Sil40sK's Build Thread

[Sil40sK]

Figured I'd finally do a build thread for my piece of crap excuse for a vehicle. I pretty much just transfered all my posts from another forum that I posted my build thread on, which is why I posted the "updates" in here. Enjoy!

Here's the quick backstory of my car. I was 15 and right after I got my driver's permit (in december 2004) I began looking for my first car. I'd been saving since I was 12 for a car so I had a decent backing to go with. My family as well as myself have always had an interest in cars especially my older brother whom has owned numerous cars including a 400whp S13 fastback, and an AP1 S2000 both of which had too many ridiculous parts. I knew that I wanted something different from the typical Civic, that would be good for daily driveablility, have a decent aftermarket, and be nicely balanced for road racing, as well as not be too highly priced. After scouring Autotrader, the local paper, and a handful of car forums I found a 1990 Nissan 240SX XE Coupe at a local used car dealer. Two of my friends and I drove out to the dealership to check it out. It was sitting in the back nesseled under a blanket of fresh snow, colored in Champeign gold with an interesting brown interior; I was instantanious hooked. I went home and immediatly told my mom I needed a ride over to the bank the next day. The next day I went to test drive the car; despite the radio (not even cassette player) not working, the heater only blowing on high, and there being some visable rust, the car seemed like a great first vehicle and perfect for what I was seeking motorsports wise. I went home and joined a few forums and started gathering as much information as I possibley could on the vehicle. 3 days later I picked up the car for just over 2 grand (kinda overpriced I know). Over the course of the next month I looked for motor swaps, I contemplating building a naturally aspirated SR20, then boosting the stock single cam KA24E, even an RB26DETT came into my thoughts of a possible swap, but I finally decided on the CA18DET. About 5 days later I had I started stripping the car down, pulling out sound deadening and removing rust, unfortunatly the more things I removed the more rust I found. I was still totally in love with the car so I didn't care. After saving my money for about 4 months (did a lot of car cleaning, snow shoveling, and lawn mowing and borrowed a lot of money, my own mother charged me interest on money she lent me) I purchased my CA18DET motorset and a few other parts, I also ordered a S13 Silvia front end conversion for aesthetic purposes. Over a year went by, and some more parts were purchased, I realised I really had gotten screwed on the car. One day I was jacking the car up from the frame rail and the jack shot through the rail, through the floorplan, up into the steering column. I sadly called it quits at that, finished stripping the car and sold the bare chassis for $1. Though I had become discouraged I figured I'd continue on with a new S13 chassis. I picked up a '93 hatch from a local ricer that claimed the motor only had "slight knock". Well 1 mile later I tossed a rod out the side of the block. Since I only paid 1 grand for the car I wasn't too upset. After test-fitting and installing the Silvia front end on my fastback I decided to sell it, the lines just don't seem to flow well to me since the fastback has the curves to the back of it while the coupe obviously is more squared, either way I sold the front end. Enough with that, it's now closing in on 2 1/2 years since my initial CA-powered 240 project was started, so here's the pictures that are a collaboration dating back to January of 2005.

Also I'd just like to state that everything on this car I've paid for with all my own money that I earned myself, not just given to me by my parents. All the mechanical work has be done by me with the acception of some help with the motor and other such heavy items. I'm originally from Michigan but I'm living down in Chicago for school but I usually drive 4 hours back to my mom's house in Michigan every weekend which is where the car is currently located, so I essentially only have roughly 8 days a month that I can use to work on this puppy; that and being a student and living on my own, god only knows when this sucker will get done.

^My first 240, yes it got vandalized by some local punks the second day I had it.^My fastback the day I towed it home^Stock KA with some baking soda residue (had to put the grease fire out when I was in the middle of nowhere)^Hole where the rod shot out of the KA^One of the stock KA mounts was broken and the bolt was stripped^My buddy Brad cutting out the KA mount with an angle grinder (notice the Silvia front end and Yashio Factory radiator panel)^YAY empty engine bay^The beautiful CA18DET fresh from JDM-Online^Ooooo Koyo!!^The new wheels, '85 S12 alloys^Which I painted blue!^Megan Racing downpipe^SSAC exhaust manifold and turbo outlet (I had planned on running the stock manifold but I ended up breaking it while trying to help out a friend who's SR was broken and he ended up ****ing me over)^URAS Type-RS exhaust shipped from Japan thanks to RareTrick^New front suspension, until a more race-oriented setup can be bought (KYB GR2s and Megan springs, rated at about 6k up front and 4k out back)

When installing new engine and trans mounts into my car one of my dumbass friends decided to jack up the motor from the oil pan and dent the **** out of it, I didn't want to chance destroying the engine so my options led me to pulling the engine, I figured I'd replace gaskets and do some upgrades and such that I should have done to begin with.

