Well, I meant to have the Auto Show photos posted today. Ooops. Obviously didn’t work out for me this time…… Heh.

Instead of putting together my post, I was running around procuring a new battery for the Miata and installing a new battery in the 240sx and otherwise prepping both cars for sale. Still need to do an oil change on the Miata and clean her up…. But there’s time for that yet.

Yesterday, the 240sx was sold. She’s now gone, and that closes out yet another category here on my blog. I took one final photo of her in my possession this morning:

And while it seems like it should be a sad moment…. It really isn’t that upsetting to me. Yes, she was a great car and a fun project. But it became a source of stress when she would need things and I never got to them or could find the money to do it.

It was hard with four cars, trying to drive all of them. That’s why we’re downsizing to two while I save up for another third — the Porsche 911 of my dreams.

It’s this dream of the 911 that doesn’t make me so sad to say goodbye. I knew I’d have to learn how to do it sometime, and in a way I wanted to do it before I was forced to do it — I came to terms with it long before the sale took place yesterday. I believe the last time I drove the 240sx was last year sometime.

Thankfully, it was a goodbye without tears and seemed to be a nice source of closure. She’s off to live in western Washington where I won’t be seeing her either. But I hope she has a good life, and is pampered how she deserves.

This Saturday the Miata is to be sold as well. I’m not sure yet if that will have any tears or not, but it’s the same thought — learning to part ways now opens up the chance to buy my first Porsche 911 either later this year or early next year, and I really want that car!!

I’ll keep you guys posted of course, as always. In the immediate future, part of the proceeds will be put into some S2000 upgrades. My pretty girl deserves some attention again!

Well, I guess I’m a bit late, but this is in time to wish you a happy S15 Day!

Every January 3rd, 4th and 5th are celebrated by Silvia owners and enthusiasts as S13, S14 and S15 Days. In Japan, there are meetings on each of the days for the respective generations. Yeah, I really wish I could be there for it at least one year. (Come on, USAF…. )

This year’s S13 Day was bittersweet for me, as it should be my last with my own “S13.” (RPS13 for those who want to get technical about it.) As sad as it is, though, I’m trying to be in good spirits about it all. So I figured a little blurb celebrating the days was in order.

My way of celebrating? Showing you some very nice Silvias, of course! Enjoy!

S13

Easily one of my favorite looks for the S13, and this is one of my favorite photos.

Of course, everyone who watches any part of Formula D should know about Dai Yoshihara's S13.

S14

Seems that Kouki S14's are the more popular ones...

But when it comes to the S14, I've always preferred Zenkis myself.

S15

The S15 seems to be popular, though I'm sure some of it in the US stems from the fact that there aren't very many here at all.

Mmmmmm.... D1 GP S15.

No, it’s not quite the end of 2011 yet… But I’m certainly ready for 2012 to get here. 2011 wasn’t the worst, but it wasn’t my favorite year either.

I figured it’d be worth looking back at some of the high points, though.

Highlights

For one, we brought home our STi. She’s been a dream to have since we picked her up at the end of April. She got even better when we added the little exhaust system and made her sound as she should!

The Miata and I managed to snag a little 3rd Place trophy autocrossing. Definitely a great moment. It was fun with the GoPro, too.

I got to enjoy driving around in my 240SX with her pretty Bride seat, even got her out to her first car meet!

At that same car meet, there happened to be these two together… Something I never thought I would see in the States!

I got to go to Canada with the Porsche Club, where I got to ride in a 996 911 Turbo. I have always, always, always had this thing for the 911 Turbo…. After riding in this one, there is NO doubt that I will have one some day. I LOVE them.

Of course, shortly after returning from Canada there was this red 997 Turbo that made me think it’s just fate and that I need to get one eventually…

I got to hang out at SOVREN and see two RUFs in one year! (After never seeing any!)

I got to see this beautiful 911 GT2 RS in the showroom along with the Carrera GT.

There was the video here of hearing the Carrera GT before she was shipped to California for the winter…

Oh, and the stop at the Ferrari dealership in Seattle. And seeing an F40 in person!

