Ok here's an update of what has been happening so far with my nissan project.
Well I did get it running and it was driveable and the only real problem I had was with the transmission, the fuggin torque converter wouldn't lock up, it wasn't a real big deal, still got better gas mileage than my cadillac and was way nicer of a ride (not big and floaty like my beast of a previous car). Then coming home one day the transmission started to slip like crazy and I mean insanely bad. The top speed I was able to get was about 15mph, which sucked really bad
. So I let that sit for awhile and drove my parents beater lincoln town car (cadillac in tank fuel pump died, and you had to drop the tank to change it, plus leaking 5 quarts of oil a week sucked and was spendy, plus 15mpg, eek). So I start calling around some rebuild shops, call up a guy in a town about 15 miles away, he wanted $1800 to rebuild it (that was with dropping it rebuilding it, reinstalling it). I'm like screw that, the car isn't worth that much. So I ask him how much if I bring the transmission in. He said $1000, still wwwaaayyy out of my price range, so I call some tranny shops about rebuild kits, about $400 for a kit, and that shop said they wouldn't even rebuilt it do to the transmissions being so finickey that they can't be liable for failure. So I contemplated doing a 5 speed conversion. After a few months and while at the drag races I met a guy that raced a totally homemade souped up 240sx, the guy lived about an hour from me and we started to chat about nissans (this guy is a nissan nut, he owns a couple maximas, an altima, a hardbody truck, and that 240sx), and he started to tell me he owned two stanzas. He's like I can get you a 5 speed parts car (with a bad clutch) so i'm like cool, so he told me to call him in a week. So I gave him a ring and he said sorry I can't get you that parts car, but I'll sell you my daily driver, I asked him whats wrong (lots of rust, lots of miles 214,000 to be exact, but runs like a champ, also the cv joints are getting bad) So I ask him how much? And he tells me, $200 cash and a spare 5 speed for my 240sx, so i go pull a transmission out of a junkyard, go to his house and drove the car home (learning a stick was kinda fun). So know I'm gonna convert it to a 5 speed for sure, the hardest part will be cutting out the bolt holes for the clutch pedal assembly, but it shouldn't be too big of deal. The transmission I need was used in MANY models of nissans over a long year span. So it should cost me about $300 to do the swap (transmission, clutch and all). But for now my rusty white stanza will get me by for awhile.