JrDarknes

Since Flickr decided to make us suffer and wants us to pay $6 dollars a month. I decided to take advantage of the $2 dollars I pay a month for my google storage and move all of my photos to google photos. While doing so I decided to update my thread.

You get 15gb free and after that you have to pay $2 for 100gb and then $10 for 1TB. If you want to know how to share an image using google photos so you can adjust the size of the picture posted or anything, let me know. It took me a while to figure it out loll.

Anyway,
Back in spring I decided to buy autocollect storm fitment guides for my front bumper since my inner fender was messed up causing my bumper to fit bad. Was a major improvment.

Before


After


Later that week I decided to restore my cluster buttons due to them looking nasty. Bought the button lens from Restomod.Ninja

How it looked originally


Used a hair dryer and a small flathead to remove it.


Used some goof off


Spayed it using duplicolor black


Then simply peeled off the back of the lens and stuck it into the button. Looked really nice all done. Did the rest of my cluster buttons as well. Really makes the inside feel newer.


Then one day while driving my car I pulled up to a light and my car stopped on me. Could not start it back up. Had my hazards on and this guy pulled up behind me and offered to help me out (apparently him and his girlfriend were admiring my piece of crap of a car haha. They noticed my car just stopped behind them so they came back to check up on me). Long story short I found out I wasent getting any fuel. Fuel pump fuse kept blowing. So I call a tow truck company from my insurance company since I get free towing.

Now my car is low. However I never have a problem getting it on a flat bed when I take off my bumper. I usually give the guy a nice tip because I'm sure I am making their life worse towing my car and they do show their appreciation immediatly haha. I've never had a issue doing this. However, that night i called my insurance company and they gave me the worst towing company I could probably ask for. I had specifically asked for a flat bed and removed my front bumper.

This guy shows up 40 minutes late and comes with a damn dolly. I try not to get pissed off immediatly because maybe its not his fault? I tell him "hey man that dolly isnt going to work". He simply ignores me and looks under my car and says "damn yea you do need a flat bed". Im like no shit? So he tells me he will be back and "I'm like okay you're bringing a flat bed correct"? He says yes. Well 30 minutes later I get a call saying they're not coming. I'm pretty mad and start demanding a flat bed and he just hangs up. The fact they didnt even try to help me and left me stranded at midnight is just the worst thing ever. While venting to myself I noticed I had a 30amp fuse in my glove compartment and put it in my fuse box and the car stayed running. However I feared something may burn up while driving home so I hauled ass and made it back safely.

The next morning I woke up looking for the company online to leave a terrible review. I cant find it, so I try calling the same number and it just goes to progressive. So I just tell progressive what a terrible towing company that place was and hope they dropped them or something. After that I looked up the wiring diagrams to see what would be causing my fuse to blow and saw that 2 wires near passenger side of the engine bay were shorted. Fixed them and the fuse stopped blowing. However I noticed my fuel gauge in my cluster stopped working. Checked my fuel pump and noticed everything was fine but looking in the tank I saw this metal piece floating around. The welds on the baffle broke off causing my floater on my fuel sending unit to get tangled with it. So I finessed that thing out and havent had a problem since.



After all that I upgraded my alternator to a RB25Neo 150AMP alternator. I read online this was a direct fit. Not true, had to cut my alternator spacer a bit and drill the hole bigger for the alternator bolt. Lastly the pulley is slightly mis aligned


Got a non-sunroof headliner finally. When I bought my car it never came with headliner and had a custom sunroof. No one near me could make a custom headliner for me so I decided to work on one my self. Need to rewrap it with better material before I install it.


Realizing I need the sides trimmed off a bit more.


Those were all the minor things I did this spring-summer. Now its fall time and I'm trying to decide if I want to work on my exterior (paint job, kouki skirts and oem front bumper) or suspension,brakes & drivetrain. I decide the suspension, brakes & drivetrain as it still has the 25 year old bushings and the subframe looks really bad. I still have the stock 240sx front calipers and those brakes suck with the RB20. I want to tackle this the same way I did my interior. So far I've only bought lower control arms. When everything else comes in I'll probably update the thread.

PBM Front Lower Control Arms


PBM Rear Lower Control Arms


I dont think I will be buying PBM rods and their other arms, I watched a video and saw how heavy they are and I wasent a big fan of that. Anyway thats it so far. Next update maybe in Feburary or March. Should have most of the parts by then and a new set of wheels finally.

