 cars show up to compete for 32 spots! Working toward a goal like that and knowing I'm pushing a smaller and supposedly inferior engine and have a chance is a bigger deal for me than seeing if the stock irs will hold up. BTW any luck finding any stock suspension s13's in the mid 7's? Theres a reason why BIG companies like HKS and shops like the DPS one chose to cut up the car and go to such lengths to modify the stock setup and they have access to money and resources I'm not even close to so I decided that if HKS and RIPS and Abbey and all the 7 sec rb's I can think of couldn't or chose not to do it I wouldn't give it a go.

As for when she'll be ready to drive well I'm hoping 2-3 months from now as that race I' mentioned is feb 24 and in my home state so It would be a good place to start. However the car may be ready but I probably wont be, I've never been in anything near this fast and will have a very steep learning curve ahead of me but THAT is fun to me. Besides I'll have a hard enough time trying to hook running street legal 275 DR's with no wheelie bars. From what I've seen there is alot more to getting the car to run perfect every pass then just throwing a 9" in it. These guys adjust there tune and suspension every pass! and what works at 3pm on a hot track is completely different then what works at 9pm when the track is much cooler and so is the air. I'll have plenty to keep me from getting bored I think.

What all still needs to be done to the chassis/suspension before it gets put back together? You running a spool in the rear end? (sorry if u mentioned that)

Well they're making a new crossmember now that will position the engine where you see it in that pick and move the steering rack, then make solid mounts and a bracket for the dry sump pump. Then comes all the piping and positioning of the dry sump tank and intercooler with mounts for both. I had wanted them to remove the firewall and replace it in the stock location with smooth sheetmetal(for appearances sake) but the geniuses at the NSCRA won't allow it in the Hot Rod class(there's no advantage at all). They will then cut that lower support and tube the front end and run the new Strange struts and make up a new front suspension. They'll make the trans mount and also the parachute holder and wheelie bars(even though I can't use them in X275 they'll be like training wheels for me to get used to the speed). They also have to make new pedals and mount a brake master cylinder. Then they'll carpet the inside, mount the seat and nitrous bottle, mount and route the fire suppression system and be pretty much done.

Yes I will run a Strange Ultra center section with the lightweight steel spool, I'm waiting till I put the engine on the Dyno before ordering that as I'd need to pick a gear ratio. Once they've done all that everything will come apart again to get the car painted and then wired and she'll be ready.

Updates? Something has to be new!

bmxarmy wrote:Updates? Something has to be new!

Nope not really lol. We are waiting on a bunch of front end components from strange engineering so they can mount everything and see where the steering rack needs to go, but unfortunately since their custom length I won't get them till early January. I'm using a smaller lighter rack but it won't in the stock location so it'll probably sit in front of the crossmember instead of behind it. Once the steering is done them we can mount the motor and do all the piping for the turbo and what not. Trust me I'm dying to get this thing off to the body and paint shop. They've done other small stuff like seal the floor and mount front and rear bumper as well as the parachute mount and other small stuff. Hoping to make the first race in April with some testing commencing in march.

Bumping this up to get me motivated to finish. Not much has happened with the car in the last two months as I had a break-in in my business and alot of inventory taken, it set me back awhile and I had them hold off on anymore work while I dealt with it. Now I'm back on track and eager to get this thing moving again. Last issue we had was waiting on Strange's GT struts since they dont make them in the length I need, well they had told me early january but here we are late January and still nothing. One of the tasks we still had pending was making a crossmember for solid mounts and the rack as well as making new mounts. Problem was that one of my only concerns with the motor is the strength of the block and every picture of a cracked block I found had the crack in the middle cylinders which got us to wondering why that might be. Thinking it might be because of the stock mount location torquing the block and after reading about how much stress is placed on the block during launch we began looking for a better way. For the class I'm building this for all parts of the motor have to be covered by the hood so I had to drop the motor a good bit from where it sits stock so the turbo wouldn't hit the hood because of that we decided to mount it using motor plate front and back. Since the trans adapter plate came uncut and had quite a bit of material around we used it to mount the back and created a plate for the front. Heres what it looks like:











