Progress has slowed slightly in the garage this week due to life taking priority. Alicia has been sick for nearly the past week meaning that I prefer to spend my time taking care of her and the girls as well as attempting to keep the house somewhat in order. Kinsey and Hattie will both start school this coming Monday (second grade and kindergarten respectively) so we’ve been busy with open houses and making sure everything is set for the new school year to begin.

Despite the chaos around the house, I did manage to get a few small things done in the garage to keep the progress and motivation flowing. After painting the front subframe and getting some undercoating finished, I was able to bolt it back into place.

I finally managed to remove the stock exhaust system for the car to get that out of the way. I don’t think I have ever seen one of these intact on a car here in Michigan… at least not with huge rust holes in it. Kind of cool to see actually…

I’ve slowly been working my way from the front of the car to the back with undercoating. I sprayed some on the bottom portions of the firewall where the paint didn’t have great coverage and have started working through the transmission tunnel. This gives me enough coverage to get the drivetrain installed soon- I’ll finish up the rest at a later date.

I took the steering rack to my cousin’s house last weekend and used his bench vise to remove the old crusty tie rods and ends. One of these days maybe I will actually get motivated enough to build a proper work bench so that I can install my grandfather’s old vice, but for now I’ll continue to work on the garage floor. After a thorough cleaning, I bolted the steering rack back into place alongside a set of NISMO steering rack bushings.

Steering rack after removing about 3″ of crud…

I purchased this NISMO power brace about a year ago with every intention of installing it on my hatch, but it ended up just sitting in my basement. I decided to bolt it up to the coupe and get some use out of it in the mean time. The silver looks pretty nice against the fresh black paint in the bay.

I next installed the fuel filter bracket and secured the fuel and brake lines to the frame rail. I’m currently waiting on the Z32 fuel filter to arrive from Nissan as well as a slew of other items specific to the engine bay. I just got the shipping notification today so I should have those things here and ready to rock by mid next week.

Speaking of packages, I just received my heater core hoses today from John Kim at TF Works. Thanks as always for the great customer service John!

As for the drivetrain, I took the engine off of the stand and replaced the rear main seal. Once that was finished, I installed the factory flywheel that I just got back from the machine shop last weekend.

My hope for tonight is to finish installing the clutch, toss some fresh seals in the transmission, and get everything bolted together. Now that the heater hoses are here, I should have everything I need to drop the engine into the car. I do have one distracting S13 related task that I need to tend to after work today before I can get that work done, so we’ll have to wait and see if I actually manage to install the drivetrain this weekend or not- but more on that next week! It could be a lot to accomplish, but I’m hoping things go my way.

Thanks as always for reading and following along with me. I hope you have a great weekend!

Damon