__________________
Instagram: Nismo_Lk

JrDarknes

Guess another update.

Still obtaining Suspension parts for the restoration. Almost have everything for the rear end. Front end I am still missing quite a bit. I think I will have everything in April or May. Hopefully haha.

Bought Voodoo13 RUCA, Rear Toe Arms and Rear Traction Rods. Love how light these are. I originally was planning on buying Powered by Max arms but watched a video showing how heavy they were and decided to opt out. Then I found out about this company.


Then I decided to get Z32 Calipers. I've always had stock calipers with autozone cheap brakes and rotors. Braking with those on the car with a RB20 was sometimes a nightmare. This upgrade was much needed. Not sure what color I want to paint them. Thinking Gold or a Dark grey. Originally wanted to go with Red but I think thats overkill. Idk.


Took a picture of all the parts I had at that time


Thennn I finally bought me some new wheels. Gram Lights 57CR
Rears are 18x10.5 +12


Fronts are 17x9 +12


As you can see I got them in different colors. I ordered them both gloss black but Mackin Industries messed up and gave me my front pair in gun blue. Thankfully I was planning on getting them Powder Coated.

Originally I wanted Advan TC3's however they only run in 18's. I only run 17/18. I looked at other 5 spoke wheels such as Work T5R, Mesiter S1R and Enkei's new PF05 but I liked the Gram LIghts 57CR the most because they looked very similar to the TC's.

So I sent them out to get stirpped and powder coated.




Now I've been tempted to paint the "rays" and "57" black but I think I might cheat with a Die Cut sticker if I give a company the dimensions or I might just leave them as is. We will See.


Lastly for this update I bought PBM Drop Knuckles.


My main goal with this car at this point is to have it as if Nissan made a Nissan 180sx similar to how Porsche makes a GT3 or Ferrari makes the F40LM. I guess more of a track version of the car. I wont be going nuts by stripping the interior or anything. I'm keeping that all in but eventually I might get a half cage for the rear end and etc. We will see....

You can see why I chose the wheel color loll.

__________________
Instagram: Nismo_Lk

JrDarknes

Around march I decided to lower my car back to how I had it. While I was lowering my car I decided to see how my new wheels would look on my car.





I need kouki skirts badly :\




Drove to ohio to get me a spare subframe to start assembling my parts on. I dont want to remove the subframe on my current car and not be able to drive it for a while so I decided to spend the extra money to have a spare one. Got the sleeves out and sent it out to get powder coated. Then assemblied the parts using zipeties until my bolts all come in.




Messed up my subframe powdercoat being dumb luckily the part I did mess up cant be seen once its put back in the car.




I unfortunately will still have a open diff. I wanted a LSD but that would of put me out of my budget. Hoping to maybe get one later in the year. Still waiting for my front suspension to come in. Should have all the parts installed on the car by late may early june.

__________________
Instagram: Nismo_Lk

da_crew10

I was considering ordering a set of those Gramlights!

Car is coming along nicely sir.

Ps OEM 180sx bumpers are going stupid cheap!

__________________

JrDarknes

Thanks, yea unfotunately I'm not trying to buy anything exterior wise until next year. If anything I might get oem kouki skirts but thats honestly it until 2020.

__________________
Instagram: Nismo_Lk

IIIXziuR

Interior is great. Looking good so far, hoss.

__________________
... ... ... ... .

z31andrew

I have a spare S13 LSD I am willing to part with, but shipping from SoCal to you may make it not worth it. PM me if you are interested.

JrDarknes

Thanks

If I end up having some spare cash later this year and decide not to get a new one I'll dm you about it loll.

__________________
Instagram: Nismo_Lk

JrDarknes

Update

So I picked up these GKTECH front drop knuckles. GKtech outer tie rods and S14 moog inner tie rods. I wanted Nismo Power brace and sway bar but those got put on hold.


Also got Stoptech Slotted Rotors


1PC Aluminum driveshaft


Once I had everything ready I decided to get a storage unit as I wanted a flat surface to do my work on. My current driveway is not the best surface to do the subframe swap plus I dont want to be outside in the rain doing work on my car either.


After a week in the storage unit I finally pulled the subframe out and man I was glad. It looked like crap.


