E's '95 S14 Build - The true "forever" build

[Mister.E]

This build thread has been a long time coming. I’m not a scholar by any means, but I’m going to try and lay this 5 year story out the best that I can. I want to give you a little glimpse into my life just so you understand what it took to get here. There won’t be any TL; DR or Cliff’s Notes for this build, I rarely talk about myself and I want people to get to know a little bit about me.



The Past Builds:



I’ll just be frankly honest; throughout my entire life I had zero interest in cars whatsoever. To me, they were always just a means of transportation. Well, I ended up joining the United States Air Force at the age of 17. I turned 18 in February 2003 and I left Northern California for basic training in August 2003. After finishing that, I was stationed in Biloxi, Mississippi for 35 weeks to complete my technical education. My first assignment ended up being at Misawa AB in Japan. At this time I still had no interest in cars and really didn’t know anything about Asian culture. In August 2004 I ended up buying a Honda Vigor (Acura Legend) as my first DD in Japan. It wasn’t anything special and it got me around.







One year later the Vigor was due for its Shaken inspection. Well it didn’t pass and instead of paying the outrageous amount that they wanted to fix it, I decided to junk it and pick up a new car. I STILL wasn’t fascinated by cars and what the automotive world had to offer. My two requirements were:

1.)It’s good in the snow

2.)It’s manual (I didn’t know how to drive stick and figured just jumping into it would be the best way to learn)



That’s when I came upon a 1993 Subaru WRX. This was the vehicle that first introduced me to automotive modifications. I LOVED the ridiculous farty sound of the exhaust and wanted to get some wheels for it ASAP.







One deployment and too much money later we had the WRX in its final form.







Fast forward about a year and a half later and I was just tired of the WRX. It had done everything I had needed it to up to this point, but my friends were starting to get into drifting. We had gone out to the track as a group several times and time attack was cool, but thanks to a few rainy days I found out that the WRX was A LOT more fun when sliding.







It didn’t take me too long to realize that I needed a car that was RWD; I had caught the drift bug. One of my good friends, who goes through cars like toilet paper, ended up selling me his 180SX in September 2007.







I immediately fell in love with the car. The exterior styling of the hatch just makes you feel like a 90’s boss while driving it, it’s just so fuckin’ aggressive. It didn’t take long before we headed out to the track. I blew my front bumper up on the first track day with this car after hitting a stack of tires….go figure. Shortly after the bumper incident the damn pop-up lights stopped working. I was forced to leave them in the up position at all times and that really pissed me off for some reason. I was still a noob and had no idea how to fix it, so I decided that I was going to do a Sil80 conversion. Looking back, I probably should have left it with pop-ups, got a new bumper, and had the lights fixed; but what’s been done is done. The 180 got A LOT of bolt-on mods during my ownership but it was never tuned or had any major work done to it. It was a great entry level car for drifting and I honestly wish I could get the car back. Here a couple snaps of the 180’s final form as well.











After a couple of years with the hatch I had to sever our relationship. I had received orders and would no longer be residing in Japan. I wasn’t due to leave Japan until June 2010, but I wanted to put the car up for sale fairly early to maximize my return investment. I ended up selling the car and moving on to a Suzuki Wagon R. Unfortunately, I can’t find any pics of the R. It was at this point that I decided to start collecting all of the things that I wanted before I had to leave the country. I ended up bringing back a bunch of shit to use on my next build. I basically brought back an entire S14 minus the shell because I knew that most of the parts were interchangeable between the S13 and S14 and I honestly didn’t know what types of chassis’ would be available in the US; I had been in Japan for 6 years.