Advan Model V / VS6 + Sunday Funday

As aforementioned in this original post, the precursor and catalyst to the S13 project was the set of wheels I picked up a while back. I envisioned the rest of the car around these wheels and they essentially set the tone and theme for the build.

The wheels in question are mismatched 17×9″ +35 Advan Model Vs and 17×9″ +18 Advan VS6s. Oldschool, used and beat up. Exactly the style I’m looking for. I bought a set of 215/45/17 Nankang NS-20s all around off of eBay for only $250 shipped.

Here I am with Blue at a local tire shop getting the wheels mounted up.

Ever since I drove the car back up from L.A., I left it parked and have yet to use it. I’m still trying to finish combing through it first and cleaning up the odds and ends. There is a big suspension upgrade in the queue that should tie everything together and render the car fitted and roadworthy to my standards. If it weren’t for my lack of time and the fact that I’m still waiting on my upgraded axles to be built, the S13 could have been dialed in by now.

If only I could dedicate one full day to it… Alas, I am only able to chip away at the car on a half-afternoon basis. Regardless, progress is still being made. This morning, I woke up relatively early to meet up with my buddy George and attend a local Cars & Coffee event in the RX-7. After checking it out for about half an hour and then becoming bored, we left to mini/private event for the in-person showing of the new NSX. After briefly looking over the car and feeling mostly unenthused, I was able to coerce George to cut the fanboyism short and leave – real work needed to be done. Because he was riding shotgun with me, I was able to kidnap him and enlist him into helping me work on the 240SX for the rest of the afternoon. But first, we had lunch at a dumpling place to gain the necessary sustenance.

I started off by tearing into the interior. My goal was to trace down the wires and remove, permanently, the unsightly Defi gauges scattered across the top of the steering column. Their poor mounting location also obstructed 80% of my view to the cluster. Right off the bat, I encountered a rat’s nest of wiring behind the headunit.

I also found this partially wired in “Tech Edge” wideband thing that was used at one point. After fishing out its harness and pulling the unit out of the car, I promptly deposited it into the trash bin.

From tracing one of its harnesses, I found a bundle of heinous wiring work underneath the driver side dashboard. There were clusters of wires soldered together by what could only be the doings of a 5-year old child, with multiple leads going to nothing. I trimmed off all of the excess and respliced the necessary connections properly and with heatshrink. The giant booger solder clump in the foreground gives an idea of what I was dealing with.

Once I was done optimizing, rerouting, and removing the gauges, I did my best to clean up what was behind the stereo. There were still a few more splices from the Defi control unit that were tapped into the stereo wiring and for thoroughness sake, I will have to redo these at a later date (possibly if I ever get around to the sound system in this car).

While I was working inside the car, George focused on spraying down and scrubbing all 4 corners. Prior, he helped realign and fit the hood better.

The wheel wells were all surprisingly clean to begin with.

Unfortunately when I bought the car, one of the wheel studs broke off and was missing from the passenger side front hub. The seller was nice enough to give me a spare wheel stud to install, but even after making a trip to the parts store to buy an actual stud installer, we couldn’t get it through. It turns out that with the 5-lug conversion, the front hubs require studs with a knurl size of 12mm, whereas the stud we were working with was 14mm. So we postponed fixing the stud until I can make an order for a properly sized replacement.

For the front wheels, I bought a pair of Project Kics 20mm bolt-on spacers, which we threw onto the car in the time being. I like to stick to my brands and for good reason – not all parts are created equal and even something as simple as spacers can make a difference. The hardware provided with the Project Kics are definitely high quality.