kingzy
Member
Okay so after owning and working on the car for several months now and reading through dozens of threads on here for inspiration I finally figured I'd start up my own.
I've been following drifting for a good 5 years now (I'm 19 years old), and ever since I went to my first event and started watching various videos on the internet such as various grassroots events, D1GP, D1SL, BDC, Formula Drift and more recently IDC and D1NZ I knew it was something I had to do, and for many years I have dreamt of having a car to do it in, in particularly an S13.
With S-Body prices becoming more and more ridiculous the past year or so, I never thought an S13 would be a car I could afford any time soon, but it turns out I've been driving past one for several years without even knowing it was there!
A little about the car, its a 1993 UK spec 200sx S13, running the CA18DET with 130k on the clock. My dad was told via a work colleague of his of the car, and it was literally located 2 minutes down the road from my Grandparents house in Woodbridge, Suffolk ( I live and work just down the road in Ipswich)m so here it is!
So a little about the car. The previous owner bought it to drift it a long time ago, however his circumstances with his other half changed, and the car was pretty much abandoned outside. Before I bought the car it had been sat for 6 years! It has been through several owners in its life, but has never been messed with. It was fully standard, with all interior etc. The bloke had lost all love for it and wanted the small sum of £500 for the car, so I jumped at the chance!
With no access to a trailer, and the car having no MOT, I had to arrange it to be towed to my work, who kindly let me keep it there for a couple of weeks (which ended up turning into months) whilst work began on the car. After a few months of waiting, the car was finally with us at the start of this year (Jan 2016) after originally going to look at the car in October 2015.
We immediately pushed the car in and got it on the ramp, due to its mileage and no history or knowledge of the timing belt being done we thought it would be best to change that first!
With it being at my work there was only so much time to work on it each lunchtime and after work, but the timing belt was done and then eventually got round to doing all the oil changes also. Whilst the car was on the ramp, it was time too look underneath! It wasn't the cleanest to say the least, but with it sat for the past 6 years I wasn't expecting much to be honest... Basically, the lump sum of it was all the usual stuff for an S Body, Sills, underside, strut top mounts and various other small places were rusty.
Anyway, when we came to start the car, it was Idling like a bag of dicks to put it likely. Misfired badly on idle, wasn't as bad on throttle. So further investigation was needed! We did a compression test to find out that 2 cylinders were very low on compression (sadly didn't record the readings but they were low!). So from this point on things escalated rather quickly and in a direction I initially wasn't planning on going...
Cylinder head off! Valves and Valve seats were very dirty.
Soon followed the Block, Prop and Gearbox.
We then proceeded to tear down the block fully, found the rings were okay, no sign of major damage on the pistons or bores either. To be honest we never really 100% found out what was causing the low compression, either way we decided on a full rebuild there and then!
So with the engine out, the car was pushed back outside and I then began the stripping out the interior one lunchtime at a time...
Dreadful job of sound deadening removal!
I've been following drifting for a good 5 years now (I'm 19 years old), and ever since I went to my first event and started watching various videos on the internet such as various grassroots events, D1GP, D1SL, BDC, Formula Drift and more recently IDC and D1NZ I knew it was something I had to do, and for many years I have dreamt of having a car to do it in, in particularly an S13.
With S-Body prices becoming more and more ridiculous the past year or so, I never thought an S13 would be a car I could afford any time soon, but it turns out I've been driving past one for several years without even knowing it was there!
A little about the car, its a 1993 UK spec 200sx S13, running the CA18DET with 130k on the clock. My dad was told via a work colleague of his of the car, and it was literally located 2 minutes down the road from my Grandparents house in Woodbridge, Suffolk ( I live and work just down the road in Ipswich)m so here it is!
So a little about the car. The previous owner bought it to drift it a long time ago, however his circumstances with his other half changed, and the car was pretty much abandoned outside. Before I bought the car it had been sat for 6 years! It has been through several owners in its life, but has never been messed with. It was fully standard, with all interior etc. The bloke had lost all love for it and wanted the small sum of £500 for the car, so I jumped at the chance!
With no access to a trailer, and the car having no MOT, I had to arrange it to be towed to my work, who kindly let me keep it there for a couple of weeks (which ended up turning into months) whilst work began on the car. After a few months of waiting, the car was finally with us at the start of this year (Jan 2016) after originally going to look at the car in October 2015.
We immediately pushed the car in and got it on the ramp, due to its mileage and no history or knowledge of the timing belt being done we thought it would be best to change that first!
With it being at my work there was only so much time to work on it each lunchtime and after work, but the timing belt was done and then eventually got round to doing all the oil changes also. Whilst the car was on the ramp, it was time too look underneath! It wasn't the cleanest to say the least, but with it sat for the past 6 years I wasn't expecting much to be honest... Basically, the lump sum of it was all the usual stuff for an S Body, Sills, underside, strut top mounts and various other small places were rusty.
Anyway, when we came to start the car, it was Idling like a bag of dicks to put it likely. Misfired badly on idle, wasn't as bad on throttle. So further investigation was needed! We did a compression test to find out that 2 cylinders were very low on compression (sadly didn't record the readings but they were low!). So from this point on things escalated rather quickly and in a direction I initially wasn't planning on going...
Cylinder head off! Valves and Valve seats were very dirty.
Soon followed the Block, Prop and Gearbox.
We then proceeded to tear down the block fully, found the rings were okay, no sign of major damage on the pistons or bores either. To be honest we never really 100% found out what was causing the low compression, either way we decided on a full rebuild there and then!
So with the engine out, the car was pushed back outside and I then began the stripping out the interior one lunchtime at a time...
Dreadful job of sound deadening removal!
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