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In the rear, the 5-lug swap is very straight forward. All you need here is a set of rear hubs from the non-turbo 300ZX or S14 240SX SE. I’ve noticed a lot of people selling and buying these on the forums, but for a few bucks more you can source new or rebuilt ones online. Unlike the front, the rear hub bearings are not sold separately and instead, are sold as complete unit which includes the bearing and the cast housing. I learned this while looking for new bearings for a set of 300ZX rear hubs that yes, I bought off the forums. Hindsight is always 20/20. Hopefully, you can learn from my experience.
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To satisfy the last portion of the SCTA rule, we knocked out the factory 12 MM wheel studs and replaced them with grade 8, ½” wheel studs from Moser Engineering. It just happens that a wheel stud from a Lincoln rear end has a .565″ knurl size, which is just a few thou different from the S14 knurl size of .558″. This was a close enough for us to install the Lincoln studs without modifying the holes in the S14 hub.
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Unfortunately, things wouldn’t be as straight forward with the rear Z32 hubs. The Z32 wheel stud knurl measured in at .511″, meaning that the Lincoln wheel stud would be one hell of an interference fit without modification. We ordered a 14 MM drill bit from McMaster Carr, which we also ended up using to redrill the holes in our rotors to clear the larger wheel studs.
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With the front and rear 5-lug conversion taken care of, we turned our attention towards finishing up the last details of the rear suspension. The S13 has a pretty cool, multi-link suspension. The only thing that could make it cooler was to rice it out with some candy apple red powder coating from Specialized Coatings in Huntington Beach, CA. In fact, we had Specialized Coatings powder coat all the factory suspension links including the sub frames. Why the powder coating you ask? I could feed you some line about its protective properties against salt corrosion, which would be true, but honestly I just liked the way it looks.
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To offset the questionable addition of “rice,” we continued to dump large doses of hardcore “race” into the equation with more SPL Pro Suspension links. We started out our modifications, by replacing our 240SX’s RUCA or rear upper control arm with an adjustable arm from SPL Pro Suspension, which was constructed from DOM Chromoly tubing and measured in at 1.5″ in diameter. The SPL RUCA allows a broad range of camber adjustment which can achieve ideal settings for street, road racing, and even *cough* hella flush applications. Sorry, I think I puked in my mouth a bit… but who the hell am I to talk with candy apple red sub frames?
On project 240LSR, we will most likely run very little negative camber in the range of .5 to .75 degrees. This is mainly because our main focus is straight line speed with a complete absence of any turns and lateral tire loads. However, if Project 240LSR avoids tragedy on the salt flats, it will spend its retirement hot lapping at the likes of Button Willow and Auto Club Speed way so the camber adjustability will come in handy.
