the Drift Club

Here's something you don't see too often in the states! My 1989 Nissan 240sx on small wheels with a semi built CA18DET! Spec Sheet: Drivetrain -Built JDM CA18DET. Forged 83.5mm CP Pistons, Spool Forged Rods, ACL Race Bearings, ROSS Harmonic Balancer, Spool stiffer valve springs w/ Titanium retainers, ARP Head studs, Tomei head gasket, stock cams. -Dual AN Head Drains -Koyorad -DMAX Raised Engine Mounts -Unknown Tubular Manifold to stock t25 turbo with a modified moonface downpipe -PBM High mount intercooler -Stock ECU w/ Wiring Specialties swap harness -DW200 Fuel Pump -Spec Stage 2+ clutch w/ factory 5 speed trans -One-Piece Steel Driveshaft -Welded 4.08 Diff Suspension -Silver Neo Max 6k/8k Coils -PBM Power Brace -GKTech V5 Tension Rods -Villains Cut Knuckles + 30mm Extended Lowers + Tie Rods w/ Rack Spacer -Stock Sway Bars w/ Gktech End Links -GKTech Adjustable RLCA -ISR Pro Toe, Camber, and Traction arms -GKTech Poly rear subframe bushings w/ risers -GKTech handbrake cables and extenders -Eccentric Lockout Exterior Pretty much the only thing note worth is the SSR XR-4 Longchamps (15x7+5, 15x7.5-7) As well as a Pignose front lip Interior -RockAuto Dash Mat to cover the grand canyon -P2M Floor Mats -Real v1 C's Short Shifter w/ GKTech detent springs and brass bushing -ShirtsTuckedIn Shift Knob + Shift Boot -DEFI Oil temp, Oil Pressure, and Coolant temp Gauges -Not pictured but I have a HUD cluster to swap in -All other interior is stock and complete including the hatch privacy cover With all that being said here's where it sits today Broken and on jackstands, as all 240's should be. Before I left for college I had just finished the engine swap and got it running. But not 100 miles into the break in period of the engine a ticking noise developed in the head and once I opened up the valve covers I discovered that my cams had become heavily worn presumably from stuck lifters Tick/Squeak from head IMG_1587.MP4 Cam Wear I'll be honest, this almost made me give up. But with help and inspiration from my brother we dug into it and I decided to purchase a spare stock head (Lucky find not far from me) and take rebuild the lifters from it to put into my engine to get it back up and running. For me this was a daunting task as I am relatively inexperienced when it comes to this sort of stuff, but after watching the few videos I could find and reading some old forums I got to it. To be honest I found it almost enjoyable and after a couple long nights I had them all fully cleaned, reassembled, and bled (pretty stiff and hard to compress with your fingers) which from what I had read is how they should be. After all that work came the task of swapping out the old lifters for the freshly rebuilt lifters, which took maybe 2-3 hours as it was our first time (of many) taking apart the head in car. The time came to hit the key and wouldn't ya know it, now it would barely run and had no compression on cyl 1 and cyl 3. Which prompted a second wave of wanting to give up. But again I did some more research and found some people saying the lifters should be squishy and easy to compress after they are bled. So we ripped it all apart, made all the lifters squishy, put it all together again, and once again no compression on cyl 1 and cyl 3. This only left me more confused than I already was, and after a good bit of thought and some more messing around with swapping lifters around, the only explanation we could come up with was perhaps the machine shop (I had them do some light head work) messed up the valve heights and as a result the lifters are holding the valves open. That's the current theory, and my next plan of action is to take the stock head I bought and slap it on with the stock springs, lifters, cams, everything to test and make sure that fixed the issue. Hopefully, this winter when I'm back on break I'll have ample time to swap the head and get it running. But till then it collects dust lol

