Keeve's Lowstyle S13

Guess I'll do a boring text update with my plans over the next few weeks in a wintery highlands.

After STL3's fuelling issues I've sourced a new fuel sender to try and fix the issue where it doesn't show me how much fuel I have.
I'm now paranoid about missing issues from a few runs at STL3 where in high rev's my car sounded like arse so I've started building VAG conversion looms.
I'm planning re-doing my mid-mount Intercooler situation so I've bought 2 90 degree aluminium elbows and a mate is going to weld them onto my Apexi intercooler.
I've got a weird idle dipping issue I've put up with since the SR20 swap, I've bought 5 meters of Vac line to replace all vac lines to see if this helps my situation.
Need to finish swapping over my ignition barrel so one key fits all locks.
I'm getting a polishing kit from my old boy for Christmas so will give my black VSXX a run over and finally paint them silver.

Finally I'm sitting my B+E trailer course on Thursday/Friday. With living full time in London driving the car to events isn't really on the cards so being able to trailer with the car being stored in Scotland will be much easier, less stressful and I'm finally going to be able to drive without giving a fuck about the car getting smashed and having to drive home with a broken motor.

Oh yeah and I’ve bought this.

 

Small update whilst I’m sat doing fuck all.

Got home to the car looking very neglected since last time I was home almost 4 months ago.







I left the car with a half drilled out ignition barrel to get all 4 locks working off the same key. Battered that out with relative ease and swapped it over but then realised I have no idea where the other 2 spare keys are.... At least I only have 1 key to loose now.

So something thats annoyed me for a bit is the wiring for battery relocation had 3 wires joined together by a bolt hidden inside an old immobiliser box. So i bought this replacement box and put the join inside there instead. Will sort out a bit of a nicer way to secure it than a rotten old piece of immobiliser haha.



With that done I moved onto my fuel sensor, since I hit the wall at Rockingham it was sticking in odd places and not reading properly. Swapped over the float and re-soldered the wire (felt dodgy AF soldering a fuel soaked part...) chucked all that back in.

As I was doing the fueltank shit the courier arrived with my Coilpacks for my VW conversion so fired that on.



I've been worried about these as I've made about 6 now for people based off an S14 loom and then an S13 loom measurement to compensate for the difference (Didn't have an engine to hand when building). Everyone's test fitted without coilpacks and were happy but i wanted to get hands on mine and be sure it was 100% fitting. Couldn't be happier with the fit other than the fact I've been branding these looms and you would never see the branding apart from when its off the car haha.



Finally some pieces to the TD05 puzzle are arriving. Just need some 740cc Nismo injectors and a Nistune board then i can start looking into finding a way for someone to map it when I'm in the middle of nowhere.



It's a 1.5bar spring inside it though so will have to adjust to make it 0.9 I'd say.

Finally with all that done I was going to fire it up and get some driving done in it but it had other plans.



Battery had died, less than 10 months old. Excellent. Also wouldn't hold enough charge to be jumped from my old dears Aygo so had to give up for the night.

 

Character as in neglected for massive periods of time? haha.

Will update now before I have a heap to do at once.

Punted the Duracell Battery back to ECP, went for a known good car brand now, Bosch. Fired up no bother now. Was getting paranoid that out of my two batteries it was something else that was up.

Fuel tank was stuck at full again after swapping out the sensor so off came the pump assembly again as Jan suggested it could be a baffle or something causing the float to stick.



Right enough there was a snapped piece of baffle floating about the tank. I had the absolute joy of 1. Trying to snap off the plastic tab that was holding the baffle in place and then 2. Getting the Baffle out of the tank through that tiny ass gap with a full tank. Turns out the sensor was working again correctly showing full but I forgot I filled it after STL3.



With all the function stuff sorted I jumped onto the other stuff I had to fit. Never seen one of these Zeta 2 backs so when it came up in red I bit the lads hand off for it.



Which completes my Zeta 2.



Then I got round to fitting an un-smashed up Kouki NS Light.



Also bashed out the bumpers corner as that had a bend in it, should be fine once its pained now.

Went to mock up my IC piping for my mate to weld and discovered that the Apexi IC on my car isn't for a 200sx and has 3" input/outputs, which is listed as 2.5" for 200sx's from when I looked into it down south.

Finally got it out for a small run.


Wonky ass photo because I didn't want to be that guy hanging about taking photos of my own car in a car park...

Took to stripping down the Greddy Wastegate.



