So yeah I alluded to getting another car in commandersafi's thread...

you all know me too well






I've been wanting a 240sx Convertible for a while, I love the way they look, they're rare (less than 8000 worldwide) and they're cheap (you can get a flawless one for $3K-$5K).

I've never really liked convertibles but once I saw a few of these I really wanted one.

I wanted a dirt cheap fixer upper, preferably one with a blown motor since I had a flawless motor from my black car.

A few sub $1000 verts with blown motors slipped through my hands, then I saw an off-handed comment by someone on my local club forum that his brother was going to sell his vert soon for cheap since he moved across the country and just wanted some cash to help pay for his new car.

I got in contact with him straight away, and the following Saturday the misses and I drove down to CT and picked it up for $500...

The body is a little banged up but the drive train is fantastic, not to mention the undercarrage is clean and completely rust free.

I'll probably sell my other motor and use the money from that to help fix up the body.

We put the car in my fiancee's name and this is going to be a project between the two of us which I think will be really fun.

one cool thing about this car is that 100% of the convertibles came with automatic transmissions from the factory. This one was converted to a 5-speed by the previous owner... the parts to do that are worth $500 alone... after driving it around the block my fiancee looked at me and said "I feel like we'd be stupid NOT to buy it"

nice find, can't wait to see what you do with it. I think you have a few too many projects.

Very nice! Do you have any specific plans for this one?

I KNOW I have a few too many projects




beyond fixing it up we're looking at converting to a Silvia front and getting it painted a different color, beyond that, really just enjoying it and having fun working on it together.

ah a sileighty project, nice one.

great project.

Actually sileighty is only for the 240sx hatchback with front end conversion.

^ actually that's a silforty

Silvia + 180SX = sileighty
Silvia + 240SX = silforty

180SX never made it to the US. It was sold here as a 240SX instead.

yup thats a 180sx (here anyway), not only that, but we got the real engine, the SR20

sileighty or silforty, same car, this one just happens to be a convertible, so sileighty cabriolet, if you must.

GrimD,

sr20...but all things held equal...an 'American' Ka-T...will have more torque than an sr20det.

edit: Ka-T stands for turbo. ANd the engine in american 240sx is labeled Ka24DE...hence KA-T for turboed versions

^
· KA24E (SOHC)
· KA24DE (DOHC)
· KA24DET (DOHC Turbo)


Sadly, the one I had was a non-turbo coupe

. . . but I had the HUD on the windshield which was a very nice feature.

HUD = Heads Up Display

That convertible is a rare find indeed. . . especially for that price.

They never made the KA with a turbo from the Factory
KA-T builds (whether KA24DE-T or KA24E-T) are all custom setups
it's gaining a lot of popularity with people who own these cars because KA motors are cheap and plentiful and SR's are getting harder to source here in the US (and harder to import and run with the law finally catching wind and cracking down on them)

the HUD is a cool feature... if I happen upon a HUD cluster cheap I'll probably swap it in

as for the SilEighty/SilForty BS...

"SilEighty" started as a nick name in Japan for silvia front 180SXs when drifters messed up their front end they'd often swap to a silvia front since it was direct bolt on and the silvia fronts where cheaper, lighter and more plentiful. A tuner shop eventually made a number of OFFICIAL "SilEighty"s complete with new badges (check yahoo auctions Japan, you can usually find the original SilEighty sales brochure for sale there).

Most of the people I know in the 240 scene stopped caring about the stupid nick names a while back...

I've heard the term but I don't know anyone who refers to a silvia front coupe as a "sil-forty"

some other fun nicknames
-One-Via: S13 coupe chassis with pop up headlight front, essentially the inverse of a sil-eighty
-Strawberry Face: any car with an S15 conversion (because "15" in Japanese sounds similar to "strawberry")
-Pig Nose: early period S13s with pop-ups since they had 2 vents in the front that looked like a pig's snout
-Zenki: Japanese for "early period" used to refer to the early period of a particular chassis, for instance a pignose is a zenki S13, also the S14s similar to mine (with the front that looks like a corolla) are known as zenki s14s
-Chuki: Japanese for "middle period" used to refer to the middle period of a particular chassis
-Kouki: Japanese for "late period" used to refer to the end period of a particular chassis. 180SXs that came out in 96-98 that had redesigned tailights and body trim are referred to as kouki 180SXs similarly the mean looking S14s with projector headlights are called kouki S14s

spent some time cleaning it up and going over what needs to be fixed

the rips in the top from the scumbag who broke into the car:


they still need to be sealed before they're water tight.

the Awesome patch job done on the EGR tube... I can't understand why it would be leaking?!?

http://solid-orange.com/wp-content/uploads.../vert_egr_2.jpg

cleaning out the random junk on the floor I noticed a cotter pin... hmm that looks like it belongs to one of the pedals... yup the clutch pedal was missing the one... oh yeah, this is probably why the clutch is slipping a little and can't be adjusted much


the cmc doesn't look to pretty either
http://solid-orange.com/wp-content/uploads...rt_clutch_2.jpg
no matter, I've got a like-new CMC in the garage and "d3m14n" from my car club is hooking me up with a new Stainless Steel Clutch Line

that pedal doesn't look to pretty either, I might consider picking up a better looking one.

The brake pedal wasn't really finished either when they did the 5-speed swap

I have a spare pedal cover and I'll be cutting that down and cover it proper

The wipers were horrible on the ride home when I picked it up so I bought new ones... taking the old ones off I noticed this

how the f*ck do you bend a wiper blade?

Do you like the spiffy top pump/motor assembly?

That's probably why it doesn't go up and down on it's own... Nissan wants $1300 for a new one, but checking Car-Part.com I can source one from a junk yard from $50-$400 which is much more reasonable, I sent out a few emails for shipping quotes.

the stereo wires that I tied up to keep from flapping around the trunk they were stripped and just hanging lose...

I found the other end of the power wire and thankfully it was disconnected from the battery. I cut it off where it passed through the firewall since it was routed through the passenger's side wheel well I'll fish the rest of it out later.

The trunk was nasty when I opened it up... the spare tire well had about a half gallon of hydaulic fluid (probably from when they removed the top pump), and it was filled with mud and dirt too because the full sized spare was swapped out with another wheel and wasn't ever cleaned off when put in the trunk
At this point I think the trunk looks pretty clean for having had nasty oil and dirt all over the place

there are some spots around the edges that are stained... not sure how to get that out, or if I should even care.

The car cam with a boot for the top when it's down (worth about $250 alone) boot was dirty and shoved in the back stuck between the front and back seats, thankfully undamaged, and cleaning out the trunk I found the boot bag (which is an even more rare find than the boot itself), also thankfully undamaged and free of oil


I have 2 sandwich bags full of bolts and other parts that I assume came off the car somewhere, I found them all over the place tucked into corners and under seats, in ashtrays etc... not sure where they all go yet but I'll figure it out lol

haha that is the most fucked up egr pipe I have seen. My god. Get a new one promptly. there are like 5 hose clamps on there. ha.

Hmmm....Whats this EGR you speak of? That must be that thing i threw out a LONG time ago

well since I have a spare motor exactly like this one sitting in my garage (the one that came out of my other 240) I happen to have all the spare motor parts I need

getting that pipe off will be a bitch though.

I also ordered an EGR block-off plate from ebay

that egr pipe is fucked

My dad had one of these- I think he blew the engine to hell and got rid of it. It was indeed a fun car though. I had no idea they rare.