Well, long story short, I have been looking for a 240sx for a while now. I have always liked the car, since I was young, and finally got my hands on one that wasn’t completely trashed. $2700 (ya, I know it’s a lot now)
I live in Illinois, next to Saint Louis, and before that I lived in New Jersey. Neither climates are good for older cars since it gets cold, snowy, salty, wet, and hot. To keep myself from buying a rust bucket I grabbed a 240 in Dallas Texas during school for the air force.
I drove it home when I was done with schooling, and in the process blew a radiator hose, belt, and a tire.
I got it home and was EXTREMELY excited to start working on it, but I had a big list of problems with the car.
-Nothing in accessory works
-driver’s side door pops on body panel when opened
-windshield wiper goes across window once when started
-clock doesn’t work
-dome light doesn’t work
-no sun visors in the car
-electric mirrors don’t work
-driver’s side window doesn’t work
-rear windshield wiper doesn’t work or shoot fluid
-no antenna
-need new tires
-body kit held on with zip ties (no joke)
-passenger side light won’t come up without tricking it to come up
-needs new radiator hoses
-needs new belts
-needs new thermostat
-needs bodywork
-interior nees some work
So, I decided to jump in headfirst since I have 2 weeks off of work to do it.
I started off with the electrical problems, since I just got done with school to be an electrician . Very quickly I realized that most of my problems were from blown, or missing, fuses and fusible links, and I had some random shorts in the car.
For the first few days my car battery kept dying. I figured since I was working with the electricity and not disconnecting the battery, I was draining it. But, after checking all of my fuses I learned that I had just blown an alternator fuse. I had a problem with my clock not working also. It would never come on, unless I put a light in my dome light. Then it would come on, but it would shut off whenever I opened a door. Easy fix, I had a short and a fuse missing.
Also, once I replaced all of the fuses I learned why the previous owner took a few out. The chime for the door being open would constantly be on. The black micro switch in the inside of the door was not making contact, making the car think the door was always open. So, the previous owner thought it would be a good idea just to pull the fuse that controls that circuit. Well, it controlled a lot of other circuits, goofing with my car. To solve this problem I just taped the micro switch constantly shut, and fixed the chime, and inadvertently fixed my dome light and my clock.
After spending nearly a week on electrical work, and after nearly everything worked (window still won’t roll up or down, but I think it’s off the tracks and side view mirror still won’t work) I decided to get to some of my physical problems, mostly the engine.
I replaced all of the hosing on the radiator, cleaned out the system (full of rust), replaced my belts, cleaned the air filter, changed a few gaskets out, replaced the thermostat, replaced the battery, added a quick disconnect with new terminals, added some sea foam, and put a switch inside the car for the electric fan that the last guy threw in there. Finally got the car to stop overheating
Since the car runs as good as I think it can, I thought it was time to work on the bad paint job and torn up body kit. The car has a sweet candy orange color on it with some cool graphics, but it was all done with some shoddy work. The orange on the car is good, except for 2 spots where the paint was sprayed too thick and I have drips. The black graphics are another story. When I bought the car the guy said it was "matte" black on purpose. I think that he did a primer base coat and said "screw it. I'm done" Plus, the orange on the body kit does not match the car at all, and the paint was all chipped off in the front from other cars.
Also, there is this ridiculous "kanji", I think it’s called, in the center of the bumper that looks like it was done with crayola paint.
So I thought since it will be winter soon and I will probably get it repainted again anyway in the summer I was going to repaint all of the body kit gloss black and re-do the graphics gloss also.
I started by cutting the lip off of the body kit. The thing sits low already, and add an extra low body kit on there; I had less than 3 inches of clearance in the front of my car. I was scraping everywhere. It had to go.
Next was to take off the body kit and start sanding. It took me a while to find the rivets holding it in place, since they were covered in bondo, but I finally got everything off. The front bumper was a breeze, considering 4 zip ties and 2 body tacks held the damn thing on.
It takes a lot to sand off the paint of this car. I don’t know how many coats of clear coat were on here, but it’s next to impossible. I am only half done with the front bumper after hours and hours of work with an electric sander.
^ my buddy james, who has helped every step of the way
I sanded the rear bumper and popped out all of the holes that were in it from the previous owners accident so I could bondo them. Also, I popped out the side turn signals from the car, since he painted over them and they looked like hell, and I am just going to bondo over them.
That is about where I am right now. About to bondo, and going to paint the next day. I got called into work today, wasn’t expecting to work for a while longer, and had no other ride but my car that was in the middle of being overhauled. So I hastily threw on my front and rear bumper with some zip ties, and my rear license plate, and rushed to work. I didn’t even have time to put in my turn signals.
what? why not? why wouldnt bondo last over the holes?
Normally bondo gets brittle over time and harsh driving with bumps and what not will cause it to break and chip off. Even more so with any type of suspension upgrades.
well, for now i am just going to bondo over them. i am probably going to get the car repainted in the summer to black anyway, so i can do it "right" then with some tack welding and whatnot.
so what should i do? just leave the holes there? could i cover them up with something? because i dont want water ending up in my panels, and since i basically broke the lights to get them out of there, what can i do.