After Steve fucking his face up with this exact wastegate and a smaller spring I wasn't taking any chances with this... Got the advice to leave 2 bolts in and slowly wind out and then put pressure on the top and then release pressure with the bolts... So as you can see in this photo 2 bolts are left on, and after this picture i put on 2 other bolts with 2 turns to take up when to know when to put pressure down...
Nah the fucker done a full on fucking explode and almost took my face off. Ripped out threads on 3 of the 4 bolts that were left on, Luckily it still threads in fine though so i'm hoping its still salvageable. Inspected the Diaphragm and seems fine, and it is one big blue spring thats inside it. So I'm either going to order a yellow one or hopefully my fake tial that comes with the turbo kit has a 0.9 bar spring that'll fit.

So the blue 180sx wings were slightly offensive I set up a spray booth.



Then hit it with Halfords finest Flame Red (the car is a tinted Aztec Red)



At this point I forgot how orangey/saturated Flame Red is. (also cemented me in being so happy I didn't paint my car this red).





If anyones after some bootleg paint fades hit me up. But at least its all red now and not some stand out "you've smashed the front of this" colour haha.

So with the TD05 having a Garrett fitting exhaust housing I'm tempted to run the manifold with gate and the T25G until its ready for mapping. When the mani etc gets up to me I'll weigh up the pros/cons of running the Garett mount..



Started the refurb of my black VSXX too. Since the black paint was relatively thick I just roughed up the paint, blow over in primer then painted with more of the Halfords special paint. I just went in looking for the poshest sounding silver paint and went with that.



Took the car on another run to get in the Christmas beers, whilst I was in for the whole of 5 minutes Adam a lad with an S14a sent me photos of it from the carpark, Inverness is small as fuck.



I got a bench polisher for Christmas so gave the lips a once over but they really need to be hit with wet and dry to look good, will do it again at some point when the tyres are off the wheels.


Thats it for now. Hopefully my 3" 90 degree bends arrive and my greddy manifold to start mocking up stuff for the TD05 build before I'm back to London.

 

Haven't touched my chrome ones yet, too scared it'll look shite haha.

Yeah plugs are all the same, for Rev counter you need a resistor in, 10k iirc but don't quote me on that, you can just wrap it around the two posts on the back of the clocks. Speedo sounds like another issue as it should just work with this swap, double check that the speed sensor wiring is intact and that it's been connected after having it out.
Do you mean the plug in the bay? Only wire you need to swap is the brown I think, my 180sx loom was already re-pinned so can't really help with that bit but i'm 90% sure its only the brown to change. The ECU to dash also needed a couple pins swapped on mine, main one is the cold start wire. Drop me a message on facebook if you need more info: Keeve Alan McIver

 

So between Christmas and New Year's been a bit of a blur with some pretty hectic drinking sessions and hangovers literally kicking my ass.

Drove my car to the airport to pick up one of my mates and I floored it and it shifted but I felt it didn't shift it as much as it really should have. So my mind went into overdrive when I was rough Gordy in my bed the next day and decided my ignition timing was out. When I did the SR conversion I was having starting issues and as part of it the CAS was out and back in. Then I timed it with a gun afterwards but can't remember if I set it to 15 degrees or not.

So pull out the timing light and time the car to 15* and I ended up having the CAS pretty much maxed out. Well fuck... Started panicking that the timing was a tooth out. So rip the rocker cover off and check it.



ALL GOOD. Thank fuck. then realise when I had the CAS out and re-aligned it it may not have been put back in bang in the middle. So I realigned the CAS again and chucked it back in.

So another thing thats been bothering me was that I had a bad idle dip sometimes and thats why I bought new vac lines. So when I took the car into timing mode I realised that I set my ICV to a high idle to stop it from stalling at the first shakedown and just never did shit about it.

So after the car was running set the ICV to where it should have been idling I then decided to break out my homebrew boost leak tester (plastic cap of a roll of livery with a valve in it) and test for this vacuum leak.... Literally, any pressure I put in was just going straight out...



So I had a fun time trying to find it when there was nothing to go off.



Culprit. Burst IC bar (although you can't really see it here). Fucknose how long this had been like this for. Driving about it was still making 0.8-0.9 bar. Either way, pulled the IC and luckily I found a replacement which was the exact same dimensions. Fired it in and re-tested.



At this point I had upgraded to an empty paint tin with a hole cut out for the valve then siliconed in place for my boost leak detector after the plastic popping out at 1 bar and me shiteing myself.

I then proceeded to find out pretty much every single silicone join I had leaked. Which was ace, and probably the reason for my dodgy idle!

Doubt theres going to be much more to add on this trip home tbh. I'm going to get a new super jubilee clip to replace the one that burst on me when I went to put it all back together then set timing ignition then take it on a blast to see if theres any difference.

 

Today was my last day up north, first off my neighbour was on nightshift so wasn't going to go starting the motor and pissing them off so did a couple wee things like wire up my battery cut off again.



