Where to even start? Well, a good place would be the very beginning…

 

Before we started on Blanche, we did a quick assessment of prjkt 240SX MAYHEM and its current condition. It was determined rather quickly that the car had serious issues with everything- low compression, very drastic suspension, electrical gremlins, exterior pieces in need of deep repair. In summary, I wasn’t going to be driving prjkt 240SX MAYHEM any time soon, so off we went to get Blanche up and running…

When we finally got to prjkt 240SX MAYHEM the day after getting Blanche going, we had to hose down the intake with ether just to get it to fire. As we all know, when you do this, it means that you have very low compression. Anyway, we had to do this a few times and the radical suspension/camber had to be taken out just to get the car to be able to get out of the driveway. All the tires were rubbing on the coilovers. Only being able to move a few feet before the engine would die again, we were left with no other option but to go rent a car dolly. With little fanfare, we got the car on the dolly and headed to the garage.

The first item up to be removed was the engine and gearbox, as well as wiring. See the pictures below. Before opening up anything engine-wise, we cleaned the engine with Purple Power and a low pressure sprayer.

Lots of quality parts were used on this engine- GReddy pulley set, Nissan S15 BB turbo, GREX oil relocator assembly, 555cc injectors, a polished ISIS intake plenum, a genuine GReddy oil pan, and BC valve springs and retainer set,

When we opened up the engine, we inspected the crank for scouring by removing all the bearings. Thank God that the crank is still in great shape. The crank bearings did their job, but they were completely toasted. All of them had severe wear. The pistons were completely covered in oil and the piston rings were in such as sad state of assembly that it’s a wonder that they were able to hold any pressure at all. I think that because of so much oil saturation, the oil was the only reason the block could even pressurize.

Both the block and crank were taken to Birmingham to be assessed for re-usability. We got lucky. The crank just needs polishing and the block hot tanked and honed. That’s it.

After disassembling the engine, we turned our attention to cleaning up the engine bay.

It cleaned up very nicely but needs to be resprayed. The power steering rack is not for an S13, but is an S14 power steering rack, and the bushings that are in place are new pieces from Energy Suspension.

The S15 BB turbo had oil all in the cold section. I can only surmise this was from all the blow-by that got recirculated into the input section. The center cartridge of the turbo is in great shape. very little play at all and spins nicely.

The rear sub-frame and the pumpkin were taken down and disassembled. It turned out to be a Viscous LSD.

Right now, prjkt 240SX MAYHEM is completely torn down and the long road to getting it back on the streets has only just started

Stay tuned as we build prjkt 240SX MAYHEM.