After being a jzx fanboy for several years and making fun of the the sr20 owners I know, I finally decided to cave in and try out schassis ownership. I searched the japanese auctions for a couple weeks and I came across a white s14 zenki K's with decent miles and a good auction score. The auction score was really important to me as I've dealt with many hacked up shitboxes in the past.
This car was a 3.5/B with alot of cool parts I wouldn't have to buy and import seperatly. My previous jzx100 was a rust bucket and really wanted to avoid that. Well I was the highest bidder and after way too much money, the car arrived 6 weeks later. Bought the car in April and it showed up in July.
well after driving it around the block I fell in love with the torque and power delivery, it felt so much more different to the jz's I've become so used to.
1st order of buisness was the completly dead battery that the car came with, I already knew that japanese terminals would have to be converted to use a usdm battery (didn't want to shell out the money for the prius one). After 30 minutes at the parts store we found out that a honda fit 151r battery fits in the battery tray with a front mount. Ended up breaking that fuse box plug harness and had to do a quick fix to keep the car moveable. Ended up ordering a q45 one and replaced that later on the line.
Got it on our lift and found out I had bnr32 calipers. My z32 rotors didn't fit so ended up just replacing the pads.
It turns out the wheel rubbing through the harness problem is actually real, I had a spare fender liner and cut it up and placed it over the hole so hopefully that won't rub through again.
Changed the oil and topped up all the other fluids. got it out of the garage and test fit the wheels from my is300. Wasn't really feeling it, F:17x8 +32 225/45 R:17x9 +37 245/40.
Unfortuantly at this point I had made a crucial error that would take my excitement from 100 to 0.
I'm a little embarrassed to post this but it was a major event in this car's life with me. I took it for a drive and after noticing the oil light came on I shut it off and came to a stop on the shoulder.
When I had changed the oil I didn't realize that the filter I took off was a toyota 4 cylinder one that is used with the grex oil cooler kit that was installed on the car. I had bought an sr20 oil filter and installed it, it threaded on and got as tight as all the other oil filters i've ever installed. Drained the oil and of course there was a nice trail of glitter. After listening to it running there was a rattling sound in the higher rpms. FUCCCCCK.
At this point I had only driven the car twice for less than 10 minutes each. I decided that I would focus on this car as my main project for the years to come.
Pulled the engine out and was started to contact some local machine shops in the area for a rebuild quote. Everything that seemed to understand sr20's told me it would be about $3-4k + parts and a 5-6 month wait. I got impatient and decided to buy an sr20det engine set from a local importer for the price of what people where selling entire cars for not too long ago.
New water pump, front and rear main seal, new pully, new belts, sparkplugs, swapped my coilpack setup,
It turns out I had an s15 turbo so I swapped the entire manifold from my old engine to this new one.
Broken coolant feed that I was fortuantly able to get a replacement from at the local fitting store.
New ISR radiator and hoses, new grex air filter, threw the oil cooler away. Car runs great, i'm gonna have my old engine rebuilt and find another chassis to put it in. Now we're pretty much caught up to present day and I can properly start the build.