More Thoughts

Not everything was a high point, I’m afraid.

There was the fact that my husband was deployed, and between that and the runway being redone here he was gone for roughly six months this year. Yuck.

The other sad part was deciding to sell both my 240SX and Miata. Having four cars to myself and nobody to dictate which I drove when or where showed me that I just don’t drive them enough… My preference is really with the S2000. I’m hoping to sell them and put the money towards a third car that I don’t mind keeping hidden in the garage for the most part — a 911 SC.

I also kinda feel bad that there weren’t any great special moments with the S2000…. That will definitely be changing in 2012.

How will 2012 be different? Well…. That’s my next post.

So it’s been a while right? A pretty long while. So I figured it was about time that I share what’s going on here.

Since I don’t want this to be horribly boring, here’s the quick run-down:

• My hubby got back from his deployment, only to be sent somewhere else for two weeks after he was only back for two and a half weeks… I’m only now starting to feel consistently better. (That was my biggest issue — Being married and alone is a lot harder I think than it would to be alone as a single person, because I miss the person I enjoy spending time with…. Nothing against you single people!)
• The STi officially has some goodies now — a Nameless Performance exhaust (axle back, which is surprisingly helpful for her and sounds great!), Rally Armor mudflaps and some new pretty yellow foglight covers. I think I need good photos of all of them… (I haven’t even shared the foglight covers at all yet!)
• I have been slacking now mostly due to work. What should have four employees only currently has two, and I’m one of the unlucky two. It’s been a long time since I worked a 40 hour week, even longer since I’ve worked seven days a week. It’s kinda sucking, since I still have classes to worry about. (Only two, so that’s a good thing!)
• Oh, it’s cold now. So even if I wanted to do more car stuff…. There really isn’t. So for me to say I may be consistently blogging now would be a bad thing to do. I’ll run out of things to talk about, I know it.
• And, perhaps the biggest thing of all, I’ve recently decided to sell both my Miata *and* my 240sx. I’m just not into the huge projects anymore… I may or may not have been corrupted by sitting in a C63 AMG and realizing that I want more stock performance and less projects-that-eat-entire-paychecks-and-then-some.
• Despite the sales and my disdain of projects now, the S2000 stays, she’s more “mine” now (my driver at least, until the snow arrives…) and she will still get some goodies because I’m not done with her yet. At the very least, she’s getting the Bride seat that’s in the 240 right now and will be the first car I’ve ever had with a pair of racing seats.

So that’s pretty much the quick run-down. I have someone interested in the 240sx, but have yet to get any nibbles on the Miata. To be honest, I’m not surprised, I figured the Miata would be harder to sell and that the 240 would be more attractive to potential buyers.

I’m also throwing around the idea of FINALLY picking myself up a bike upon sale of both cars. I’m looking into an older (1970′s preferrably) Triumph. I’m a total café racer nerd and love the style to pieces, and think it’d be a great fit. (Not to mention the fact that bikes don’t take up much garage space and the S2000 could then finally be garaged!)

This is the newer Triumph Bonneville, but I plan on getting the older one.

So I guess wish me luck, heh. I’ve never really had to sell cars like these, and to be honest I never thought I would so I wasn’t really sure of what to do…. I want them to go to good homes, not just anywhere, but I also can’t hold onto them forever if I want to move forward, ya know? :/ It sucks.

I’ll try to throw some updates on here. I know the STi deserves some spotlight for her new pieces and just in general for being awesome. Plus she’ll be wearing her winter setup soon, which is just a set of the older STi’s gold BBS wheels…. They’re a nearly brand new set too, so I kinda feel bad for basically signing them up to be destroyed, but I like her stock set better.

Either way, I’m still definitely around Twitter, and Tumblr gets all of my Instagram (which I LOVE!) car photos. So I still kinda keep some updates around, otherwise I’ve been pretty boring car-wise…. You haven’t missed much really.

My husband’s current deployment is a bit odd to me. In many ways, it’s similar to the first one I went through. In others, though, it’s completely different.

