ZERTA RACING

My s14 build thread
Hello My name is Thomas, I am 23 years old and love to work on cars, I have read almost every build thread on this site and love to research the crap out of stuff in my free time then apply it to my car. This car is a work in progress and will be updated from time to time. I am doing all the work myself and really only have one to two days a week to work on the car as it is my main DD.

Well let me start off by saying when I was looking to get my first car I was looking for an S14, but came across a deal of a life time and in 2009 purchased a 2003 G35 Ivory pearl with Black interior (extremely rare) but it was a Auto trans with only 65,000 miles on it one owner which was my best friends dad for 9,000. Had minor front end damage which I repaired and did a few things to along the way. I was making about 285HP to the wheels all NA, car was a blast to drive. Well one day I decided to get stupid and totaled the car on 2/17/2013. Here are some pictures of the car before and after.




And Here are the after pictures:







Well I learned my lesson that's for damn sure… If I ever go fast again it will be on a closed course. I am lucky to be typing this right now, I really think there was someone watching above giving me another chance. I was lucky enough to only have half my tooth missing(which is now a cap) and a few chunks of glass in my arm some of which I removed the next morning then other pieces had to be surgically removed.

okay enough about my old car a stupid decisions, Time for my new ride to take shape.

Here is how the car looked about a week after I picked it up(4/9/2013) for 3200.00 with a salvage title from a minor front in hit and 143,xxx miles, I can't thank tocotacotaco enough for letting me keep this car at his house for like a month while we got it up to smog spec LOL and Vatche for lending time and space in his garage for me to work and ask stupid noob questions. Let me tell you, I had thought I had made a huge mistake buying this car on the ride home from North Hollywood to Oceanside. The car was in limp mode the whole way home barley getting above 65MPH on the freeway. We thought it was a MAF problem so we tried another one and it didn't help, then we found a leak in the EGR hoses and intake system, well it turned out the valve cover gasket was shot and oil was leaking into the spark plug chamber causing the car to run on 3 cylinders. After figuring that out I did the normal crap to make it pass smog, cap, rotor, EGR tube and system clean, oil change, fuel filter change, new plugs, plug wires, knock sensor, O2 sensors, timing adjustment, and finally a 97 front pipe made it pass after 5 attempts LOL.

****Side note**** I will never buy another salvage title car in my life, not only did it need a smog but it also needed a brake and lamp check and vin check. What a pain in the ass, even the smallest crack on a light would fail you!

Anyways this first picture was after I washed the car for the first time. In the bone stock form.




The I wanted to have nice looking non-yellow lights so i polished them up with the 3M kit. Turned out really well as you can see how yellow they were in the first picture.
Also did a mini detail myself on the car.






Sorry for the crappy pics only ones I had of the time. Yes the car is a bone stock base, but I am 6'5''' so a Sunroof would not work for me lol.

Now I bought the car because the interior was mint and I mean MINT. So what did I do???? I added a nice headunit, speakers, and sub and upon taking out the old headunit i had found that the PO had hacked the radio trim to shit. Guess I will just have to purchase one later on down the road as it looks okay for now.



Well I still had cash left and wanted to make a nice DD like my last car, well I guess I wanted it to handle and stop well so I bought the following parts:
BMC(300zx)
ES Subframe bushings
Coils Fortune auto 500 7k front 6k rear
Intake (carb legal cause my plastic one was cracked)
5 lug hubs
driftfreak motor and trans mounts
New FLCA PBM
RUCA PBM
inner and outer tie rods TEIN
SPL Eccentric Lockout Kit 95-98 Nissan 240sx
Z32 Brake setup
new rotors Z32
stoptech pads


Still need to purchase the following:
Traction rods PBM
Toe rods PBM
Tires 235/40/17


Lets start with the final interior finishing touches before getting into actual progression pictures of the exterior and suspension.


Well I figure since I will be DD'ing this car I might want to protect it as little, so I went with a BALLER Viper system from Toby Broadfield. Let me tell you Toby is a great guy and very willing to help with any questions you have. His service is excellent! Since the car is a base model I wanted to get all the features I could possibly get for the car. Power locks, Power windows with the push of a button, tilt sensor, trunk pop, smart start, and shock sensors. Well Toby came through with a great deal I could not pass up so here is the progression of my alarm install.

All laid out and labeled.




