HitTheDeck - Stage Two S13

Hi Guys!

Well back in March of 2015 I had saved a bit of money for a holiday for me and me girlfriend at the time, we split up before we had the chance to go so I decided to treat meself instead.
I'd already been trawling Ebay, Gumtree and the forums for ages to see what I could get for me money and then luckily an S13 came up locally for dirt cheap.

Initially I went to view the car, two hours later; £450 and a crate of corona lighter it was on a trailer on its way to me house.
From the moment I got it I knew it needed work, The chassis rails were shot, the outer sill had seen better days and engine was misfiring and wobbling more than pensioner who'd forgotten their medication but it seemed like it had potential.

Anyways, this is what I came home with;



Like I said it'd definitely seen better days at this stage, first thing I did was get it booked in at a local bosdy shop to get the sills and chassis rails sorted.


When I say they were bad they literally had to consistency of cheese, absolutely done with.
So they kept the car for two weeks replacing the chassis rails whilst I spent the rest of the money living off of pasta and rice to pay for it, though job well done.
When I got it back they were absolutely solid and that was the main parts of the chassis taken care of.


So once It was back from the shop I decided to squeeze into the tin can in me garden that we call a garage so I could start tearing into it and see what was going on.
At first we serviced the engine, replacing fluids, spark plugs trying to get rid of the misfire but after all of this failed we did a compression test.

Aye, cylinder one was dead

So whilst I figured this out and whether to rebuild or source another CA18 I got stuck into the other jobs like taking the front end of the car off to start figure out fitment for a front mount, oil cooler and just a general check over/tear down.
To be fair it wasn't actually that bad, I focused initially on the engine mounts as they were shot.
I thought about buying stock ones and also hard mounts but in the end after going through every forum I could I chucked a tenner at Ebay and bought some Ice Hockey Puk's.

I had to get everything out of the way so I could access all the bolts, manifold bolts were on there very very good as you'd expect from any old nissan; which in turn led to a lot of this;

After a lot of convincing/swearing the manifold, turbo and exhaust came off to make way for me to get to the engine mounts.
Unfortunately I had a bit of set back, when I was drilling off one of the engine mount bolts because they were complete seized I had an incident involving the drill.
long story short, I pretty much removed me knuckle which in turn led to a trip to the doctor
to have it glued back on.




So about three weeks after the incident I was good to go again and powered through to get the mounts completed on both sides.
This is what I was left with;


As solid as can be to the point when you start the car every single last piece of trims rattles but It was never going to be used as a daily so this never bugged me.

Anyways that's the first part of write up and still plenty left to come.

Cheers lads ​

 

Ah I forgot to mention pal I did this way back at the start of 2015 and they seem to be relatively settled now!

Aha cheers mate, not the best feeling in the world and me knuckle looks a tad strange now but hey, its still opposable so we're all good!

 

After the engine mounts were done anyways I moved onto the intercooler.
Still being stock at this stage but I knew from the off I wanted it stage two after seeing me friends PS13, I started going through Ebay and collecting a few parts,
Picked up a second hand Intercooler kit, Garret T25g Turbo, Oil Cooler kit, 75mm core radiator and a new ECU with a stage two Hdev chip in it.




So I started mocking up the Intercooler on the car so I could figure out how to mount it and where to cut the hole for the piping etc.



Ended up being relatively easy though I knew this was only a temporary measure to get it mocked up on the car and I'd need to do it properly down the line but this would do for the moment.
I cut out some thin bits of sheet metal (road signs) and used it to bolt the intercooler to where the horns once were.





The rest of it from there was easy to figure out and get sorted relatively quickly.

Next I moved onto the Turbo, now intially I had no plan on changing the turbo but I was told the T25g is from an imported SR20 and because it was a ball bearing turbo complete changed how the car was to drive.
Exact set up on me mates old PS13 and after being told how that thing shifted I decided this was the route I wanted to go down.
I got the above turbo relatively cheap, clocked it (with much ballache), bought a Driftworks braided oil feed line and got to work building it up.
I did have a tubular manifold as well that came with the car that turned out to be a lovely Ebay piece of shite so I just stuck with the stock one in the end.

And then fully built up


And queue set back number two; apart from swearing at stubborn cars I spend the rest of me spare time skateboarding and working.
Again long story short, stacked it pretty badly which led to a bent (yes bent, not broken/fractured) arm.


That bone is meant to be straight, result of this mean I was rocking this beauty for 5 weeks.


Another up date to come!​

 

So anywho, after the arm incident I was straight back into the thick of it again.
I finished up the Intercooler piping and got that all sorted.

Also at this stage I offered up the new turbo set up to the car and got that all plumbed in including the hot side of the Intercooler.

It was at this point I started looking at coilovers, Ideally I didn't want to go and spend a small fortune on just coilovers alone however after looking at me options I figured it'd be better to buy nice than buy twice.
Before I knew it I'd placed another order on driftworks and had a set of HSD Mono Pro's on there way.
These showing up was like christmas morning for me.
Opening up a box and being greeted by this;

Absolutely beautiful sight.
Was also thinking about wheel options as well, always liked the look of the XXR 527's.
Again scrolling through Ebay I found a set of 17's in the size I wanted and again after a trip to Peterborough and back I ended up with these beauties in me garage.

