I just had a funny thought: I have updated the blog more times since technically not really owning an S13 than in the past couple years when I had two more or less functioning examples. Kind of weird how that works, right? I guess it has really freed me up mentally to start from a clean slate. The transition of parting ways with two 240SXs and moving to a singular 180SX has felt like a total reset that I desperately needed. I hope the feeling of freedom and the mental weight I have shed in this process continues as I focus on only one vehicle, because it’s been a huge breath of fresh air so far.

I have a few exciting updates to share this week (at least in my opinion, anyway.) Let’s start with the 180SX. Last week I finally received an official invoice for transporting the car and was able to pay the importer’s fee, shipping to the USA via sea, and land transport to take the car from its current location in Southwestern Japan to Osaka for shipping to the states. I was able to nail down a pickup date of March 14th with the importer and the seller, which took a fair amount of back and forth. It already feels like ages ago since I paid for the car, but that’s to be expected with this process. I said I wanted to experience it, so here I am! Hopefully everything goes smoothly with pickup and transport next week. From there, I believe the car will be waiting until the next available ship. I am telling myself I will not have it in time to enjoy the 2024 season at all here in Michigan with the hope that it arrives earlier – but we’ll see what happens!

Meanwhile, I have continued to stockpile items for the car’s highly anticipated arrival. The first item I secured this week was a NISMO sport shifter. I’ve tried a number of shifters over the years including C’s, Tomei, and B&M but was never super happy with any of them. I ended up switching over to a stock shifter and had been using that for the last several years. It’s just tough to beat it, especially for street driving.

I’m told the throw reduction on the NISMO shifter is pretty minimal, which makes sense as most NISMO items are a pretty small change over the factory components they replace. I talked to a few people that have them and I think it will be a nice in between. I actually ended up sourcing what must be a slightly older stock item since the box has the mid NISMO logo on it. I went with one that I found on Yahoo! Auctions Japan and used Streeter to import it as I found that these are apparently on backorder until the end of July. Though I am not in a rush since I don’t even have the car yet, I figured it was worth paying a little bit more (but still much less than any stateside vendor) to have one ready to go when the car gets here.

If you haven’t sensed a theme here yet, my hope is to source just about every modern NISMO component still available for the S13 chassis for my build. I think it’s so cool that items are still being produced for this chassis by Nissan, even if it doesn’t seem to get the same support that the R chassis does. NISMO parts just generally sort of fit the relatively conservative tuning mindset I have acquired as I have gotten older and I am really excited about adding all of this stuff to my mod list. I had the majority of these parts on my 240SXs that I parted out, but I thought it probably made sense to sell those items and start with fresh, new components wherever I could for the 180SX build. I think the satisfaction it brings will be worth it in the long run.

So, let’s see – I’ll start with the NISMO suspension components first. I’ll share more detailed photos and part numbers etc. later when I actually begin installing all of these items on the car. I started with bushings, including steering rack bushings, rear knuckle bushings, and rear subframe bushings. I almost kept my old rear knuckles and subframe to save myself the hassle of pressing them again, but thought it would be cool to keep the original parts on the 180SX that came with it. Plus, it’ll give me something to do down the road when I am in the mood for a project.

Next, I sourced what is more or less the same suspension setup I had on my 240s with NISMO front and rear lower control arms. I decided to stick with the S14 front lower control arms again for the additional track width and camber adjustment, in addition to being able to utilize S14 front knuckles and OEM five lug hubs. I liked this setup a lot on my hatch, so I decided to just copy/paste the setup. I also bought what is probably my favorite NISMO piece of all time – the power brace.

Finally, I decided to round out my NISMO order and grab a few drivetrain related items. This included engine mounts and a transmission mount. While I love the engine clearance and lack of vibrations with these, it does bum me out that I can’t run a strut tower brace with them. However, I think it’s worth it to avoid running more aggressive engine mounts. I also picked up a reinforced clutch pivot ball and a braided NISMO clutch hose to replace the flimsy, aging rubber one on the manual clutch line setup I sourced from Japan. Unfortunately I had to ditch the NISMO clutch slave cylinder I had been using on my previous cars due to the clutch setup I decided to run in the car, but I think it will be a worthy trade off. More on that later when it arrives – possibly next week?

I am really excited about the next set of parts that arrived this past week. Many years ago, I sourced a couple pairs of Cusco adjustable suspension arms for my 240SX hatch from a seller on Zilvia. They came in really cool boxes and I loved the blue color. Cusco has always been one of my favorite Japanese tuning companies. When I bought my chassis back after parting it out, I went with SPC arms as they were much more affordable and got the job done well enough. However, I always missed running Japanese components on the car. I often dreamed of replacing them with Cusco components, but never really had the extra cash to make it a reality.

Fast forward to this new clean slate I find myself in, and I was able to make it happen with the full fleet of Cusco adjustable arms: front tension rods, rear traction links, rear upper control arms and rear toe arms. I know it’s silly, but it feels so cool to be collecting all of these parts from Japan for an actual 180SX. Truthfully it doesn’t really feel real, and probably won’t until the car is sitting safely in my garage. But the excitement is building by the week. Again, I’ll share a better look at these in a future post when I begin getting everything put together.

I scooped up a set of Moonface Racing front sway bar links to try out. I noticed on my coupe that the stock end links were at a crazy angle, especially when I was super low on the 15″ Work Equips. This caused the sway bar to sit at a funky angle and the bushings to become distorted. I am hoping these shortened end links will help with that issue.

Finally, I got out my set of DMAX Super Street coilovers. I actually bought these months ago to replacing the aging Stance coilovers on my 240SX hatch (it still feels so weird to keep calling it that, but I feel I have to now to avoid confusion) as I had a set of DMAX coilovers back in 2012 or so that I really liked. They have a really cool camber adjustment feature up front and seemed to work well enough when I had them previously – not to mention they are MUCH cheaper than most coilover offerings out there these days as the prices have increased dramatically. I know they go plenty low, so hopefully they will serve me well.

As for my 240SX shell, it’s still hanging around. I finished installing the rear subframe last weekend and also bolted up the front subframe, arms, and knuckles. I still need to get a couple items together to make it roll and to nail down a pickup date with the buyer, but I hope I will make some progress on that soon. For the time being it is a bit of an eyesore, but a minor inconvenience to have in the garage. So much of my current situation is really testing my patience, but I know good things take time.

If anyone reading this is in need of an S13 Silvia slicktop headliner, a crack free S13 dash, or a crack free S13 dash with four 60mm gauge holes in it, let me know! I am still actively trying to sell these items from my previous cars. Unfortunately, these items are too large to ship – so they would need to be picked up in Michigan. I can also have them transported to NJ with the shell if that is closer to you. Let me know!

That’s about it for this week’s update! I hope to continue to go into a little more detail on my plans for the 180SX next week. I think I am beginning to form a pretty clear game plan, but it always helps to type it out and ensure everything seems to make sense. I know I frequently change my mind, so that is always something to look out for.

Thanks as always for stopping by and have a great weekend!

Damon