The first time I drove the S13 was around 4 years ago at Hadashi, and I was impressed with how well it handled. In fact, it handled better than any car I’d owned up to that point. The setup was simple with Tein Flex coilovers, extended lower arms, cut knuckles and tie rods from Yuramode, and a mix of adjustable arms in the rear. On the track, it had more steering angle than I needed and the suspension travel felt great. As they say, if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it. But, I was definitely going to refresh it.

I started up front with the lower arms, knuckles, and power brace. I took the time to properly clean and prep everything and considered going the extra mile and pulling out my Iwata knock-off and spraying base/clear. But I decided it was best to keep things simple.

Rustoleum out of a can does a good enough job. I didn’t bother taking a picture, but everything was primed before it was painted. I used a Duplicolor automotive primer.

It’s definitely not as durable as 2-stage or powder coat, but it looks good and is decently durable. After everything was dry I threw the power brace on to see how it looked against the gun-metal of the engine bay. It’s not a Nismo piece, but a one-off that came with the car. I added the flat bar running across, which is the lower mount for the radiator..

I’ve always run Zeal Functions, but the S13 came with Tein Flex. They’re a budget coilover, but they performed surprisingly well so they’re staying for now. However, they were dirty, rusty, and green… so they had to come apart. I ended up cleaning them thoroughly and painting the springs, lower brackets, and upper plates. Again, I went with Rustoleum and chose “sail blue”, which is actually pretty damn close to Calsonic (Champion) blue.

The car came with Cusco tension rods, but they were pretty worn out, and I had a set of new D-Max laying around so I just swapped them out. I also threw in a pair of new Moog sway bar links. With everything back together I was pretty happy with how the front end turned out.

Fun, fact, D-Max and Phase2Motortrend (P2M) arms are EXACTLY the same. They’re literally made in the same factory and come in the same boxes. The only difference is a big mark-up and a D-Max sticker. If I didn’t have the D-Max on hand I would have bought a pair of P2M tension rods instead.

The rear required more work because of all the adjustable arms. I’m not sure of the makers, but they were all on the rusty side. The traction and upper arms were red, and possibly Kazama, but they could have also been something cheap off Yahoo Auctions. I’m pretty sure the toe arms were Ikeya Formula.

Like the fronts, the rear coilovers were Tein Flex, but they were a bit weird. They had traction springs and spacers that looked like they were from a set of old Cusco coilovers. The main spring wasn’t the original either. It had a larger inner-diameter and didn’t sit on the lower spring perch correctly. I literally could shift the spring back and forth by hand. I don’t remember hearing any clanking or clunking when I was driving, but it definitely needed to be fixed. I also discovered both were leaking a bit.

If these were high-end coilovers I would have probably sent them in for a rebuild, but I didn’t want to invest money into Tein Flex I was going to end up replacing down the road anyway. Luckily I happened to have a good pair of HKS Hipermax Performers laying around so the Tein’s went in the garbage.

I ended up painting the HKS the same as the Teins up front, but decided to not bother with the upper plates. Unlike the fronts, you can’t actually see them in the rear. I was going to buy new black dust boots for the HKS as well, but ended up liking the yellow ones they came with.

I was in a rush to get all this stuff painted with winter knocking on the door. Unfortunately, I didn’t work fast enough and ended up spraying the rear bits with the garage door open while it was snowing outside. Painting in the cold isn’t ideal, and I ended up spending half my time keeping everything warm with the heat gun. It was worth the effort though.

In the end, it took me about a month to get everything off, cleaned, painted, back on and, but I was happy with the final result. The underside of the S13 is fairly clean and rust-free, but the suspension definitely was not.

The Onevia is back on the ground now and officially a roller again. The next project on the list is brakes, and then there’s some big stuff happening with the turbo and manifold setup. I decided to part ways with 1970s Trust turbo technology and step into the 21st century. More on that in a future post though.