EXTERIOR -fake hot road front bumper
-fineline tuning hot road style sideskirts
-fineline tuning hot road style rear valence
-oem type x spoiler (not currently installed)
-ebay smoked euro tails
-avery dennison quicksilver gloss metallic wrap
INTERIOR
-bride zeta 2 w/ buddy club super low down rails
-r32 GTR passenger seat
-personal 330mm neo grinta black/red
-trust grex shift knob
-red checkered floor mats
-stack mechanical oil pressure gauge (sucks)
-AEM AFR gauge
-shirtstuckedin cupholder
ENGINE
-550cc dw side-feed injectors
-ISR 255 fuel pump
-wiseco pistons
-manley connecting rods
-ARP head studs
-CXRacing T3/T04E
-JGS log manifold
-tial f38mm wastegate w/ dump tube
-GM IAT
-megasquirt MSPNP2
-homemade downpipe mated to a free exhaust
-Koyorad
SUSPENSION/BRAKES
-HSD coilovers (shit)
-10k front swift springs
-30mm extended LCA
-maxima tie rods
-projectmu d1 spec rear pads
-gktech ebrake cables
-gktech handbrake leverage extenders
WHEELS
-F: AVS Model 5 17x9 +40 w/ 30mm spacer 215/40
-R: AVS Model 5 18x9 +35 w/ 15mm spacer 215/40
hey y'all,
i wanted to make a post about my KA-T hatch and the semi-grueling process it took to get it to this point. I've always wanted a drift car since lurking Zilvia, making pixelcars and playing shit like live for speed when i was a kid. i did get sidetracked and waste a lot of time and money on VW's for a number of years since my first car was a mk4 golf but that’s not important l. i was finally able to get into drifting in 2020 when I bought a g35 sedan for $1500. it was a 2 owner lakeshore slate factory manual car, i kept the car fairly simple w/ a stock motor, coilovers, welded diff, bride zeta 2 and some other odds and ends. here's a photo of that car:
towards the end of the 2021 drifting season the g35 was due for some maintenance, the suspension was clunking, it felt kinda shitty to drive and i was faced with either dumping money into the car to hopefully make it more exciting (this was going to be done in the form of an angle kit and possibly some sort of forced induction) or try to get rid of it so i could focus on getting the car i actually wanted (an s-chassis).
i posted the g35 on fb marketplace looking for trades for either a shitty running s-chassis or a decent shell. i was promptly shit on, everyone was saying no one would ever want to trade any s-chassis for my car (maybe they were right lol) so I decided to cash out on some of my savings and just buy an s-chassis and sell the g35.
in september of 2021 I had plans to go look at a two–tone silvia that was a bit out of my price range but I thought if i sold the g35 for the right price i could probably make it work. The morning i was supposed to look at the car, i did a quick check on kijiji (canadian craigslist) and found a hatch that supposedly had a knocking SR. it was already 5 lug, full interior, had coilovers had what appeared to be a hotroad front bumper, chuki sideskirts, type x rear and type x wing. The ad mentioned some rust but nothing too crazy and the price was pretty reasonable. it was closer to me than the Silvia i decided to make a pitstop at this car before looking at the silvia.
when I got to the dudes shop the car was on a hoist which was a good sign (a lot of s-chassis or old cars in ontario in general probably wouldn’t be able to hold themselves up on a hoist or jackstands. from underneath i remember seeing one small rust hole and a shitload of undercoating, given the reasonable price, my friend who’s much more experienced with this shit than i am and i decided we could look past it. before even arriving at his shop i knew i didn’t want the knocking SR that was in the car so we agreed i’d buy the shell if he pulled the SR and i placed a deposit that day.
a week later my homie and i pulled up with his trailer and brought the car back to my house. I also saw the SR from the car go up for sale for like $3500 w/ a “slight tick at idle” the next day… maybe i should’ve asked him to start it while i was there lol.
