Not so N/A S13 anymore...

Haha I did l but then decided against it as I'm not touching anything that's not broken hahaha, also it means the wiring would have to run backwards or I'd have to trim the plastic back

 

Had a day on the car yesterday(well, it was supposed to be, and then both my mum and dad visited and within a few hours of each other so that took some time away lol)

Modified my battery bracket and added 2 extra little tabs so that the battery can't move


Bolted up the engine loom and also tucked my brake line in there aswell


These fancy things arrived, Amy bought me these as a fathers day present, just a few extra little things that will help me with fabrication etc - haven't had chance to have a play with them yet though


Made up some intercooler brackets to support the intercooler(obvs...)


Finally unwrapped my Nardi! Its only been in this Next bag for the best part of 8 months!


Just after tea, a guy turned up at the front door, eventually he convinced me and I ended up buying these off him...(Damn cold callers!!)


I ended then spending from 8.30pm until 11.07pm outside, taking each coilover off and stripping it down, wire brushing and copper greasing and then re-fitting and setting the correct ride height...also fitted the new wheels(might aswell right?)


This came in very handy trying to fit coilovers in the pitch black.

Also - Amy pointed out earlier in the night that my rear lights aren't very bright - anybody got any suggestions on how I can make my rear side/brake lights any brighter? These are normal bulbs so anything that will give off more of a "IM HERE! PLEASE DONT CRASH INTO ME FROM BEHIND!" sort of appeal then that would be great...



Getting extremely close to being on the road now!

 

Ye! I have been aware, but I knew the car was going off the road shortly after so didn't bother lol, but now its going back on the road I want to get it sorted

 

Small update...

Wired up the horn using the old light washer button - Amy had the genius idea of removing the pin using tweezers and then soldering in some extra cable to lengthen the horn wire and then fit it back - works a treat now! Just need to label it


Onto the engine, now its running fine, I started bleeding it up and then noticed that there was a pool of water underneath the car near the gearbox, so was confused, then after looking realised its the pipes going into the heater matrix, I remember fitting them and thinking that they were a bit too big...anyway, duct tape to the rescue, put a few layers around the little nozzle and then slotted the pipe back over and tightened it up, works fine!


Finally got the cold side intake pipe all welded up by a local company(Weld AC) - only cost a tenner and was done ready for me to pickup next day, great service!


Took the car for a spin up our back avenue to see what its like, and its ace, very responsive and picks up well! Heres a very short clip of Amy recording with her broken iPhone...

After this, parked back up on the drive and noticed that the power steering fitting was leaking - ARGHHHH - Just one thing after another lol


Onto the rear light issue...Norfy made a suggestion of fitting aluminium tape to the inside of the bulb holders to try and reflect more light

After spending an hour n half doing this to both drivers and passengers, refitted them(Aluminium tape is a pain as you have to rip it off the reel and then peel the back off which is hard to do! its also very sticky!!) Can't say its made much difference but every little helps right?


on the subject of lights, Amy bought me these LED Strips for Xmas - I'm going to try and wire these in on the front and cut a slit in the bumper so that you can see them which will be cool

bought some proper connectors aswell rather than just push male/female ends that are crimped on...


Lastly, now the car is lowered onto the ground and ride height is pretty much set(as low as it'll go and then raise it 5mm either side) I noticed theres a slight issue with the tyre to arch gap... the previous owner of the shell had already done the arches, but obviously wasn't anywhere near remotely low, so it looks like im going to have to re-do these and raise them another 2 inches or so...woohoo...



This is how the car sits at the moment, looking a bit sorry for itself - hopefully we'll be getting somewhere soon!

 

Carrying on from last time...

