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I have several questions
1. Do you have another car in case things dont work out the way you plan?
2. Do you have that $5,000 at this very moment?
3. What tools/skillset do you have? Do you have access to a vehicle repair shop? Do you have a garage where you plan on doing this work?
My impression is that:
-you got a car fairly recently
-did some light reading on ka-t.org and here
-saw some builds that piqued your interest and saw old dates on those threads so you made a new thread.
-you priced out a build from frsport/enjuku by filtering for your 240sx/ka24de in a similar fashion that people "build" gaming pcs using PCpartsPicker
Don't start spending money yet. I assume you will be going to college or some kind of tech school? Don't tie up all your money in your car, don't take out student loans for car parts.
From you asking about machine work/rebuild costs it tells me that you should not be walking into a machine shop at all anytime soon. They will gladly take your money.
My advice:
Buy a spare daily driver that is going to be good on gas, reliable, comfy, and boring enough that no one wants to steal it. Keep the 240 as a fun weekend car. As you get older, weekdays start to fly by and the weekends are gone in an instant.
Regardless if you buy a separate daily or not:
Buy a spare set of wheels (oem) with a spare set of good tires. Keep a full sized tire in the trunk.
Make sure all your tires are in good shape.
Next is brakes.
Next make sure your car is running nicely so take care of all leaks/driveability issues regarding the engine and electronics of the vehicle. I would get water temp/ oil pressure/ and oil temp gauges
Suspension bushings/mounts/struts
The rest is optional, like interior/exterior accessories (wheels, seats etc)
Once you've taken care of all the bullshit with these 22-31 year old cars, then you add power.
Download the factory service manual, look at youtube videos for engines in general and how they work, and above all, READ. Reading old build threads and creating your own notes from them is whats important. Learn from the mistakes that other people make.
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