Rushin
Active member
- Joined
- Jan 20, 2022
I decided to make this build thread to track the progress on my other project- 16v swapping my other green 1992 240. This car has been with me for a very long time. It kind of was the first step into actually knowing what I was doing and progressing past the point where doing heads on a 350 chebby is a huge task. The body and frame are not in great shape but it has enough sentimental value for me to continue working on it. Bodywork is slow going but it only gets driven in the summer so there's no real rush. I've done a LOT to this thing and still have a huge ways to go. All pictures will be taken with a 240p Kodak Charmera as usual. Don't get too comfy with the high-res intro images.
It's a car I bought for $600 and is probably worth about $1000, $700 if I keep the wheels. It's still my baby and I'll probably have to be buried in it. (They'll find my dessicated corpse fused to the seat in the early Autumn of 2055)
I will get into some of the background of the car (probably too much background, it doesn't matter at all for this)
It started out as a standard neglected 240 wagon with some scorpius wheels coated in brake dust, bald tires, a seized caliper in the rear, and blown out bushings. The engine ran like absolute shit and it got limped home an hour back from Elkhart.
After getting more familiar with the car, I started on some stage 0 stuff. I got it running beautifully, almost everything was resealed, and everything mostly worked. Interior wasn't great but it was serviceable.
I then had a hood spring break while driving, which put a hole in the green hood, so I had to replace it with a white one. I actually really like the color with the forest green a lot. When I eventually get a fibreglass hood, I think I'll stick with the white.
About six years back, I fell asleep at the wheel after a 40 hour bender and had a very, very low speed bump which did not damage a very nice woman's car, but crushed my fender and broke my marker light. I replaced this with a silver fender off of my old lifted car and carried on.
The fender will not stay silver once this thing actually gets painted lmao
About 5 years ago my water pump bolts sheared because I had probably overtightened the tensioner for the belt waaaay too much. It overheated and warped the head but I didn't realize it. I was losing coolant but the car ran beautifully and didn't overheat. Coolant was getting into the pan, but not mixing with the oil, and I was leaking enough oil to where it evened out on the dipstick.
Eventually I wanted to get to the bottom of things but I also had !!!BIG PLANS!!!! like every enthusiast does when they don't realize how much work !!!BIG PLANS!!! are. I park it in a friend's garage, the engine gets pulled, drain plug comes out, two quarts of coolant come rushing out, followed by the goopiest tar oil you've ever seen. At this point I figure it doesn't make sense to put this one back in, so I break it down for spare parts.
The car sits for 3 years while I get stuff together for a new build. I have it in my head that I'm going to somehow do standalone injection, a manual trans swap, and supercharger build with forged bottom end all at once. I think I have an embarrassing post on it farther back. I get a lot of the parts for the bottom end together, and then I deploy.
Once I get back, I realize I'm letting perfect be the enemy of mediocre, and decide that a car that sits while mice nibble at it, and while I assemble an engine at the rate of one part a year just wont cut it. I source an M46 trans and a mystery mileage engine and throw it in. Engine gets completely resealed and cleaned, and I go with a hydraulic clutch.
Now it gets a whole new black interior in great shape from a donor car, an ABS delete, kilmat in the entire interior, and the remainder of the suspension work I neglected finished up. Here's the build as it sits:
-G80 locker (bad choice)
-M46 with flat flywheel and hydraulic clutch
-IPD strut brace
-GT Strut braces
-STS Machining Chassis brace
-Poly bushings front and rear (I know, I know, you don't have to tell me)
-IPD Sway bars
-IPD Lowering springs
-Bilstein shocks and struts
-BNE Brembo brake kit
-BMW E30 seats
-255w 300TW tires on 17" pegasus wheels, powdercoated white
-IPD Stainless Sport Exhaust
-Stainless downpipe
Plus LOTS of small repairs, part replacements, scavenging, etc. to make this car as complete as possible
It cleans up okay. You can see the rust on the rear wheel wells hasn't been tended to quite yet. It's been cleaned up and had paint slopped on it so it doesn't look to shit, but the rockers and those bits still need attention.
It's an autocross machine now, end goal for the build is to have a comfortable, moderately powerful (by 240 standards) sport tourer. It handles well in autocross, but the auto gearing coupled with 80hp makes it piss slow. The tires could probably be 200TW to get everything out of the suspension work but they're fine for now.
Most recent upgrade is going to a noco lithium battery using STS's kit. My hood latch cable had been broken off by the previous hooligan so it was pretty short, and was stretched around the corner of the battery. So, during very hard turns, like you seen in auto cross, my hood would pop up:
Not amazing, as you can imagine. This gave me an excuse to get a fancy battery, with the excuse of not getting thrown out at my next meet, and saving about 40lbs in weight. Huge space savings too, of course.
