1990 Nissan 240SX

The Story

Welcome to my ongoing project car… I "have" a 1990 240SX which I bought back in May of 2021 for way more than it's worth. It originally looked like what you see in the title image, where I drove the car around till late August when I finally decided to fix a nasty exhaust leak by replacing it. That's where the problems started..... What when from a 30 minute exhaust swap turned into over 2 years, and still counting, of it sitting on jack-stands in my garage. The previous owner cut and welded the entire exhaust system together; so I ended up removing the entire exhaust system which now required an aftermarket exhaust manifold. This 30 minute job evidently snowballed, causing an immediate EGR delete which, due to accessibility issues, turned into REMOVING THE ENGINE. Once doing so, a plethora of problems started to show on the now 33 year old car. For example, the car was T-boned... twice. Removing the driver's side quarter panel revealed that the drivers front section was poorly replaced from a collision along with removing the carpet showed shattered glass inside the interior. The car evidently got hit on it's rear passenger side quarter panel as a magnet and I removed over 1 inch thick of body filler. When I decided to take off the side skirts to look around and see if there was any other damage, a lovely set of rusty rockers came to greet me, wonderful. While the car was up on stands I decided while I'm here, why not refresh everything on the subframes? This decision lead to me replacing all bolts related to the suspension with OEM bolts from Nissan themselves, plus sandblasting and powder coating the rear subframe a nice metallic cherry red. While doing so, I for some reason thought it would be a good time to swap the wheel hubs from 4 to 5 lug, which led to a whole knuckle refresh, new bushings, bolts, brakes, control arms, sandblasting, you name it. This smooth brained idea eventually led to my brake booster vomiting brake fluid all over the car. When trying to rectify this issue it ended up revealing a whole line of rust in all the iconic s13 places and turned into me removing the front and tubbing the car which I have yet to finish. While I started my trailer fender tubbing journey I ended up getting a bunch of metal working tools to aid my process and hopefully help me fix the other rust spots on the car. This is where I'm still at today... TLDR: as my profile bio says... With enough determination, you can drive a car into a garage and it will never leave. Stay frosty, - Snacki Boi