Going into the car:


At this point I am about 99% done with the interior of the car, I want to buy the radio trim piece to fix the hacked up one, and replace the bulbs on the AC control panel. Also the rear speaker cover vibrates over some bumps and is really annoying so I might replace that with carpet and get some s14 floor mats as right now I have cheap walmart ones from the PO, and maybe to a quick release setup. The car is also a AT right now so I need to start piecing together a 5spd swap for it, but for DD I don’t mind the AT.


So from here I will be installing all the parts listed above once I purchase the few remaining parts I need which may take a couple weeks. Then I will try to tackle everything on a weekend but I may need to take longer than that as I want to paint the sub-frame, and under coat the fender wells and rear of the car.

Okay today I got a message saying my Rotors and brake pads were coming in today ( they didn't LOL). I was like oh shit! I better make sure I have all the parts for the 300zx brake swap!!!! While I was at it I felt it was a good idea to clean all the parts up. I also fixed my AC panel lights and emergency flasher bulb so all my instruments would light up at night so i could see what button I was pressing.

Here are the pictures of me uninstalling the AC controller, I had to be extremely carful because my trim piece has all the tabs and I wanted to keep it that way:





So once I got it out i proceeded to follow these instructions:

My DIY On How to Fix your HVAC Lights (56k = gay) : 240sx General Discussion

and then I told my self it might be a while till I have the trim piece off again so I tackled the Lights on the switches for the rear window defrost and emergency lights. Sorry did not grab any pictures of the process but I followed this DIY with "great success" LOL.

DIY: S14 dash switch bulb replacement : 240sx General Discussion


and here is the outcome of all my work on replacing the bulbs!!!!!



And here is some before and after of the hardware for the brakes:

BEFORE:



After:





Turned out pretty good, I then looked at my 300zx brakes and wanted to shine them up a bit to so I polished the lettering.

Before:


After:


And then I put the pins in to see how it would look.
Sorry for the dark picture, flash makes the powder coating look weird and the polished letters funky.



Well this week I was going to buy tires for my 5 lug rims so I could start on my suspension, Mine is completely blown LOL It's like a wizards sleeve. Get in my car to go to work a turn the key and all I get is a click FUUUUUUU starter!!!!!! Hop out tap the solenoid with a wrench and she fires up. The whole week it did that and I had finally had enough of it lol, went to NAPA today and got a rebuilt lifetime warranty starter and man does she crank now. I did not get any pictures as I was in a rush today to get to a memorial service, but I plan to order tires next week and a couple brake parts i need to complete on caliper. I did however finally pick up the Toe and Traction rods from PBM two weeks ago so I will have everything but the RLCA,Rear knuckle and Front spindle brand new.

Sorry for no Pictures just trying to keep my thread updated.

Tires came in today!!!!!!
federal 235/40/17's to go on my base G35 rims Front: 17"x7.5" +30mm offset
Rear: 17"x8" +33mm offset, these are just to get me buy till I can get a legit set of wheels.



I plan next weekend to actually make some real build thread progress! I am busy this weekend.

Update Time !!!

Well I couldn't wait for the weekend to start working on the car, Good news is I got word i didn't have to work on friday so that gave me a three day window to get stuff done. To be honest I should still be working right now but my neighbors would be pissed at me so i opted to go to bed early and wake up early to get back to work. So I got off work today around 4:30 and headed down to my local dealership to pick up some parts for my Z32 brakes, well I get there around 4:45 and they are closed. I guess I will have to drive down there tomorrow to get the parts as i need them for the front calipers. I cut my loses and head home, on the way home I say F it lets get the progress started. Get home clean the garage up and jack the car up!

At this point a take the tires of and begin to inspect what needs to truly happen to drop the subframe. Since I had just drove about 30 miles I had to let the car cool down a little before I pulled the exhaust which I proceeded to do in about 5 mins which I couldn't believe how easy it was to do.


At this Point I was like damn this shit is gunna be easy to drop out, I disconnected the drive shaft and then was able to disconnect the E-brake cables, since i was going to go with Z brakes I just disconnected the brake line at the hard line. From there I removed the bolt holding the shocks on then the two bolts on each plate for the subframe front two mounting points. After that removed the two front nuts on the subframe got my jack into position and took off the back two nuts and dropped it right out with out a problem. Took me about an hour an a half and I was taking my time, It was a lot easier than I thought it would be thats for sure.

Sub frame out!!!



I knew my bushings were pretty bad but these almost fell out when i dropped the subframe they were so bad, funny thing was the fronts were the only bad ones were as the rears still had some life left, So it was time to get the old bushings out an get the subframe ready of the ES poly bushings I bought.


