A week has passed since I last updated you guys and I have made a decent amount of progress. I didn’t end up talking myself into working on the car during the week after work but I put a good portion of this weekend into it. Last I left off I was looking for a frontpipe exhaust hanger/bracket for the PBM Cobra pipe. I found one on the auctions but it was kinda rusty and I couldn’t see the state of the rubber hanger. After consulting my friends I ended up going with a new rubber hanger as well as a custom new bracket that mounts to the trans brace. Ordered from Faction Motorsports down in New Jersey and they arrived within 2 days! I like their podcast so I was happy to support when I saw they had what I needed.
Got that all bolted up as well as tightened up the rest of the exhaust system. Slid the radiator in place after acquiring lower bushings from eBay, slight modification needed. Still need to drill out and tap the driver side upper bracket hole. Next on the chopping block was to see if I could get the engine to run for a couple seconds to ensure I have everything hooked up correctly so far. Spent about an hour and a half trying to figure out why the fuel pump wasn’t priming.
Thankfully Tyler was helping me today so I wasn’t trying to do this all by myself and probably mess something up. Ended up finding that the ECU plug wasn’t screwed in/pushed in all the way so took care of that as well as swapping the CAS out for the one from my spare motor and it fired up! Took that as a win for the day and called it good on the 240. Swapped in new spark plugs on the Miata since it was breaking up and of course just had to make sure it still works properly 😉
This morning I woke up early and went straight into the garage. I ended up cleaning the whole place up and that really helps my motivation to work on the car when I can comfortably walk around. In the process of cleaning up I grabbed another shelf I had in the basement and put all the SR parts from this car on it.
I started underneath the car today and installed a new Nismo slave cylinder. Got it bolted up then moved on the tightening the transmission bolts that were already there as well as adding about 4 of my own that were missing. Also got one front shifter turret bolt in from underneath the car, still need to figure out how to get the other one in.
After that I got to work on the top of the engine bay. Got the power steering belt on and tightened. Slid the clutch fan shroud into place and bolted it up as well as the radiator hoses. That piece alone really makes the car look like it’s coming together. Next got to work on trying to fit up the intercooler piping. Hotside piping went on very easy. For now on the passenger side I have opted to remove the washer fluid reservoir to fit the ISR piping kit that I have. At some point I plan to get a different reservoir setup going as it is a function that I would like to have in the long run. Other misc things I did were putting on a bunch of clamps that I found missing on the intake side as well as the heater hoses. Shortened the fuel lines a little as before they were just on there for testing and hadn’t been cut.
Starting to look like it should! I came to the realization today that I completely forgot that the core support was still just in primer. I didn’t really have a plan in mind to paint it when I got the car and it being so close of a color to the rest of the bay made it slip my mind until now. I guess my plan is going to be get it all assembled now and drive it until winter, then pull it apart and assess/paint. I know that is probably stupid but I really want to drive the car before snow/salt and possibly even drift it. I didn’t mention it when I bought it but the car has been rebuilt in the front end. Originally in 2016 someone put a S15 front on it but my buddy put it back to S13 earlier this year. That wraps it up for today, waiting on a power steering line then I can get some more stuff hooked up and ready to go!
Bino W0rld 