The long term Wrecked Magazine project V8 240sx got rushed to a finish in the month of October so we could bring it to the 2011 SEMA Show. The car is sporting stickers for our new website Fuelculture.com on the doors instead of Wrecked Magazine due to the new website launch but it is our same old project car! The car at the show is still running its 1946 Georgia license plate titled WRECKED.

The car brought some huge traffic into the Kenda Tire booth and has received some great press over the week so we are quite excited! Stay tuned to this project blog over the next few months to see how we finally got the car into this 100% drift ready state. One last huge thanks to Kenda Tire for giving us some great real estate at the show to present our new build.

Thanks to the guys at SPD Metalworks we received a rear brake bracket identical to the one that 2011 Formula Drift champion Dai Yoshihara is running on his Discount Tire S13. Here is the installation 101 on how to get these brakes with some super tight clearances.

Disconnect the brake line from the caliper. Make sure to have a mason jar around to catch the draining fluid. Now remove the brake flex line from the hard line. Remove the two bolts holding the caliper bracket on, now you can remove the whole caliper assembly. Don’t forget to remove the disc rotor and NOT use it as a Frisbee on one of your buddies. Install your brackets for the caliper. If you have to remove the hub to install your bracket be sure to buy longer bolts for the hub.

Place the new rotor on. Now get those calipers mounted. Make sure your bolts do not touch the rotor. As you can see ours is very close!

Connect the Wilwood brake lines to the calipers. As you can see we are going with a two-caliper setup. Connect your brake caliper line to the cars hard line. On a later installment we will go over running the hydraulic e-brake and line. You can spin the bracket to get them to fit with some adjustment if needed. Here is what it looks like once our calipers have gone on the bracket.

Connect the Wilwood brake lines to the calipers. As you can see we are going with a two-caliper setup. Connect your brake caliper line to the cars hard line. On a later installment we will go over running the hydraulic e-brake and line.

Connect the Wilwood brake lines to the calipers. As you can see we are going with a two-caliper setup. Connect your brake caliper line to the cars hard line. On a later installment we will go over running the hydraulic e-brake and line.  Torque everything down, and get the wheel on. Be sure to bleed your brakes as well before any driving in the vehicle. 

Our S13 chassis came with some old junky rotted out rear suspension pieces that had to be replaced before we got it track ready. Luckily the guys at ISIS Suspension showered us with gold arms and elbows. The installation went seamless and the product looks fantastic under the car. Read below to find out how to got installed on our Project V8 240sx.

To get started you will need to jack the rear of the car up and place the jack stands under the frame in-front of the wheels.  To start off remove the rear tie rod and upper control arm. This can be done with a 19mm and 17mm Wrench. Be sure not to lose the adjustable washer when removing the nuts as you will need these later.

Place one side of the control arm on the car. Loosely thread the bolt (make sure to put that washer back in). Now adjust the control arm until you can place the bolt through the hole on the other side of the product.

The rear toe link will be the same install as the upper control arm, with the exception of not having the adjustable washer to lose.

Now the rear traction link is a little intimidating, though not hard. You will need to loosen the rear sub-frame in order to remove the tie rod bolt (breathe it’s easy I swear). There are two bolts on each side of the sub-frame. First loosen the rear bolt but do not take it off as the sub-frame only needs to drop in the rear.

Remove the front bolt. Use a pry-bar to lower the frame just enough to slip the tie rod bolt out.

Sliding the bolt back in with the new ISIS Traction Link will be a breeze. Don’t forget to tighten the sub-frame back up!

Go over all bolts and make sure you left nothing loose!

This completes the rear ISIS Suspension installation for our S13. This last photo shows you a great shot of where all the arms end up being located on the car. You can purchase a full arm kit at a great price from Enjuku Racing (just denote S13/S14) which will give you these three arms and front tension rods. Here is where to get the arm package: http://enjukuracing.com/isis-suspension-package-nissan-240sx-p-8984.html

We just filled the office with boxes from Sikky Manufacturing who provided us with a complete LS engine swap kit into the S13. It included everything you see above and more. The oil pan is built to fit perfectly inside the S13 without any clearance issues and has a 7 quart capacity. This will help us install our GMPP LS3 engine with just bolts with these great mounts and other products making the installation a breeze.

B&M is one of our favorite companies we work with at Wrecked Magazine so they were our first option for a General Motors transmission. The 4L60E is good for up to 600hp and we have some minor modifications we plan to make to it which will make it the perfect compliment to our LS3 engine we picked up from GMPP.

