Well, as far as the process of importing a car goes, this past week was a pretty exciting one. I first reached out to Dario, the seller of the 180SX I purchased, in November of 2023 to discuss the car. I committed to purchasing it in late January, and was finally able to get payment sorted out by mid February. Yesterday, the car was finally picked up for land transport from Sasebo to the port for export. Dario was able to swap the factory wheels onto the car and send me a couple photos and videos of when the driver arrived to pick the car up.

It was so cool to see photos of the car in this environment and know that it’s finally on the way to me. I am very grateful to Dario for taking these photos and how great he has been to work with in this process. I am working with Jordan Tweed of Tweed Autogarage for the import process on the Japan side, while Richard from Run Matsuo is assisting with things on the US side. Richard has been such an amazing resource so far – I highly recommend him and really appreciate his help so far.

It sounds like the car will remain in port for several weeks while a ship is booked to the States, but hopefully it will find its way onto a boat sooner than later. Fingers crossed!

Here at home, I received a couple more packages this week. The first was my NISMO Super Coppermix twin disk clutch kit. I have never had a cool Japanese clutch in any of my S13s before, and have always dreamed of a twin disc primarily for the sound it produced. It will absolutely be overkill for my needs and hopefully won’t be too terrible to drive with, but I just couldn’t pass up the chance to own a cool NISMO clutch like I have always wanted to.

My 180SX feels like a unique opportunity to acquire the parts I always wanted to have on both of my 240s, but never really could for financial reasons. Focusing on only one car and selling so many parts that were redundant from my hatch (like most of the aero, for example) has freed up the budget considerably to allow me to make this happen.

Jimmy and I were discussing how he enjoys making “tribute” builds, or cars that pay homage to famous cars from the past. I joked that I want my 180SX build to be a CamryOnBronze tribute build, which is pretty funny to think about. And even though it was a joke, I kind of really like that mantra. I want this car to encompass all of the best aspects of my 240SX hatch build over the years. All of the parts I sold that I wish I had kept, or all of the things I wanted to do but never had the extra money to make it happen. I really like this concept a lot, and I hope I am able to pull it off. This sort of feels like my final contribution to building these cars, and I am really grateful to have an opportunity to put one together with all of the experience and knowledge I have gained over the years.

Later in the week, one more box from Japan showed up. This one included a number of OEM restoration parts that I have been sourcing to help freshen up the car. The first included a new coil pack cover with fresh bolts, as well as washers and nuts for the valve cover. I will have to take a look at the valve cover when I get it and decided if I want to send it out for powder coating or not. I will most certainly be keeping it the factory black color though.

Next came a set of OEM drive belts for the engine. I’ve found with most of these parts that I am just rebuying all of the things I purchased for both of my SR20DET swaps in my 240s over the last few years, which makes things a bit easier. Fortunately I have found most of it is still available, with the exception of some smaller things.

I ordered just about every coolant hose for the SR20 that I could get my hands on. A lot of the straight hoses have been discontinued for some time now, but you’d be surprised how many others are still in production. As always, I will go into more detail with all of this stuff (part numbers, locations etc.) when I get the chance to install them on the car down the road. I am sure it will be sort of a long process.

Much like the coolant hoses, most of the crankcase ventilation hoses are still available as well. A lot of this stuff can just be replaced with random domestic parts store hoses, but it’s just too cool to have the real deal sometimes. These clean up the look of the engine a lot – not to mention I am sure all of the 27 year old hoses will be pretty brittle.

Door strikers are one of the best things you can buy for your S13 and add a really fresh feel to the car. I of course had to grab a new set of these. The screws are still on order, but should be here at some point down the road.

I scooped up some new nuts, washers and grease caps for the S14 front knuckles and hubs. Again, it feels like I am just doing all of the same things over and over again at this point, but it feels great to start fresh.

For the pedals, I picked up a new set of pads. I have some other pedal restoration items on order that should be here in the next few weeks. That will allow me to refresh the brake and clutch assemblies and have them ready to drop in before the car arrives this summer. This are really cheap from Japan – much cheaper than any stateside retailer. I think the accelerator pedal was about $2 USD.

Finally, I grabbed a new wiper cowl seal. This was one of the only pieces of weather stripping that I actually installed on my 240, so I needed a new one to complete my set. I still have all of my moldings and weather stripping that I bought for my 240s. My hope is that the paint on the 180SX is clean enough that I can have it detailed and coated professionally and be happy enough with the results to need any paint work done. If that’s the case, I will likely install all of these items I have been holding onto for so many years – which would be a pretty awesome feeling of accomplishment.

It’s been a very strange winter here in Michigan this year. We had a week or two of bitterly cold temperatures, and a couple of snow storms – but we have also had a lot of random days in the 60s and 70s. This past week was no exception, and I was anxious to work in the garage – so I decided to assemble my shifter for the 180SX manual swap. I decided not to replace the plastic carrier in the shifter base, despite being tempted. I also opted not to buy one of the brand new discontinued shifter bases I tracked down. While it would be really cool, I came to my senses a bit and decided to save some cash.

I didn’t end up using the wave washer I bought for the bottom of the assembly, as I forgot to put it in and hate taking apart the snap rings to get to it. I am sure this will not cause any issues. I am really looking forward to trying this shifter and comparing it to the stock one. I think it should be perfect.

Sadly, the one area I did not make any progress with this week was getting rid of my 240SX shell. I still need to find time to pick up and/or track down the remaining parts I need to make the shell a roller, but I found out that I have more time to take care of that as the buyer can not come pick it up until sometime in April. Again, it’s not really hurting anything being in my garage at this point, so I am not too stressed. I look forward to the day when it is finally out of my hair though.

That’s about it for this week! Thank you to everyone that has been keeping up with the process so far. I am having a great time and feel like I have my motivation back again, which is funny considering there’s not car here in the garage to actually work on. I’m so excited for the car to arrive. At the rate time is going right now, I am sure it will be here before I know it.

Thanks as always and have a great weekend!

Damon