At this point everything became hell.

So right out the gate I try removing my old handbrake cables. Well I could not for the life of me get them off. I think they had rusted into the handbrake assembly because I tried everything. So i ordered one from california in better condition. After that I try to remove the brake hardlines from the rear brakes. Well the rear hard lines break off due to being rusty. I was worried I may have to replace the whole entire line from the bmc. Lucklily the part below the green was all good. So I only had to buy the portion in the red from a buddy down south who has a ton of S13 Parts


After that I screwed up big time. I accidently forgot to lock my unit when I left one night. So the manager of course is going to check my unit to make sure its okay and nothing is stolen since he checks every unit out in the morning. He opens my unit and finds out I have the whole rear suspension off the car =/. So he calls me to say this is not allowed blah blah blah and tells me I have the end of July to get it out and it was June 29th when he told me that. I never rented a storage unit but I think they can kick you out right on the spot if the want to so I did not complain at all and apologized to him saying I didnt know. I promised him I would have it out. So I started working alot more hours on the car than I typically would. I was really tired but I knew I had to get this done.

I ran into a few issues that were kind of annoying but small.

My calipers I had bought remanufactured. The threads for the lines fucked up some how so I had to retap them.

The PartsShopMax drop knuckle. My god is this thing annoying. I wish my dumb ass had read the descripition because if I had known about the RLCA and Z32 Ebrake anchor nut issue I would of never even bought the damn thing. Man its so annoying adjusting the RLCA with this issue. For anyone who doesnt know you have to cut the interfereance edge of the nut so you can tighten your rlca because the two nuts interfere with each other. So you have to like slightly push the RLCA up while tightening it. Its kind of hard for me to explain but it sucks.

My voodoo arms did not fit the PBM knuckle too well. I mean I should of expected this since they're not the same brand but it was kind of annoying.

After all that

I got everything together.



Installing it was a bit harder than I expected it.

Dont worry I put washers on the subframe nuts. I realized I forgot to add washers as soon as I took the pic loll.



Finally got my wheels mounted and started fiddling with the suspension to try to make the car sit right before heading to get an alignment.




And July 28th I finally got the car out of the storage unit and drove it home. Still need to get an alignment but Im so glad I got it out as I was bit worried I wouldnt make it due to my work schedule and life in general getting a bit busy.





Getting an alignment this friday and should be receiving my blastpipes so I will try to install them this friday as well.

I will start Exterior work feburary of next year. The goal is to go all oem aero besides the valances and front lip. Replace seals and get a fresh paint job.

__________________
Instagram: Nismo_Lk

CamryOnBronze

Excellent job Lawrence. Sucks to hear about the storage unit issue- I've heard of that happening to a few people in the past. I've been there with the rusty brake lines and the thread issues on remanufactured calipers too- same thing happened to me on my hatch a while back.

Love the silver on the wheels! Can't wait to see this dialed in. Always appreciate your direction and ability to be patient to get things done properly.

__________________

CamryOnBronze.com

Eddiemac

The car looks killer man!! Those wheels look just right on there. I can't wait to see this thing painted.

JrDarknes

Thanks man. I can’t thank you enough for that brake line. Came through for me as soon as I needed it.


Thanks Damon, yea I panicked when he called me loll. I’m just glad he was nice enough to give me a month.

Appreciate the kind words.



Yea I’m very happy with wheels, they turned out much better than I expected. Was going to try to paint the engravings in the wheels black but I’m just going to leave it as is.



Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

__________________
Instagram: Nismo_Lk

wanadrift

This has come a long way since I first watched the few youtube videos. Nice work and those wheels look great on the car.

JrDarknes

Thanks a lot. It still always surprises me when someone tells me they watched those videos loll


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

__________________
Instagram: Nismo_Lk

JrDarknes

So I've done pretty much just minor stuff to my car at the moment. Currently I'm slowly collecting parts to give the exterior a refresh. The state its in now is somewhat okay, however I want it to be much cleaner and fresh. To be honest I am very surprised how long my paint has lasted in good shape considering its maaco cheapest option ($300) and I took absolutely no care of it the past 6 years I've had it lol.

Soo last year I bought a used quater panel from atlanta and got it shipped to me. My quarterpanel at the moment has alot of bondo and If I'm going to take this exterior restoration seriously I told my self it would be best to finally do this the right way and get it replaced.