Tuesday started off with loading the car, taking 4 wheels down to Target Tyres and getting the Nankang's swapped off of the Works onto the Rota's so I can put them on the front, also took my turbo elbow and downpipe off and took them to Weld AC so that he could remove the flange and raise the exhaust, and also removed my power steering line and took it to a local Hydraulics place(JLR)


Power steering is now fixed! Took the whole pipe off including the banjo it bolts to coming out of the power steering pump and took it down to JLR. He said that the end currently on would never seal as it was way too big, and that because it was a japanese banjo size, it wasnt something he had in stock, he had one that was around 1-2mm smaller, and he said that he could fit that and drill it out so that it fit, he did that and within a few hours I was back, collected the pipe, then ended up spending 2 hours that night re-fitting the pipe due to the awkward angle that it goes into the steering rack. Fucking finally!! These late night occurances with the flash light are becoming quite common now...hopefully not for long


Then re-fitted the exhaust elbow and downpipe and got a picture before and after of the exhaust - it now sits level with the chassis rails which im pretty happy with, now just the back of the exhaust around the rear subframe scrapes haha so thats next on the list


The brake brackets for the front turned up and also the fuel pump plug cover - I fitted the brake brackets and Amy fitted the fuel pump plug cover so thats 2 more things ticked off the never ending list



Whilst I was on my break at work on Nights, I found a quite conference room(tbh its night time so they were all quiet...) and got all my wiring stuff out so that I could fit these plugs to my new front indicators, fitted the plugs and they are now ready to go on the car once I manage to find out which resistor I will need



Then I spent the rest of tuesday re-doing my rear arches and gaining some well needed clearance...


Started out by masking up each arch and using a tape measure and a marker pen, measuring 4cm from the current lip and drawing a line(extremely neat and perfect as always, just don't zoom in...).


I then got the angle grinder and cut along said line, and hammer away where the outer skin was welded to the inner skin


This revealed the inner arch, to which I marked up line every inch or so and then just cut up each line to meet the outer skin


Made sure I was making the most of out my cutting discs though!


The hammer then came out and I folded each of the lips up and over the outer skin



The welder saw some daylight and I tacked up each lip to the outer skin, I didn't want to fully weld them as it would warp the metal too much. Not overly happy with the outcome, stupidly MIG welding outside, I didn't increase my gas flow so it kept spattering and blowing holes even with tacks which was extremely annoying so these will be done again at some point properly and will be alot neater.



Then went to Halfords and bought some brushable seam sealer


and did both arches so they are both now fully sealed and water tight etc


Also fixed the rear lights issue, bridged the wires from the original side/brake lights and put them into the fog light socket for either side - they are now super bright and will work a treat


Moved the fog light to one of the reverse lights, currently the picture below is with a standard clear reverse light in, so once the red LED arrives it'll look perfectly fine


Fitted new bulbs to the front lights aswell which will hopefully make things a little bit brighter!


Alignment and MOT booked for next Thursday morning first thing which is exciting, hopefully it will pass with flying colours and there will be no issues

 

Past week has felt pretty hectic but hasn't been that bad tbh...

Bought myself a dremel so that I could fit an LED rear number plate strip into my bumper... Cut out the slit


Then used good old super glue to stick the light in from above so that it doesn't stick out that much and hopefully makes it nice and clean



Something that had been bugging me for days was that I had a few holes in my rear quarter from where somebody had previously had overfenders, drilled out the rivets and they had fallen and left a gap... there was 2 on either side...not big, but not small enough to just put some filler in(trust me, I tried and failed) and I couldn't get to the back of them due to the rollcage/seat etc...

Whilst in my shed, I was going through my tub of bolts for something or other and came across this threaded bar...

So, first step - grind flat all the current rivets there so I dont have to fill them holes, and then clean up the metal around the empty holes...

Step 2 - get the welder out, this time I increased the gas flow so I didnt keep blowing holes in the metal! Doing my rear arches I realised this AFTER I had finished which was a bit annoying...

