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8 minute(s) of a 16 minute read
1-6-2021
Adventures in a Craigslist Nissan Stanza
Compliments of Afazz @ http://forums.fourtitude.com/
This weekend I went to visit my college motorhead buddies in Los Angeles. Among the planned activities, we wanted to go camping in the Mojave Desert Saturday night.
On Friday night, we were sitting around watching videos on YouTube waiting for more friends to arrive in town. One thing lead to another, and we ended up on videos of rednecks jumping beater cars. Then the conversation....
"We should buy the cheapest running car on Craigslist and beat the f*ck out of it in the desert!"
Billy navigates away from YouTube onto Craigslist and found this gem...
Saturday morning, we pull up to the house outside of Palmdale to this scene - a beat ass Chevy Celebrity trying to jump start an even more thrashed Nissan Stanza.
The battery was fully charged, but it wouldn't start because it was still in 'drive.' After almost burning the thing down with improperly attached jumper cables, we were ready for a test drive. It ran... kinda. It was firing on 3...sometimes 4 cylinders, and the oil was overfilled by about 2 quarts. After waiting for the guy to drive to his badymama's house to get the title (they had no idea the title was required to sell a car), we exchanged money and were off.
First stop: gas station. Notice the left rear monster truck tire, which was clearly not the correct spare for the car.
We stopped in the town of Mojave because the monster spare was rubbing the fender really bad. A hammer and some pliers offered an elegant solution.
After another 20 miles, we had reached our campsite in the heart of Jawbone Canyon in the Mojave desert.
We did some off-roading
Our fender/tire survived the trip without rubbing!
The next morning, we woke up early to do some shooting.
Of course, the Stanza wanted to participate!
In the process of shooting through the doors, we managed to explode the monster spare with some shrapnel.
Billy took the OEM wheel (which we found in the trunk) back to town to get a spare mounted up. While he was gone, we decided to head out of the canyon on the flat, since we didn't care about the rim itself. It degraded pretty quickly!
Allllmost out of the canyon
We made it out of the desert to the Jawbone Canyon general store, where we ate some mediocre food and waited for our new spare to arrive.
After mounting up the new tire, we drove it 3 hours back to Los Angeles with no problems! Except for another off-roading incident that I forgot to photograph...
Monday morning, we decided it needed some more work. We pulled it into the garage.
First we cut the front springs.
The rear springs were a little more dificult to remove, since the strut and spindle are all one piece. So we cut them in the car.
While Billy and Jimmy were messing around with the rear suspension, I painted the wheels two-tone
About 2-1/2" lower!
Then the real fun began. We taped up the windows to smash them out.
Myself, Billy, and Jimmy. We're practically coachbuilders.
After the glass was out, we started cutting.
Stanza Convertible!
Racing stripe
We all piled in for a victory ride around the block.
We took a cruise to the local In'n'Out on PCH... it attracted quite a crowd!
I'll leave you with some artsy shots Billy shot after a successful maiden voyage.
The interior is surprisingly clean.
And finally, the Lucky Ducky that helped us through the journey. We unloaded 10 magazines on this guy at close range, and nobody managed to hit him. He's invincible.
