Tweet
It all started one day when I almost went off-roading on my street bike.
Fearing for my well-being, and of those traveling the same roads as I, the decision was made to part with the bike.
I wanted to buy a vehicle that is quick and sounds amazing like street bikes tend to do, but without all the dying (something safer). Sold the bike to a guy, who rode off with it no helmet and all.
Then I realized there was absolutely no way I was going to to find a sub 20k dollar vehicle that would perform on any level of streetbikedness and still be somewhat reliable. Sooo, I did some research and decided to do a motor swap; which really was a good idea considering, at the time, my car experience was limited. Car experience was as follows:
--4 accounts of hobby shop tint sprayed on tail lights
--1 Autozone hub cap swap
--6 accounts of oil changes (including new oil filters)
--2 front brake caliper (high performance) red paint jobs
--1 account of plasti-dipped side mirrors and antenna
--Also did some of that tire pressure monitoring stuff here and there
Basically, all I've ever owned was a Honda accord that I sold for a civic si and they were heavily unmodified
Back to the story. I was on these forums and discovered the multitude of engines that could be swapped into early Nissans, so I decided that an early model 240sx would be the best bet for my engine swapped vehicle. Adding to that, there seemed to be a plethora of information on how to go about these different engine swaps, including many build threads.
So I went to sitting on craigslist and other such sites waiting for the perfect 240 to appear to start this incredible adventure. One day I saw an add close to home for a single owner '89 240sx, that ran perfectly, so I sent one of my good friends to do a pre-buy rust inspection to see if it was even worth my time. I knew at the time that rust plagued these little critters and I wanted to make sure it wasn't too good to be true. Sure enough, he reported back that it was a clean little booger and that I should get down there and test drive it immediately!! Holy excitementface.jpeg!
So I get all of my car friends and beg one of them in particular to drive us an hour and a half or so south to go get this car. We all pile into his car and begin the trip. (These are some of my favorite times.) We get there and all pile out and probably surprised this old guy. We're all pouring over the car doing our ooohs and ahhs and pretend inspections of different parts of the car. We ask to drive it and he throws us the key!
All four of us jump in; my friend who did the pre-buy rust inspection earlier is driving because he has more vehicular experience than I. ...he drives the dick out of this 240 right in front of the owner. 0-60-0 acceleration/brake test; a slalom course and some more random break tests later and we pull back up.
I give him the cash and hop into the driver seat for the first time, waistband my chub, and rear wheel drive out of there!
On the way back home we listened to the radio and were pleasantly surprised by the cold air that came out of the vents upon selection of A/C.
I also wondered to myself why we tested the motor at all considering it was coming out the next day...
That evening I get it back to town and meet up with the other car enthusiast around town because they all wanted to see the 240. A 350z and I drifted around the city for some time. I was having difficulty containing myself considering it was the first time ever piloting a rwd object.
Due to my lack of license plates, registration, insurance I headed home for the night.
The next afternoon I drove it to my friends shop to make use of the car lift in order to expedite the engine/tranny removal process. So I pull it up between the two lift posts and we move the lift arms into place (of course I looked up the exact lift points of the vehicle, the 240sx had become my baby already). My friend begins lifting the car up on the hydraulic lift with the fancy button and then BOOM! the whole left side of the car drops two (2) inches! I almost fell out my pooper because I thought the lift was going to drop my girl. We stopped, but everything seemed fine so he kept bringing it up to the height we needed to get underneath. It went smooth the rest of the way up.
So I go to investigate the underside of the car to check the lift arm and BOOM! the whole lift arm had sunk 2 inches into the car frame rail !!!!!!!!!
There was an absolute metric wiener ton of rust, like so much rust I'm still surprised to this day that the car was even able to support its own weight.
I could see directly through the driver-side floor pan into the dynomat! The entire frame rail all up into the engine bay fell off in my hand as I stabbed it with my finger!
It was a complete worst case scenario, like worse than the engine exploding and shooting a hot magma sludge of engine components into the atmosphere. No amount of money could ever convince a body shop to even think about a solution to fix this amount of frame rust...
Thankfully my friend did a thorough rust inspection, or else it could have been much worse
That's all for tonight, I'll add some more later...