I realise that I probably should've focused on the bigger matters at hand, EG; Working Engine.
One of those things where when somethings pops up at the right price its hard to say no.

Which would lead me onto the next purchase.
I loved the look on the BN/URAS kits for the S13 and was determined to get one for mine.
I found one advertised, the lad wanted me oem bumpers and a bit of cash his way so I figured why not?

Now this is the point where I mention at the time me daily was a Lupo that I'd quite literally "slammed" and if you had more than two people in it you couldn't drive it due to the amount of tyre rub that happened.

We drove all the way from Milton Keynes to Sheffield with the bumpers on a roof rack and had to bring the body kit all the way back in a fucken' Lupo.

It was somewhat comical as you can imagine...



Anyways after that ordeal we offered the kit up to the car to see what It would look like.
To be honest it wasn't the greatest fit in the world but I was happy enough with it.




Needed a lot of work but It had potential, in me opinion as well a lot better than the stock facelift bumpers.

So that's me last update for today, will try and update more tomorrow

​

 

That'd probably be it mate!
Apparently its common with toddlers when their bones are developing but to see it adults is just plain weird
Years of breaking bones has taken its toll, time to find another hobby to transition over into!

 

So another catch up on the progress.
After I'd got the body kit I decided to finish gutting the interior, to be honest I still haven't got around to doing the sound deadening but its long tedious work that I really don't have the patience for.
Anyways after an hour or so I was left with the interior looking like this

Finished gutting it completely then got the seats back it.
At this is point I started thinking about the fitment of the wheels, I knew they weren't going to fit with the 25mm spacers I'd ordered and wanted them to poke out a wee bit so I decided on overfenders.
I just sort of picked up and angle grinder, one thing led to another and before I knew it I'd cut the majority of the metal off of the rear arches.


After sorting out the metal I'd been left with I test fitted the over fenders to see how it'd look


I was quite chuffed to be honest, finished riveting them on and called it a day.

By this point I was sick of the amazing looking TSW's the car came on and just want to get the car on the deck on a decent set of wheels.
Changing the coilovers wasn't hard at all, again just a bunch of seized ball achey bolts that didn't want to play ball but a heat gun, breakers bar and A LOT of WD40 soon changed that.
2 hours later and with the coilovers wound right down I had the car sitting pretty.



Couldn't believe how much better it looked with just changing the suspension.
Picture with me daily at the time, both running odd wheels due to not being able to afford new tyres.

Got the wheels spacers on and swapped the wheels out at long last, again I couldn't believe how much it changed the look of the car.


Cosmetically by this point I was really quite happy with the car bar needing to get the body kit sorted but before I could contemplate doing anything with it needed a lot of fibreglass and body filler to get it looking even remotely good.
However I test fitted it because why the the fuck not.


Now I finally decided It was time to turn me attention to sorting out the engine and started pulling me hair out at the prospect of swapping it out.
​

 

Haha not at all mate, they got sorted just didn't take any photos before sorting the over fenders!

 

Reet, so after getting the cosmetic side of things sorted like I said it was time to turn me attention to the engine.
After not being able to get rid of the misfire we found out it had lost compression completely on cylinder one, I started looking for another ca18.
Managed to find one about an hour and a half down the road from a lad called Steve.
He was building a S13 that was being converted to an SR20 (finished now and look fucken mint.)
Anyways after a three hour round trip we collected the lower mileage engine and I started shitting it about me first ever engine swap.
First things first; I gave the CA18 a suitable goodbye;

I figured considering this would probably be the first CA18 of many I made an investment in one of these;

And then the new lump;

Being a CA18 me first concern was the bottom end, really didn't fancy going through all this ball ache just for the engine to let go as soon as it went to stage two.
Ended up getting some ACL bottom end bearings and had a hell of a time figuring out how to get all that sorted.
Anyways, bit of swearing and figuring it all out and eventually got it done.

Sump back on and ready to go back in

(Don't own an engine stand)
So kept at it eventually got to the stage where I could finally start getting the engine out of the. A very low garage roof and not a lot of room proved to be bit a bit of a challenge but with a bit of elbow grease we got there.

And the engine after a lot more ball ache and effort ended was lifted out and ended up with me engine bay missing an engine.


Garage was also looking clean as well, seriously need to be more organised.
Was left like this due to work getting in the way and needing to find the spare time to get things sorted on me own.
Anywho, I couldn't get any work done on it for a wee while so I started stock piling me drift rims

Managed to get all of them off me mate Evan who had previously owned an S13 to his S14 that he'd just finished building.
One I shot of his beautiful S14 a while back

And whilst I was waiting for a day when I could sort the engine out I decided to kill time by doing a few shoots for the rest of the lads I knew.
Again had the opportunity to shoot me mates R32 and was reet happy with the results




Until me next update
​

 

Haha its the same with any sport though mate, the injuries just come and come.
To be fair even If i was to give it all up and take up knitting instead I'd still end up stabbing meself with a knitting needle or something!
He's sold the S14 to move onto his next project as well, should have a very tasty PS13 soon pal

 

Nothing like a trusty old CA mate, cheers!

Cheers pal!

Haha that exactly, got a few updates to come though

 

Cheers bud, will hopefully have another one up shortly!