Step 3 - drill the holes out to 8mm so that the threaded bar would fit inside the hole

Step 4 - stick threaded bar in the holes and tac it in place

Step 5 - cut off unnecessary bar

Step 6 - finish welding around the bar and grind flat the left over ugly bits

Step 7 - spray black


Overall this came out better than I expected and I'm rather happy with the results

Then it came to fitting the overfenders - taped them all up and got the drill/rivet gun out


Did 1 rivet and then the end that comes off in the gun got stuck and was made un-useable!!


Trip back to Toolstation and when I took it back, the guy knew straight away and he said "yep, they are shit, not sure why we even sell them" - Great, nice one for saying that when I asked to buy it! Refund and then went to Screwfix and got another one, worked a treat and got the overfenders on

Went about fitting the rear bumper, but this time, this shell didn't have the rear towing eye cut off - so I had to get the dremel out again and cut a slit in the rear bumper to allow the towing eye to stick out - worked a treat!


Thats about it really - test fitted the shitty fitting sideskirts and also the dmax wing and got a picture(excuse the dirtiness - our back garden is currently like a building site and extremely dusty!) I can't wait to get this out on the road/track and enjoy it! It looks so much better than I had hoped!


MOT on Thursday - just front indicators/bumper to fit and I think thats about it - hoping it passes as I want to get this road worthy and then have a week off lol! Non-stop since god knows when on this thing...

 

Only a small update this time...

Spent Wednesday morning fitting new front indicators(Land Rover jobbies) - Wedged them in the side and used some of the strongest glue known to man, these are only temporary so only put a bit on top and bottom so they will come out if needed


And this is what they look like fitted, personally I dont mind them.


I also wanted to modify my fuel filler cap so that it sat flush with the overfenders as it's quite annoying when theres a big gap, and since i've got a welder now, why not!

The grinder and tape measure came out...

Some marking happened


Some magnetising happened


Some welding happened


Finished product, not great and its not finished etc but it works and sits flush, the only problem now is that when you push the flap to open the filler cap, it doesn't pop open due to there being no solid surface for the metal clip/spring to sit against, so its currently a 2 man job to open the fuel filler cap lol



Thursday morning came around and I was nervous, drove the car down to Target Tyres to get the car aligned, involving taking the front and rear bumper off lol, but we got there in the end!


Put the bumpers back on and then literally took it next door for its MOT...after a few advisories, it was time!!


It passed!! I am so pleased after all the hard work Me, Amy and friends/family have put into this!!!


Whilst up on the ramp for its MOT, I had a little look underneath and noticed that my power steering rack is leaking, looks like its from the top part that the column bolts to? If anybody has just this top part of a cheap rack they fancy selling me, let me know please - S13 rack!


Took the car home and got a picture, decided to remove the 25mm Front Spacers as I didn't like the poke, and already had -6 degrees of camber up front...


Friday morning, Me and Amy took the car for a spin over to Brighouse to visit our bodyshop guys, they were mega happy to see us(maybe?) and we got discussing the work required on the car etc, after some ideas thrown back and forth, we set a plan, and I asked when they could do it, got a reply saying "Drop it with us tomorrow morning and you can pick it up the following Saturday". Instantly bit their hand off!

Friday night we had a local car meet that I went to with one of my friends in his TD04 1.8 Mx5 running around 240hp, definately a very fast car haha


Somebody also got a picture of the little Marvel wobble heads that we've stuck to the dash!


So the car is now at the bodyshop and should hopefully come back all one colour and looking freshhhhh! I am so excited, need to do a few other bits and bobs now but nothing major and I just want to drive it now!! Super happy...

The next big thing Im going to be buying is a boost controller, been looking at Gizzmo V4 - I had a V2 in my old S13 and it worked pretty well once you got your head around it

 

Update...

Bobbed down to Within Fields Garage on Wednesday and got a picture of the car pre-paint


And now post-paint! Super happy with it!! Especially now I've lowered the front down by 20mm as well, sits very nice and a useable height whilst not being 4x4 spec...



