CLICK HERE FOR RECENT PICTURES OF THE CAR
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 :happyfing. 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. :thumbsup
I will update when I get more done.......
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 :happyfing. 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. :thumbsup
I will update when I get more done.......