^After pulling out the CA, replaced the clutch disc, all the gaskets and hoses, installed a KA24 throttle body and maf.^KA throttle body close up^Stock turbo fitted with an HKS adjustable actuator

Ran into some more trouble, after starting the car the ignitor caught on fire and my apparently "rebuilt" turbo proved to be shot. Damn I just can't win. Oh well, more debt for me!

^Melted stock ignitorI decided to bump up my power a little bit to roughly the 250-280whp range and I got a great deal on some parts that one of my brother's friends had on his CA powered S13.^New parts. Mine's VX-Rom ECU (bought front my brother's friend), JDM Silvia gauge cluster, Skyline 444cc injectors, Z32 maf with HKS filter, and a brand spanking new OEM S15 turbo^XS Power Front mount kit (worst possible kit ever)^Shot of the S15 turbo installed^Taka motorsports stainless braided turbo lines^Mounted the intercooler^Intercooler piping, and a nice shot of the hks b.o.v.^Z32 ignitor with conversion harness^Technafit stainless braided clutch line

Since the car is lowered and the common problem of the tire hitting the wiring harness exsists I decided to reroute part of my wiring harness^The stock harness routing^Taking a clue from Yashio Factory's 240, here's the relocated harness routing

Since this car will be seeing a fair amount of track time I decided to fiddle with the chassis a bit.^As a weight savings measure I decided to removed the sound deadening^After removing the sound deadening (picture above) I sanded down the paint, removed all the rust and a patched a small hole in the floor and layed down 2 layers of paint^Test fitting and drilling the mounting holes for my Autopower rollbar^Installed the rollbar, trimmed the panels to fit, and installed my Schroth Profi-II ASM harness

Modified by Sil40sK at 3:10 PM 8/17/2007

Modified by Sil40sK at 3:31 PM 8/17/2007
Modified by Sil40sK at 3:32 PM 8/17/2007

[Sil40sK]

Too add to structural rigity, something these chassis really lack I decided to weld in some braces and do some stitch/seam welding

^Prepping the front part of the car for some welds^After stitch welding the front^The prepped rear before the cross brace is welded in^The first part of the rear bar welded in

[Sil40sK]

*7/5/07 UPDATE*

Haven't been working too often on this beast for the past couple weeks, I've been moving most of my crap down to Chicago for school. I pulled a classic case of "measure once, cut twice" and fubar-ed the bottom of my rear seats trying to relocate my battery, so now I have tan lower rear seats. The battery has been relocated, I mounted my gauge pod and mocked up my dashboard, rechecked the conversion wiring, test-fitted my carbon kevlar Momo and NAMS seat-rails; all of which seem to fit up great. And for the record, I do not reccomend buying XS-Power's/SSAC's products. I know I should have done better and just paid more to begin with and gotten a better product but I didn't realize it would be this bad, I've had to hack up a good majority of the intercooler piping just to get it to slightly fit, which probably means boost leaks like a mofo! On top of that, I noticed a slight film of oil under the front of the car tonight while working on it. After I investigated a little further I found that I have an oil leak from my turbo return line. Yay another thing to fix. I'm doing another compression-test tomorrow (only did one right when I got the motor, and it was a little low) so if it's still on the lower side the motor is coming down to Chicago with me to get a nice rebuild so that I have something to do in my free time. Either way the 240 project is getting put on hold for a while. I'm up in Michigan right now picking up some more of my stuff but when I get back down to Illinois I'll upload the recent pictures. Sadly though this means the car will be sitting in a spider-infested garage for the next year. :'( But it will run, I have faith in my little ugly bastard-child of a Nissan!


Modified by Sil40sK at 3:20 PM 8/17/2007

[Sil40sK]

*7/25/07 UPDATE*

Started school last week so I've been stuck down here in Chicago. I was however back up in Michigan last weekend, I didn't get a chance to check compression but I did find some more pictures that I had taken but never uploaded. Unfortunatly my digital camera out of my car was stolen by some assbag so it will be a long time until there's anymore pictures and there will also be a huge gap in progress since I had all the pictures from the past 5 or 6 months of progress on the XD card that was in my camera, and I never uploaded any of them to my computer. I'm thinking the bottom end might need a rebuild so I'm heading back up to Michigan on Friday to do a compression test and check out some other things on the car. I live on the third floor so rebuilding the engine in my apartment is kinda up in the air right now, but who knows. Here's a couple of pictures from a different card that I had uploaded. Also for the record FU*K THIEVES!!!

^Finished shot of the rear brace; which I've decided to get rid of because it looks haggard and crappy.

^Rear inside of the wheel-well before stitch welding it.

^Modified my stock coil cover with a dremel and some black model paint

^My gauge setup Boost, Oil Pressure, and Fuel Pressure. I sold the fuel pressure gauge which is going to be replaced by a mechanical gauge mounted in the engine bay. An EGT gauge will take it's place in this pod.