so the next day my homie came over and we pulled the carpet to evaluate the rust situation; this is where the regret starts to set in. to my horror, there were self tappers all over the floor holding shitty sheet metal in. from the bottom of the car i couldn’t see them through the undercoating i guess but the car i just bought that needed a weekend or two of rust repair work just turned into something that might not even be worth fixing. i’ll insert some pictures if i can find them of the rust situation but it was pretty horrible.
after debating what i should do and realizing i’m probably never going to get my money back for the shell we decided to try to fix the rust the best we could. so essentially the entire winter of 2021 up until the summer of 2022 was spent in my freezing garage w/ my homie cutting out rusty metal, making cardboard templates, cutting sheet metal and welding it in. the process felt like a lifetime, i definitely wanted to give up on the car multiple times but i’m glad i stuck it out.
when i bought the shell my original plan was to just do an NA KA, enjoy reliable s-chassis ownership for a year or two and eventually try to piece together a simple KA-T setup. of course if a reasonably priced SR swap came up I wouldn’t hesitate to go for it but really i was looking for a KA. i was at work one day on my lunch break and this built bottom end KA-T full swap came up on the fb marketplace for a little over half of what people were asking for SR’s at this point. i sent the dude a message, we agreed on a price and i picked it up that weekend.
in july of 2022 we finally finished the floors, they were patched, seam sealed and por-15’d. i was finally able to put the car on the ground for the first time since september 2021. here’s where i made another huge mistake. the motor was just sitting in the corner of my garage so we figured why don’t we throw it in. i didn’t regasket ANYTHING on the motor, didn’t really check over anything, we just kinda dropped it in. this was my first time swapping anything which was pretty exciting and i was just happy to be one step closer to finally driving the car. looking back on it i really wished i 1. painted the bay while the motor was out and 2. regasketed the motor (not that it has any terrible leaks, but the peace of mind would be nice). at this point it seemed like the only thing stopping me from driving the car was intercooler piping and a downpipe/exhaust setup. we plugged in the harness and ECU, made sure the fuel pump was priming and went for the first start. i almost hydrolocked the motor due to a leaky injector. at this point i fucking hated this car lol, it felt like i was in way over my head and i just missed the simplicity of the g35, it felt like the g35 was a little more my skill level if that makes sense lol. i ended up picking up DW 550cc injectors to replace the jeccs that came w/ the car. once i replaced those and left the maf unplugged the car started up first crank. it was running rich as shit but this was the confirmation i needed to continue moving forward with the car.
i bought a universal cx racing ic piping kit and slowly put together ic piping planning on doing a draw through setup, this is when i realized i did not have enough room to run a draw through setup bc of the turbo placement. to switch to a blow through setup i’d have to send the ECU to RS Enthalpy to get a retune and redo some of the couplers to fit the MAF on the piping. not a huge deal but i didn’t want to go through all of that just to possibly run into more MAF related issues so I decided to just buy a megasquirt pnp2 over the winter. we finished up making the exhaust, i was able to putt the car around the block a few times for motivation before putting it away for the winter.
one thing that always bothered me about the car (other than owning it for over a year and not being able to drive it) was the front height. i maxed out the HSD coilovers and still had wheelgap on a 17x9 w/ 215/40. having a low, cool looking car is most of the appeal of all this shit to me anyway so this height simply would not cut it. I ordered 5” 10k swift springs for the front and we randomly got a super warm day in february where I decided to put them in. this was the first time i looked at the car and was actually seeing what I had envisioned come to fruition. unfortunately the car was unmoveable at this height since the HSD shock bodies are so long they hit the sway bar links with the shorter springs so extended LCA’s we’re going to be necessary. im not a huge fan of excessive camber but my hand was kinda forced here.
