The steering on the white car was always a problem. Several things were developing in the steering due to age and abuse. There was lots of steering play. Nearly a quarter turn of the steering wheel. Also, there was little feedback from the steering. It was very difficult to feel what the front tires were doing. Also, the abuse of repeatedly throwing the steering against the steering stops had blown out the seals in the stock steering box. I was replacing steering gearboxes nearly every event until I finally decided to go without power steering. This made drifting MUCH more difficult. Other things that were beginning to happen with the steering. The steering wheel would shake at certain speeds. Also, the steering column's height adjustment would come loose randomly.

Imagine for a second driving a car at speed, sideways, where the steering wheel feels dead. You turn it a quarter turn with no reaction from the car. You are fighting the car with no power steering. Suddenly, the steering wheel starts to shake violently and is bouncing up and down. Yeah. It was CRAZY driving the white car.

I had always planned on one day doing a rack and pinion to fix this. When we started the racecar it seemed like a logical addition to the project. Little did I know how much each little decicison would come back to haunt me. I wanted to maintain the geometry best I could without introducing too much bump steer. In order to do this I had to keep the distance between the lower control arm bolts the same as on a 240SX. Since adapting the stock crossmember for this duty would have been too much work, I decided to just make adapter plates to bolt a 240SX crossmember onto the car. Doing this would also allow me to use 240SX lower control arms, uprights, etc. This way I could also bolt on 300ZX brakes, and REAL coilovers.

The adapter plates were pretty easy to fit to the car. It was also easy to drill holes in the control arms so that I could use the Starion tension rods. Next was to fit the final attachment point, the strut tops. I originally tried to use the 240SX stock struts. The car would sit on them fine, I even got to bolting one side up. I soon found that due to the size of the stock spring, I would not be able to turn the wheels with such a large spring! I then tracked down a set of used Coilovers. Dad made me a camber plate for the top that would adapt the Tein pillowball mount to the Starion bolt pattern. Now I had a bolt on coilover for the Starion. No drilling required.

Now the car sat LOW. Too low even. With the adapter plates, the front crossmember sat so low that the control arm angles were HORRIBLE. To fix this I removed my precious adapter plates and cut another 2 inches out of the crossmember. I welded a plate on with the Starion's bolt pattern. In all I raised the crossmember 2.5 inches. Control arm angles are now okay for a car sitting as low as a car can go with on Tein coilovers.

The next step was to get the steering column to work. It was the smart thing, at the time, to use the 240SX steering column for this. Oh boy was that a mistake! Turns out the steering column needed to go right through where the brake pedal would normally be. This prompted me to get some floor mount pedals. This was also a big mistake. Due to the profile fo the floor, I had no choice but to move the pedals towards the back 12" I could raise them a little to keep them from needing to be moved back more. Doesn't sound so bad does it? Think again. I then had to move back the driver's seat 12", move the shifter back, ebrake back, and make a 12" steering wheel spacer!!!.

That's right, a 12" section of pipe was used to move the steering wheel back. For this we had to rob the tapered and splined center from the 240SX steering wheel. We thought we could just weld a steering wheel onto the end of this, but that was also an issue. If you cover the front of the spacer up, how could you ever get to the bolt to install the steering wheel? Now I needed to find a steering wheel with an open center. This is how all aftermarket wheels are set up; a bolt circle around an open center. For this I splurged and got a suede momo rally steering wheel. This had a 3" offset making the total steering spacer around 15" long. Crazytown!

In the end, the steering setup is great. Moving most everything back 12" could only improve the weight balance of the whole car. The seating position is exceptionally comfortable. The floor mount pedals offer lots of adjustability for bias and pedal position. They also lower the center of gravity a tiny bit. Using the 240SX front axle also gave me the opportunity to use Tein coilovers and a cheap big brake upgrade.

Upgraded brakes was always on my list of upgrades, but it was always out of my budget. When I swapped the 240SX front suspension over, this suddenly became a possibility. 300ZX four piston calipers bolt to 240SX hubs and with S14 5 lug hubs I used the rotors without modification.

The brake upgrade was pretty straight forward. I went to the junkyard and found 2 300ZX with brakes still on them. Each one was a 1990 model and had the 26mm rotors. I pulled them and cleaned them up and they bolted right on. I tried putting the wheels on and I found out that I would need wheel spacers. For my mesh wheels I only needed 1/4" spacers, but this was enough to require that I get some longer wheel studs. I got some Moroso studs, had Matt machine down some of the knurl and installed them. With the 1/4" spacer the mesh wheels went right on. I will need thicker spacers for the stock wheels to clear the brake calipers.

I purchased some 10mm x 1 to -4AN adapter fittings and ran stainless braided -4AN lines to a -4AN -> inverted flare adapter. This adapter clipped right into the stock brake line mount. The rear brakes remain stock, but should be able to cope with the heat they'll be seeing.

As mentioned earlier with the Steering modifications, I am using Tein HA coilovers on my Starion. They use custom camber plates to adapt them to the Starion Chassis. The rear offered me very few options. There are only two aftermarket options available for the rear: KYB GR-2 and Tokico Blues. I chose to use Tokico blues because they are the best of what is available. I use them with sagging Suspension Techniques springs. One day I hope to upgrade the rear suspension, but for now this will have to do. I carried over the sway bars from the White chassis.

When building this car I tried to remove as much weight as I could within reason. Some things I eventually reinstalled for cosmetic, comfort and safety. I also knew that some weight reduction was just too much work for the savings. The key for me has always been to bring the weight as close to the center of gravity as possible. This places more value on weight removed the farther it got from center. The engine was moved back only slightly, but since it is a lighter engine than stock this should make a large difference in the feel of the car.

The chassis started out black. I always wanted a black Starion. I think they just look very evil. Somewhere in the last 2 years I decided I wanted to do a police theme. This is a pretty simple modification. All I did was throw some white doors onto the black chassis and add some decals and a light bar. If I ever want to switch back to all black it should be pretty easy.

I found an Aerodynic red-white lightbar in the junkyard from an ambulance (any red-blue are kept by the police when they dismantle a squad car). I re-arranged the lenses so that all of the red lenses would be on the driver's side and all the white ones would be on the passenger side. I then tinted the white side blue using some Hygloss blue cellophane sheets. I cleaned everything up and hooked it up to a battery. After years of laying out in the rain in the junkyard, not a single bulb was bad and the motor still turned smoothly. More info can be found in the page dedicated to just the details of the Police Theme.

After having some down time when the head was off the car I decided to paint the engine bay. I used a method I had read about on the 'Net. You do the usual prep work of cleaning and sanding and cleaning and more sanding and then you paint it with... Rustoleum! Now this is not the same as spraybombing the car with rattle cans. What I did was buy rustoleum in the [white] paint can. I then thinned it down about 1:1 with mineral spirits and sprayed with with a gun. Each coat goes down so thin that it takes about 5 coats until you cannot see the metal underneath. Each coat is thined enough that it doesn't dry right when it hits the surface. This gives it time to self level. I did some light sanding after the first 20 thin coats dried and then sprayed 20 more coats over that. The end result might not be a show car finish, but It looks pretty amazing for a $10 paint job. Repairs and paint matching should be as easy as buying a can of Rustoleum at any store. So far the paint seems pretty durable. I may not be able to clean it with some chemicals, but oil and grease and water does not seem to effect it. One day I plan on painting the outside of the car using the same method.