1992 s13 240sx - Killin my car

I bought this car last year. 1992 ka24de. Been driving it the way i got it for a few months, and I finally decided to make a project out of it.


took this pic a few months ago before it started raining






Getting it drift ready.

Just started ripping out all the smelly insides, and I'm trying to get down to its minimum weight. .. That fat box I have in the back there weighs 65 pounds on my bathroom scale. It sounds very good, and my girl friend wants me to keep it too, haha. So im thinking of making a box to fit where the back seats went.


Being a total nubbin, I have no idea what I'm doing. I used a heat gun / scrapers on the tar in the back for an hour or two last night. And this morning I used a wire wheel grinder on the rest. Learning this morning dry ice would have made things a lot easier for me. xD

I just purchased some sandpaper and primer. Ill do my best to make it as clean as possible.. Id like everything to at least look like it was done properly. :rolleyes

I'm also running on a tight budget.

Project list:
1: Strip everything down bare, and primer it. ( no idea what kind of paint I'm suppose to use ) ( the guy at crappy tire told me this Armor Coat primer should work fine )

2: Parts as time and money allow them;
not sure what order I should go in;
kaas 2.0 way lsd (seems like the best choice)
coil overs
Engine.. Debating between sr and rb power
Bucket seats/ harness (no ideas yet)

3: Drift my pants off

Turns out you need a special kinda primer, called zinc chromate primer. Not just any primer because it wont stick good enough to bare aluminum. Its a thin yellow color and you need to hold it a bit farther back when applying because its a thicker paint.

I wasted a bunch of time with the cheap stuff, and had to grind it, sand it, wash it all over again. But was faster then the first time because the other stuff was scratching off so easy.


The zinc chromate primer, its suppose to be applied onto bare metal. So I sanded it down as much as I could get it.


First thin coat.


Dark outside, but happy with the results.

I used 1 can of the primer to coat everything. 2 light coats.

Took me 2 cans of paint to completely cover it all in the solid color. 2 coats.

So I spent most of Saturday evening ripping out the a/c from my engine, with the help of a fellow 240 owner. Of course I was the one getting dirty.
It didn't work anyway.

Crawling under the car we were able to remove the compressor WITHOUT draining and removing the radiator or taking off the bumper. I took off the sway bar, and it fell through with ease.

I was able to remove the condenser squeezing between the frame and radiator.

All the tubes I just hacked off with a small metal hacksaw....



Weighed it up on my bathroom scale to be just over 37 lbs.

I spent most of my Sunday working on the rest of the tar.

Ive tried both ways.... Dry ice and the heat gun. I prefer the heat gun...



3 bags of this stuff in total. Including the rear. Weighing up to around 25 lbs



Ill have to put aside an entire day to begin painting again. Another weekend project.

I might begin the custom back seat box this week to reinstall my sounds.

As for the feel of the car. It feels great! After removing the seats, carpet, tar, A/C and panels. The difference IS very noticeable. Handling and acceleration have been improved.

Update.. I forgot to take pics of the painting prep work.. But heres the finished product right after painting. :1

I spent most of my day making sure everything was covered and clean prior to painting.







Happy with the results..

lookin good!
i would say that your parts order is pretty good, but from what i saw at the first practice, i would start on your suspension asap. and maybe wait on the lsd seeing as you have a stock vlsd. but judging from how much your car was leaning at the track maybe some swaybars and coilovers are in order.

good job on the interior. you might also want to think about making it easy to remove that sub for track days.

Well all that work was done a couple months ago. Since then I was hooked up with a deal on a brand new kaaz 2.0 lsd



Took roughly 9 hours and a little elbow grease, on a sunday afternoon to install this beast in the garage.



Thats my new kaaz 2.0 installed in the pumpkin.

After which, I took it to a parking lot in the middle of the night. Following the instructions I performed figure 8's for half an hour to break it in. >.<

That last practice was fun, but im going to have to get some treaded tires for next time. Bald tires and a wet tarmac sure is a difficult combo.... Of course this goes without say.

Well lucky for me. My work has a welding shop full of pipe bending and cutting machines. So naturally I took advantage of this by making myself a diy cage.

After measuring up the inside of my car, trying to remember my trigonometry. I decided to dive in and start cutting, bending and welding pipe.



I started with the main hoop and modeled everything else off of that. Before I welded everything in place, I made good use of the powder coater. (:







All the work was done after hours. Buddy welded it up for me, seeing as how, he welds everyday. And I wouldn't exactly trust my high school welding experience over my life.

looking good


are you still running stock suspention?
and are you still running the Hicas system?

If I can save up any money.. Suspension is defiantly coming next.

Honestly, I don't know if the hicas still works or not. I haven't taken the time to check. I doubt it still works. Just excess weight. Id love to rip it out.

Merry xmas eve

The Switch wrote:

If I can save up any money.. Suspension is defiantly coming next.

i've got some stock suspension you can have. cut the springs and slam your car.

it takes like 20 minutes to swap suspension on these cars. do it.

nice build thread! I still need to remove my sound deadening, dont have the right tools yet tho.

Im not sure how the s13 hicas works, but I had a r32 gts-t a few years back and I bought a hicas delete bar from a shop in vancouver that worked great. It was about 100 bucks i think, but it looked like something you could easily build yourself.

building a canel bar is really easy i build one for my 240 and it worked great you just need soem round stock tubing and some flat steel find some plugs to stop hicas lines and ill get the measurments . i have them at home and ill be back in a few days

yeah i have it in my 91, i just want to rip it all out.