put the extended LCA’s in and maxima tie rods cut to size so by now the car was basically just waiting on a tune to be driveable, I got in touch with a local homie who has street tuned a few cars and dealt with megasquirt and KA-T before and he came by and got the DIYautotune trigger wheel installed and got a base tune put on the car. this was the first time I could ever take the car above like 2500 rpm without it breaking up and stalling out. it felt like all of the work leading up to this point was finally starting to pay off, even if I hadn’t even gotten the car into boost yet. I was super stoked I had to park the car on the street for a pic lol. finally, my vision coming to life.
at this point the car was basically just waiting to be put on a dyno, the dude that did the base tune had a pretty busy schedule so I prob wasn’t going to be able to make it in and I was trying to make an event I was hosting in july. by chance I ended up meeting up with another friend around this time for reasons semi-related to drifting, he invited me to tag along with him to final bout SSE and offered to help me figure out my tuning situation.
I basically had the month of june to make sure the car was mechanically sound and ready for the dyno, I was tripping basically every day bc I’ve never taken on a project like this, I probably skipped a bunch of steps I should’ve taken and I just thought my luck was about to run out. to make matters worse I had a destination wedding to attend, which left me with a week between the wedding and the event to book the tune and make sure the car was gonna be able to street drive 3 hours each way to the event.
I ended up getting back from the wedding and got the car tuned that week. the car made 353hp/318lb-ft of torque and the dyno session was relatively drama free. worst that happened was not being able to turn the boost up and blowing off a coupler or two. again can’t thank my homies enough for helping me get to that point.
took it for a drive around my hometown the next day, alignment the day after that and at the end of that week decided to trust it enough to street drive it 3 hours to an event that I’m supposed to be helping organize.
and surprisingly….
the car made it perfectly fine. I was able to drive all weekend, some shit was definitely coming loose, ebrake didn’t lock despite the mu pads and I quickly learned the importance of proper bolt checks and marking your bolts but to finally be able to enjoy the car after almost 2 years of imagining what it might be like felt great.
however, leaving the event the car felt super fucked, anytime I’d get over like 50km/h it’d start shimmying and crabwalking across the road. I pulled over multiple times, checked the torque on the wheels, checked the tires and eventually ended up jacking the car up and realizing my driver rear LCA bolt was backing out and the nut had fallen off. felt like the biggest dumbass on the planet and thank god my friends pulled over with me and had spare hardware I could borrow. i whiteknuckled the car the rest of the way home going like 20 under on the highway while my gf followed me w/ her van lmao. id never been so happy to be see my daily that night lol.
fixed the height and went out to a local s-chassis meet
our last event for the season was coming up in september and I had been complaining about not knowing how I’d paint match the shitty paint on my car. I had never considered wrapping any of my cars but given how shit my paint was and how affordable the wrap could be (+ I was being taught by someone that’s very good at it) I figured I might as well try, if it looks bad I can always take it off. so I spent the next 2 weeks trying to get the car wrapped for this event on labor day.
bbq at design shop react (where I was wrapping the car)
unfortunately I couldn’t finish the wrap in time, between running out of material bc of my fuckups and me leaving the most complicated parts for last I ended up with a blue-ish silver car with a red bumper trying to paint match my red car with white skirts. funny how that works.
took the car to the event, this event was super rewarding for me, especially because I finally was able to put trust in the car, almost everything was working as it should including my factory handbrake after replacing the cables and I was super stoked on how the car performed. this was also the first time my homie kristtian and I could get proper runs in together as a team. as the event went on we learned more about our driving styles and how to make them work together, definitely did some of my best chase driving ever at this event.
installed a personal 330mm neo grinta, took the car for it's last drive of the season and that pretty much brings us to now, plans for this winter are to fix the leaking rack that i never addressed, figure out a better gauge situation since my stack mechanical one doesn’t work properly (could be user error) and finish the wrap.
sorry for the word vomit... and i'm aware my windshield stickers are
update:
finished the wrap on the front bumper this spring and went to my parents house to put the bumper on and retrieve the car.
