How bad of an idea

How bad of an idea is it to buy a second car in the form of an autotragic 240SX with the intention of swapping an SR20 and a manual into it?
I've noticed there are many cheap 240's in the form of automatic that aren't as beat on as their drift taxed manual cousins.

Very expensive and very time consuming.

How expensive is expensive?

Much more expensive than just buying a nice 240 while simultaneously ruining resale value by doing all the conversion shit.

That $2400 will quickly turn into $5000 by the time it's installed and running.

Unless you cut corners and just throw in a junk yard engine without doing any new seals, clutch, coolant hoses, etc.

Speaking from personal experience here.

And don't forget about the time spent doing the swap. Add up all those hours and imagine spending the same amount of time enjoying a car that's already fun and quick but may have cost you more to begin with.

>ruining resale value
Kek I just want to Tear one up before Jose gets the rest. Cars don't last forever and I'm not a collector.
Good point. Maybe I'll just bite it for now and hope some better manuals pop up.

Or just save for an imported 180SX, which is the one I really want.
>tfw no sil80

>ruining resale value
youre improving resale value (but still not worth the amount you put into it after all work is done)... literally no one wants an automatic 240sx unless its dirt ass cheap to begin with.

The point of the resale value is that you're dumping multiple times the price of the car into it to get it where you want and then barely being able to sell it for what you got the car for in the first place. Meanwhile you could just spend equal or less money on a nice manual 240 already which may or may not have an SR20. Here you can get an SR20 swapped 240 for ~$8,000-$10,000 depending on how well it's been maintained. Or you can get an automatic one for $3,000 that still has high miles on the chassis, then spend another $5000 and countless hours chopping it up, sourcing parts, and trying to get it where you want it just to sell it for maybe $4,500 if you're lucky.

>condition:used
don't do it man, for all you know that transmission has been beat on, there'd be no point

>stock 240sx
>resale value
>as if 90% of its value isn't drift tax anyways
>as if doing the swap doesn't quadruple the value through maximum drift tax

>Buy well maintained swapped car for $8,000
>Be able to resell it for $8,000
>Spend $8,000 converting it all yourself with a cheap used engine and tranny, do a half assed job, thrash it for a while, then resell it for

I swapped a "known great condition" tranny into a (previously automatic) Z32 once. Drove it around the block and quickly learned that the 2nd gear synchro is a gonner. What a huge waste of time.

Learn from my mistakes, anons. Don't trust used parts.

exactly that's what I'm sayin, this user is just better off buying a manual and repairing whatever comes his way

Why are the only cheap 240s convertable?

Because the already floppy as fuck chassis is made even floppier and more useless by being convertible.

>getting an sr
>not just truboing the ka
Dat midrange pull bro you just don't understand.

Not OP but what if you wanted to just buy a rolling shell 240 with no engine or tranny and just put another stock KA in it would it be cheaper then just buying a complete 240

Fuck I'm doing a t56 swap next week in my LS1 sweating bullets desu.

At worst I'll get the box rebuilt with new synchros and steel/billet bits and just man the fuck up.

Kits are cheap here in aus about 1500-2k shipped but you don't know what your getting I hope the 3 month warranty isn't bs. I'm getting a trusted shop to do it for 2.5k installed with a new clutch and tuned so if something shits itself it's gearbox itself but apparently a fluid flush fixes weird shit.

Wish me luck, if the box is junk I have to ship it back half way across Australia and fuck paying postage on that shit

>re-sale value
>auto 240
Bro do you even know why people buy/sell 240s for what they cost?

I just picked up a 93' with an sr20 and the previous owner half-assed everything in the swap. Currently having to go back and re-bolt everything in/fix all his shitty wiring jobs.

I mean both of y'all are right