NightDrive Type X Hatch P.1
So I’ve been super lazy and haven’t really posted the progress of this car. Everything happened to it pretty quickly and I just didn’t have the time to put up a build thread or blog post. Luckily though, i took lots of pics.
So I guess I’ll start with the fact that this is not my first S13, this is the 10th one I’ve had throughout the years (about 15 years to be exact) but I’m not going to go into all shitboxes I had in the past, in order to tell my Type X story correctly i do have to briefly talk about this one car.
This was at the end of 2011, I had spent about 2 years building this car on a super tight budget since I was young and reckless. This was the car that started my Type X obsession, which I can blame Brian Harte and most importantly the Kouki Type X Thread on Zilvia. I knew about Koguchi’s infamous black car, Koguchi’s red HR Falken car that was at Irwindale, I knew about King Komatsu through the Super Street Signal Auto features in the early 2000s, I also knew about the Miura Bros and Sexy Style (but that’s a whole other conversation) . I had seen the photos of Itai’s HR car, but I didn’t know about all the nuances and details of OneEightyStyle, the golden rule of 17/18, the meaning of the numbers 573/570, three finger headlight gaps, and popped up sunroofs are part of the Type X Experience. Shout out to they Type X thread on Zilvia.
This car ended in a part out. About a year later I blew the head gasket on it due to my own stupidity and I ended up parting it out since I didn’t have the money and honestly didn’t have the motivation to work on it.
So, let’s fast forward to 2019 and I’m looking for an S13 hatch to finally build the Type X Hatch I’ve always wanted to build. Prices have changed, the market for the s-chassis is…unique. Clean cars are getting harder to find and almost all the cars that get posted for sale on South Florida are either overpriced or pieces of shit. But I get lucky and one of my homies Steven (IG @_schico) who lives in TN comes across this car. It didn’t start but he had worked on it before and was pretty confident the motor was fine, the car wasn’t the cleanest but it was completely stock and unmolested.
It ended up being the fuel pump, I ordered it and Steven swapped it out, fixed. So now started the challenge of bringing this thing home to Miami, FL. All the shocks were blown, the brakes were shot and suspension components were all stock and worn out. So before the drive I bought replacement parts and Steven did me a solid and swapped them out for me.
Got Stance XR1s, went 5-lug. Bought the brake setup from Steven’s car which was Z32 calipers/Z33 rotors. ISR Pro arms, aluminum radiator & GK Tech fan. The drive down was going to be a fun & reliable one.
So car was ready to, shout out to my homie Steven for finding the car and doing all that work for me before I got up there. Can’t thank this guy enough, fr fr.
I flew up to TN with another friend of mine, Chris (IG @itsguybro) and we made the drive down to Miami. I don’t have many pictures of that drive because most of the driving was at night and I was extremely worried about the car. But it made the 1,200 mile trek with absolutely zero issues. Amazing. Oh no wait….we had to replace a positive battery terminal.
Car was in Miami and now the reeaaal fun began, but I’m going to cut this blog post here and I’ll continue it next week. The car has a ton of work already, but organizing and typing it all is going to take a bit of time.
Thank you for reading, see you soon.
NGT.DRV