This is my 1990 Nissan 200sx. I got it nearly two years ago and tried to make it perfect since. As you probably can see there's still a long way to go for me until i reach my goal, but I can tell you, its far better than what it used to be. After some encouragement i decided to share this story with the people of the internet to shed some light on what its like to rescue and old car.
My name is Matt and I'm from Poland. I weren't always a huge fan of the s13, I just wanted something noticeably faster and more fun than my Civic that will also be japanese and pretty rare (that was the reason i didn't go for the BMW 325i). S13 met all the requirements and seemed affordable enough for me (as i naively believed).
I saved some cash and started to look for the right example. Found this one the day it was posted on olx (polish site, something like craigslist) and 2 days later i went for a 400km trip to examine and buy it (these cars are far more rare in europe than they are in the US so there were no local on-sale s13s').
My mistake no 1: I didn't bring the manometer (or however you call the thing you use to check the compression)
My mistake no 2: I only examined it a little, there were no lift or one of these longitudinal holes in the ground (don't know how they are called) so i was crawling under the car with a flashlight from my phone.
After the examination I thought i could repair the rust for around 5000 (~$1400) pln and got the car itself for 10000 (~$2800) pln. Drove it back home without larger issues (water temp sensor popped out and i thought it was overheating)
That's the photo i took the day after. The engine was standard for the europe version CA18DET, previous owner claimed it made around 210hp. It had walbro 255 fuel pump, bigger turbo (turned out to be a lie later), lowering springs and some shitty bucket seat. I was lucky it started snowing after i were back home as it had no snow tires.
Thats all for this time, I'll try to keep the story going. Feel free to leave suggestions in the comments if there's something wrong with my writing. Peace!