It’s been nearly 1/3 of a year since my last update. That’s actually crazy when I think about it. I knew it had been a while since I had the level of motivation required to create a blog post, but this one is a bit surprising even to me. November – January is always a busy time with the holidays and whatnot, and this year was no exception. However, with thoughts of spring starting to creep slowly into my mind, I am back to working on the car to try to have it ready when the snow finally melts and the road salt is washed away. I’ll do my best to recap what has happened with the car since I completed the manual swap last October.

After completing the manual transmission swap and putting a proper exhaust on the car, my driving experienced changed a lot. It took a little bit of practice to get used to shifting with my left hand, but thankfully the transition wasn’t too bad. The NISMO short shifter is surprisingly a little notchier than I expected it to be. I almost prefer the stock shifter, but I’ll give it a bit more time to see if I get used to it. I’m also trying to tell if the transmission I am using is a little crunchy between certain gears, but all in all it’s not too bad.

I took a road trip about three hours away to Ohio that had been in the works for quite some time. I ended up buying my old pair of red Bride Brix 1.5 seats back from my friend Cole. I sold these seats to him in 2017 or so and missed having them. Fortunately he was willing to sell them back to me, so I made the trip on a Monday and scooped them up. The seat rails had developed a little bit of rust since I owned them, so I sold those and ordered a fresh pair of Bride MO brackets from Japan to replace them.

That was just about all I did to the car in November. I drove it for the last time of the season just before Thanksgiving, then parked it to begin my projects for the offseason. I started in early December by removing the front fender liners, front bumper, lip, and crash beam. It was cool to see all of these items in their original, unaltered state – before altering them. While I had the fender liners out, I installed a pair of DMAX crystal clear sidemarkers.

After Christmas passed, I managed to make my way into the garage again. I removed the stock front seats and installed the pair of red Bride Brix with the new seat rails. I also removed my valve cover and sent it out to TRG Coating in New Jersey for fresh powder coat. TRG did the valve covers on my previous S13 builds and does amazing work for a reasonable price – I highly recommend them!

In January, we picked up a new family vehicle and replaced our 2008 Toyota Sienna with a 2025 XSE. It’s been a crazy transition to get used to all of the new tech, but it’s nice (hopefully) not having to worry about working on my wife’s daily vehicle for a little while. We were excited to get a black one as that is Alicia’s color of choice and she has never been able to have one before. We also opted for the AWD this time around which has been really nice in the winter time so far.

Shortly after New Year’s, I finally made a daytime run out to Chicago to pick up some parts I had dropped off for paint in May of last year. This included two pairs of mirrors (Ganadors and East Bears) as well as two front bumpers – one with only the plate cutout, and the other with a pair of OEM R33 GTR N1 ducts. I think I am going to install the one with N1 ducts first to see what I think of the look. I had this bumper on my 240SX previously, but never with the vents actually painted. I discovered that most of the tabs are broken on the front lip that came installed on my 180SX, so I will likely try to have my spare lip painted so that I can install it sometime before spring.

More time passed without much motivation, but things have been ramping up in the last couple of weeks. I continued working on preparing the car for the new suspension and five lug conversion. I decided to tackle the most difficult task first in mid-January: rolling the rear quarters and hammering the fender lips and metal seams on the front of the car. I had been putting this off as it essentially sort of felt like ruining the car. Once you take this on there is no turning back. January is always the hardest month of the year for me living in Michigan, and it’s a tough one financially as well. I always have thoughts of selling my car around this time, and this year was no exception. However, I decided to take charge of the situation and make it happen.

I used a cheap fender roller that I purchased from Summit Racing a few years back for my coupe project. It doesn’t work very well, but I did manage to get the job done. I experienced a little bit of paint flaking, but overall it didn’t turn out too bad. I elected to only roll the lips flat this time instead of pulling the quarter panels out a bit like I did on my 240. While it was nice not needing to run too much camber with a 9.5J +12 offset in the rear, I prefer the look of the stock body lines. I am hoping I will be able to make this work, but we’ll see what things are looking like when we get to that point later this spring. If I absolutely have to, I will likely go with a slight pull again.

The front fenders went relatively smoothly as well. I always hammer those flat a bit with a rubber mallet instead of a fender roller so that I don’t warp or damage them. After that was finished, I removed the front fenders to prepare to tuck the chassis harness on both sides. It’s always painful to break the seam sealer for the first time, but it’s a necessary evil if you want the car to be low.

I took a break from the chassis work for a bit and turned my attention back to the interior. My car came equipped with the optional fog lights from the dealership, but I had decided not to run them. I wanted to remove the switch from the cluster surround, so I took it out along with all of the associated wiring that ran through the firewall and into the front of the car. I ended up selling the complete wiring harness and switch which helped fund some of the new parts I needed. I replaced both the fog light switch and the automatic transmission “power” button with brand new blanks from Nissan to clean things up. I still need to put the interior back together, but it should look pretty nice when I am finished.

Back outside the car, I removed both the stock side mount intercooler and the windshield washer fluid tank from the front of the car. I would have considered keeping the fluid tank, but the sprayer function didn’t work when I bought the car anyway. It needed to be relocated slightly for the TRUST front mount intercooler, so I elected to remove it.

At this point it was time to really start ruining the car and move the fender well chassis harnesses up out of the way of the front tires. I’ve done this a few times now over the years and like to think I am getting decent at it. I initially wanted to run the harness through the engine bay above the strut towers like my friend Kevin down in Houston, but when I started unplugging everything from the interior I got a bit intimidated. It looked like I may need to remove some HVAC components to access everything, so I decided to do it how I always have in the past and tuck the wiring up inside the fenders instead.

