But at the end of the day, it just wasn’t a car worth holding on to and I didn’t have any motivation to invest further work into it, past what I already did. I have a stockpile of parts that never made it onto the car. My original argument and reasoning behind the purchase was to be frugal and save money. Sure, it was a relatively cheap car… but the dividends obtained from its low cost of entrance only pays out when a.) you don’t mod the car and b.) you intend on keeping the car long term. My folly was that I broke both of those rules. When the logic supporting my justification of driving around a 26 year old Nissan collapsed, a new course of thought needed to take its place.

The S13 was also symbolic of the last bastion of my youth. I grasp dearly to the ideology of staying young and choosing to daily drive this car was a final act of rebellion against an unwavering and unconditional foe – time. You can only try for so long before it starts to become artificial and forced. So yes, I have accepted the fact that it is now time to move on and embrace the more mature choices of an adult.

Don’t get me wrong, the S13 was a fun experience and I got to clutch kick it hundreds of times, especially during all of the rainy days we had this Winter. The ambition was to attend drift events with it and enhance my overall driving skill by becoming familiar with oversteer situations, but let’s be honest, that was never going to happen. Events are too far in between and too far away for my convenience. Unfortunately, I have to prioritize other needs in my life and don’t have the luxury to sacrifice a whole day to swing my car around in a parking lot. I also can’t risk drifting around on the street all of the time because, well, I’m not 18 anymore. I will simply have to add to my drifting experience by more organic and supplemental ways. Amazingly enough, I did seriously daily drive the S13 over these past months. Since I bought the car back in August, I raked up around 6,500 miles. That’s more than double what I have put on the RX-7 in the nearly 5 years of its ownership. The S13 stayed reliable and was trouble free the entire time, which was impressive. I won’t lie, driving a smelly, loud, lowered car with stiff coilovers and a bucket seat every day was getting tiring because the reward of enduring the harshness wasn’t really that high. It took a couple months to sell the car.

Although the effort of climbing into the tight squeeze of the Bride Zeta II was tiresome, I do miss this seat. I imported it from Japan and tricked it out with all of the add-ons… seat back cover, headrest pad, and side bolster protectors.

I have owned an overabundance of cars that would categorized as old and junk by the average, non car enthusiast. From a myriad of Miatas to a ’91 Previa van with a 5-speed manual to a $700 Saab 900. I need to put those days behind me. I too agree that I do not have the time for an “old” car that needs maintaining and modifications to be acceptably “nice”. There is only enough time to focus on the best or what I really want. In the meantime, I have an RX-7 that needs finishing.

Anyway, I will make this post quick because more important matters are on hand with the RX-7.

A key exterior item I desired for the 240sx was a set of rain guards. The old, OEM ones are difficult to find and expensive, so I tried a set from a place called H.I.C. a couple months ago.

After installing them, I expeditiously decided I wasn’t satisfied and ripped them back off. Their fitment was slightly amiss because the cut curves were roughly done in areas and didn’t conform to the shape of the window moldings. Now it was time to acquire a set of the real deals – the hunt was on.

I eventually sourced a good condition pair of OEM rain guards from a guy in Malaysia. The hardest part was removing the old double-sided adhesive that was caked onto the plastics after many years of use. My boy Haroon stepped up and handled this task, so huge shoutout to him for lending the hand.

Once the old tape was cleaned off, I gave the rain guards a quick polish and lined them with new 3M tape.

And now onto the car.

Much better.

In my eyes, the exterior of the S13 was mostly complete with the already added OEM aero parts and, of course, the Silvia conversion. I did, however, want to swap on aero side mirrors to amp up the style. The particular mirrors I sought were the East Bears. Bomex and the 2-piece Aero Markers are similar in shape, and I did come across a couple of those variants in my search. I eventually came into contact with a seller that had a pair of manual East Bears, from Israel of all the places.

Discontinued parts are becoming harder to find and are ironically less prevalent in their country of manufacturing, Japan. The world these days is truly a flat and globalized one, with trading and movement occurring in all continents and corners. Thankfully, that also means buying internationally from foreign countries is nearly as easy as domestically.