Amy had a friend round on Sunday with their kids, so I had some spare time and got some bits done on the car.

First up was fitting new top stud nuts as I was missing one from each side and I didn't like that they didn't match, ordered these off eBay for a few quid, every little counts right?


Next was getting my Dmax boot lip fitted, nipped to Halfords and bought some sticky stuff and with the help of Amy and Lisa, got this on and clamped down, left for many hours to seal properly


Also an advisory on the MOT was I had a bit of play in my front right drivers wheel bearing, so a friend had one spare that he sold me for a tenner and I got that fitted, perfect!


The second advisory on the MOT was I had a leaking gasket from the exhaust, which I was sort of already aware of due to the state of the gasket when fitting the exhaust, again ordered one for a few quid off eBay and got that fitted


Been meaning to sort this for ages, my old doors were very rusty and had started letting water in which was far from ideal.


Amy eventually pushed me to sort it and a pair of rust free doors came up and I got them as part of a deal for my old wheels, they were fitted when the car got re-sprayed but I didn't get the keys for the locks and also it meant my central locking regulator thingy was on the old doors, I was dreading this as I imagined the door handles being a nightmare to get off, but they came off pretty easy actually and it was all done and dusted within an hour.


Although whilst doing this I saw this inside the driver's door on the lock, it was disgusting and my hand got caked in the gunk stuff, although I'm guessing somebody has put it there to grease up the lock?


Something I've been meaning to do for a while was sort out the passenger seat so that I can put Scarlett's seat in the car using the standard seat belt etc, fitted that around the roll cage but I had to remove the passenger seat and modify the bracket that the clip bolted to as it was too far forward. Forgot to get any pictures of this really as I was short on time and rushing. You can see on the pic below where the old bracket was(just to the right of the clip) and where it is now, unfortunately couldn't get the seat belt through the side hole but since it'll have a car seat in it, this will be more than fine anyway


Amy bought me a Groot sticker so got that on!


She also bought me some more figures to go on the dashboard/around the car, but haven't had chance to stick them on ye, Groot at the back was bigger than expected so don't think he'll be going in the car unfortunately...


Next up, the clutch is having a slight issue at the moment, it struggles to go into gear sometimes, especially reverse, the biting point is right at the bottom of the pedal and you have to push it right to the floor to get it into any gear, so decided to re-bleed the clutch last night, have only driven it to work this morning but wasn't even thinking about it so will try on the way home and see if I can notice any difference, if not then I need to start looking at other stuff(hopefully not pulling the box would be ideal!)



Daily driving the car at the moment and trying to iron out any issues I come across but so far its behaving itself! The only real issue being the power steering rack leaking from the top...but that's it, no more water leaks as far as I'm aware and no oil leaks either fortunately!

 

Ye that's been mentioned on Facebook so gonna give it a try tomorrow

 

Following on...

Adjusted the clutch pedal and its maybe made a very slight difference in that it goes into gear sometimes alot easier, but still struggle to get into reverse, but at the moment its liveable and hopefully won't cause any long-term damage?

Also been dealing with an idle mis-fire and also under light acceleration the car would mis-fire and not really do anything until you applied more throttle then it would jerk into life, after some facebook diagnosing, somebody made the suggestion of it being the Lambda sensor, I had a spare so swapped it and the issue is now fixed thankfully! It was extremely annoying but glad its now sorted, no pictures but swapping a lambda wasnt exactly challenging haha


Had been discussing stuff with Josh of Graphix-D all week about spicing the car up a bit, after a bit of messing around we came up with the following:


After doing the school run Friday morning, me and Amy immediately headed over to meet him and got there about 10, Josh started applying stickers straight away! So we nipped to Tesco for drinks


Came back and Josh was pretty much done so we got some pictures and headed home. Love the look of the car now, the orange vinyl just gives it a breath of fresh air and its something i've wanted to do for a while... I'm liking the single spokes on the wheels alot at the moment, but if I get bored I can always just remove them easily enough which is handy.