Went off and got some more super jubilee's and spent time with the family/dog before trying to start the motor fired up no bother.... Then died. Then decided to not start again.
Fuckin A. So my idea of just starting up and doing the timing then giving it a good run was out the window. Spent ages arsing about trying to get to the bottom of whats going on.



Turns out when I did the CAS re-alignment the second time I didn't have the engine on TDC and mixed up the 2nd notch from the left on the pulley for TDC with the 2nd notch from the right for 15* (to time to).

Fired up but was rough as balls. Gave it a good few revs and was hesitating and being a bit of a shitebag. Thought there was another big vac leak but more likely the ECU needs to learn what its like to drive without a big ol boost leak...
Anyway, managed to get it timed up to 15* then took it out my road for a run to be sure it was driving fine....

First things first, As soon as I put my foot down the back end stepped in the dry and then my Greddy OLED started beeping like mad. Was like, wtf? Did it a second time and again its going up way past 0.9 bar that it's set to. So obviously I had this EBC set up compensating for a massive boost leak. I had done this at Rockingham at the start of 2018 after couldn't get my Spec B to work after killing the sensor at STL2.... So essentially I've not driven my car with proper boost since STL2...

Switched over to Low boost which I think I had set to around 0.5 and planted it again to check there was no misses or hesitation like when it was running rough. Again, back end stepped out and the car took off. The road was dry, so yeah I've been driving this fucking thing with next to no boost for over a year. Excellent. Boost gauge and OLED would read 0.9 bar so I'm baffled but it 100% explains the car feeling slow/sluggish when people were taking off on me at STL3 and not really feeling aggressive.

Anyway I only had an hour or so to get some dinner and finish packing before my flight so grabbed a couple as is photos. I'm 100% happy with how it sits now, not going to go any lower on the front. +40mm LCA's and non-burst wings did the trick for sure.

 

Cheers dude. I'm now in two minds if I do want to switch it up to 18's still or not!

Haha yeah I was thinking about those spats after posting that photo of it looking clean on IG the other day. Need to get out the super strength tape again.

 

Not the most exciting update but I passed my B+E Towing test and my old boy has fitted a towbar to his Yeti for me to be able to tow the car to track with it so now I can drive without thinking about damage consequences and getting home!

On another note I'm a bit gutted to say that the VSXX have been sold. Just under 3 years with them but they are going to another stock bodied RS13 which is cool. I really have committed to the next pair of wheels coming across from Streeter which I think will divide opinion but I think they're going to look great and I wanted a change. Also thinking about going a little bit further with the current livery but still just an idea at the moment.

Also the TD05H 18g I picked up is up for sale. I only have 3 events this year so I'm not sure if i'm going to bother with mapping etc when the car is fine as it is. Especially since I will be driving with the car on boost now! I'm going to be up north to get the car drift day ready at the start of March before the MOT runs out so I can get the EBC sorted on the road and not guess and arse about in the pits somewhere. Normally get items from Japan in a week's time so hopefully get the wheels on and not have to leave it on bricks.

 

So I've realised I've done that bullshit build thread suspense shit with that last post saying the VSXX are gone but not whats replacing them as if people care...

I doubt many people saw the E46 that me and Freddie built because we completely fucked it with the alignment and it was so hard to drive, but since Hudson's PS13 with GTR RG's I'd always wanted a set so picked up a set which fit the E46 perfectly.





Plans were to run these on the S13 after the event but at 17x8.5 e31 I decided they wouldn't really suit my motor due to colour and sizes then sold them off. Next up was the YAJ crawl again. Was keeping an eye out for either RG2's or RG3's but when i realised the 3's spokes had cutouts on them I realised they weren't for me. Finally some RG2's came up with time for me to contact Streeter and get bids in. Two pairs of RG2's both in 17x9.5 e15 AKA the strongest RG2 17" size.



I knew that bidding on a set of wheels across two auctions was extremely risky but decided to take the plunge, bit over budget on them to make sure I 100% got them. Well I lost both auctions at the 2nd highest bidder.

About 3 days later I go to get my deposit back on the wheels then just have a sly check of the auctions, "RG2" nothing, same old scrap wheels or shit offsets. consider buying some 17x8.5 e31 but think I'd rather have the money. Then did the search for "RGII" and found my wheels. Coming in a lot less than my maximum bid on the above.



Messaged Streeter to hit buy it now and it was done. 17x9.5 e15 Gold RG2's. 2016 me is pretty jealous. I have been considering painting them silver so it suits the red paint better but can't bring myself to do it so I'm going back to red and gold 3 years later.

Mikinyu's car has me so excited to get these fitted up to the S13.