For one, I didn’t really develop my love for cars until *after* he came back from the first one. I actually did my first modification to the Miata, her TSI’s, while he was gone. That was when the modification bug first bit me, and didn’t really bloom until after he was back. (And that’s when she got her Enkei RPF1′s and Flyin’ Miata suspension.)

I also chose to not get into racing until he was back… Which was kind of a good thing, as the Miata really needed that suspension upgrade. Her stock suspension was pretty much gone, so not sure how that would have went!

This Time…

This time, however, cars are my life. They are pretty much what gets me going to work every day. I know I need to make money so we can do the things we want to do — which are nearly always car-related.

So while I was nice and stockpiled the S2000 parts he ordered the last deployment, I think it’s my turn now…

I’m creating a nice little stockpile of parts for the 240SX.

My Plans

I’m hoping to get most of the brake parts set aside while he’s gone, so when he’s back we can upgrade her brakes.

I will also start saving for my Silvia parts, though I don’t foresee myself getting that stuff ordered until he’s already back.

At any rate, I have a lot of parts I plan on ordering and setting aside. I’m kinda keeping quiet about my plans because I don’t want to jinx them. If all goes right, I’ll have big things to announce next summer…

Current Parts

I currently have a couple of things set aside for her. I tend to share photos like this on my Tumblr more often because it’s hard to make a decent post out of one thing. Now that I have a couple of them, though, I figured I’d share it here for anyone that isn’t following along elsewhere. (So sorry if this stuff is old news to you!)

Hopefully I’ll be adding some brake lines, brake pads and rotors to my stockpile in the coming months… But we’ll have to see. It’ll be some slow going I’m sure. (That STi is eating a *lot* of funds, haha, but she’s well worth it.)

For one, I bought this 180SX Type X Spoiler off of eBay a couple of months back. It's sitting around waiting for paint... I need to get the Type X rear bumper pieces yet.

A friend of mine gave this to us -- It's the owner's manual for the 180SX. Beat up, yeah, but it's from Japan and pretty old at this point! I have it inside right now but when the 240SX is done I'll keep it in the car. Figured it'd be fun for shows!

The latest parts for my stockpile are these OEM Nissan calipers. My set actually came off an R33 in Japan, but these are the same size as the turbo 300ZX's in the states. I got them for a pretty good price off of eBay, so I went ahead and got them sooner rather than later. I plan to refinish and possibly rebuild them this summer.

Hopefully my stockpile grows a fair bit between now and September… I still want to make decent progress on my 240SX despite the STi being around! (As much as I’m happy with the progress we’ve made in the past two years, I’m looking for MORE! )

This was a great day for two reasons: One, it was one of the first days I really got to go and hang out with cool car people in MONTHS.

And two, I got to drive my 240SX!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! SO. HAPPY.

The Day

Sadly, the day was chilly…. But it was sunny, so I guess one out of two isn’t bad! I know it should be warming up here soon but I’m getting pretty antsy for it. (When we got up here last May it was still chilly and didn’t really warm up until closer to June… Blah.)

At any rate, I enjoyed pulling out the camera and taking some car photos again! I’m really eager to location scout for my 240SX and get her some good photos. (I want good ones to start submitting to magazines with, even though I’ve got HUGE plans for her this year… )

The Meet

While it was a meet organized by local people on the Northwest Nissans forum, they said they didn’t care if other cars wanted to show up. It just so happened that there was an organized S2ki meet the day before and I told my husband to extend them an invitation to the NWN mini-meet.

What was nice is that quite a few of them showed up. Just showing how awesome my hubby can be at meeting people and getting them together, haha. (He was partially responsible for S2ki meets in Arkansas, and he’ll manage the same here if I know him at all.)

Unfortunately, my crazy work schedule doesn’t leave me much time off… So I couldn’t make the S2ki meet. I was lucky in that some of the best cars from that showed up the next day.

My 240SX

Did I mention I got to drive my 240SX?!?!?!?!??!?!?!?!???!?!

Haha, okay. Just checking. But she drives AWESOME. SO. HAPPY.