Then I was working nights all weekend, but lucky for me, I get a 2 hour break each shift, so I used my break on Saturday night to fit my new boost controller(Gizzmo IBC V4) in the multi-story car park at work.


I can't describe how compact this little setup is! I have included a picture of the actual digital controller compared to my thumb! It fits nicely just on top of the steering column surround and I can see it inbetween the steering wheel which is ideal for setting it up!


Wasn't too painful to install, an ignition live, earth and then connect the solenoid along with a pressure reading from the engine...fairly straight forward

Don't worry, this was just a temp fix with tape until I got my drill, this is now mounted securely and most important of all, centrally!


Sunday I will be setting it up properly and running it at around 1 bar boost which will hopefully make the car extremely perky and very fast! Only running 0.6 bar at the mo and its fast(compared to the DE lol)


I had noticed that my temp gauge never came off cold, initially thought it would be the thermostat being stuck open, so removed that and tested it in a jug of boiling water from the kettle:


Moved freely as you'd expect from an engine that only has 50k on it...but I ordered a new one before I did this so that was a waste of money. My thoughts then turned to the water temp sensor that sends the reading to the dash, tested this with another spare I had lying around and obviously no change


Then after speaking with Norfy, he said that I needed a CA Temp Sensor due to running CA clocks...so I've now ordered a CA one which will hopefully arrive on Monday

Decided to put everything back together with the old thermostat in(due to it being OEM so more reliable) - fitted everything up with Instant Gasket sealant and started filling the rad and noticed LOADS of water pouring out from the thermo housing like it wasn't even tight... Took it off and found this:


FFS! Just what I need as dailying the S13 currently... Apparently this is caused by the thermostat dropping off its ledge when tightening up the neck to the housing and it leaves the bottom hole at a funny angle and thus cracks... straight on the phone, got hold of Saule who hooked me up with Woocash in Appleton just outside of Manchester, he said he'd be at his unit at 11pm that night, so I headed over and collected it, got home for half past midnight and then up again for work at 6am - ideal...

Took my break the next day at work and rushed home and fitted up the thermostat etc and made sure there was no leaks, so happy with that and done and dusted - just waiting on my new CA Sensor to arrive, fit that and then hopefully i'll finally have a working temp gauge!!


Whilst doing the above, I also ordered a new fuel filter and fitted that.


Whilst doing it I noticed that the return fuel line off the engine was looking a bit worse for wear, so removed it and replaced it with a new piece of pipe for peace of mind, don't fancy that splitting on track!



Not much left now, need to set the boost controller up, fix/replace my leaking steering rack and also get the front re-aligned since I've lowered it and messed about with the camber.

 

Sooo....huge update...

Got my boost controller setup and its running 1bar boost(there abouts) - the car goes like shit off a shovel now, although I want to get it properly mapped on its current setup as its overfuelling like mad, and £15 of Shell V-Power gets me like 60 miles max? even driving like a granny...

3 out of 4 of my dials now work - woohoo!


Fed up of the bumper sagging like mad so ordered these bumper quick release catch thingys and also ordered some exhaust heat wrap as the passenger footwell gets rather warm on a long drive as the downpipe is basically sitting on the underside of the car lol...

Fitted the bumper catches(took all of 5 minutes)


Then on Friday night, helped Jamie strip his CA down to find out why Cyl #2 was low on compression - stripped it down and found alot of pitting marks on the outer edge of all the piston tops and a bit of scoring to the bores in the block so not sure on his plans but maybe a strip down and re-hone/rebuild with new 2nd hand pistons, or if anybody has a cheap block etc then he might be more favourable for that option...


Also gave the car a quick wash using Halfords Wash and Wax and a hose...



Sorry for lying, I've done jack all as there isn't much to do if im honest...haven't fitted the exhaust wrap yet, thats a job for either this week or next...