Figured I'd get around to making one of these now that I have some free time (aka procrastinating to do assignments). This won't be too much of a build thread because at this time I'm not doing many mods to the car but hopefully as time passes I'll be able to get some more stuff done to it.
In June 2010 I was looking around to see if I could find any cheap 240's and found one in NJ for $900. Brought it back home, did a bit of work to it (clutch because I only had 2nd, 4th, and 5th, put the interior back together since it was stripped, and a few other things). While it was parked for the winter I was trying to decide if I wanted to keep it or not. It was during this time that I drove a friend's 1999 Miata and realized just how much fun I was missing out on. Sure enough I posted the s14 up for sale and sold it a couple weeks later for $3700.
The S14:
The same day I sold the 240sx I put a deposit on a 1991 Mariner blue Miata that was 4,000km (2,500miles) away in Santee, CA that I had never seen before and just had a friend that lived in San Diego go take a quick look at it for me. Bought one-way tickets for my brother and I and within a week I was flying out to California, in the middle of the semester. Got there and drove the car around a bit, everything seemed to look good so I went ahead with the rest of the purchase. After a bit of confusion at the DMV because the car's original title was lost, everything got sorted out and I was on my way, getting ready to do a 4-day drive back home in a car I had never driven. Everything went well on the drive back, other than running low on the oil after forgetting to check it for two-days, or 22 hours, of driving. More details of the trip can be found in this thread.
First picture back in Canada at home:
with the Smurf's little friend:
The first order of business after getting the car back home was to take care of the zipper on the top. The zipper itself was fine but the material around it had ripped. To fix this I had a friend of my dad's who used to work in upholstery sew it up for me and then I used "Shoe-glue" and some strips of material to cover it up and strengthen it.
Stitched:
Finished:
After finishing it I left it closed for a few days so the glue could harden. Unfortunately since the smell was so bad I couldn't really drive the car much in those few days.
The next thing that needed to be changed was the horrible stock steering wheel. Hated driving around with such a big wheel. It really sucked for any hard driving, and the new wheel freed up some room on the driver's side.
Removing the stock one:
Getting ready to trim the clock spring:
Installed! No horn button at that time because I got the wheel for free from a friend and he didn't have the horn button anymore.
The wheel is a 330mm MOMO Champion on a MOMO hub.
I then had the car professionally detailed by a friend of mine to take care of some of the oxidation on the hood and all the swirls in general. I was amazed by the results.
A 50-50 of my hood:
A couple weeks later I shaved the raised letters on the exterior lights just to clean things up a bit, here's a quick example of one of the taillights.
I drove the car like this for pretty much the rest of the year until about September when I really started to get bored of the 4x4 ride height. Being on a university student's budget I got Racelands and regretted it shortly after. At this time I also picked up some BMW bottlecaps with good tires because my current tires were completely dead and really noisy around any corners that I took somewhat quickly.
Doing shocks and springs on my friend's NB while doing the coilovers on the NA:
Here is how the car looked around September of 2011:
I got sick of not being able to handle as well at that height and hated the ride of the racelands so when I went to put the car in storage in November I took them off and sold them. Currently the car is sitting on jackstands without shocks or springs as I try to decide what I want to do with it this year.
Some ideas I'm playing with for the car:
Take the rollbar off my NB and install it on the NA for the summer.
Sell the current shocks and springs on my NB and buy coils for the NA that both cars will probably end up sharing for now while I'm in school.
Buy some decent tires and just run on stock wheels for this year.
For coilovers I was thinking to keep the costs down to go with TEIN Street Basis.
Hopefully I can take this car out to some autox or lapping days sometime this season as that was one of the reasons I wanted it rather than my s14.
I'm trying to convince myself not to sell it in the spring because if I do I could probably end up making an even better profit than I did one my 240sx, but I think I would definitely miss it, and I would never get to see what I could've made the car into if I just held on to it.
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