Snikty
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Greetings Folks!
After owning my ST for a little over a year now I have finally decided to start a blog. Unfortunately I am only a mere enthusiast and hence my progress on the car is going to be completely dependent on the size of my wallet so it will be a long term project. However I do have very big plans for this car as I think they are an amazing piece of engineering and worth keeping mint while still showing off the enormous potential they have. This first post will be fairly lengthy as I want to try and be as thorough as I can with the blog just so it keeps me focused and so I have my own record of the work that goes into the project. So here goes...
I bought a 1989 March Super Turbo from an import dealership in August 07. Here's how it looked when it arrived from Japan. It had 105ks on the clock when I bought it and has a little over 110 on it now.
Then I took it home :grinning:
I had to take a personal loan due to the nature of the car and had a bit left over so got some new rims.
About three months after getting the car I had a nasty boost leak that caused my ecu to start doing some really strange stuff that basically meant I couldn't move the car anywhere without cooking the engine. So it remained parked for about a fortnight while I did some shopping around.
I tried several mechanics and at the first mention of twin charge I got dumb looks and became instantly scared. So when I found the my current mechanic and mentioned twin charging he reacted with, "oh ok, cool" as though it was nothing new so I decided I had found the right guy. So I had the car towed to the workshop and they held on to it for about 6 weeks. In that time they replaced the bulk of the ignition (ie leads, plugs, starter motor, dizzy, rotors). Replaced all the thin induction hoses. Most had at least an inch of splitting at the ends. Replaced oil n air filters, timing belt and all oils. Replaced front discs and front and rear brake pads. And had an inspection carried out on EVERYTHING. After all that it was put up on the dyno to check/clear fault codes and adjust the ignition timings. Which ended with...
I then decided that 'MARCH' number plates would look really hot and heard a rumor that Nissan Australia was going to release a special edition K12 over here that would be called a March. So I got a bit anxious that if that happened someone else may get them. So I got em as soon as I had the cash. As it turns out they didn't release a K12 March. I stand by my decision... :wasntme:
Next I had to take care of some of the body work. Namely my driver's side door and a spot in the bottom of the driver's side windscreen.
I was expecting to have to take the windscreen out and it became a slight issue to source a K10 windscreen over here. As it turned out we were able to chip out the rust then grind it out completely without having to get too close to the glass, sometimes you do get lucky breaks....haha bad choice of words. It also turns out the windscreen that was in there was a particularly high quality one and it would have been an awful shame to crack it as it would have cost a bit in its day.
Now the driver's side door is a little hard for me to talk about. Lets just say if I ever meet the previous owner I am gonna punch em in the throat. Basically they had fabricated over the top of rusty holes then bogged over it. In the process they also filled in the drainage hole. So we cut about 200mm off the bottom of the door and put in a new piece of metal. I don't have any photos of the car itself after the body work was done as its pretty much gone straight from the body shop back to the mechanics. But I've attached pics of what we took out. I could rant for days about it but a pic says a thousand words and all that grr
So now the car is back in the shop and is getting the suspension completely redone with kyb shocks and king springs. I am getting the rear brakes replaced as the passenger side one is in a really bad way. Replacing gearshift bushes, sway bar bushes, the rear lower engine support, fixing an oil leak, crank and cam seals, lower control arm bushes. And, as per Ed's sage like advice, I will be relocating the lambda sensor. That will basically have everything that was 'wrong' with the car fixed and gives me a nice clean pallet to work from. And now comes improvements...
While the things listed above are getting done I am also going to replace the exhaust. I've not yet decided what exactly I will get with that, and am very open to all suggestions, but will probably look at something silenced cause I just have a personal preference for performance cars that are extremely quiet when being driven normally. So I will post some pics of that work and the body work in a few weeks.
As far as my future plans for the car go...I pretty much want to do up everything that possibly can be done up (that's the point of a project car, right?). Having said that I think it would be silly to start speculating about what I might do with the engine, induction, ecu etc as these are all things that may not be attended to for another year or two. However I do have a firm idea of what I'm aiming for with the aesthetics of the car. And that is as follows...
Firstly, this will always be a white car. I thought about various colours over the past 12months and I still think I really like the look of white on K10s. It will get some kind of white, light weight Japanese rims, I have my eye on some 'vintage' enkeis but am not entirely sure yet. Will pop nissan centre caps in em and paint em in blue/red along with the old blue/red nissan logo valve caps and red and blue anodised wheel nuts. I may look into blue/red anodised exhaust tips also but that is a long way down the track. Will get it resprayed and have some kind of red and blue decal but not sure what will look good yet, I have a few ideas. Basically I am of the opinion that you make a car look good by showing it for what it is...and I see this car as having that sporty/rally look that just screams, Retro Japanese! And I think I can do that and make it look good without going TOO over the top.
With the interior I will get black suede trims, perhaps with a small blue n red flash in it. White faced dials with red lighting on Speedo and blue on the rest. Will get a multi-guage at some point which I will mount above the air con vent on the right of the dash. And will keep the old red digital turbo timer (see Original Interior Photo), which is now mounted a little neater.
Then, due to the laws over here with roll cages, I will have to get the car converted to a two seater and registered as a commercial vehicle. I will do a lot of the prep work for that and hopefully get a little weight out of it. I will be doing a similar thing to what cisco did with his blue K11 for anyone that knows of him. Despite the personal safety factor, K10's are just too rare in Australia for me to not put a roll cage in it. I can also get a dry cell battery put in the back once that work is done. When I do that I can also move the seats back and hopefully make the car a little more comfortable for a 6'5 giant like myself :grinning:
So that is basically it for now and what I intend to do. Thanks to everyone who managed to read the whole rant and hopefully you will all enjoy following my progress as much as I enjoy sharing it.
