The Beginning Of The Journey

Taking Delivery of My 240SX - October 29, 2002

Well here she is.  

She is not as clean or straight as I would have liked and she is also black - a car color that I vowed that I would never own again.  However, my 240SX was FREE!   So with that I have happily come to accept her and am looking forward to getting her back into showroom condition.  I had been getting frustrated searching for one for a couple of months, so when this opportunity came up, I jumped on it.  A big thanks to Maurice "Mo" Hill for giving me his baby and also to Kevin "Big Daddy" Neely for setting things up.  I've promised a ride to Mo when everything is done so I just hope that I can deliver a frightening ride to him to show that his contribution was well worth it.

Here are a few details.  Mo was the original owner of this 1990 coupe.  I am not sure of what was standard equipment or options.  She has an 5-speed, electric sunroof, cruise control, and an aftermarket stereo.  Other than that she has manual windows and door locks and no air conditioning, so she is going to be fairly lighter than a fully optioned car.  She has 166K miles with a dead battery, a leaky injector, a leaky intake manifold, a smashed front bumper, damaged front hood and a broken rear quarter window.  However, all of this does not matter as you will be seeing in the next few months.

Here are a few more pictures of her sitting in my driveway.

Before this journey really starts to take off, I need to take a moment to thank, or shall I say blame, some people for leading me or encouraging me to take this journey.

First they is Kevin.  Rather than calling him "Big Daddy", I feel like calling him my personal instigator.  Without him egging me on and constantly talking about the virtues of the mighty SR20DET motor, I might never have gotten this to this point of the journey.  Also, when you see some pictures of car in the garage, take a look at the background and notice the details of the garage.  That again was Kevin instigating me to take my garage to the next level.  It now looks like a car dealership garage, only probably a little nicer.  Thank you so much Kevin.

Next there is Mike Kojima.  When Kevin first planted the thought of the SR swap into a 240SX, I called Mike to discuss and get his thoughts.  Of course Mike immediately jumped on the idea and tangled the project car carrot out there for me.  He said that Nissan Performance Magazine,  was looking for a 240SX/SR20DET conversion and that if I decided to go ahead with it, they would use it in the magazine as a project car, if I were willing to write the articles.  So after a couple of days of debate, how could I resist. 

Next are the people at Sport Compact Car, whose March 2002 article on the Silvia conversion really caught my attention and got the initial thoughts flowing.

Lastly, I would like to thank the venture capitalist of my former employer, who shall remain anonymous.  They effectively shut down our great company and laid off everyone, and thus allowed me all the time in the world to work on this project.

Look forward to my next update in a few days.  I will be detailing the plans and goals of this project.