herbieS13

this always makes me laugh

Persona

I think you should put black vinyl around the three A/C controls instead of that wrinkle powder coating.

Just looks out of place with how OEM and clean everything else is!

Keep it up!

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donandal

We thought about that also. That piece is almost impossible to cover without
wrinkles in the vinyl. We may also paint it silver same as the trim ring around
the shifter. That trim ring is just painted with a rattle can Krylon and clear and it came out pretty good. The black wrinkle powder coat actually looks better in person. When it's photographed it looks a lot more sparkly than it really is. We may have to experiment.....but you're right.
Thanks

Quail

If vinyl isn't an option, I think the silver could definitely work, although the trim piece is wider than the shifter surround, so may look a bit odd.

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donandal

I agree
you have a good eye for this stuff!

sc400rada

All I can say is wow this guy has some skills. And his boys are very lucky to have him.

azndan2

amazing... I admire your hard work.

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donandal

Hey
I got a pic of the center piece without flash

.
looks a lot more natural than those other pics with flash.
Still, thinking about vinyl again. It's an easy piece to get at.
I think it needs "more than just paint" because it will see a lot
of wear and finger prints

daryl337

Am I the only one who is looking at the GARAGE in a loving and lustful fashion?


I see all sorts of goodies/equipment in that garage that I wish I had.

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This is my clever and witty signature.

donandal

Here is the latest update,
I realized on the last update of the fender liners that there wasn’t much info, and the pics didn’t really show very well what was what. The inner fender liners were made from .042 thick aluminum. It’s pretty light and easy to work. In order to get them in, they needed to be made in pieces.
The rear pieces have aluminum threaded bungs welded to the back of the panel and the screws are stainless steel. We also made these two bottom pieces (one on each side of car) out of thicker .062 aluminum because it is right where the stones will hit.
the rubber hose is the A/C drain line (350Z)
the black rubber at the top is the wiring harness grommett

This is one of the upper pieces. It was formed on the English wheel

They start out looking pretty bad after I beat them on the sand bag

But just a few minutes later they look more like this


This piece is a little different side to side, because the wiring harness goes thru the passenger side.

This is the passenger side front… the extra bump is lined up with a cutout in the body tin…just behind the windshield washer reservoir and allows a
little more air to the air filter box

These are some pictures after they were installed



this is the driver side... the wiring harness now goes thru
the passenger side....sothis covers the hole..there is also a
metal plate covering the hole behind here as well



We are going to spray this all with undercoat or truck bed liner eventually.

plusONETEN

I swear, those tires look fatter in person.


The suspension setup was inspired by veilside180sx's housings, and i was reading through the koni yellows and GC thread on here...

I wanted some fat-ass tires. This means that i cant slam the car, but with then engine sitting so low, i couldn't slam it anyways. If you really felt like slamming a car on 265s, you could drop it about 2 inches from where we have it, but then you'd have no travel left.

the wheels are +38 offset.... most people with s13s use +18 or something, so that means that i have 2 cm less tire sticking out than most people with 265's... which is why the fenders are rolled+pulled rather than +30/+50 overfenders or something... clearance on the inside is tight, but while most peoples tires sit next to the coils, ours sit below them (saw this on McCoys car and thought it was a sweet idea) which is why we can use 265s on a +38 and not have the tire hitting the coil.



the engine sits low to clear the hood, as well as to lower the CG. Yes, lowering the whole car would lower the CG but it would also wack out the suspensions camber curve and make my tires and hood not fit...
I have a feeling that the vq35hr might be a little taller than the vq35de overall, because from what i read on the net, fitting a vq35de didnt seem quite as hard as this, but def. close. i think the HR has longer connecting rods... not sure though... maybe someone else can confirm.
we had to lower the steering rack 2 inches and we actually shifted the entire engine a few CM towards the passenger side... the steering racks' pinion housing was trying to occupy the same area of 3d space where the starter was, hence moving the engine away from it.
IMO this is pretty awesome anyways, since our exhaust runs down the driver side, making it heavier, and then there's the driver...but even with the engine slightly to the passenger side, the drivers side is still probably heaver... so we stuck the battery on the passenger side (in the trunk). You may notice the modified steeting linkage - that enables it to clear the exahaust...

lowering the rack 2 inches messes with the steering geometry... so we needed to space the outer tie rod ends down to get rid of the bumpsteer... i could talk about that shit for ages, but, in the end, we ended up dialing the bumpsteer down to almost nothing (had a 3ft straight edge on the wheel and jacked it up through its travel to get a rough idea, barely moved)
this of course only tells us about the bumpsteer when the wheel is near the center, but since we actually are usually at a low steering angle while driving anyways, its the most important.... this car shouldnt wander on the ol' pavement cracks and expansion joints.

also, we quickened up the steering ratio by moving the tie rod end fowards (closer to the pivot point aka. lower ball joint) and cut down the akermann just a bit by moving it outward... wierd thing about strut suspension is that when you lower the outer tie rod end, you increase akermann... (atleast with a strut setup like ours... which i made a crude 3d model of to toy with... i didnt dimension the whole thing, i was really just looking for the general behaviors... figure we'd have to tweak it on the car regardless)

actually to be 100% sure, id have to have plugged in completely correct dimensions... which i didnt do... but IMO from what i've seen, 240sx's have too much akermann to begin with. i figured that those 2 observations were good enough to bet on...

