My interest in Japanese sports cars started when I was young. My childhood gearhead neighbor bought a 1st gen Mitsubishi Eclipse, natural aspirated, manual transmission model. He took me for a high-speed ride where he attacked a curvy section of road near our homes. From then on, I had a deep interest in lightweight sports cars. Fast forward several years until my last few years of high school. My friend Thomas had a lightly modified 5th generation Honda Accord. I didn’t have my license yet but decided that my first car should be a Japanese sports car. I don’t remember what started it, but I became interested in drifting and after shopping around, settled on the defacto drift car choice of the time, a Nissan 240SX.
I ended up buying the car pictured below. When I got it, it had stock suspension, steel wheels, and this molded body kit. I didn’t like the kit being molded but it was a solid, mostly stock s13 with 103,000 miles on the clock for less than 2000 bucks. I picked up these beat-up wheels for about 150 bucks and then made a terrible decision, installing no name coilover sleeves and springs on the stock shocks. I ordered the springs on ebay for a 240SX but received 1G DSM springs instead. The springs were shorter than a soda can and the car was extremely low. The shocks would bottom out on the smallest bumps. I thought I was cool as hell though. This was in 2009.


I don’t have any pictures of the car over the next year or so. I knew that if I wanted to start drifting, I needed suspension that halfway worked and that it would be ideal to address the open differential. I bought some used KYB GR2 struts and Megan Racing lowering springs, and paid a friend to weld the diff. I then owned a Bonafide drift car.
Everything was going fine until February 2010 when I rolled the car onto its roof, destroying the body. When the car started to roll, I yelled out “oh shiiiit!”. The car went airborne and landed on its lid. While hanging from the seatbelts I said to Tyler, my passenger, “dude, dude dude, did that just happen?”. Tyler calmly responded, “yeah”. After confirming that Tyler and I were ok, I started trying to figure out how to climb out without breaking my neck. I don’t remember exactly how we climbed out. I only recall standing in the middle of the road when Rob approached me. The homie Rob was driving in front of me when the crash happened. He saw my headlights turn sideways and disappear in his mirror and stopped on the side of the road. Rob approached me and said “Dude, what just happened?!”, I calmy replied “I flipped my car.”. Rob responded with, “Let me rephrase that, WHAT THE FUCK JUST HAPPENED?!’. I gave the same monotoned response. We then realized the engine was still running and one of us went and switched off the ignition. Thankfully no one was hurt, and a few jokes were cracked while waiting on a tow truck.


A few weeks later I sourced a replacement S13 fastback. It ran rough for (unknown to me) reasons, was spray painted blue, and had cracked body filler on the driver’s side quarter panel. I couldn’t find any pictures of the car as it was when I bought it. After getting the new 240 in the shop, we determined that it’s KA24E had a blown head gasket. Instead of trying to repair it, I decided to swap in the single cam from my first 240, the engine that ran upside down for several minutes. After swapping the engine over, we got it to start. It smoked like hell for the first few minutes, burning off all the oil that entered the combustion chambers from sitting upside down.
I wish I had more media from these years and countless drift events and hours of wrenching. At some point I spray painted the car white.
In January of 2012, a local tire shop let us have a sketchy drift session in their parking lot. Before the event, my friend Robbie and I christened the lot with some doughnuts. He was driving a 1st gen RX7.
Sketchy parking lot skids:
Here’s a video from Piedmont drift in 2012, still rocking the single cam that ran upside down.
I don’t remember exactly when, but one day Rob and I decided to paint my car with real car paint. He had some white school bus paint and some big bass boat style metallic flake sitting around. We shoddily masked the car and Rob painted as much as he could. We only had enough paint for the front bumper, fenders and doors. The pic below shows the clear difference between the new paint and old rattle bomb toward the rear. I still have those Enkei RS-3 3-spoke wheels. Rob and I stripped them down years ago to refinish them and never completed the project. One day we’ll get back on that.
Rob and I painted the hood with chalkboard paint, using a roller. This is the best modification I’ve ever made to a vehicle.


After years of abuse, my old KA24E still ran but was getting tired. It burned nearly as much oil as gasoline and had earned retirement. I rebuilt the blown head gasket bottom end and used the cylinder head from my friend Tuna’s old single cam as Tuna had recently swapped to SR20 power. The engine refresh took several months and included nearly every OEM Nissan part still available.

I rebuilt the steering rack while it was easily accessible. It should come as no surprise that the rack was leaking prior to being rebuilt.


I used this opportunity to clean up and paint the neglected engine bay. Living on a dirt road and having oil leaks produces tons of grime.


During the build process, I refreshed the front suspension arms and replaced the all 4 brake calipers and lines.

Interior shot with gauge cluster LEDs, and a Parts Shop Max digital voltage, coolant temp, and oil pressure meter. This unit only lasted a few months before the screen failed.

With the new engine installed and running well, I eventually grew tired of the half car paint, half spray-painted look. I enlisted my friend Fender to lay down some GM fleet white single stage paint. During the paint and body process, we fitted a non-chalkboard hood and a B-WAVE style Wangan wing (unsure if it’s a replica or real).
It wasn’t anything great but it was undoubtedly the golden era for this car (at least since it was nice, new, and stock).





It wasn’t long after the paint work that I took a job with a 45 minute highway commute and this was my only highway capable car. Racking up that many miles every day took its toll on the car and me. Stiff suspension with rod ends and poly bushings, very stiff motor mounts, and a welded differential caused my enjoyment of the car, and the car itself, to fall apart.
I owned a few other cars and a truck alongside this project, but none were fit for highway driving. Sometime around 2015-2016 I re-ignited my interest in Jeeps, traded my truck and some cash for an XJ, and parked the 240 in the back field and abandoned it.
In December 2024 I decided it’s time to revive this old thing with the goal of driving it on a road trip.

The revival effort will be documented in a video series, here’s episode 1 and 2.
Leave a Reply