Been gone for awhile, but still have the S13! :D

Hello again!

I've been off the forum for a bit but can report that my 64K mile S13 is still stock (for now)

I took it to JM Imports recently for a complete inspection and they found a few normal age-related issues like it needs new front bushings and there is a TINY diff leak, nothing that crazy and all totally fixable. They also confirmed my suspicions: my Turbo is cracked! It's not a big crack but even as someone with very limited knowledge on this sort of stuff could tell that it sounded like a whistle for the turbo. It's nothing major and it still works.

I'll be honest, I've been chatting with tons of people and I always hear the same old stuff: "Ohh nooo, you can't mod this there aren't any left like this!" and I'm starting to get a bit tired of it. Someone even said it would hurt the resale value. I take good care of the car and so far I've barely driven it. Should I just sell this car? I'm assuming there are people out there interested in this sort of thing. Or should I just ignore them? I want to make the car mine, I wanted to swap the turbo for a bigger better one and change the fuel pump along with other strengthening mods but it's sad to know that I might be disappointing so many people by doing that. Maybe I should just get a GT86 or something so no one cares what I do! HAHA


What do you guys think?

Anyways here are the pictures:

https://imgur.com/a/uE6YN8g

I wouldn’t go crazy with the car but.. you can add a better turbo in the stock location and updating the fuel pump will in no way detract from the value either. It’s your car so do what you like with it really.

When you said you'd been gone a while I expected a membership older than 7 months :wack:

You must do what you want with your car. The cars are appreciating in value and, in theory, standard or reversible mod cars should command more money, but it's not always the case.

If you didn't buy your car as an investment, do as you wish with it.

So the facts are :-
Standard cars are now becoming collectible. If you want to sell your car for the best price, don't make irreversible alterations to the bodywork and keep the standard parts.
Your car is a low mileage late facelift S13. They are not the most collectible and the bodywork is good but isn't the best I've seen. If you don't spend some money on it in the next two-three years, the car will lose a lot of its current value. You need to spend money on getting the rust/rot sorted while it is still salvageable.
S13 prices are heading upwards and are unlikely to drop as they are coming from a very low place.
Modifying your car t work with a bigger turbo is not going to be cheap and you will NOT increase the resale value by modifying it. It will be more powerful, more fun but less driveable as an everyday car with a bigger turbo.
Upgrading the fuel pump is a sensible, invisible mod that will save your car. Do it. Now. It will not affect the resale value.

Everything that JW says ^.

I still think it'll be a real shame to lose another standard car to rash modifications but it's your car, innit. Much like Jonny says though, I had a blue ~300bhp S13 with suspension and brakes, and a grey bog standard S13 with the original equipment. The difference was quite remarkable and the grey car was a lovely place to be. I never expected that. Go figure.

If you're interested in getting rid of it, I have been gearing up for a bit of a project (I need to find a way of stopping my wife spending all of my money on house renovations, so :wack: ).