BTW: update, im almost done sanding, just gotta do medium and then fine sanding. Then bondo, then paint. hope to be painting either tuesday or wednesday....
If you wanna do it right you need to weld a piece of sheet in there. If you want to do it cheap I would just go get some new lights, you should be able to find them for pretty cheap. Try car-parts.com
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"I do not fear the ten thousand techniques you've practiced once, i fear the one technique you've practiced ten thousand times.- American Shaolin.
hahaha, i know that now. its whatever tho. its just money. plus i wanted this car. it just sux i got boned for a car. the thing dont run too good either :/
but UPDATE: painting is done, i just gotta wait for it to dry and mount the body kit. i will have pictures and a walkthrough up later on tonight......
btw, does anyone know whow to get overspray off of paint
btw, does anyone know whow to get overspray off of paint
Do you mean on the clear coat or actual paint? If its the clear just sand it with very fine paper and buff it. If its on the actuall paint you might be able to get away with just painting over it, but sometimes you have to sand it also and then paint back over it
ummm, when i was redoing the stripes my taping job wasnt as good as i thought it was and i got some overspray on the clearcoat of the last paintjob. it seems to smudge if i scrape it it with my fingernail, so im gonna take some wax to it and see if that works.
hope to have pictures of it tonight, but i have yet to mount the body kit back on the car. everyhting is painted and just waiting to be put back together. gotta go to work tho
Ok, well, I haven’t posted any real updates, so I will make this one a smorgasbord (sp?) like my first post.
At the end of my first post I was still sanding, about to bondo, and then gonna paint. Well, I did all that, and here it is:
To start, the sanding took WAAAAAAY longer than I thought it was. I must have gone through 30 pieces of sandpaper on my electric sander. It took me a good 4-5 days to get everything sanded down, but I finally got through all of it.
Now that everything was sanded, it was time to start bondoing my body kit. The kit looked like it was drifted into a cow farm and had dings and breaks everywhere. I patched all that I could find and the end result turned out well. I even bondo'd my front and back side turn signals (I know everyone told me not to, but I wanted to see for myself)
So, then came painting. Painting outside in the cold, wind and dust was not an option. I didn’t know how I was gonna paint this thing. But, a window of opportunity opened to me. My dad left town for a few days, which gave me just enough time to cover the ENTIRE garage in painters paper, tape the car off, and paint everything in the garage.
First came final sanding and priming of the bumpers and skirts. I started my taping at about 11 o clock at night, and didn’t get done sanding, taping, priming, and painting the body kit until about 6:30 am
I was tired, so I went to bed, got up about 6 hours later, and started to tape the car off, then I painted it. I did all of this with industrial spray enamel in gloss black (hope it stands up.....)
Now, I don’t want everyone in here to say "OMG, you spray painted your car! What a dumbass!" Well, to be honest with you, I was just after making my car look better. I’m not looking to build a show car here, but the old paintjob and f'ed up body kit made my car look like hell. So, I fixed it the cheapest and best way I knew how. And I am quite proud of myself doing all of this on my own with very little knowledge about what I am doing. Just kinda did it.
Back on topic, after everything was painted, I called my dad to ask him when he would be home. Turns out, he was already on his way home and already in Illinois. So, I hurried and tore all the paper off the walls and threw it into a dumpster down the street, and tried to air out my garage as best I could before he got home
The first thing he asked me when he got home is "what did you paint in the garage!?" I told him I didn’t, that I painted it at a friend’s house and had it stored in the garage because it was too cold outside. He bought it...
Then I had to remount the body kit, which I am in the process of doing now. I got almost all of the rivets in, just need to put a few screws in and mount the front bumper right.
Here’s a pic of it when I was fixing my hood today (hood wouldn’t shut)
Hope to have pics of the finished car up sometime tomorrow. Gotta work in the morning so hopefully I can get this thing done before I gotta go to work, or else I’ll be getting more rides from family members, which is always embarrassing......
I like that you did the work yourself.
For the little that you knew, you did a good job with what you could.
But...
The bondo on the light hole was not a good idea. Although it looks good with paint over it. It wont hold. Not the way it looks in the pic. It's going to ruin your paint when it brakes off. (and it will.)
None the less. Good job making it work for now. Hope it gets done right in the summer though.
The Paint choice was cheap, but i've seen those paint jobs last over a year. So your job should last easily till summer.
The color choice is not my style, but it looks to be evenly glossy between the two colors.
I cant comment on the rivits since i can't see them very well.
Rivits are rivits though. As long as its holding and you can hide them well then it'll come out good.
Hope they were'nt too tight though, If they were, then it might crack your kit with little flex applied.
All in all. I'd say you did a good job with the time and skill you had.
VERY happy you're getting your hands dirty.
For that...
All the rest of the flaws are out the window.
It feels great having something like this under your belt. Yeah?
=)
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. Very quickly I realized that most of my problems were from blown, or missing, fuses and fusible links, and I had some random shorts in the car.
Mountain Biking is AWESOME!
