Well to get an idea of where I'm coming from I'll post a couple pictures of my first vehicle. For some reason I really wanted a 98+ Ford Ranger, extended cab, 2wd, 4cyl, 5 speed for my first vehicle. DAMN do I wish I had this truck back stock Anyways, saving up lunch money, and the piddly $5.15/hour I made at Arby's I could afford to do this to my truck. Whenever I'd have a decent long vacation from school, mostly spring break or Christmas, I'd drive down to my brothers in Fayetteville, North Carolina (600+ miles away) and we would get stuff done. The worst was my spring break of senior year... Had 10 days off, drove down, with all my air ride stuff in the bed, cut, welded, hooked stuff up and limped it back home.

Shaved everything, door handles, third brake light, emblems, tailgate handle, roll pan, antenna, gas tank door, body lines you name it, it was gone.
50lb Door poppers
Street Scene front bumper cover
Lowered on a 3/5 drop, then air ride now back to the 3/5 drop
Air ride consisted of Front, Back, Side to Side
(2) Viair 380c compressors
200/150psi pressure switch
(2) 5 gallon tanks
All metal quick connect fittings with d.o.t approved lines
(4) SMC 1/2" Fills
(4) SMC 3/8" Dumps
Suicide Doors 4 link Cantilever Ranger Air Ride Kit
Front upper adjustable control arms
Front Lower air ride control arms
'03 Ranger Edge wheels
225/60/15 Falken 512's
Checkerpro checkmate bed cover
Custom Fuel Cell
Fresh as of 4 years ago gm white paint with House of Kolors Ice White metal flake.
A typical decent sound system

I enjoyed it, had some good times and very bad times with it but overall I'm glad I got this truck. I learned a lot through the build, and wouldn't trade it for anything.

And some pictures...
Import and Truck Bash '05 in Indy, back in it's prime




Fuel Cell and Bed cover we made, need something to cover up the big hole we had to cut for the c-notches.


All painted with POR-15


Taking the Air Ride off and putting the 3/5 drop back on. It just got to be too much of a pain, fixing leaky fittings, airing the system up and all the other hassle. Not really what you want for a daily.




A unique picture with my car making the reflection.


In its primed stage.


I grew up in what most of you would consider the sticks... the demo derby was a big thing where I'm from. I kinda wanted to do it, so I talked one of my friends into letting me store it and work on it at his house. We both put in 50/50 on everything, cost of the car and all the stuff we bought for it, including all the time invested in it. I got the car from a guy for like $150. A 1976 Chevy Nova sedan. 305 v8 with a 4 speed auto. Damn was that a turd.

Ended up prepping it for derby which consisted of taking all the glass out, full interior out minus drivers seat, fuel tank in back seat, welded doors/trunk shut. Weld a reinforcement across the drivers door, weld in a roll bar. We flipped the manifold and had the exhaust coming out of the hood. Welded the diff, and added some reinforcement to the front bumper. Considers we stored the car and worked on it using his tools at his place, I thought it was only fair that he would drive it. I had more fun building it, but hey that's what I like to do.

I have a few pictures of it, but this one gets the point across.


Also the garage you'll see in most of these picture's is somewhat of my build too. My dad built a new house after getting a divorce, he needed a garage... luckily I talked him into building it bigger than he originally planned

Basically it's a 36x60 insulated, heated pole barn with 12' ceilings, a work shop, an office and a family room, with a built in entertainment center. My dad and I did all the work except laying/finishing the concrete. My grandpa hooked up most of the electrical, and my uncle helped when we needed more than two people. This took what seemed like forever, working damn near every weekend for the better part of a year and a half.

I'll just post a couple pictures, you'll be seeing this garage and it's progressing a lot in other pictures, throughout this thread.

i heart your garage.

Very nice. I love your garage.

Very nice. I build a 30x60 with my dad last year. Sooo nice. We've still gotta get heat in it though -.-.

Yay for another bagged car. (My daily is bagged )

Now onto the meat and gravy, what most of you came in here to see.

Basically I wanted something a little more performance oriented, somewhere in the winter of '05, I wanted something cheap, rwd, light, easy/cheap to mod and somewhat reliable. I looked around at a few things and decided an s-chassis was the car I wanted. I knew I didn't want a pignose single cam car, and knew I couldn't afford a 95-98. So I was left with two options, a chucki hatch or coupe. Originally I wanted a hatch, I looked at a coupe in Louisville, went down with cash in had, but it turned out to be a bigger nightmare than I had imagined. Then I found Karl, on http://www.cincinnatistreetracing.com/s ... =36383&hl= (now a rather dead site) It was cheap, didn't run and needed alot of work, my type of project.