We welcomed this big beautiful crate to our shop yesterday. It contained our GM Performance Parts Crate LS3 6.2L V8 engine (GM Part# 19257230)  that’s soon going to find refuge in the engine bay of project 240.

The beauty of a crate engine package such as this one, is that GM Performance Parts throws in everything you need to bolt this engine up to your transmission of choice and drive. Along with the complete 430HP LS3 long block, our crate package included a GM Performance Intake, Wiring Harness, ECU, Electronic Gas Pedal, 2 sets of exhaust manifolds (ones with o2 sensor bungs, and ones without), various emissions equipment for street-legal swaps, and even a CARB sticker for California residents. The crate LS3 package is just that, a complete package solution.

Stay tuned as we source a few additional vital parts before we get this beast into our engine bay, and onto the track.

We got our Enkei RPF-1 wheels matched up with some gorgeous looking BFGoodrich g-Force KDW tires this weekend. Our front Enkei wheels (17×9.5 38 Offset) were matched with a 235/40/17 KDW and our rear wheels (18×10.5 15 Offset) were given some 265/35/18 KDW tires to complete our wheel/tire drifting stance.

The guys at BFG even supplied us with some extra rear tires for when we get this V8 machine out on the track! The tire tread on these BFG tires look so aggressive with the tread pattern it’s unreal. Now I am starting to get why Sam Hubinette’s cars always look so aggressive.

Here is a close up of the 265/35/18 BFGoodrich g-Force T/A KDW that is what we mounted on our rear wheels. Our last photo is a quick preview of our wheel/tire combo on the back of the ProjectV824osx S13!

This is a close up of the rear wheel/tire setup mounted on our S13 chassis. Our suspension setup is nearing completion and we are about ready to move into a new phase of the project car soon!

The guys at Enkei Wheels hooked us up with some RPF1 wheels in F1 silver. Enkei in case you didn’t know is the McLaren Mercedes F1 supplier and the McLaren F1 cars have run a similar dual spoke style wheel in Formula 1 over the past few years. Since I am a diehard and long time Formula 1 McLaren fan I had to pick these when we talked to Enkei Wheels about partnering up with our Project V8 240sx.

We took the wheels in F1 silver and you can see all four wheels on display in the image above.

We are excited to get these on our S13 hatchback along with our APEX’i S1 coilovers we just installed to start completing the suspension portion of this Project V8 build.

Once we get some rubbers to put on the Enkei Wheels we will have them installed on the S13 along with some photos to show you guys how they look on our chassis!

17×9.5 38 Offset (Front)
18×10.5 15 Offset (Rear)

The great thing about coilovers is that they’re all inclusive which means no spring compressors, no headaches, and of course: easy installation with only a few basic tools. Let’s start with the front.

STEP 1: The front suspension bolts to the shock tower at the top, and at the caliper assembly at the bottom. First, remove the bottom two bolts that go through the caliper assembly.

STEP 2: Remove the three nuts atop the shock tower. Once the last nut is removed, the shock may fall as nothing is holding it up at this point so be ready to catch it or secure it in some way.

STEP 3: Remove the old coilover, and use reverse instructions to reinstall the new coilovers.

Then do the same on the opposite side. Both driver and passenger sides are identical in removal/installation.

One thing we like which we highlighted in our previous parts post was that the damper adjustment knob is recessed into the shock body for easy adjustment while protecting the knob from being sheared off on a bump or pothole. This is perfect for daily drivability.

The rears are only held on with three bolts overall. If we head to the bottom, there is a single bolt that holds the coilover to the rear trailing arm. If you’re on the original suspension, you may need to use some muscle to break this bolt loose if it hasn’t been done before. Then Remove aforementioned bolt.

STEP 4: Remove the two bolts atop the rear shock towers. To install the new rears coilovers, simply perform the reverse instructions of these past two steps on both rears. And that’s it! The Apex’i S1 Dampers not only look better, but will certainly perform much better than our old worn coilovers once our motor is in. We can’t wait to test them out and report back!

We visited APEXi down in Orange County yesterday and finally got some new parts for the V8 240sx S13 project. They gave us some of these amazing looking S1 Dampers that have some amazing craftsmanship to them in the aesthetics alone. On top of that the APEXi engineers in Japan took this S1 Damper system and tuned it for high performance street use without sacrificing it’s racing use. Most race suspension kits out in the market are improperly sprung and dampened for street use giving you a horrible ride on the street while hurting grip performance when the suspension cannot conform to the terrain your on. With all that said we are very excited to have these APEXi components ready for installation on Project V8 240sx soon!