My package arrived from the beautiful city of Tel Aviv-Yafo in less than a week and without hassle. The only hiccup was me having to pick it up from my local Post Office and encountering the most inattentive and apathetic workers possible. I use the plural form of worker hesitantly, because although there were quite a few people walking around behind the counter, only one on average would be serving customers at a time. What should have taken 5 minutes at a maximum to pick up my package took over 40 minutes, with only 3 people in front of me in line. And to make matters worse, I ended up with a parking ticket when I walked out because my meter expired. But back on topic.

Before I even opened the box, I took it straight to a local body shop for painting, the same one I used to paint my RX-7’s old trim panels a while back. A few days later, I picked them up in a fresh, paint-matched form.

I dropped by a buddy Gio’s house after work today to get these quickly mounted. Installing them was easy, only 3 bolts behind the door corner and the mirrors lined up well. Here is a comparison of the stock mirror versus the East Bear Aero mirror. Being manual and smaller in construction, the East Bears were significantly lighter than the stock powered ones.

Sometimes you have to make the conscious decision of sacrificing function for form. And you know what, that’s okay. Life is too short to be passive and stick to the safer, higher ground at all times. Take the road less traveled. Be different, stand apart. In this case… I basically sacrificed ALL of the function for form, because I can’t see anything out of these dinky little mirrors. But it’s totally worth it.

I love their cool factor.

After we wrapped up the mirror swaps, I lined up my car behind Gio’s S14 for a mini photo opportunity. Straight outta Fremont, CA. The land of JDM goodness.

I dragged on this next part for a couple of weeks, but I was eventually able to schedule a mobile locksmith to come by and he was able to perform the necessary the work in about 10 minutes.

With the trunk lock rekeyed, it was ready to be swapped on.

Excuse the overly dirty trunk, it has been my daily driver after all and there was a brief stint of rain recently. Maybe when I start driving it less, I will give it an exterior detail – but that day is not today.

Before, whenever I looked at the rear end of the 240sx, I felt that something was off. This trunk lock emblem really was the missing link. While a small detail, I think it added the needed touch to fill out the rear.

With the recent work in the front fenders to tuck up the wiring harnesses, the connectors for the corner lights could no longer reach. All slack had to be removed in order to keep the harnesses above the lip in the inner fenders.

The remedy, extend the connectors’ wires.

While I had all of my wiring tools and supplies out, I moved to the trunk area to fix the rear speakers. Over time, I noticed a crackling coming from the driver side rear speaker. It seemed like it worsened when going over rough roads or turning, but I couldn’t quite pinpoint it… that is, until I popped the trunk and had a look at its wiring. Then it became obvious.

Again, I’m finding myself fix the previous owner’s shoddy electrical work. The electrical tape started to come off the solder connections, which inevitably caused the positive and negative wires to contact when in motion. I took the opportunity to clean up both sides.

Next, I removed all of the old Gorilla lugnuts and their awful allen head keys in favor of the dominant Project Kics R40s, another one of my staple go-to’s over the years.

To wrap up the interior, I strategically picked and reinstalled 1 of the 3 Defi gauges – the boost one. I certainly didn’t need 3 massive 60mm gauges cluttering the top of the steering column, like before, but having a Defi boost gauge was nice. I still wanted to place it in a discreet location, and the best out-of-the-way spot I found was in this corner underneath the dashboard.

Although it may look like it would be in the way of my right leg when driving, it isn’t. I’ve had zero intrusion with it mounted there.

Earlier last month, around the time when I was purchasing the Tomei 2-Way LSD, I was conducting my research by calling Kaaz, its differential parent company. The advisor I spoke with ultimately recommended I try the Torco line of gear oil, and in the thicker 85W140 viscosity. Along with a bottle of friction modifier for the LSD, too, of course. Kaaz’s experience with this particular oil during their FormulaD endeavors was hard to deny.

Aside from the fact that the LSD was only recently installed and the oil inside was still fresh, I wasn’t quite sure of the exact oil used and I wanted the confidence of running my preference. These days, I’m starting to think smarter. I could have put the car onto jackstands and crawled underneath myself to manually pump in the new differential oil… or I could just drive over to my local quick change place and have the good gentlemen there take care of it for me in less than 15 minutes, at a nominal fee.

It was funny because 3 people working there owned or had owned a 240SX, and it was nice to chat with them about the venerable S-Chassis. Overall, while driving around and commuting, I’ve received a fair bit of attention with this car which is pleasantly amusing. From my standpoint, I see this as nothing more than a daily driver.

