- 1,601
- Indianapolis,IN
- JrDarknes
At this point my car is very close to being a empty shell. Basically if I removed the engine and drivetrain it would be empty. Seeing it like this made me ponder about parting it out which I have never and I mean NEVER thought about until now. I had made a excel spreadsheet seeing if it would be worth it and went back on forth about actually doing it.
Alot of the parts I have accumlated over the past 11 years have drastically went up in price and it felt like a perfect time to cash out. Would I upgrade to a higher tier 90's JDM car or get something new like the GR86? I kept going back and forth until I realized parting out this car would probably be the worst idea. I've spent so much time on making it exactly how I want it, it would be foolish to just part it out and not enjoy the fruits of my labor. When I was younger and would read build threads from multiple forums, I never understood how some of these people could put so much effort in a car and then part it out and sell the shell. It made sense now as I was very close to doing the same thing. Seeing your car in such a dissasembled state can really kill your motivation if you're not careful.
So the next project were my doors. As I posted above, I got a new driver door to replace my rusted out one. However even though I got a new door, both my original passenger door and new door had a few issues I need to address.
1. When I insert my key in the driver door lock cylinder, It takes alot of force to make it unlock the door. The passenger door lock cylinder is worse, it actually will not budge. Its like frozen.
2. The doors sag when I have them on my car. This is because the hinges are 30+ years old.
3. Driver door handle was broken.
Simple issues to fix right? I thought so too but these actually turned out to be a bit of task. To tackle item number 1 & number 3 I bought a new door handle from ebay. With this meant I would need to change the cylinder lock so I ordered some key lock cylinders and started changing out the locks and springs in the cylinders. What was annoying about this is that I would think I got the sequence right and then when I went to test out the key I was actually wrong. It was like a puzzle. Eventually I replaced the locks correctly and the lock cylinders were smooth as butter but it was very annoying.
Fixing item number 2 almost took out my hearing. I had to remove the old pins & hinges from the door with just a hammer and flat head. This was an absolute nightmare. I spent 2 weekends trying to get this done. It ultimately resulted into mw having to get a air chisel. I originally was not wearing ear plugs (like an idiot) and my apple watch let me know if I kept it up I was basically going to go deaf. Was so glad to have this done. It definetly made a huge difference however If these tend to sag again in the future I am just going to let it be. Not worth this hassle.
That door pin should be off but it was rusted to the hinge just drilled off as much as I could to release it off the door. Absolute nightmare. Almost all of the door pins could not come out because they were rusted to the hinges. The new pins and hinges below. All OEM.
Now that I had the doors finally done. I went to tackle my steering shaft bushing. There was alot of slop when driving my car. I would turn about 5-10 degrees on the steering wheel but no movement on the car. At first I thought maybe it was my steering rack but I got alot of people saying it was most likely the steering bushing. So I removed my steering column and replaced it with a GKTECH polyurethane bushing. I was tempted to do a solid bushing did not want vibrations in my steering wheel.
Steering column removed
New Bushing
Once this was done. I took the car out for a drive as it needed a bit of gas and has sat for about 7 months so I wanted to make it sure it could stilld drive to the paint shop. The steering bushing made a very big difference. I still need to probably get a new steering rack for a peace of mind but man it felt like a totally new car.
The last mods I did before dropping the car off to paint were to my mirrors. So the JDM 180SX Type X had the option to have heated mirrors. I really wanted to do this with my car and many people have. Typically they use a maxima or Z32 mirror that came heated. However all of that seemed to expensive to me. Did not want to pay over $100 dollars for this. So what did i do? Buy ebay heated mirror kit for $12!
I was restoring my mirrors since the powered mirrors I bought locally were just in terrible condition. I had ordered new glass and with the new glass I installed the heated portion to the back of the glass.
These things are awesome. They work very well. I bench tested them and put my fluke meter on thse heating pad. It gets pretty hot. Very excited to drive this car on a cold morning now haha. I installed the heated mirror switch in my cluster bezel. My car never had powered mirrors so I needed a switch for that as well. I do not like the S13 switches as it is very ugly and does not look like it belongs to the car (My car is a bit inspiried by nissans 1997-2001 phase and the oem S13 power window switch looks like it belongs in the late 80's imo) so I bought a window switch from a 2001 maxima installed that instead. It exactly like the S15 Silvia one.
Currently now I am just still waiting on my car to be done at the shop (been 2 months so far). Not gonna lie I am getting a bit irritated as it seems they're insurance work is kind of taking priority over my car even though I had an appointment. Just gotta be patient unfortunately. I havent posted photos of the painted parts anywhere but since GTPlanet is where my first build thread started thought I'de post some of the finished parts. Hard to believe this thread is this old.
The color code is LP2 (Midnight purple). Why did I go with this color?
My car was originally a Nissan TK3. They only made 1300 of these out of the 64,000 S13's that came in america. I felt honestly awful just painting my car basic white knowing this. I thought about painting it TK3 but it would not flow with the red seats. So I pondered what would I like and match the red seats & then it hit me.
