So here is my 1990 s13 that for as nice as it was looking, isn't all that nice.
First photo I ever took of the car when I got it in early 2020. 1990 240sx manual on stance coilovers. Still has the single cam in it. Bought the car for the same reason many of us who are younger seem to have wanted them for, we grew up watching YouTube videos of these drifting. My disease was specifically the Animal Style 2014 parking lot fun vid. Ran and drove fine but quickly needed some rear tires as I was riding on the wires when I first got it.
A pair of federal 595 s (rip) fixed that issue. Also I raised it about an inch as I was much more concerned about being able to work on the car than having it slammed. I was very fortunate to be at a technical college that had a massive automotive program (and an inground lift that I only got to use once because of that one thing that happened a month later in 2020)
Also did my first oil change on the car and found out just how bad the previous owner did with maintenance.
Did my best attempt to fix the pig nose and the factory front lip by plastic welding it (using the proper repair technique of using poly urethane plastic but not the right tools /prep. It didn't look the absolute greatest but it did work.
Then I got about a good 6 months of no issues after this. Got some good photos and got to drive it to work a bunch.
Did some rear lower control arms and got it aligned and got to enjoy it some more but work was catching up to me. At this point I had switched jobs and was commuting 2 hrs a day and working night shift so the car started to slip to the back burner. Eventually it ended up needing front ball joints and after installing new ball joints ,lower control arm bushing and sway bar endlinks I went to drive it and it would only idle at 2k rpm. I sprayed the whole engine down with brake clean probably 20 times to try and find vacuum leaks, nothing. Replaced a lot of vacuum lines, nothing. Replaced seals for one of the air valves (which led me to needing to pull and reseal the injectors and rail.) but still after that, no change. So then the car sat for about 2 years. I had lost a lot of motivation for the car and also had moved away from my parents where the car was being kept so I rarely saw it. Then finally around March I went back and started rediagnosing it and finally decided to reseal the iacv and ... still no change. Finally though I decided to maybe try and set the idle so I unplugged the iacv to start that process and... it idled as smooth as it ever had. So to this day it remains unplugged as I don't want to reopen that can of worms. Since actually getting the car properly running and gaining a massive amount of motivation the car has gotten---
Rear brakes, front brakes , soft brake lines all around ,a brake flush, new parking brake cables, a new axle to replace the old busted axle that I've had since getting the car and probably some other things that I am forgetting. I also moved about half way across the state but was able to get somewhere with a garage so I took the car on the furthest drive I had been with it (130ish miles) to its new home.
Currently the car has not left the garage in the past month. Whilst the car sat outside it went through not one but two hurricanes with one having the eye about 30 miles south of where it was. Obviously with it in this weather and just baking in the sun and humidity, a lot of rust has appeared. The fuel tank strap in the spare tire well is about halfway rotted out, the roof developed a good rust crater where I can only assume it was there when it was painted years ago and got slapped full of bondo. It also started to rust right at the tip of the hood. Currently addressing the fuel tank strap mount as once that is fixed I will feel much more comfortable driving the car again. After that I will fix the battery tray area because of course it's rotted out meaning I haven't had a battery tie down since purchase. Then I'll hopefully be able to tackle the roof and then the hood.
There's also a Ka24de with everything to make it a ka-t and swap it in the car that I should mention but that has been on hold for a long time and is now for sure on hold til the rust is repaired. Hoping to make this car a street car with some drifting thrown in.