Fearing for my well-being, and of those traveling the same roads as I, the decision was made to part with the bike.
I wanted to buy a vehicle that is quick and sounds amazing like street bikes tend to do, but without all the dying (something safer). Sold the bike to a guy, who rode off with it no helmet and all.
Then I realized there was absolutely no way I was going to to find a sub 20k dollar vehicle that would perform on any level of streetbikedness and still be somewhat reliable. Sooo, I did some research and decided to do a motor swap; which really was a good idea considering, at the time, my car experience was limited. Car experience was as follows:
--4 accounts of hobby shop tint sprayed on tail lights
--1 Autozone hub cap swap
--6 accounts of oil changes (including new oil filters)
--2 front brake caliper (high performance) red paint jobs
--1 account of plasti-dipped side mirrors and antenna
--Also did some of that tire pressure monitoring stuff here and there
Basically, all I've ever owned was a Honda accord that I sold for a civic si and they were heavily unmodified
Back to the story. I was on these forums and discovered the multitude of engines that could be swapped into early Nissans, so I decided that an early model 240sx would be the best bet for my engine swapped vehicle. Adding to that, there seemed to be a plethora of information on how to go about these different engine swaps, including many build threads.
So I went to sitting on craigslist and other such sites waiting for the perfect 240 to appear to start this incredible adventure. One day I saw an add close to home for a single owner '89 240sx, that ran perfectly, so I sent one of my good friends to do a pre-buy rust inspection to see if it was even worth my time. I knew at the time that rust plagued these little critters and I wanted to make sure it wasn't too good to be true. Sure enough, he reported back that it was a clean little booger and that I should get down there and test drive it immediately!! Holy excitementface.jpeg!
So I get all of my car friends and beg one of them in particular to drive us an hour and a half or so south to go get this car. We all pile into his car and begin the trip. (These are some of my favorite times.) We get there and all pile out and probably surprised this old guy. We're all pouring over the car doing our ooohs and ahhs and pretend inspections of different parts of the car. We ask to drive it and he throws us the key!
All four of us jump in; my friend who did the pre-buy rust inspection earlier is driving because he has more vehicular experience than I. ...he drives the dick out of this 240 right in front of the owner. 0-60-0 acceleration/brake test; a slalom course and some more random break tests later and we pull back up.
I give him the cash and hop into the driver seat for the first time, waistband my chub, and rear wheel drive out of there!
On the way back home we listened to the radio and were pleasantly surprised by the cold air that came out of the vents upon selection of A/C.
I also wondered to myself why we tested the motor at all considering it was coming out the next day...
That evening I get it back to town and meet up with the other car enthusiast around town because they all wanted to see the 240. A 350z and I drifted around the city for some time. I was having difficulty containing myself considering it was the first time ever piloting a rwd object.
Due to my lack of license plates, registration, insurance I headed home for the night.
The next afternoon I drove it to my friends shop to make use of the car lift in order to expedite the engine/tranny removal process. So I pull it up between the two lift posts and we move the lift arms into place (of course I looked up the exact lift points of the vehicle, the 240sx had become my baby already). My friend begins lifting the car up on the hydraulic lift with the fancy button and then BOOM! the whole left side of the car drops two (2) inches! I almost fell out my pooper because I thought the lift was going to drop my girl. We stopped, but everything seemed fine so he kept bringing it up to the height we needed to get underneath. It went smooth the rest of the way up.
So I go to investigate the underside of the car to check the lift arm and BOOM! the whole lift arm had sunk 2 inches into the car frame rail !!!!!!!!!
There was an absolute metric wiener ton of rust, like so much rust I'm still surprised to this day that the car was even able to support its own weight.
I could see directly through the driver-side floor pan into the dynomat! The entire frame rail all up into the engine bay fell off in my hand as I stabbed it with my finger!
It was a complete worst case scenario, like worse than the engine exploding and shooting a hot magma sludge of engine components into the atmosphere. No amount of money could ever convince a body shop to even think about a solution to fix this amount of frame rust...
Thankfully my friend did a thorough rust inspection, or else it could have been much worse
That's all for tonight, I'll add some more later...
Comment