The Present Build:
So here we are. It’s June 2010 and it’s time to leave the beloved country that I had grown so used to loving. Some traveling and a 14 hour flight later, the family and I landed in the states. It was my wife’s first time in the US of A and my daughter…well she was only 8 months old, it didn’t really affect her all that much. Among finding a home for my family to live in, transportation was also very high on the list of things that needed to be acquired. I started browsing Craigslist looking for a good family car…Somehow I ended up on the Vegas Drift forums and one thing led to another and the first car I purchased was NOT a family car. It was a 1995 240SX SE with a factory 5 speed. The original owner ended up lowering the price a pretty decent amount if I let him keep the wheels and suspension, so I took that deal knowing that I had a ton of shit inbound on a boat.
Here it is with the suspension removed and at my house. The previous owner let me borrow the battles until my stuff arrived.
Clearly the car had been in a front end accident, there was no hiding that. The hood and passenger door both had huge bends and paint damage. The entire passenger side fender had been replaced but not painted.
I got to work on finding a replacement hood and door. At the same time I also solicited Kognition to make me one of their S14 carbon sunroof delete panels even though it was out of production. They actually made the panel and I was so excited to install it. Unfortunately, the panel was too small to cover over my sunroof. This confused the shit out of me, I had no idea why it wouldn’t fit. I eventually found out that the sunroof on my car was aftermarket….my car was an original slick-top SE that someone had chosen to install a sunroof in. Fucking sad face man, seriously. To recoup my losses I sold the delete panel to my friend and he installed it on his S13 coupe. I just accepted that the only way I was going to get rid of the sunroof was to get a whole new/different slick-top roof panel and the interior braces that help support the panel. This is A LOT easier said than done so I decided to just keep the sunroof unless I found a new roof later down the road.
So September 2010 rolls around and my household goods shipment arrives. Most of my free time is spent getting the house squared away and into a livable condition. I wasn’t able to work on the car until October but that didn’t stop me from sourcing more parts. When I bought the car, it had a terrible whining noise that I was told was due to the fact that it had solid subframe bushings. I sourced a spare subframe and a set of Energy Suspension bushings. October rolls around so I installed the bushings and slapped the subframe into the car. The damn noise was still there. I was pissed off having done all of that work myself, just for it to not solve the problem, so I said fuck it and left the new setup in there. I sold the other subframe with the solid bushings and moved on.
I decided that this would also be a great time to clean up the HKS Hi-Power exhaust that I had brought back with me and get that thrown on the car. I had also acquired a wingless trunk before leaving Japan and I felt that this was a good time to throw it on. This piece is very special to me because it is wingless and it has no 3rd brake light. For some reason that 3rd brake light makes me so salty. Threw on the wingless trunk and sold the old trunk with the SE wing.
Wheels on deck. Six Work XD-9’s (in the boxes) and the Meister S1’s on the side.
One thing that I didn’t bring with me was suspension. I ended up picking up some brand new D-Max D1 Spec coilovers from Forrest and Get Nuts Lab back when he was sponsored by them. So fucking fresh and I love the colors. I had these on the 180 back in Japan and loved the way that they felt; it was an obvious choice for me.
Wheels and more low achieved. It’s actually starting to look decent…but not really.