I figured I'd take the time to make this since I know a few people that own these, but have never installed them. A'PEXi - E.R.O Flasher (Electronic Reconfigurable Output - Headlight Flasher) First off, whatever the box says: DO NOT DO But here's a pic, anyway: (thanks Tyler!) Instead, here's a wiring diagram to better illustrate things: I'll describe the wires as they're displayed next to the flasher: • ORANGE - Illumination for the dial • RED - Power for the flasher • YELLOW/BLUE - The box portrays them as left/right, but just consider these as where power comes IN to the flasher • GREEN/WHITE - Like the yellow and blue, left/right doesn't matter so consider these as power OUT to the lights • BLACK - Ground Inside the cabin, I used a fuse tap to get power through a switch, with the the RED and ORANGE wires connected on the other end (so the light on the dial turns on when the flasher is being used) The same switch also outputs to the coil-side of a relay I have in the engine bay (thin red line connected to relay terminal 86 on the diagram) The black wire I just have grounded somewhere under the dash/kick panel area Regarding the relay, I have wire from the battery with an in-line fuse powering the load input (relay terminal 30) The load output (relay terminal 87/87a) is a thicker single wire that connects to both the YELLOW and BLUE wires I forgot to draw it in, but the other side of the relay coil (relay terminal 85) is just grounded All that's left are the GREEN and WHITE wires. Doesn't matter which side they power, but run one wire to one light, and the other wire to the other light. Then finish the circuit by grounding the lights locally or onto a common ground. And that should be about it for the universal install. If you want a slightly more in-depth S13 install, I have a write-up on Zilvia: https://zilvia.net/f/showthread.php?p=6428762

Yo. I'm about to ramble incoherently, like you're supposed to do on forums(??) I drive a funny wedge car that isn't the normal funny wedge cars, which makes it funnier. Nobody cares about these cars or does anything cool with them so I figured I would throw out my experiences and feelings in the loose hope of inspiring or something. Bought the car in January, has 335k on the dash but that stopped working nearly a decade ago and it is believed to be over 500k- Original stock CA20E 5spd. Ride height was absolutely brutal, so we made quick work of doing the fabled S13 conversion. Was quite simple really, just had to source a bunch of random parts and spend money. This was in February. We used: Rev9 Coilovers ISR Tension arms S14 4lug knuckles/brakes/etc (Its actually the same as S13, or I just got sold S13 ones idk) S14 Tension rod bracket S13 LCA That + some borrowed wheels from my friends had me looking good. I also fitted a spare MK2 hood since the original one was destroyed. Also fitted my Nardi Classic 330 and welded the diff around this time. Alignment: Front -3.5* camber, 7* Caster, 0 Toe | Rear -4.5* Camber (swingarms...), 0 Toe. Next up we fitted a Chevy S10 lip and a Battle Magazine plate me and my buddy made. The lip was pretty simple, cut to fit and self tap in. Looked awesome It did a lot to make this car look better. Was also on my own wheels at this point lol. Basically all the updates for March. Then in April I got a screaming deal for a $150 Bride Zeta. It's ratty but definitely real and I love it dearly. Mounting was easy. I used planted L brackets and bolted it to the stock sliders. If you are under 5'2 you can buy the terrible horrible useless planted floor mount bracket, but I'm not so I didn't. It sits HIGHER than the factory seat I genuinely don't understand how people use it. The floors of S12's are weird and lumpy be warned. The CA20E's life was on borrowed time, I spent May starting to collect all the parts I would need for a KA24DE swap, the go to swap for these cars. The parts list is basically all factory nissan stuff and I wouldn't remember if I tried. The coolest parts were a wiring specialties harness that was in Hvlko's car when it was KA. But we had the parts and began refreshing my friends S14 KA with 200k miles (would you believe he's doing an SR swap?). Through June we soldiered through the swap, nothing of crazy note. Frankly it was too many long nights and weekends for me to rightly remember anything about this swap. It didn't give us much trouble, forums are you friends, have someone who can wire help, and uhhh have good friends lol. This is worth noting as well, 240sx 5spd swap. The factory CA box sits way too close to the radio. I am a pretty lanky person and struggled to grab 5th, it sucked. So the 240 transmission can go in and move the shifter ~5 inches back, making it livable and nice. You have to trim the interior bits and swap around driveshaft bits but its worth it lol. Other notes: Exhaust is Megan header, 2in into a z33 resonator, back to 2in up to a Tractor Supply combine