^Having to find a place to mount the pod (I'm not a big fan of pillar pods), and being short 1 blue 240SX dashboard (never got it when I bought my blue interior) I was forced to modify my stock brown dashboard. This it was it looked like before...

^...and this it what it looks like now.

^Test fitting the dashboard.

^I hate the stock tweed that covers the glove-box so I ripped it all off and started sanding down the glue that still remained on it. After it's sanded smooth it will be painted to match the dashboard.

^The 200SX wheels use a different style lugnut than the one that came on my 240SX (steelies ftl) so I was forced to purchase new lugnuts; the new ones are obviously on the left. (noticed my old exhaust cam in the background, yea I was one of those morons who broke the little half moon for the cas)

^Project-Silvia resonated test-pipe that I got for $30 because it was on sale.

^My Momo 1000-Lakes carbon-kevlar bucket that I picked up for $800 from a friend. It's expired but since I don't plan on doing anything more than HPDEs anytime soon, it will do. Notice the NAMs seat rails as well.
Modified by Sil40sK at 3:22 PM 8/17/2007

[Sil40sK]

*8/14/07 UPDATE*

Finally tested the engine; it needs rings. I've come down to a couple options which I am currently contemplating.1. Do a full performance build (all gaskets, bearings, boring and honing, pistons, rods, more boost, cams, 5 angle valve job, and some sort of standalone ems) 2. Just do a full stock rebuild, basically making the engine brand new (keep my current setup, but it might not guarentee that the thing will still work; I need to test more of the electronics)3. Rebuild the bottom end and replace any necissary gaskets that will be d!ck with in the process4. Just replacing rings

Only time will tell, being a student and having no money proves to be a big problem. I've already spent a lot of money on this thing; in retrospect I was rather irresponsible and should have been more wise with my money. I feel like I should just sell the engine and thrown a n/a KA24 back into it and call it quits; but at the same time I want to see this thing run. I'm getting tired of driving slow-*** beaters. Nonetheless I'm still sticking with it; I love this little bastard too much!
Modified by Sil40sK at 3:25 PM 8/17/2007

[Sil40sK]

*8/16/07 UPDATE*

I've decided to do a full rebuild(everything new) unless there is some major OOR in the cylinders that would require boring past the point of using OEM pistons. Since the car is obviously going to be sitting around for a fair amount of time I'm going to go over the car and fix anything left that's wrong with it, plus redo some of the hacked-together/poorly done/rushed things on the car. I'm really only shooting for around 275whp which is roughly what most people on here seem to make with the setup I'm running and is more than enough for what I need. The only thing I am still debating is whether or not to go full on track car with this or keep it at that street/track level similar to what Opera/Amuse/Mine's/Yashio do with their cars. I'm leaning more towards the street/track level.

[Cameron]

hey man other than the 800-1400 you bought the CA for, how much you got in it right now? i was thinking about going with a CA but i wanted to know what the grandtotal would be.. thanks.

-Cam

[driftin8ez]

hey man other than the 800-1400 you bought the CA for, how much you got in it right now? i was thinking about going with a CA but i wanted to know what the grandtotal would be.. thanks.

-Cam

Don't get a CA they suck and are money pits. Just read the threads. A hand full of us have blown our motors in this month alone. I hate to say it but the SR is cheaper in the long run.

On a side note... Nice work so far.

[Cameron]

i know your just telling me that..

but i dont want it necessarily for power, i like the build of the CA and its quality, engineering and durability.

Edit: I liked your vid on Youtube btw. You got Compressor surge?

[Sil40sK]

hey man other than the 800-1400 you bought the CA for, how much you got in it right now?

Probably about another $2000 if not more. That's just in the engine itself. Not including what else has been done to the car.

Don't get a CA they suck and are money pits.

It's true, they really are. It's an addiction, a lot like heroin or coke.

On a side note... Nice work so far.

Thanks.

[Cameron]

yea ive been thinkin of going the CA route, and i figured that the total price of a swap would be about 3500-4000 w/o going with like greddy fmic and what not..

but 700 dollars of my swap will be in labor fees soo..

[ca18datsun510]

Don't get a CA they suck and are money pits. Just read the threads. A hand full of us have blown our motors in this month alone. I hate to say it but the SR is cheaper in the long run.

On a side note... Nice work so far.

did you catch my bitter disease?

[driftin8ez]

did you catch my bitter disease?

Nah... LOL I just figure the more people i sway away from CA's the more for me.

[Cameron]

lol true that, but i promise i wont steal all the parts.

[Sil40sK]

i wont steal all the parts.

Oh you say that now, but just you wait; soon you'll be murdering people just for a cam sensor.

[Cameron]

hahahahahah, i heard them things were hard to come by, but not like that haha..

[Sil40sK]

Alright I ran into some problems with my daily driver; I'm selling my swap now, pretty much everything but the turbo.

zerothread/273427