I'm also thinking about attaching my dry sump pump to the plate. I went ahead and ordered fiberglass doors and a carbon fiber hood but I'm having difficulty with the lexan for the windows. I called the two companies that I knew made preformed kits for the S13 but one is no longer in existance and the other discontinued that kit. I spoke to a company called ProGlass that does alot of domestic kits and they'll do it but they need the stock glass and their in chicago. I'm looking for someone with a hatch being parted out in that area that would sell or rent me the glass so they can make a mold out of it. We also closed all the holes in the firewall and built the trans mounts. Hopefully within the next few weeks I'll have alot more photo's to share and a more susbstantial update.

Wow love the mount.. only question is, what are you doing for a water pump? It looks like you are using the water pump bolt holes to mount the bracket to the motor.

Well actually I was never using the mechanical water pump And if you go back to earlier pictures of the engine you'll see I cut off the pulley portion already since I'm not running any accessories(no water pump, ps pump, alternator etc) I've got an electrical pump in the water tank which will allow me better control of the temp since the pump will be triggered by the coolant temp sensor probably. Still if I wanted I could use the regular pump with the plate and if you see the third pic I posted the water pump is back on simply with 1/4" longer bolts.

i know this is a old post but wondering how this turned out.

c4240sx wrote:i know this is a old post but wondering how this turned out.

Well I last updated it two weeks ago but there isn't that much new to share, we got the struts in and they fit well. We'll get started on the front suspension this week and once that's done it'll be the turbo and intercooler piping. Then finally I can take the motor out to get tuned while the car goes to the body shop. It seems like the small stuff at the end is taking forever.

It seems like the small stuff at the end is taking forever.[/quote]

It always does, especially when u got an awsome thing goin on..I can't wait to see that beast running, hopefully u can take a video for us while it getting tuned, please

sry i am new to the forum i need to stop looking at the join date and start looking at the post date. I did not realize u just updated.

can u shoot me email to [email protected] had few questions about the build you are doing and price range.

very motivating thread

If you are concerned about the block cracking/flexing you can fill the block with filler.

raremotive wrote:If you are concerned about the block cracking/flexing you can fill the block with filler.

Yes that is one way to strengthen the block

was there anything done to strengthen the block?

It's got some fill in it but I kept alot of the coolant flow still there because the fill was more to help with harmonic issues at high rpms. Other than that just cryogenic treatment for everything which included the block, not sure how much if any that would help.

whats all been done to the head, have any flow numbers or specs?

Well the head was a bit of a challenge as they made some changes to get it where they wanted. At first we used the regular oversized valves and the largest 25 cams with the PNP but it wasn't netting what we wanted so we switched to custom oversized valves and the 26 cams and a bit more head work. I don't have exact numbers but from what I remember the head won't be the limitation.

Edit: I still have those first set of valves btw if anyone wants supertech valves +1mm.

who did the head work

All the work on my engine was performed by Proline racing engines, they are local to me and have tons of experience making stupid power.

subscribed for later reading.

Great build!

Well after months of delay getting the two freaking custom struts from strange we got them in a couple of weeks ago and started on the front suspension. Things have been moving slow as the racing season already started and there were a couple of cars who needed things done to get out there. The first big race of the year was two weeks ago and they quickly dropped the class record about 2 tenths so I'm all of the sudden gonna have to push the RB MUCH harder then I ever intended if I want to come anywhere close to what the top cars are running. Anyways here are some progress pics, since we dont need a X member to hold up the engine we are gonna use a stiletto steering rack to move the steering way forward underneath the ATI balancer so that it will make dropping the oil pan much easier. After seeing how much maintenance is done to these cars between passes I'm trying to make everything as painless as possible.

Front wheel finally on






Accufab 90mm Vband TB with an adapter for the Greddy IM(yes I will polish that adapter to make it look better)






Where the steering rack will be mounted to


Front suspension coming together


Front section to hold up bumper and mount intercooler to






Intercooler piping getting started






Front on, yes it looks hideous now but after paint it'll all come together


So we should be ramping things back up here soon now that we aren't waiting on very many parts.