Time to bring a 240 back from the dead

[KoopaTroopa]

(backstory) I've been sitting on a 91 240sx for about 4 years now, slowly trying to get it in running condition but constantly running out of time and money to use. As of yesterday the car i've been driving currently (hyundai elantra) has died on me and is out of the picture, a week before final exams too... Anyways when i'm home for summer break i'll have 4-5 weeks and about $2000 to finally get the 240 back to life!

(where the car stands currently)
I had the head off for too long while waiting to do a valve job and now the cylinders have rusted. Overall, to get this car running it needs a valve job with new valves and maybe springs, gasket kit, wheels/tires, and i'm not sure what to do about the block. I figure a valve job should cost around 300 for the valves, 200 for the labor since i've already got it disassembled. I've seen stock wheels/tires go for around 240-300 here on the forums so that leaves me with maybe 1000 to figure out what to do about the block itself. What are my options and what would you guys recommend?

(summary)
$2000.00
4 to 5 weeks
block is rusted, needs valve job, needs wheels/tires

[hatedinthemind]

good luck

Get some pics up!

[NYIntensity]

(backstory) I've been sitting on a 91 240sx for about 4 years now, slowly trying to get it in running condition but constantly running out of time and money to use. As of yesterday the car i've been driving currently (hyundai elantra) has died on me and is out of the picture, a week before final exams too... Anyways when i'm home for summer break i'll have 4-5 weeks and about $2000 to finally get the 240 back to life!

(where the car stands currently)
I had the head off for too long while waiting to do a valve job and now the cylinders have rusted. Overall, to get this car running it needs a valve job with new valves and maybe springs, gasket kit, wheels/tires, and i'm not sure what to do about the block. I figure a valve job should cost around 300 for the valves, 200 for the labor since i've already got it disassembled. I've seen stock wheels/tires go for around 240-300 here on the forums so that leaves me with maybe 1000 to figure out what to do about the block itself. What are my options and what would you guys recommend?

(summary)
$2000.00
4 to 5 weeks
block is rusted, needs valve job, needs wheels/tires

From your description, it sounds like you should search craigslist to buy a running 240 that you can swap parts from your non-running one onto. Shouldn't be hard to find one with body damage that someone just wants to get rid of. Either way, good luck man, I'll be following your thread!

[KoopaTroopa]

Actually, yea you guys are right. This is basically a build thread and it'd be great to have a few followers. Most of the fun I have on nico is following other people and their cars/builds anyways so, here's some pictures as to where I'm at with the car now!


Here's the car, it's a 1991 LE hatchback (automatic), picked it up for 900 with a plethora of problems. I though I had a steal at the time, haha. picked it up from a smalltime dealer, it stalled on me while in traffic which freaked out the owner of the dealership into letting it go for cheap. He was originally asking 2000. Body wise, not much rust if any, not even on the upper suspension mounts! The only place I've seen it was on the brake master cylinder. It definitely needs some paint though.

When I first got it my friends and I purchased the timing kit rebuild from ams and figured we'd tear into it ourselves. It misfired pretty bad and ran extremely slow. I "raced" my friends jetta, not really a race but i've got no idea what a stock 240 feels like and needed a speed gauge, it lost pretty terribly. It took us a while to figure it out but it was a bad fuel injector in the 4th cylinder. Once we got that repaired the engine kicked out smoke like crazy, especially under throttle. So my friend and I tore back into it once more figuring it was a leaky valve seal. However, now that I've gotten slightly more knowledgeable about these cars I realize it was due to installing the Cometic hg without any sort of prepwork besides a dremel/wire wheel to clean the old gasket off the block... But that leads us to where I've got the car now.


Pretty much exactly like that with the exception of a few towels and a tarp over the block. You can also see the Hyundai which recently died on me. I was going to give it a medal of honor if it could have lasting me through finals with all it's problems but it failed just 2 weeks short.
Here's a few pictures of our teardown in the driveway:

We took off the head and struggled with getting the collars off until my friend had a pretty good idea. He saw that i had an O2 sensor socket in my toolbox and figured with the help of that and a magnet we could probably pull them while pushing down with a slightly drilled 2x4 to keep from slipping off the socket. Turns out it worked very well! Even though we were working in the grass we managed to not lose a single collar!