All it means to me is she’s ready to get some nice photos, even though I plan on big things for her this year haha. I’m a bit weary to share all my plans just in case they change though. (I might. I need to think on it some more.)

The Cars

Oh, there were other cars too, of course. Here are some of my favorite cars and shots from the day.

My 240SX (RPS13) parked next to another 240SX (kouki S14).

I thought this was kinda funny -- It's pretty accurate for me. I sorta care... But I'm not a crazy offset nazi or anything.

I always appreciate a nicely done Civic, especially hatches. I like this photo overall. (Especially with the No Parking sign on the fence.)

On Flickr this is one of the most popular photos from the day, not hard to see why. I love the fender flares -- THAT is "proper" fitment to me! (I am obsessed with fender flares....)

After not seeing a kouki S14 for so long, I didn't mind it so much! (I'm a zenki S14 type of girl.)

There was a C5 Vette that showed up, packing this surprise under the hood....

Our S2000 and 240SX out, together, for the first time! Awwwwwwwwww.

I love listening to rotary engines. ^_^ This FD is converted to single turbo as well.

It's also been quite a while since I've seen one of these Supras, so that was a nice treat. JZ's sound great.

*This* photo was the highlight of my day, probably my entire month -- Having a Supra and a Skyline parked next to each other. Two of the most iconic Japanese muscle cars in the same place, both with amazing engines and great styling. I thought I'd have to wait until I went to Japan for a photo like this... But I didn't!!!

Another Skyline/Supra shot. While she had a GTR spoiler, the Skyline was actually an R33 GTS.

But tucked inside that R33 GTS.....

Was the heart of the real GTR, an RB26. This one a single turbo. But it is still my favorite sounding six cylinder.... (Apart from the flat six in 911's.)

One thing that I know for sure about show cars is that they are scary clean. Like, super scary do-you-even-drive-it-anywhere clean.

Because I want my 240SX to be a show car, she too will one day be meticulously clean. I hope.

I also know that it will be a long, long, long road to get her to that point; so I’d better start now.

My Summer Project

Aside from hopes and dreams to get her front end conversion paid for and hopefully finished this summer, I want to work on cleaning her up.

While I don’t plan on fully starting until the weather is cleaner, I may go ahead and figure out what I’ll need to help me embark on my ambitious cleaning goal: To get her engine bay as squeaky clean as possible — hopefully up to show car standards.

Hello, 2011 summer project -- Operation Clean Engine Bay?

Trust me, this is going to be quite the project.

Dirty, dirty, dirty…

She’s got a lot of dirt and grease in plenty of little nooks and crannies under her hood. Sadly, the engine swap timeline and time of year didn’t really lend itself to taking the time to pressure wash the empty engine bay. And since I neither have a pressure washer nor want to run the risk of damaging her engine, I’ll be doing it all by hand.

I see some long summer days spent under the hood of my 240SX polishing away… Haha.

It’ll be worth it in the end, I’m sure. I also hope to buy her a few shiny parts to work on getting her ready to be a show car. She’ll always be a car I enjoy driving, I just want a pretty car too. (My Miata is cute, yes, but her paint is in awful shape. She’s also my race car, and scratches, dings and dents aren’t things I want to worry about with her.)

Rewarding Work

It is, of course, my hope that this project turns out to be rewarding.

We do have an odd coolant leak that we need to figure out yet, since we can’t seem to tell where it’s leaking. Or why.

What is sad is that I’d like to take her to one of the bigger meets that takes place in Seattle… But I’m not sure if I’ll ever feel comfortable driving her that far.

Hopefully the coolant leak gets solved and after that, perhaps, I’ll feel okay driving her further than I am now. Then we can plan on her first car show, probably either late this year (if there is one for us to go to) or next year sometime. And hopefully after her front end conversion.

Whatever the case may be with all of that, I am determined to have a squeaky clean engine bay by fall!!

I hinted about this, as well as went out and blabbed about it on Twitter before I even ordered it. But here it is!!

With my part of our tax return, I bought myself my SB-600 speedlight for my camera and this beauty — my very own Bride Zeta III seat. So happy!!