It was for sale for what seemed like over a year. I went with a friend and told him, "if this car has any rust on it, don't let me get it!" well needless to say it didn't. I checked it out, had new KYB AGX's all around, a new INJEN intake and clean front and rear S14 seats. Other than that the car was an unmolested, '93 coupe 5 speed, that lived the first 13 years of it's live in Florida. I picked it up for $400, figured if worse came to worse I'd just part it out and make a few dollars. Only real thing wrong with it was the #1 rod bearing had a ton of play in it and had a killer knock.

So he delivered it for me, actually came out to be less than $400 with all the spare change he left in it... I think this was Mayish '06.


The engine bay


Pulled the motor


cleaned the bay


It was extremely hot during the motor swap, I think it was Julyish most likely 90+ degrees, working in my grandpa's pole barn with no windows for cross ventilation. Notice I have a fan, on the fan to keep the motor cool not sure if that helped anything or not.


I had the hardest time finding a ka for this car, I think it took a couple months from when I bought it. I payed way to much, but it's been a strong motor for me. This was back when I really didn't know what I was doing, still in that learning process, so I didn't do a lot of things I should have. One thing I'm glad I did was remove the complete ac system.

I started to polish the valve cover, but it proved to be more of a pain than I had thought, so I only did half.


I got a Header for it, also went with 2.5" alumized piping, 2.5" I/O Magnaflow Cat and a Magnaflow Oval polished muffler.



Surprisingly everything went back together great and she started on the first crank.


My truck sat lower than my car?


After driving it for a bit, the mods started rolling in. Eibach prokit springs, pbr metal master pads, brembo drilled/slotted rotors, goodridge ss lines, and new synthetic dot 4 fluid.



Like any typical 240, it had a cracked dash, so I swapped it out



While at the junkyard getting the dash, we pulled the fusebox cover off to get to something, ended up someone stashed a crisp old school 50$ bill in there and must have forgot about it. I think that's been the only time I've gotten paid to go "shopping"

Then came Blackie.... I owed my dad somewhere in the neighborhood of $1500, for fixing my truck after I had a very bad incident with riding too low I finally came up with a solution that any true Nissan fanboy would appreciate. Instead of just giving him the money which he would spend and forget, I'll just buy him a car He was a little unsure about this but eventually I talked him into it. He figured this would be better on gas than his truck, and his was back when gas was on the rise. I found this car less than a mile away from my house in a mechanics parking lot with this sign on it...



I got this car for $400 as well, but it wasn't even close to being as good of a deal as Karl. The motor was packed with 10qts of and oil/coolant/water mix. The car was disgusting on the inside, and the tard left all of his personal information in it, pay stubs, bank statements, ss#, left testicle the list goes on. Luckily I'm not a douche and just pitched all that info.
Picking it up.

It was super cold working this time around, around 40* IIRC


Finding a motor for this was pretty easy, it was a 100k mile s14 motor, came with all the accessories and the tranny, for much less than what I paid for the other ka I had just bought.


I guess I was working on putting a motor in this car when I was putting brakes/suspension on Karl.

This time around I replaced all the gaskets, new belts, new dist. cap, rotor, plugs all the tune up crap. Also put new pads/rotors on it and fixed the front tension rods, inner/outter tie rods/ball joints.

I had to do something about the carpet, it was stained/molded/and had vomit in it. I tried steam cleaning it, but it was still disgusting. Luckily a junkyard 240 had mint carpet, so I janked it.


And bam, my dad had an extra car to drive, and I didn't owe him money anymore. I fixed this car up for him back in the winter of '06 I believe... anyways, he still drives it almost everyday to work. He bought an '08 fusion, it's going to be '10 soon and it just turned over 3k miles. He was coming home from work one day, there was a bucket in the middle of his lane, and a car coming head on in the opposing lane, with a ditch off the side of the road. Luckily he was in the 240, and did the only thing he could, mack it. It cracked the paint and took out one of his chucki vents, i replaced that and it was all better. Imagine if he would have been driving the new fusion

More to come when I get some more free time.

nice work! love the garage!

Those wheels on that coupe were pretty slick....

love the builds and the garage!!!

I may be a fan of the s14s but I sure do like the s13 coupes!!