s13 assembly 1o1

After a few days away from the s13, noticing a trend here?, I came back and took a few more shots of the completed interior repairs. 

Not bad.

I then began assembling the dash. I quickly realized I was missing a part. Maybe one day I'll find it in my garage or basement and have a good laugh.

I was missing one of the dash vent tubes around the cluster that connect the inner ac ducting to the vent itself.

I looked over an entire table of parts from inside the basement, looked all over the garage, even to the point of cleaning in and around the work bench.

It was no where to be found.

I grabbed the part number of the vent connector I did have, thankfully, incase I would need it later.

I then installed the main dash, which took much longer than it would seem based on this apparent photo progression. But the dash is in. I actually put it in twice as there was a plug I could not locate later, and it was tucked behind a vent tube, inaccessible to any human.

I ended up going to NSP, yet again, to get a second vent connector. It turns out they are the same on the US spec models.

I then installed the center cluster surrounds, connecting all the gages and button controls.

After this, I laid out the carpet to assess damages. You can see the rare original RHD center console in the photos as well. It was completely destroyed when the driveshaft spun into the cabin.

That's enough for one day.

s14a in the forest

s14a tails

As some of you may have noticed, my s14a was slightly modified when I bought it, which is fine. It was the lease modified car I could find at the time in London, which is fine. She came with blacked out tail lights, which is not fine. I don't need any excuses to get pulled over, there are enough valid ones of those without adding.

I bought these black Kouki lights from a friend, Will, and we are to this day arguing if they are black or almost black, but I finally decided they had been sitting on my coffee table long enough. That and I needed a break from the s13, more emotionally than anything.

I took the car over to Haydn's garage the night before a local show, the floor of which is still masked off for halloween haunted house festivities. 

Before close up shots.

It took a lot of time to remove the first lens. I was extremely careful not to break any tabs.

UKDM on the left and top, USDM on the right and bottom.

The UKDM and USDM Kouki lights are slightly diffeent as the UK versions do not have the cut out for the third marker light. In the UK all function is done by the two main lights. Inside the car, the chassis literally doesn't have a spot where you could access this light cut out even if you wanted to. It's just a solid panel of the main body.

I replaced the RTV, resealing the new-to-me lights, and then repeated the entire process on the passenger side.

I almost liked the blacked out center section with the oem L and R lights, but decided to continue the back-to-stock swap. I could always change it back later.

Upon removing the blacked out center section and test fitting the oem section, I realized the boot didn't have all of the holes drilled it needed. There were two locating pins on the center section that had no holes to drop into. I checked the blacked out center just removed to find that the previous owner had instead opted to cut off the locating pins from the housing instead of doing it the correct way and drilling the proper holes.

My locating pin holes looked more precise than the mounting holes themselves, but I'm sure this would aid in final adjustment to line up the lights. As it turns out, I needed spacers here more than anything to bring the center section out (aft) so its face surface alined flush with the sides as first test fit they were proud.

Fin.