Peace
After owning my ST for a little over a year now I have finally decided to start a blog. Unfortunately I am only a mere enthusiast and hence my progress on the car is going to be completely dependent on the size of my wallet so it will be a long term project. However I do have very big plans for this car as I think they are an amazing piece of engineering and worth keeping mint while still showing off the enormous potential they have. This first post will be fairly lengthy as I want to try and be as thorough as I can with the blog just so it keeps me focused and so I have my own record of the work that goes into the project. So here goes...
I bought a 1989 March Super Turbo from an import dealership in August 07. Here's how it looked when it arrived from Japan. It had 105ks on the clock when I bought it and has a little over 110 on it now.
Then I took it home :grinning:
I had to take a personal loan due to the nature of the car and had a bit left over so got some new rims.
About three months after getting the car I had a nasty boost leak that caused my ecu to start doing some really strange stuff that basically meant I couldn't move the car anywhere without cooking the engine. So it remained parked for about a fortnight while I did some shopping around.
I tried several mechanics and at the first mention of twin charge I got dumb looks and became instantly scared. So when I found the my current mechanic and mentioned twin charging he reacted with, "oh ok, cool" as though it was nothing new so I decided I had found the right guy. So I had the car towed to the workshop and they held on to it for about 6 weeks. In that time they replaced the bulk of the ignition (ie leads, plugs, starter motor, dizzy, rotors). Replaced all the thin induction hoses. Most had at least an inch of splitting at the ends. Replaced oil n air filters, timing belt and all oils. Replaced front discs and front and rear brake pads. And had an inspection carried out on EVERYTHING. After all that it was put up on the dyno to check/clear fault codes and adjust the ignition timings. Which ended with...
I then decided that 'MARCH' number plates would look really hot and heard a rumor that Nissan Australia was going to release a special edition K12 over here that would be called a March. So I got a bit anxious that if that happened someone else may get them. So I got em as soon as I had the cash. As it turns out they didn't release a K12 March. I stand by my decision... :wasntme:
Next I had to take care of some of the body work. Namely my driver's side door and a spot in the bottom of the driver's side windscreen.
I was expecting to have to take the windscreen out and it became a slight issue to source a K10 windscreen over here. As it turned out we were able to chip out the rust then grind it out completely without having to get too close to the glass, sometimes you do get lucky breaks....haha bad choice of words. It also turns out the windscreen that was in there was a particularly high quality one and it would have been an awful shame to crack it as it would have cost a bit in its day.
Now the driver's side door is a little hard for me to talk about. Lets just say if I ever meet the previous owner I am gonna punch em in the throat. Basically they had fabricated over the top of rusty holes then bogged over it. In the process they also filled in the drainage hole. So we cut about 200mm off the bottom of the door and put in a new piece of metal. I don't have any photos of the car itself after the body work was done as its pretty much gone straight from the body shop back to the mechanics. But I've attached pics of what we took out. I could rant for days about it but a pic says a thousand words and all that grr
So now the car is back in the shop and is getting the suspension completely redone with kyb shocks and king springs. I am getting the rear brakes replaced as the passenger side one is in a really bad way. Replacing gearshift bushes, sway bar bushes, the rear lower engine support, fixing an oil leak, crank and cam seals, lower control arm bushes. And, as per Ed's sage like advice, I will be relocating the lambda sensor. That will basically have everything that was 'wrong' with the car fixed and gives me a nice clean pallet to work from. And now comes improvements...
While the things listed above are getting done I am also going to replace the exhaust. I've not yet decided what exactly I will get with that, and am very open to all suggestions, but will probably look at something silenced cause I just have a personal preference for performance cars that are extremely quiet when being driven normally. So I will post some pics of that work and the body work in a few weeks.
As far as my future plans for the car go...I pretty much want to do up everything that possibly can be done up (that's the point of a project car, right?). Having said that I think it would be silly to start speculating about what I might do with the engine, induction, ecu etc as these are all things that may not be attended to for another year or two. However I do have a firm idea of what I'm aiming for with the aesthetics of the car. And that is as follows...
Firstly, this will always be a white car. I thought about various colours over the past 12months and I still think I really like the look of white on K10s. It will get some kind of white, light weight Japanese rims, I have my eye on some 'vintage' enkeis but am not entirely sure yet. Will pop nissan centre caps in em and paint em in blue/red along with the old blue/red nissan logo valve caps and red and blue anodised wheel nuts. I may look into blue/red anodised exhaust tips also but that is a long way down the track. Will get it resprayed and have some kind of red and blue decal but not sure what will look good yet, I have a few ideas. Basically I am of the opinion that you make a car look good by showing it for what it is...and I see this car as having that sporty/rally look that just screams, Retro Japanese! And I think I can do that and make it look good without going TOO over the top.
With the interior I will get black suede trims, perhaps with a small blue n red flash in it. White faced dials with red lighting on Speedo and blue on the rest. Will get a multi-guage at some point which I will mount above the air con vent on the right of the dash. And will keep the old red digital turbo timer (see Original Interior Photo), which is now mounted a little neater.
Then, due to the laws over here with roll cages, I will have to get the car converted to a two seater and registered as a commercial vehicle. I will do a lot of the prep work for that and hopefully get a little weight out of it. I will be doing a similar thing to what cisco did with his blue K11 for anyone that knows of him. Despite the personal safety factor, K10's are just too rare in Australia for me to not put a roll cage in it. I can also get a dry cell battery put in the back once that work is done. When I do that I can also move the seats back and hopefully make the car a little more comfortable for a 6'5 giant like myself :grinning:
So that is basically it for now and what I intend to do. Thanks to everyone who managed to read the whole rant and hopefully you will all enjoy following my progress as much as I enjoy sharing it.
Peace