harvester muffler. Sounds amazing against literally every odd imaginable PLUS its not loud. Epic. Gauges: Oka-chan Water meter, Omori Oil Press Meter, OE Volt, OE speedo, and uhh that's it. No tach or fuel gauge sucks but it's fine. Also have a DNA Alu Rad which works wonders (after deleting the t-stat). Had the car back on the streets officially in July. Back on daily duty. First drift event in the S12 was a week away... I had done a few autocross events and plenty of mountains and street action when it was CA but never a proper event. So this was the first real event in this car. Also painted the hood black bc it's cool, the paint was shot, and I wanted to differentiate the car from its CA past. First event. Holy shit this car did good. I brought it out to the last East10 event at smokies stadium. Amazing event and had a lot of progression really quickly. Started in C class, got up to B class, and was on course at the same time as literal pro-spec drivers it was truly insane. I ended up borrowing my friends Intras with RT615's for steers as this car understeered immensely. This solved it and added a new item on my checklist before next event. Could gush forever about how great this event was but I'll refrain. The bad: Still had the t-stat in, was running basically 105c-115c water temps all day. No bueno. Aforementioned understeer was also a wasted session but I fixed that. No A/C was also brutal in the 100f heat. Bleh. Lovely look on the Intras though. Late July I removed that evil t-stat and got new steers. 15x7.5j-5 CST Demon Cambers with Accelera 651 195/50/15. Had these wheels tucked away forever and finally had my friend refinish them. Shiny. I go back and forth on whether or not these wheels are the best look for the car, but I'm just running them regardless, why not they're objectively cool wheels. Unpictured, was event 2 in the S12 in August. Another East10 event, this time at Bristol. Another event I could gush over endlessly. First tandems, flawless running, doin' it big. The Acceleras did wonders at fighting the understeer I faced on all-seasons. It still had a bit of understeer, more on that later. Tire wear has been pretty fair, despite aggressive rear camber from the god awful swingarm suspension. No complaints all I can think about is driving more ugh lol. Small update after that event was deletion of front swaybar. Grip driving this car felt terrible and I had to do something, this pretty much solved it. Car feels much more like what I'm used to and actually will oversteer in grip driving now. Lovely. I assume this won't really mess with drift feel that much? If that is the case then I feel this car is pretty genuinely setup for my do-all street car attitude. (it is my only car, did I mention that?) Big update: AERO!!! This is free game for S12 owners for real. AE92 GTS Sideskirts, got a single side from a junkyard and figured why not mock it up. I had been planning on AE86 sideskirts as allegedly they would fit? But oh my god the AE92 skirts fit literally perfect. Needs the slightest trim on the rear section for the door as well as a slight shave on the front bit that meets up on the fender. But length and style and fit is like as great as you could want. This was paired with a JBlood (rep, cry me a river) AE86 Front bar. I know of 3 others who have done an 86 bumper, ones a levin bar and it isn't relevant, the others looked...poor. Some say it needs to be widened and the cars aren't the same size and blah blah blah, they're wrong. Step 1: Cut your fenders just under the marker lights, remove the front bumper bar thing and all that nonsense, ziptie that thang on. Reinstall grill/markers. Ziptie the signals in the 86 bumper. Done. Lol. Totally wild new look. And here it was dubbed the AE87 Frankly I've yet to get a picture I truly like of this setup, but its been LESS THAN A WEEK LOL That's the car for now, I am attending Driven Luck on the 7th, we'll see if the aero survives. Will update. If you actually read this you are epic and I apologize. My instagram has better pictures, but I'm terrible at posting. More updates to come. No real plans beyond driving and perhaps changing the wheels up, it remains daily status for the forseeable future. S12 owners- DRIVE YOUR CARS THEY ARE GOOD. Every event I've gone to someone has been so happy to see one of these cars out, had a guy tell me its been 20 years since he's seen one on track and he's not a stranger to events.