The Install

I think the install went smoothly mostly because of the Zeta III we already had in the S2000. My husband had already messed with installing it before, so he pretty much knew what he was doing. (Besides, this was our third seat install, lol. Counting the Miata’s Corbeau.)

Unlike the Miata, neither the S2000 or 240SX are currently fitted with a harness bar. So they’re just running the normal seat belts. I’m on the lookout for a good easy-ish to install harness bar for my 240, if you know of one let me know, please! (Also debating on whether or not to get Takatas or go with Sabelts… Leaning towards patronizing Sabelt.)

At any rate, I was pretty useless with the install, as usual. I’m good at finding tools and remembering where things were. I also vacuumed out the driver’s side once the seat was removed — she needed it BAD! I should probably go back sometime and get the passenger side… Haha.

But what I do well is taking photos to document the changes!

The Result

Oh, and documenting the result… My favorite!

These two photos were taken a day or two after the install, when my super awesome SB-600 showed up. The lighting in the garage is awkward at best, and these were only possible with some fill-lighting. (So the SB-600 and a diffuser, my beginning combo of choice.)

The seat in the 240SX!! Sooooooooooooo comfy....

I really like how this shot turned out. Thank you to the SB-600 for making this possible!

One of the things I need to get over is a bit of shameless self-promotion. So here it goes:

Can you spare a second to go and vote for my 240SX in Password:JDM’s Money Shot photo contest on Facebook?? Pretty please??

All you have to do is click here and like my 240SX’s photo! That simple! (Seriously, it’s over quick and it means a lot to me!)

The photo that I chose is one of her older ones, after the SR20DET swap and before it was correctly wired up, the front bumper was back on and she got her current 17′s. Back then, she was legitimately slammed, haha.

^Click the photo above and then like it for your vote to be counted!

I’m hoping to get her into their top ten, which then sends her off to the Password:JDM staff for judging. If chosen for the top three, I could get some PW:JDM bucks to put towards her Silvia front end conversion. Worthy cause I think!

So, care to help a girl out? Go vote!!

[Bonus points if you share with your friends! If you do share and would like to get some FREE CarsxGirl for doing so, contact me through the contact form and leave a comment on her photo entry letting me know you shared it!]

Okay, shhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh — Let her think she isn’t that old. But when it’s all said and done, my 240SX is 21 this year!

She also had a very sketchy maintenance history. We knew that when we bought her, and weren’t too worried since the SR20DET swap was always a plan for her. Why bother to worry about an engine & transmission that would be replaced anyhow?

Well, not everything was all good…

Replacing Parts

The first thing we did when we got her was replace nearly her entire suspension. She desperately needed it.

The difference of having an old and tired suspension and having brand new parts is night and day. I know — I’ve done it twice now. Both the 240SX and the Miata had worn out suspensions and got new ones. Once you get a good suspension, you never want to go back!

Thankfully, replacing the suspension and her hatch struts left us good for a while…

Winter 2011

Until this past winter. She decided it was overrated to have two working headlights.

Of course, that doesn’t fly in this household! Since she wasn’t moving at all for a few weeks, we waited for the weather to get a bit nicer… But it wasn’t that nice to replace the headlights.

One of her new headlights before the install. Sealed beams!

As long as we were at it, we took the time to replace both headlights. It seems like the driver’s side had been replaced at one point in time.

Her new driver's side headlight!

The passenger’s side was a different matter.

She looked a little funny while my husband worked to get the passenger side bracket to cooperate.

PITA?

There’s nothing worse than dealing with old, stripped out screws. I’m really thankful for my husband, there’s nothing I’d have been able to do! (FWIW, I am lifting weights now… So we’ll see if that helps me any haha.)

Icky, right?!?!

It took a bit, but the delay wasn’t that major and the replacement was done in maybe an hour. The results were fantastic, she can see much better now with shiny new headlights!

Eventually we (er, my hubs...) got the passenger side to cooperate and she was able to see again!

It’s just one of the joys of owning an older car, dealing with rusted in and hard to remove screws. My hubby might not always love me for it, but I wouldn’t have my girls any other way!