rsxse240 Posted June 3, 2015 Share Posted June 3, 2015 I was contacted recently by a friend whom I met through my son. His son, my son's friend, purchased a 240SX with an SR20DET swap which I have turned some wrenches on and gave lots of tips too. He asked me to come over and give my opinion on what to do with this car, as it was driven over a curb at a very high rate of speed. This is what I saw when I pulled up The wheels were shoved into the footwells of the interior, the intercooler was busted into a gozillion pieces, oil pan ripped open, and the entire cabin was badly damaged, buckling the roof rendering the chassis completely useless as anything but scrap metal. So I told him that if the engine and drivetrain was still in good shape, that it would be worth about $1500 as a donor car as really the ONLY thing usable on this car is the engine and transmission...maybe some interior bits and pieces, but not much since they've all been painted black with fabric dye and vinyl spray paint. So he goes on and asks if I would be interested in purchasing it from them. I wasn't in any financial position to be able to buy a car at the time, but I said I'd give him a grand for it, if I had the money. And I was ready to help them strip it down and haul off the bad parts to scrap and he could sell the motor swap to recoup some coin. Well he throws me an offer to fix his 1990 full size Ford Bronco that the ignition switch caught on fire and burned up some wiring harness under the dash and I agreed. I was thinking it was going to be an awful nasty job of first tearing out a burned up dashboard and then finding a properly colored replacement and all the doo-dads, gadgets and gizmos that goes along with it....then I opened the door to find a perfectly pristine dash, no obvious sign of fire, not even the odor of burned plastic. To abbreviate the story of the Bronco, it took a bunch of wire that I was able to scavenge from work, an ignition switch and a connector with pigtail and about 6 hours of wiring repair to get it back on the road. Total cost for repairing the Bronco... $35.00 and time. Now that I'm done working on the Bronco, I set my eyes on finding out how bad the engine was damaged when the oil pan dumped on the ground. I got on several local and national Nissan forums in search of a replacement pan and pickup tube for the SR. I found one locally that my friend Jody had been hording for about 12 years now, and he readily let it go with the pickup and hardware for $20. I had to repair the lower pan baffle with my harbor fright body hammer kit, clean some parts up and slather some RTV to seal everything up. Got some cheap bulk 5W30 from work to pour in the motor and began to figure out how to jump start this thing as there are no power leads since the battery relocation cable that was stretched from one end of the car to the other was cut off or ground down in several places and was grounding out on the body. I ended up cutting the cable at the starter and hooking my jumper leads under the car, which worked out fine. I put the other end of the cables on my Pathfinder and cranked her over. She was a bit hesitant as I think it has a weak starter or bad grounds since it was cranking VERY slowlly at first, but she picked up some speed and fired off. gratuitous engine porn: To my surprise there was not even a hint of internal damage by sound, vibration or visual cues. Oil pressure was right up there and the clutch was in good shape too! So to summarize the story, I got a fully operational SR20DET swap for $55 and 6 hours of labor! I feel quite guilty for taking the deal, but we agreed on price and payment method, so we're both good with the deal. I'm still going to do some generous favors for him for giving me such a smoking hot deal. I hope I can help make someone else's day somehow to repay the generosity. I also hope this story inspires people to do good by others. The world would suck so much more if it weren't for people like Dane and his son. God bless them and all of you who read this Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Pim Posted June 3, 2015 Share Posted June 3, 2015 congrats mate gotta admit I am pretty jealous about that Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Tonioseven Posted June 3, 2015 Share Posted June 3, 2015 Pretty COOL!!! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Zarana-X Posted June 3, 2015 Share Posted June 3, 2015 Congrats on the engine! Don't be so quick to junk that 240SX, though. This was a Junked Silvia: Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ZTony8 Posted June 3, 2015 Share Posted June 3, 2015 If you can get access to a frame rack would it be worth it to pull the structure? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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