At this point, I started removing all of the front suspension to prepare for undercoating. Everything came apart fairly easily, and I have had all of the replacement parts on deck since before the 180SX even arrive stateside. I’ll share more details about what is being bolted up in a future post, but it should look pretty familiar to what I have done in the past with a couple of small changes.

After removing the stock plastic wire shielding and tucking things up nicely, I hammered all of the seams in the front fender well flat with a dead blow hammer. Once this painful process was complete, I sprayed everything with a couple coats of 3M undercoating to protect the metal I smashed up and freshen up the look of the fender wells a bit.

Last weekend, I finished the process of securing the chassis wiring, hammering it flat to try to clear the fenders, and bolting the fenders back up. It’s pretty tough to bolt the fenders on and keep the gaps and body lines straight as the new location of the chassis wiring is a tight squeeze against the fenders, but I think I did the best job I have ever done on any of my cars with this process. It felt great to have all of this clearance work out of the way as it is not the most glorious work. It certainly feels like I am destroying the car, but being over this hurdle is a huge win. While I was at it, I installed a new pair of OEM fender braces and a new hood release cable.

I held onto my modified OEM fender liners from my 240SX coupe project and installed the rear portions on either side into the freshly modified metal seams in the fender wells. I’ll go ahead and install the front portions once the suspension and front bumper are installed. Now it’s finally time for the fun part – installing all of the goodies that I have had sitting around for almost a year. I’m excited to dive into the front suspension install later this week.

On my way out of the garage Sunday night, I bolted up the TRUST front mount intercooler core. I have used this same setup on all of my S13s and I am super happy with both the look and the fitment. It’s really cool to see this car with a big front mount on it. I know it’s essentially the same as my 240SX looked, but I was still stoked about it. I still need to cut the hole in the battery tray, weld the hot side BOV portion closed, and order a hot pipe for the engine bay section – but all in due time! For now I will enjoy staring at that big core.

As far as new parts go, things have been fairly light – but I do have a few things to report. I got the valve cover back from TRG a few weeks ago and I am really happy with how it came out. I tried to match the OEM blacktop cover as best I could, but it does have slightly more texture to it. However, I think it looks amazing! I’ll be installing it with all new hardware and a new coil pack cover soon – likely this weekend.

I found a deal on an Apexi Power FC and snagged it a couple months ago when I was thinking I might dive into a T28 turbo setup and supporting mods like I had many years ago, but that has been put on hold for a while until I have the funds. I want to finish the projects I already have started before spring and save some money for it, so I decided to sell it and worry about making more power at a later time. I loved my S15 turbo setup though and would definitely like to do this again sometime if I can swing it.

I ended up buying a black Bride Brix 1.5 to replace my Ergo with. The seat looked very clean in the listing photos, but it turned out that the photos had been edited to make the seat appear less faded. When it arrived, I learned that it was faded purple like most old black Bride seats. I ended up selling it and keeping my Ergo, which will fit the bill should I swap to one of my black seat setups in the future. I would still love to have a clean Brix instead one day like I had previously, but that might just be a pipe dream in 2025. I can’t imagine there are many clean ones left out there! Be wary of some of the resellers on instagram out there, specifically the big ones from Thailand. I had good luck with them up to this point, but wasn’t so lucky this time around.

I received an order from NissanParts.cc earlier this week that included a new ignition/key for the car as I am still having random no-start issues. Only one of the 3 keys that came with the car will start it, and the others cannot be removed easily after the car is shut off. The key had to be inserted just right or the car would refuse to start, so I elected to replace the whole thing with a new one. I am hoping I can have the door and hatch locks modified to work with the same key, but I am not sure if that’s the case. I’ll look for a local locksmith and see if they might be up to the task. I also picked up a replacement valve cover stud as I messed one up when I removed the valve cover.

An internet friend and fellow 180SX owner named Tony hit me up a month or so ago asking if I would be interested in trading my optional window louvers for his NISMO glove box gauge holder panel. I had a set of white Defi Link Meter gauges I was hoping to run in this car, but I didn’t want to drill into the dash again our mount them on the top of my clean factory dash. Needless to say I was stoked about the trade and we went through with it. This is such a cool piece! I can’t wait to install it in the car.

The NISMO panel houses three 60mm gauges and one 80mm gauge. I had a set of four 60mm gauges, so I had to replace one with the 80mm version Defi offers. Thanks to a tip from Instagram, I found a matching 80mm boost gauge and was able to snag it from YAJ via Jesse Streeter. Once I had the gauge and panel in hand, I had to toss it together for a quick mockup. I am in the process of ordering everything I need to install the gauge sensors and should have the whole setup in the car soon. Very much looking forward to seeing it installed!

So that’s where things stand right now. After selling some spare parts I had laying around, I have a list of things I want to order this week for the final push towards having the car ready to rock this spring. I don’t need a lot of things, but it’s a decent list. With any luck I will be able to have most things here by mid-March and make a big push as the weather warms a bit to get everything installed. It should be really satisfying to make progress and see it all come together. Here’s to hoping the motivation continues!

Thanks as always for stopping by and following along with the new car. I get bummed out sometimes that things don’t move at the pace they did in my younger days, but that’s the reality of trying to hang in this hobby while pushing 40 years old. It’ll get there eventually! I’m thankful to still be able to do this when time and funds allow. Have a great weekend!

Damon