you would think that you could just move the outer tie rod end down 2 inshes and the rack down 2 inches, and all would be the same, but this doesnt work... because when the steering is turned, the 2 inch down extension is no longer facing directly down due to the caster angle/kingpin inclination...

see what i mean - same wheel positions require different steering rack positions (regular rack vs. lowered rack):




the wierd thing was that after going down/forward/out, we ended up with the tie rod just hitting the wheel near full lock... so we had use a curved bit on the end of our tie rod... kinda question mark shape, if that makes sense... for those of you that have seen the 350z tie rod end, they actually did the same thing.

actually, im not sure, but our turning radius is probably slightly different than a normal s13 - because our knuckles give us faster steering, we get the full steering angle of a standard s13 a bit before our rack runs out of gears - but we dont have any tire room to allow for an increased steering angle, so we steering-stopped it back to stockish... if i ever wanted skinnier ties up front, i could just tweak the steering-stop and get some drifty angle stuff up front. but i like my 265s. but that would also mean skinner rims with a lower offset because id have to remove all that tire from the inside, or else the tie rod would just hit anyways...

donandal

Now if he could only teach his dad something about
computers!
Right Al ?

Wake

LOL
That should shut some people up.
I mean assuming they actually take the time to read all that. Either way its cool to get an explanation for moving the rack i was wondering about some of the things you covered. Good info!

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**CoUpe LOve** Member #00

tr4c3

Awesome stuff. Subscribing!

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96Turbo

tasty, tasty fab work

what other cars have you built? this obviously isn't your first time...

donandal

my other car is here
http://zilvia.net/f/off-topic-chat/3...ts-subaru.html

the subie is my first try at a car

this 240SX is my first with my son Allen
He's obviously the smart one....haha

Starfire97

so your first try at a car was... building an entirely new one?

if your kids inherited any of that, they'll be master fabricators forever. just asking, what background do you have in fabrication/engineering?

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97 Starfire Blue/93 Coupe, Black-SOLD
98 Starfire Blue-Auto, 1 owner, 102k

donandal

I got a job in high school sweeping floors at a tool and die shop.
Worked my way up to running lathes and miling machines.
I was learning to fly. Quit machine work back in 1982 but
allways loved it, and knew I'd get back to it if I could.
I am now a Captain on the B737 for Continental airlines.
I don't have any other experience in fab work.
But I did stay at a Holiday Inn.....haha
Actually learned all of the English wheel and aluminum fab from videos
Same with welding...that and a lot of practice and mistakes.
I am hoping that with what I learn from these projects, that my next
project will be really sweet, and more refined.

Shadowhunter

Love it and hope to see more of it.

Starfire97

wow, amazing how you applied that knowledge of machine work directly to building cars. eventually i'd like to own all of these tools and learn how to use them, gotta get that degree first!

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97 Starfire Blue/93 Coupe, Black-SOLD
98 Starfire Blue-Auto, 1 owner, 102k

Backintoans13

One of the sickest builds on any forum....awesome work!!! Cant wait till its done

FaLKoN240

I never would believe ANYONE could/would be able to build a car THIS clean and do it ALL the way with the interior and everything.

It's great.

I'm so sick of seeing half ass "race cars" with some sort of motor swap with a painless wiring kit, and they think they're the shit. Your attention to detail and the extra mile you go to make everything OEM is incredible.

I hope one day I can do something like this.

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Best way to do business with me? Make your best offer FIRST.

97240TB

Where the hell are all these great build threads coming from! Jesus, The fab work is phenomenal. Really good to see stuff like this on here, Personally I'm not a fan of the Z dash in the 240. but that's my opinion and I completely understand your reasoning for doing it.

As kansai said before you guys will love the balance and power, First few weeks driving my car after finishing I was shocked how flat and sudden turn in felt. The power is completely usable all over the RPM range to boot.

You should get on your son about showing you how to use solidworks and some other computer programs. Ha ha It's the least he could do for you!

Goodluck with the rest of the build guys!

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97' 240SX, VQHR swap Combplete.

herbieS13

man im glad your decided to post your builds on zilvia instead of nico or one of those other forums

PoorMans180SX

HAH, this has been on Nico for a while now.

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Build: http://zilvia.net/f/showthread.php?t=643065

Friends don't let friends buy knock-offs.

Onyx5spdSportx

nice work!

donandal

Ha so true...
you crack me up ... in a good way
Allen's the one who knows all this internet stuff.
He said this is the forum he used for a lot of his research
so I put it up here too.
Certainly way more interest and feedback here!

Wake

nico doesnt beleive in using a forum as a forum.

Although they have a lot of technical info, they arent very organized and they get all of our rejects.
Not saying im not a member there also but you will definitely get more props for your work here.

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**CoUpe LOve** Member #00

conrad_s13.5

u guys should make your own body kit pieces

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cONtRol FReAkS

donandal

Well, it's another rainy day in western N.Y., so here's another
update. We had an old cracked and dry rotted washer fluid tank,
and decided to make a new one from .042 aluminum.

the tank is a little skinnier but also a little longer side to side
this gave us a little more room to move the fender liners forward
we used the original 240SX brackets



this is the 350Z pump... we welded some thicker stock to the .042
where the brackets and motor and float sensor attach



we also used the 240SX filler neck...
the small aluminum box with the switch next to it holds
the relays for the headlites and retract motors. The switch
interupts all power to the headlite motors if ever necessary



this is the float switch from the Z



we sealed the tank with gas tank sealer... z harness for the
motor and float were long enough and just plug in ..

more to follow...