Then I started addressing small issues with my car that were bothering me such as my vent pod always coming off and not staying flush. I remember broadfield did a little mod to keep them stable so I copied him.








After that I addressed my wideband sensor issue. I originally bought a innovate LC2 and installed it inside my cluster 4 years ago but that thing went bad so I bought me a new one that was OLED. This had alot more material so it took me much more work to get it inside my cluster.






Did all that work and the sensor stays on calibrate (the image shoes E2 but that just means no power, at the moment it will show HTR which means heating up then stay on CAL and never calibrate) for some reason smh... I feel the O2 sensor heat up but it wont calibrate. Going to go on a limb here and say its a bad sensor. If that dosent work I am going to have to pull out my cluster and see if maybe I pulled a wire off the board and try to solder it back but I honestly doubt I did. If worst comes to worst I'll send it to them for repair.


Got a DCC with all the sensors for 100$. Could not pass that deal up. Decided to change the colors of the VFD output (using a filter) as the blue-green color would ruin the color scheme have for the car at night. I also changed the green light to a dark yellow.




The unit came with just pigtails and all of the other sensors had pigtails as well. I could not find a wiring guide so I downloaded the japanese 180sx FSM and made it a searchable ocr and translated the dcc portion of the FSM. I bought a bunch of wires and started wiring everything up and decided I would make a pinout and a little write up for the DCC.



However, I have one issue and its the fact the blower motor only works on "4" (highest setting) and thats it.
Which is funny because my old analog unit all of the settings worked besides "4" so Idk if its a wiring issue or a blower motor issue. I still need to figure it out someday. Everything else works fine which makes me very happy.

Got a good hook-up on a Uncracked Dash. Was using the cover overlay which I was fine with but I could not pass up the deal on this dash.


Brand new cluster lens & Door Handles. Will install the door handles once my bride fabric comes in so I can redo my door cards



Anddd lastly I moved to washington loll. Big thanks to my sister boyfriend for being there when the transporter was coming to pick the car up from Indiana.


The goal so far is still to collect the pieces for the exterior. So far I've only bought the door seal belts (or whatever they're called) but thats going to change very soon. In the next coming months.

__________________
Instagram: Nismo_Lk

va240dude

Any updates?

__________________
180SXオタクだ!

JrDarknes

Sort of just, just small stuff at the moment. Mainly engine and driveline mods. Still slowly collecting parts for exterior. Have all the door moldings, just need to work on the front & back windshields & sunroof. Things will probably pick up pace in Decemeber.



My car out of no where wouldnt rev pas 4500. Turns out my ISR intake went bad after 4 years so bought a greddy one.


One of my coilpacks went bad, decided I needed to get a new set since the others were bound to go bad as well so I bought these spitfire coilpacks second hand



Bought Gktech front high clearance swaybar



Brand new RB25 power steering pump and Chasebay Power steering kit



and lastly bought these headlights I plan on HID retrofitting these in decemeber. Saw alot of FD guys were doing it so I am going to try to replicate.



Ran into issues with my front wheel not coming off because the lug stud became loose. Had to drill the stud out which meant ruining the hub so I had to replace that.

Thats about it.

__________________
Instagram: Nismo_Lk

va240dude

Nice, I have Splitfires on my RB25 and like them! I ran into the same issue too with going with a cheap knockoff aftermarket air filter and the plastic started cracking like crazy since its complete crap. Imagine if it had gotten sucked up into the turbo? Had to order a new HKS one! Live and learn lol

__________________
180SXオタクだ!

PoorMans180SX

Great looking car you have here man. Looks like you're trying to do it the right way with high quality products too, so props. Sadly even when you get the best stuff there always tends to be fit and finish issues hah. I'm excited to see where you take this thing.

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

Friends don't let friends buy knock-offs.

JrDarknes

Yup, so far the splitfires have been very good. Car idles & drives much better and yea I was little upset my Air filter went bad but it was so cheap so I'm not surprised. Definitely a live and learn situation like you mentioned.

Thanks and yea now that I can afford it I'm trying to replace everything with better products haha. Definitely owe you a alot for the roll center thread you made. Helped out a ton since I know very little about suspension.

__________________
Instagram: Nismo_Lk