We also used a nerf dart to get the caps off, haha.


Here's a shot of the "organization" of our teardown project. I hate not having a garage


Once we had the head completely disassembled we cleaned up the valves using some simple green and a toothbrush.
Dirty

Clean


Here's another shot of the car. You can also see the wheels it's got on now.

I actually don't think they look too bad on it, it could have been worse. 3 out of the 4, however, don't hold any air which is giving it that nice low look. That and being on gravel.

Almost forgot! I've got a 5speed swap ready to go in, thanks to Didderson (finally here's that build thread you've asked for), and now looks like the perfect opportunity to dive into that!
So yea, 5 weeks to work on it, 2000 to put into it. Maybe I should buy a used engine and just swap it? Do you think a rebuild is plausible for those time/money requirements?

[hatedinthemind]

your tires or wheels dont hold any air?

[KoopaTroopa]

The wheels are kinda messed up inside, i tried having them repaired but it didn't do much. helped them last a little longer but they still leaked pretty bad. The other part of the problem is i bought cheap walmart tires for it because i knew the car would be sitting for so long and just needed tire to roll the car around on. Two of them won't last the night while the third takes a few days before its flat. Wheels/tires aren't the biggest concern though, i'll most likely end up picking up a pair of oem's off the classifieds.

[gigabit240]

Yo! as far as the engine goes, I say you just pick up a ka from your local junkyard. That'd save you time and a headache.

[240sxjoe92]

could you find a used ka motor on craigslist?

[KoopaTroopa]

Yea, i was looking for a used ka/damaged 240 with a good engine for a bit today with a few good results. Having 2 engines (or that and a junked car) to mix and match parts would also be nice. That and i'd be able to part it out on here. The reason i'm kind of in the air about it though is because I like the idea of getting a rebuild kit, finding a machine shop and building the engine back up to better then before. Either way, that engine is coming out which will leave me with some time to clean up that bay!

[KoopaTroopa]

Just got a quote back from a shop near Philly. "Complete machine work on the bottom end would cost only $1000 for labor. Assembly of the engine is $600 and cylinder head work starts at $600 without port work." Am i wrong in assuming this is really, really expensive? I was figuring the machine work would be more around like 600-800 for everything. I was planning on doing the assembly myself. Maybe finding a used engine is a better option.

[gigabit240]

People sell there Ka's here all the time. If you can't find one local you could prolly get one here for 200 bucks. I've seen some people sell um for 150.. I think your best bet is looking around the classifieds section to find a Ka. If you get the Ka for that much, that would leave you with money to go into other things like rims, coilovers, interior work, ect ect....

[dre1507]

yup. used ka and doing the work yourself saves you a ton of money.

[motoman399]

well i had a local machine shop do the engine out of my toyota pick up. they charged me 800 for pistons, rod/main bearings, polish the crank, bore .040 over, full gasket set and assemble the bottom end. also they cleaned the block.

[KoopaTroopa]

Thanks for the replies, I'm finally back to NJ and going to start working on this thing really soon. I found this on ebay : http://cgi.ebay.com/ebaymotors/ws/eBayI ... gory=33667 I guess it's a good backup if my cylinders have rusted too badly. I'll also be pulling out the engine and checking out the machine shop next week. I'll try and document it with some pics for you guys.

[breaker77]

just buy a used engine for a few hundred. MUCH less of a headache.

[KoopaTroopa]

Buying another used engine isnt something i want to do, since i've already got one and know its condition. I need to get this car reliable so the plan is to build it up with new (better where i can afford it) parts so that i can turbo down the road. I want to put the money toward getting it rebuilt regardless just figuring out where that money would be best spent.

[JDM Sil4ty]

i think with a budget of 2k .. your rebuild will be finished, but the car won be running 100% .. just my thoughts and exp w/ a budget ..