Nissan 200SX

had a ride in one over easter, loved it. there aint to pricey and look good (well to me, like the skyline front) any good places to grab info? google turned up a load of old bollocks.

also what can these engines take with standard bits? can you get away with upping the turbo boost without breaking nothing? 200bhp is nice but i'd want a tad more ;)

still looks and sounds a good motor so is on the list with an MR2 turbo and celica GT4 :)

Reply to
Vamp
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I find them massively uncomfortable. The nearside front arch intrudes too far into the footwell, and even though I'm well used to cars where you almost sit on the floor, I found the Nissan seats a little too close to the floor to be really comfy. Rear seats for short people only. (OK for someone up to about 5ft tall, but no more).

Turbos are a weak point on the engine - if you're planning on chipping it, also budget for an uprated turbo.

Maintenance costs can be crippling - expect a bill of a couple of grand for one of the services between 60k and 100k. (this happened to my father-in-law's - cossetted company car)

If you do take the plunge, don't buy a Touring with leather interior as the leather is s**te quality and starts to look really tatty once you've done 60k or so miles in it.

Reply to
SteveH

i found seating ok and i'm like 6" 2

uprated turbo eeeek pricy :) are the breaks up to extra power or that a thing that'll need a look as well? MR2 breaks are pretty good for a few extra bhp

why? fudge do they do to warrent that kinda cost!

is all jap leather s**te? seems that way to me

Reply to
Vamp

I'm 5ft 8in and find my feet very cramped in the passenger footwell. Not comfortable at all.

Given that they work find for the auto version of the car (ie. f*ck-all engine breaking), then I'd say they'd be OK for a moderate increase in HP on a manual car.

Can't remember what the total was for - but I know it involved a replacement turbo. Suppose there could have been a pair of tyres in there, too. All I remember is that the f-i-l chucked it at the Nissan dealer and asked them to 'fix it' before he bought it from the company. Total bill was well over £2k - closer to £3k, ISTR.

The explanation (from a friend who worked in the retrimming business) is that the Japs find the smell of dead cow skin offensive, so over-process (tan) it to kill the smell. Unfortunately, the tanning process also makes it brittle. They also tend to use very thin leather, and not the best layer of the hide either to keep costs down.

BTW, the above mentioned car went to my brother-in-law who also incurred a couple of grands worth of costs on it (he had it from, ISTR 85k miles to close on 100k miles) before an HGV flattened the bonnet for him at a roundabout.

Reply to
SteveH

I'm 5ft 8in as well. This gives me an idea for a really pointless thread ('cos we haven't had one of them in a while!).

Peter

Reply to
AstraVanMan

(well to me, like the

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take a look around then click tab for community, messageboard, look in events meets for your area and go meet some owners, search in S14 technical for common faults, 600 owners of
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S13, S14, S14a, S15 200SX's and still growing.

upping the turbo boost

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- on side bar click 200SX S14, ND conversion - has item by item list of what you need to make 240-650bhp. New site under development, seems to have lost item by item lists so maybe worth leeching the whole lot. Then go buy the stuff from
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they only sell stuff for 200SX's and have development cars for both RS13 and S14. Active on sxoc forums.

Late ones 96 on are hard (impossible?) to chip as program is in CPU chip so you need a replacement ECU apexi power fc etc. This often locks you into using the supplier to reprogram it every time you make a change or you have to buy an expensive kit to reprogram. Early ones have a header and some links can be soldered up to allow a rom daughter card to be used.

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for234 bhp (scout around and get your 26Mb pdf copy of the workshopmanual while you are there). Decat, 2.5" turbo back exhaust, cone or panel filter, chip or FCD =

240bhp. Late ones have pre-cat in dump pipe so you need to ditch that too. Add front mount intercooler for next 30bhp (270), remapped chip or apexi fc, fuel pump and regulator for next 40bhp (300). Injectors and new turbo for next 50bhp (350). Beyond that it's not cheap bolt on in a day stuff any more. Big bore and forged pistons.

Auto trans can't go much more than 250bhp (300ZX auto weak as well). Manual will go over 400bhp but expect layshaft bearings to be needed if you go to higher power and use it.

Brakes are 4 pot and a set of drilled/grooved combi discs and better pads does it for most people.

-- Peter Hill Spamtrap reply domain as per NNTP-Posting-Host in header Can of worms - what every fisherman wants. Can of worms - what every PC owner gets!

Reply to
Peter Hill

Rubbish. They use exactly the same Garrett blowers as everyone else. You can expect

250bhp or more, from the stock blower.

Rubbish. If he got a bill for a couple of grand, then there was LOTS of maintence in it ! They cost no more to service than any other Turbo car.

Rubbish. I've seen a couple with more than 60k (one with more than 100k) and the leather looked fine. The Touring is the higher-spec 200SX - you'd be an idiot to avoid it !

I've done a fair bit of research into the 200SX, and they come up rather well. Don't listen to Steve - it would appear he only has experience of one single unreliable car.

Reply to
Nom

good (well to me, like the

upping the turbo boost

try

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I take it you looked at a S14 or 15 as the one I had was the S13 with pop up headlights. The later ones do look like skylines and you can even convert the back end to match. The site above is the official owners site..and has some good links etc.

Reply to
Daz and Lynda

Well, it's actually a known problem with the 200SX. The blower may be the same, but the oil feed is apparently lacking.

Exactly. This car was serviced on the dot by a main dealer, driven sensibly when cold, allowed to cool and everything. It even had a slushomatic box, which meant you _couldn't_ thrash it too badly - yet it still ran up huge bills as it aged. Certainly higher bills than the heavily tweaked Sapphire Cossies he'd had before.

Other owners have also been hit with big bills from their dealers as the miles have racked up, too.

Servicing isn't the problem, it's the other stuff that goes wrong that costs silly money to fix.

It's cheap Jap leather, and unless you're anal about feeding it etc., then it cracks and grazes _very_ easily.

If you dig around, then yes, most owners rate them as reliable. However, if anything goes wrong then they cost huge amounts to fix - there aren't a lot of pattern bits available for them, so you're stuck with using main dealers and their extortionate prices.

Reply to
SteveH

But that's standard-fare for a performance car. You don't expect to be able to come by 200SX parts, in the same way as Ford Ka parts for example :)

Reply to
Nom

there are pattern parts available for the 200sx

Reply to
Theo

And if you can't find a pattern part, buy a performance part. Will still probably be cheaper than a dealer part (especially if you import it from somewhere else in the world).

Reply to
MeatballTurbo

Not at all - it's more to do with it being a Japanese performance car.

If you were looking at, say, a Saab 900 Turbo, Mercedes, BMW, Porsche or performance VW, then the bits would be readily available from German & Swedish or Eurocarparts.

In fact, it's cheaper to run a quality German performance car on bits from the above than it is to run a Ford on main dealer parts.

Reply to
SteveH

not engine parts I wouldnt have thought.

Reply to
Theo

You'd be amazed at what you can buy from them, and the prices. They make running expensive cars no worse than running a Eurobox.

Reply to
SteveH

Indeed, but it will be more stressed and reduce its life :)

Justin.

Reply to
Justin Cole

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