Here is the S13 as it sits today.

A significant amount of work has been invested into it already. So much for a “turnkey” car. There is still plenty more to do, but I think I’m going to slow down the pace now and just continue to drive it. The real fun should start when the rain season arrives this year.

To put it simply, the front wheel well and fender area of the 240SX is absolutely atrocious. It is quite obvious that Nissan designed this car to singularly remain at a factory high ride height, which translates to a LOT of work ahead for owners with intentions of lowering their cars. Unlike the RX-7, where the front wheel wells are already tidy and well clearanced by Mazda, the 240SX has wiring harnesses running through both wheel wells right on top of the tire AND a pinch weld/spine jutting down like a knife edge.

I picked my battles with this job and Justin was kindly enough to step in and accept the work. He has already gone through this before with his own 240SX’s, so having the relevant experience was a plus. The evening before, I dropped off the S13 to him.

The next morning, Justin got started. With the front wheels removed, rubbing in the wheel wells themselves could already be seen. Leading up to this, I drove in a subdued manner because I could hear rubbing when taking corners hard… but I didn’t know it was this bad. And this is at the front of the wheel wells and not even taking into consideration the wiring harness or spines.

These areas were persuaded into giving more room with a BFH. Any sign of alteration was masked by reapplying undercoating.

Circled in red are the spines that sorely needed to be moved out of the way, lest they shred the tires into pieces on hard bumps. The rearmost spine was likely not a major culprit, but we took care of it anyway.

People employ various methods, from shaving off the pinch welds completely to cutting them into sections and then bending up. The best approach seemed to be to hammer and bend them flat, intact.

With the front fender removed, the wiring harness that runs across can be seen – dangling precariously above where the tire would be and the top of the wheel well.

The objective was to stretch the harness over the lip above and ziptie into position.

At the same time, Justin also installed the Nagisa Fender Brace that I provided. Another notable difference with the RX-7 is in the S13’s chassis rigidity. When working on the latter previously, I noticed that if I jack up one corner, the doors would be tweaked from the flex and become harder to close. Whereas with the RX-7, the entire chassis stays solid to the point where the opposing corner will start to lift off the ground as well. This is why it was recommended to me to triangulate and reinforce the front fenders with braces.

Once the driver side was all sorted – rinse and repeat on the passenger side.

Finally, the fenders needed to be reinstalled and aligned.

MAJOR thanks to Justin for taking care of this for me. This job was undoubtedly a laborious feat and unromantic in its handling. The results are not glamorous, they are essentially invisible and unapparent, but as is the case… the subtle doings are usually the most important and most difficult, while amassing the least attention.

So yes, even though bystanders cannot visibly correlate the effort put into the front fenders and wheel wells, the functionality gained is far more worthwhile. The car no longer rubs on hard turns and is liberated from the dangers of cutting through the wiring harness or cutting chunks of rubber off the tires. In addition to getting all 4 fenders rolled flat, I’m a bit weary at all of the work required to properly run a lowered ride height with this car… at least that is all behind us now.

After driving around for a couple of weeks with the old JVC headunit already installed in the car and playing music off an auxiliary cord, I decided I needed the luxury of wireless, Bluetooth streaming. Originally, I wanted to redo the entire sound system like how I did with the Tacoma with an amplifier et al, but I could tell that the speakers were already upgraded by the previous owner. In fact, the quality of the sound was surprisingly nice… definitely good enough to keep and be able to keep things simple.

I could have just gotten away with a basic headunit that had Bluetooth functionality, but I couldn’t resist. I ended up getting the Alpine CDE-164BT which is a latest generation product that was released at the beginning of this year. For reference, I had the CDE-153BT previously in the Tacoma.

To begin, I needed to splice up the headunit’s wiring harness to the patch harness. I can’t even keep track of how many times I’ve done this task over the years, with so many different headunit installs.

Another reason why I went ahead with the headunit upgrade is because I wanted to clean up the horrid wiring inside the dash. The amount of bad wiring I’ve come across and had to redo is appalling.

Not only was the JVC’s harness done in a poor fashion, but there were half-done taps for the gauges with blobs of solder and the wires almost falling off.