I cut them out, I burned them and I wire wheeled them and I am still only half way done LOL. I need to cut out the front bushing inner cage and clean the front two holes. So this is what it looks like now.


I will Update tomorrow evening again and hope to have the complete rear subframe ready to go back in the car.

Well,
Today didn't go as planned LOL.
I wanted to try and get the rear end ready to go back in the car by tonight but I had errands to run all day and really only got about 4 hours or so to work on the car. I was able to cut the front cages out and clean up the sub frame a little.
Before:


after a little bit of cleaning still not done with it but you get the idea left the arms dirty because they will all be replaced:


Then I installed the bushings, went with ES bushings as this is my DD, if I pick up another S chassis I will go with solid mounts as it will be a track slut HAHA.


Man getting the front to sleeves out were a pain in the ass, but now I know how to do it again lol. from here is where progress started to slow. I started on the rear Z 32 brake setup but had to leave to help a friend, I got one side torn down completely and got it ready to convert.



The other side still looks like this:


That was it for the day pretty much, but I did pull most of my parts out of hiding to snap some pictures of them lol

ZERTA RACING

Well,
This is all I got done today rear brakes, all suspension parts and installed the subframe.


All the PBM parts.


Z brakes!!!


ready to go in the car!!!!


test fit without coils installed:


All parts installed


and all buttoned up:


The front stuff will go on in the morning, I feel like it needs MOAR LOW. But I need to roll the fenders and get an alignment.

Well today was a long day... I almost felt like giving up hope of having it done today but had a second wind push me to finish the car. I got up late as I felt like I needed the sleep from the three days previous. I got the front end jacked up


Then proceeded to take the front suspension completely off the car I had to order steering rack boots and that set me back about an hour. Finally got both sides almost together



after getting the shocks on I did my best to get the alignment set up and I feel like i need to get it to PBM ASAP for them to get the car aligned as almost all of their products are on my car.
Here is the finished product.


Things I still need to complete are:
Bleed the brakes again as I feel like they are a little soft.
Get the Car to PBM for alignment.
Play with the coils to find a setting I like.
Buy new sway bars
VLSD
and a few other things.

ZERTA RACING

Damn the car is stiff, Like almost to stiff. anyone have input on to how to make it DD able? I mean like after 25-30 min of driving my stomach feels like shit. I am going in for an alignment tomorrow and hope it will make it better but I almost feel as though I made a huge mistake with putting all these parts on. Maybe I am just a sissy but damn it pretty bad. This is my first car with coils and full suspension and it just feels off.

EDIT:
Got the car aligned and dialed in and it is much better now... I don't think I had everything installed correctly as far as preload and camber which made the car really ruff. Now I have a CEL for cat sensor bank one though so I think the plug to my first o2 sensor got messed up while working on the car, going to check everything over and make sure all the connections are good.

Thmotorsports

Looking forward to the upcoming mods any other future plans?

ZERTA RACING

I think I am going to go kouki JDM front, sides, tails, wing, rear bumper, and valances. I want to do a 5spd swap, sway bars, vlsd or helicoil rear diff. Also looking for an exhaust.

Reece

It isn't bad so far. I like it. But keep the Zenki front end!

__________________

ZERTA RACING

Here is a picture after the alignment, I had them raise the front just a hair and lower the back.
(Sorry for crappy pictures and dirty car)

FaLKoN240

Subscribed to this, just for the hvac repair.

__________________

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

Tomeis15

Nice build i jelly cant wait to see moré ^_^ any plans for paint or engine swap in near future ?

ZERTA RACING

The paint is I really great shape actually, there is no need for it(pictures don't do it justice). However I will be putting new front fenders, hood, bumpers, sides and wing on it very soon. I just need to find a kouki wing, sides and kouki USDM tail lights. If I do anything to the motor it will be way down the road as it is my daily. But if i did any motor swap it would be RB25 series 2 for sure.

Tomeis15

That's wat up bro can't wait so see more hard to find clean 240s now days nice pick up tho ��

zooopreme

Nice progress so far. As for your stiffness complaint, what else did you expect did you expect with coilovers and spherical bearings? lol Even with 7/6kg spring rates and proper break in, it'll be stiff.

__________________
For Sale #1 | For Sale #2

ZERTA RACING

To be honest I didn't know what to expect.

I feel like after I drive it for a while it will get a little better and I will get used to it(and it has). Also I might add that I think the reason I feel as though it is to stiff might be because I think I am fighting a stomach flu right now LOL and thought it was the car making my stomach hurt but I am just sick. Just so happens that I got the bug the day after finishing the car.