My car has a skyline power plant, why not use a skyline color?? So I decided to use LP2 from the R33. The JDM 180sx came with this color stock as well and was limited to I think 700 out of the 75,000 produced in japan? So I thought it was only right to choose this color. I was bit worried about the red seats but C's garage 180sx had this exact combo so it made me feel much better. Plus I plan on tinting the windows a bit anyway
Pics of C's garage
Anyway that is it for now. Next update should be the finished product
Alot of the parts I have accumlated over the past 11 years have drastically went up in price and it felt like a perfect time to cash out. Would I upgrade to a higher tier 90's JDM car or get something new like the GR86? I kept going back and forth until I realized parting out this car would probably be the worst idea. I've spent so much time on making it exactly how I want it, it would be foolish to just part it out and not enjoy the fruits of my labor. When I was younger and would read build threads from multiple forums, I never understood how some of these people could put so much effort in a car and then part it out and sell the shell. It made sense now as I was very close to doing the same thing. Seeing your car in such a dissasembled state can really kill your motivation if you're not careful.
So the next project were my doors. As I posted above, I got a new driver door to replace my rusted out one. However even though I got a new door, both my original passenger door and new door had a few issues I need to address.
1. When I insert my key in the driver door lock cylinder, It takes alot of force to make it unlock the door. The passenger door lock cylinder is worse, it actually will not budge. Its like frozen.
2. The doors sag when I have them on my car. This is because the hinges are 30+ years old.
3. Driver door handle was broken.
Simple issues to fix right? I thought so too but these actually turned out to be a bit of task. To tackle item number 1 & number 3 I bought a new door handle from ebay. With this meant I would need to change the cylinder lock so I ordered some key lock cylinders and started changing out the locks and springs in the cylinders. What was annoying about this is that I would think I got the sequence right and then when I went to test out the key I was actually wrong. It was like a puzzle. Eventually I replaced the locks correctly and the lock cylinders were smooth as butter but it was very annoying.
Fixing item number 2 almost took out my hearing. I had to remove the old pins & hinges from the door with just a hammer and flat head. This was an absolute nightmare. I spent 2 weekends trying to get this done. It ultimately resulted into mw having to get a air chisel. I originally was not wearing ear plugs (like an idiot) and my apple watch let me know if I kept it up I was basically going to go deaf. Was so glad to have this done. It definetly made a huge difference however If these tend to sag again in the future I am just going to let it be. Not worth this hassle.
That door pin should be off but it was rusted to the hinge just drilled off as much as I could to release it off the door. Absolute nightmare. Almost all of the door pins could not come out because they were rusted to the hinges. The new pins and hinges below. All OEM.
Now that I had the doors finally done. I went to tackle my steering shaft bushing. There was alot of slop when driving my car. I would turn about 5-10 degrees on the steering wheel but no movement on the car. At first I thought maybe it was my steering rack but I got alot of people saying it was most likely the steering bushing. So I removed my steering column and replaced it with a GKTECH polyurethane bushing. I was tempted to do a solid bushing did not want vibrations in my steering wheel.
Steering column removed
New Bushing
Once this was done. I took the car out for a drive as it needed a bit of gas and has sat for about 7 months so I wanted to make it sure it could stilld drive to the paint shop. The steering bushing made a very big difference. I still need to probably get a new steering rack for a peace of mind but man it felt like a totally new car.
The last mods I did before dropping the car off to paint were to my mirrors. So the JDM 180SX Type X had the option to have heated mirrors. I really wanted to do this with my car and many people have. Typically they use a maxima or Z32 mirror that came heated. However all of that seemed to expensive to me. Did not want to pay over $100 dollars for this. So what did i do? Buy ebay heated mirror kit for $12!
I was restoring my mirrors since the powered mirrors I bought locally were just in terrible condition. I had ordered new glass and with the new glass I installed the heated portion to the back of the glass.
These things are awesome. They work very well. I bench tested them and put my fluke meter on thse heating pad. It gets pretty hot. Very excited to drive this car on a cold morning now haha. I installed the heated mirror switch in my cluster bezel. My car never had powered mirrors so I needed a switch for that as well. I do not like the S13 switches as it is very ugly and does not look like it belongs to the car (My car is a bit inspiried by nissans 1997-2001 phase and the oem S13 power window switch looks like it belongs in the late 80's imo) so I bought a window switch from a 2001 maxima installed that instead. It exactly like the S15 Silvia one.
Currently now I am just still waiting on my car to be done at the shop (been 2 months so far). Not gonna lie I am getting a bit irritated as it seems they're insurance work is kind of taking priority over my car even though I had an appointment. Just gotta be patient unfortunately. I havent posted photos of the painted parts anywhere but since GTPlanet is where my first build thread started thought I'de post some of the finished parts. Hard to believe this thread is this old.
The color code is LP2 (Midnight purple). Why did I go with this color?
My car was originally a Nissan TK3. They only made 1300 of these out of the 64,000 S13's that came in america. I felt honestly awful just painting my car basic white knowing this. I thought about painting it TK3 but it would not flow with the red seats. So I pondered what would I like and match the red seats & then it hit me.
My car has a skyline power plant, why not use a skyline color?? So I decided to use LP2 from the R33. The JDM 180sx came with this color stock as well and was limited to I think 700 out of the 75,000 produced in japan? So I thought it was only right to choose this color. I was bit worried about the red seats but C's garage 180sx had this exact combo so it made me feel much better. Plus I plan on tinting the windows a bit anyway
Pics of C's garage
Anyway that is it for now. Next update should be the finished product