All fixed.

New Alpine mounted and ready for streaming. It’s so much more pleasant not having to dig out your phone and plug in an auxiliary cable to the headphone jack. Ah, the luxuries.

Next, I replaced the shift boot with this one made out of black Bride material. I requested that the seams be hidden and made on the inside.

As another staple upgrade that I’ve done time and time again is replace the windshield wipers with frameless Bosch Icons. This is especially worthy because I fully intend on capitalizing on the rain season this year with this car.

Lastly, I bought this titanium drift button/spin knob/whatever-you-want-to-call-it for easier handbrake pulls.

After removing the vinyl grip around the e-brake, I could then pry out the tabs and release the spring. This allows for the e-brake to be engaged by just pulling the handle without needing to hold down the button. Locking the handle is done in the opposite manner – pushing the button outwards instead of depressing.

These drift buttons are made to be a press-on fit with the existing, plastic ones. The tolerances were tight and I needed to use a small hammer to persuade it into place.

Center console area looking much tidier now.

There wasn’t a sliver of a doubt – the corny, chrome Grip Royal steering wheel had to go. I was luckily able to offload it and at the same time source a Nardi Classic from the tried and true Yahoo Auctions Japan. I didn’t want to pay $300 for a brand new one, after all, this isn’t the RX-7. The one I picked up from YAJ was in good condition and had the silver anodized spokes I was looking for. My aim is to keep the theme of this car true to its vintage.

Installed. After removing the unsightly Defi gauges, I had to buy another steering column trim because the original one was riddled with mounting holes.

In order to make the horn button work with the quick release hub, I had to get crafty (ghetto) by jamming a bent paper clip into the pocket. This created a grounding contact for the backside of the horn button to the hub.

Next up, I finally threw in the D-Max checkered floor mats, which were one of the very first things I bought for the car along with the D-Max exhaust.

The driver side needed a slight trimming to get around the Cusco cage.

There are still a few more items to take care of, but the interior is coming together and gathering form.

The driveshaft certainly looked new and visibly showed no signs of defects. Once installed, I immediately noticed a vibration/rumbling through my seat exactly in the 3000 RPM to 3300 RPM range. Since I never really noticed the vibration previously, the immediate culprit was thought to be the new driveshaft.

Upon further thought, because the vibration occurs at the same RPM through all the gears, where the driveshaft will spin at different speeds depending on the gear, the issue should lie more upstream. More than likely, I’m thinking my transmission’s flywheel might be slightly off balance or there’s something going on with the clutch itself. Regardless, I wanted to find a resolution quickly and wasted no time actioning it.

On a Tuesday night, the day after the alignment, I drove back to my work’s parking after the gym and met up with my buddies Haroon and George. Huge thanks to Haroon for helping me underneath the car and George for making an emergency trip to his house to grab his floor jack. The prevailing motif with this S13 is the amount of good help I’ve been receiving from people around me, these moments do not go unnoticed.

This is what midnight on a Tuesday looked like.

Haroon with the prize in hand.

With the driveshaft evacuated from the car, we had to leave the rear on jackstands to put the transmission on a tilt, otherwise the the transmission fluid would have leaked out of the open output shaft.

Not exactly kosher leaving your car on jackstands overnight and through the next day at your work’s parking lot, but the deed needed to be done. I informed Security about it so my car wouldn’t end up getting towed.

The very next morning, I rushed the driveshaft over to a local driveline shop to get it examined. Later in the afternoon, they called me and said it started shaking violently as soon as they put it on their machine. The balancing or alignment is off by drastic amounts, apparently. The problem now was I needed to get my car going again and I sold my stock driveshaft on the spot when we removed to to a friend of Jeff’s. I quickly got on the phone and was able to retrieve it from Jeff… he even came to the rescue and was nice enough to deliver the stock driveshaft to me at my work so I could put it back on and get rolling again.

The private seller who sold me the Driveshaft Shop driveshaft was reluctant to take responsibility, so I had to contact the company directly. They were willing to take a look at it, even though I wasn’t the original purchaser. So the next day, I shipped it off to North Carolina and now its fate is to be determined.

The 3000 RPM vibration is greatly reduced, so I think the issue is both a combination of an off-balance driveshaft and something amiss at the front of the transmission.