I was shocked at how much better the car looked all one colour lool. my house is about an hour and a half from my parents' house, when I was remounting my ecu after doing some gauge wiring I guess the fuel pump relay wire pulled out of the ECU connector so I had a crank no start situation despite the fuel pump priming (because it's hardwired to ignition). Figured that out, car was running and hadn't given me any issues so I figured I'd drive it to my house.
that didn't work out, my rad hose ripped (the same one that ripped at the last event I drove) and sprayed all of my coolant out on the highway, I didn't notice until I got off the highway and the car was billowing smoke out of the hood. Pulled into a gas station and my homies Mason and Jay pulled up with some water bottles to try to cool it down/get some water in the rad that was now empty. we were there for probably an hour and a half trying to get the car to start, eventually it started, running on 3 cylinders and I was able to limp it to my house. the oil looked fine at the gas station (i knew i was fucked though) but when I got to my house it was a milkshake. head gasket is definitely blown, i'm still unsure on what else is fucked.
the car sat in my driveway like this for a week while I debated my options. Mason had the single cam that he pulled out of his car which he replaced with an SR. he offered the motor up for free (really, i'm borrowing it for the summer) and we decided to try to swap it for a skid pad event I was hosting in 2 weeks.
we spent basically every day after work in my driveway working on pulling my motor and putting the single cam in, it rained almost every day for those 2 weeks which made things pretty difficult as we'd have to stop and pack up if it rained hard enough. we were able to get my motor out and drove it to jay and my homie jsmall's shop about an hour and a half away to put it on an engine stand.
got the motor started for the first time a few days before the event. the studs on the manifold to front pipe (y) were snapped so mason welded them together at his house, then we realized we couldn't get the manifold on as one piece so we had to cut it apart again and reweld it in on the car. it's got a few leaks but it works for the most part. after chasing a few wiring issues, the car started and ran okay sitting in the driveway. we took it for a spin for like 30 mins around town to see if it would do anything weird the morning before the skid pad event. no issues so i figured i might as well try to drive it 3 hours to the skid pad.
the car made the trip with no major hiccups. only issue was it randomly cutting power on the highway for a few seconds and then coming back (almost feels like you're hitting a governor, no idea why), it also started misfiring for a few seconds but again came back before the next exit so i just kept going.
i didn't buy tires for the event because i didn't know if my car would make it until literally like 6 hours before i was supposed to be there. jsmall loaned me his pair of vienna courages and because of the rain i didn't really wear the tires down at all. i knew driving a single cam would be much different than driving a car w/ 350whp but no power + no power steering (the pump's on the passenger side on single cam as opposed to driver side on dohc so my lines didn't reach, i ended up looping the lines). because of the no power steering/no power situation driving in the dry was basically a write off. i'm a pretty small dude so i didn't have the man power to direct the wheel in drift, or the power to rely on to make things easier so i was basically limited to only doing laps when it was raining. no pics from the event but i have a video or 2 on my instagram.
car made it back home without too much drama.
for some reason, idk if it's the lack of power steering or my alignment has somehow gotten significantly worse since last year but the car feels really wonky and unstable, i've done a bolt check and even went as far as tightening the preload on the rack but it just doesn't feel great. maybe i'm just not used to what a 30 year old car feels like anymore.
my friend anthony came to visit and we took a little cruise around town lol.
next up for the car was the annual SON240sx (southern ontario 240sx forum) meet. always a good time and super fun to see what hidden s-chassis gems ontario has to offer.
went and got ramen with car shop react and a few other friends after the meet
i've really just been driving the car to the skatepark here and there
my taillights and all interior lights stopped working after this, blew a fuse due to my fucked up radio wiring.
that pretty much brings us to now. i don't really have many plans for the car besides driving it around for the rest of the summer. i did pick up a pretty fucked up sexystyle kit i'm going to try to fix. basically everything is on hold until i start disassembling my turbo motor and find out whether i need to rebuild it, buy a new motor or simply do the head gasket in it.
thanks for reading.