The build continues, originally I had planned for an 8v supercharged build but realized my foolishness and finally caved and went with a 16v head from my friend. It's been redone by Yoshifab with his valves, valve springs, and whatever head work he used to do. It came with ARP head studs, so that saved me a bit of cash. Beginning of the build in the next post. Hooray!
It's a car I bought for $600 and is probably worth about $1000, $700 if I keep the wheels. It's still my baby and I'll probably have to be buried in it. (They'll find my dessicated corpse fused to the seat in the early Autumn of 2055)
I will get into some of the background of the car (probably too much background, it doesn't matter at all for this)
It started out as a standard neglected 240 wagon with some scorpius wheels coated in brake dust, bald tires, a seized caliper in the rear, and blown out bushings. The engine ran like absolute shit and it got limped home an hour back from Elkhart.
After getting more familiar with the car, I started on some stage 0 stuff. I got it running beautifully, almost everything was resealed, and everything mostly worked. Interior wasn't great but it was serviceable.
I then had a hood spring break while driving, which put a hole in the green hood, so I had to replace it with a white one. I actually really like the color with the forest green a lot. When I eventually get a fibreglass hood, I think I'll stick with the white.
About six years back, I fell asleep at the wheel after a 40 hour bender and had a very, very low speed bump which did not damage a very nice woman's car, but crushed my fender and broke my marker light. I replaced this with a silver fender off of my old lifted car and carried on.
The fender will not stay silver once this thing actually gets painted lmao
About 5 years ago my water pump bolts sheared because I had probably overtightened the tensioner for the belt waaaay too much. It overheated and warped the head but I didn't realize it. I was losing coolant but the car ran beautifully and didn't overheat. Coolant was getting into the pan, but not mixing with the oil, and I was leaking enough oil to where it evened out on the dipstick.
Eventually I wanted to get to the bottom of things but I also had !!!BIG PLANS!!!! like every enthusiast does when they don't realize how much work !!!BIG PLANS!!! are. I park it in a friend's garage, the engine gets pulled, drain plug comes out, two quarts of coolant come rushing out, followed by the goopiest tar oil you've ever seen. At this point I figure it doesn't make sense to put this one back in, so I break it down for spare parts.
The car sits for 3 years while I get stuff together for a new build. I have it in my head that I'm going to somehow do standalone injection, a manual trans swap, and supercharger build with forged bottom end all at once. I think I have an embarrassing post on it farther back. I get a lot of the parts for the bottom end together, and then I deploy.
Once I get back, I realize I'm letting perfect be the enemy of mediocre, and decide that a car that sits while mice nibble at it, and while I assemble an engine at the rate of one part a year just wont cut it. I source an M46 trans and a mystery mileage engine and throw it in. Engine gets completely resealed and cleaned, and I go with a hydraulic clutch.
Now it gets a whole new black interior in great shape from a donor car, an ABS delete, kilmat in the entire interior, and the remainder of the suspension work I neglected finished up. Here's the build as it sits:
-G80 locker (bad choice)
-M46 with flat flywheel and hydraulic clutch
-IPD strut brace
-GT Strut braces
-STS Machining Chassis brace
-Poly bushings front and rear (I know, I know, you don't have to tell me)
-IPD Sway bars
-IPD Lowering springs
-Bilstein shocks and struts
-BNE Brembo brake kit
-BMW E30 seats
-255w 300TW tires on 17" pegasus wheels, powdercoated white
-IPD Stainless Sport Exhaust
-Stainless downpipe
Plus LOTS of small repairs, part replacements, scavenging, etc. to make this car as complete as possible
It cleans up okay. You can see the rust on the rear wheel wells hasn't been tended to quite yet. It's been cleaned up and had paint slopped on it so it doesn't look to shit, but the rockers and those bits still need attention.
It's an autocross machine now, end goal for the build is to have a comfortable, moderately powerful (by 240 standards) sport tourer. It handles well in autocross, but the auto gearing coupled with 80hp makes it piss slow. The tires could probably be 200TW to get everything out of the suspension work but they're fine for now.
Most recent upgrade is going to a noco lithium battery using STS's kit. My hood latch cable had been broken off by the previous hooligan so it was pretty short, and was stretched around the corner of the battery. So, during very hard turns, like you seen in auto cross, my hood would pop up:
Not amazing, as you can imagine. This gave me an excuse to get a fancy battery, with the excuse of not getting thrown out at my next meet, and saving about 40lbs in weight. Huge space savings too, of course.
The build continues, originally I had planned for an 8v supercharged build but realized my foolishness and finally caved and went with a 16v head from my friend. It's been redone by Yoshifab with his valves, valve springs, and whatever head work he used to do. It came with ARP head studs, so that saved me a bit of cash. Beginning of the build in the next post. Hooray!
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) block. I take it to a machine shop and get it hot tanked, decked, bored into round, and checked for cracks. It all looks great. They machine my crank too.