Also I don't think there are any adjustable arms that aren't spherical that are of good quality?

What do you mean by proper break in? Sorry to sound like a noobie just curious.

zooopreme

Well, stock spring rates are ~2/2 kg. You've got 7/6 kg, that's almost 3x stiffer. Coilovers and relative comfort will never be in the same sentence with entry level coilovers like Fortune Auto. Not to say they aren't good coilovers, as I own a set myself and have owned other sets of FA's, but they were intended for off-road use.

There are good quality adjustable arms that aren't spherical: SPC. The only con about them is that they have a limited range of adjustability so if your goal is to go stupid low, you went the right direction with PBM. Being low (static) and having a comfortable ride is an oxymoron.

Springs break in and, though not proven, dampers also have a break in period. Springs do for sure settle though. Also, if you haven't read the instruction manual that Fortune provided, I would do everything in there. Not sure if the newer gen does this but with each Fortune Auto set I've had, I had to preload it a certain way for the front and rear, then I had to turn the damping adjuster from full soft to full stiff and back before driving.

Coilovers vs springs are just something to get used to or get rid of. When I use my S13 for commutes, I just slap stock struts back on and it's like night and day. Sure, my car doesn't conform to today's standards of cool but hey, I'm in and out of driveways a-ok

__________________
For Sale #1 | For Sale #2

ZERTA RACING

Thanks for the info, I have started to get used to it and i have only driven the car three days now, but man this stomach flu sucks lol, on the freeway the car is better riding than my G35 use to be, however on main roads that are beat up and patched everywhere it is a little bouncy but not horrible. I will read the instructions again for the FA's but I never saw the part about going full stiff then back to full soft again. pre load was set up to FA's instructions. I have heard horror stories about SPC products when I was looking to drop my G35 and that is why I never looked into their products.

driftheart

My ruca,traction and toe arms are SPC, and I haven't had any real issues yet. The only issue I had was one of the arms un-did itself, so to speak, the locking nut(I think that's what it's called) that's supposed maintain the adjustment of it backed off from I can only conclude was from driving super shitty roads and harsh vibrations from said roads. I had to reattach the arms to itself and guess what the length of it was. I haven't measured the other side for reference to adjust its length yet. Other than that they've been fine I guess, hahah. I've had them since January and I'm also on Fortune Auto 500 coilovers.

ZERTA RACING

Sorry to keep posting pictures but these are better quality and I just detailed the car today.

blockedwizard

Man what a beautiful car, I second to keep the Zenki front!!!

ZERTA RACING

To keep everyone happy I will keep the Zenki front in my attic LOL, if I ever want to swap it out I can.

Tomeis15

Looking fresh bro looking clean what your next plans for it ?

ZERTA RACING

Picking up A 5spd tonight finally found one !!!!

Tomeis15

Nice bro post more pics ^_^

ZERTA RACING

Well i had to postpone the picking up of the trans. But i am picking up some other goodies this weekend and will take pictures.

Tomeis15

Thats sucks man Whats the delay on the tranny ? Are those fortune auto coils good ? Cuz im saying for some pbm rite Now

ZERTA RACING

Well Today was awesome JK, went to pick up some parts and was on my way home when my alternator crapped out on me. Oh course all auto places were closed so I had to order it and won't be here till tomorrow, so tomorrow after work I will be installing my new alternator. At that point in time I will post pictures of the new parts I picked up.

ZERTA RACING

Well I got my new alternator in, And while I was doing it got me thinking about cleaning the bay a little. I didn't have much time but at least I got it started by doing a little bit on the strut towers. I need to spend a day removing things from the bay and cleaning them with degreaser.

Here are some pictures

Drivers side before:



Drivers side After:


The whole bay needs to be done like this and it will make the car look so much better.

And I also picked up some Kouki sides and this exhaust:

Tomeis15

Dam nice bro keep it up ��

tacotacotaco

looking good! your dog looks intense!

dbeiler

Love that clean subframe and shiny suspension arms! Did you use Z32 rear knuckles or S14? I'm piecing together a Z32 brake swap, but not 100% sure what else I need. I'm guessing you used the Z32 e-brake assy with an R33 e-brake cable?

ZERTA RACING

Thanks man!, I used the S14 rear knuckle with the R33 Cables and used the stock cable brackets on the subframe just opened them up a little to fit the bigger R33 cable in them.