My Pro Street

Budget Beast – Remove your 240SX Rear End

John Huh

Whether you are following along with our Budget Beast build, or simply building a drift missile of your own design, chances are at some point you’ll need to address the rear end. If this is for your 5 lug conversion, or to install a new differential or rear end, or even service the subframe bushings or convert to 300ZX rear calipers, you can use this guide to remove your 240SX rear end.

This is the first part of a multipart series that will show you how to address all of those projects for your drift 240SX. Today we are showing you how to remove your 1995-1998 Nissan 240SX S14 rear end and go through it to prep for competition.

If it wasn’t already obvious, go ahead and raise the back of your vehicle and secure it safely. Make sure to always use jackstands and use proper chocks up front to prevent your vehicle from falling on you. If you have any doubts on how to work on your car safely, stop now and take your car to an experienced mechanic.

Now remove your 240SX wheels and go about removing the axle nut, as shown above. Don’t bother removing or messing with the axles now.

Use a floor jack to support the bottom of your rear end and diff, make sure not to go overboard here and double check your jackstand points to make sure your 240SX isn’t going anywhere.

By this point, you should already have your driveshaft disconnected. If you are following along with our Budget Beast project, you will already have your engine removed in Part 2.

Where most people want to remove each and every control arm and suspension part on your rear subframe while on the car, we recommend just skipping this step. Instead of wasting time and effort on this, instead just remove the 19mm bolt that runs through the bottom of your rear shocks.

Take out this 19mm bolt and washer, and set to the side. Your rear shock should now slide off the rear spindle, freeing the suspension from the subframe and rear wheel bearing housing.

Now with this part done, make your move toward your ebrake cable to disconnect from your rear subframe.

This is the section of your 240SX that houses the emergency brake cables and weather grommet. To remove this section, you’ll need to take off the center console cover and undo the 10mm bolts to the bracket. Instead of wasting time doing this however, you can simply follow your cables back and find your 2 way union.

This ebrake cable exits from this location and connects to a two way union, shown above. There should be two 10mm nuts that hold the left and right side of your ebrake cables. Remove the 10mm nuts and swing out either side of your ebrake cable from the two way union.

Now with this section undone, your rear end is now ready to be loosened and lowered.

Start by removing the 14mm nut and the two bolts that go through this L bracket. There’s one on either side of the 240SX, so make sure to remove them and pull of this panel.

Now that either ends have been removed, locate the four main carrier bolts to your rear subframe.

Begin with the rear mounts and carefully remove these 17mm nuts and special subframe mount cups.

Make sure to get either ends, and now you are ready for the front mounts that head through the subframe and into your 240SX chassis.

Now loosen the rear pumpkin bolts located below, it might help to have a buddy handy to help keep an eye on your jackstands and subframe.

At this point there should be just two things holding your subframe to your car, and that’s the brake lines. Making sure your subframe and rear end are raised in the air, gently undo the 12mm banjo bolt that runs through the back brake calipers. Allow it to bleed or drip, and carefully lower and remove your subframe and rear end as a whole.

We notice the bushing failure pretty quickly. and once we have the subframe lowered it’s clear that all four corners are pretty much dead.

Begin unloading your subframe by removing the rear control arms and traction bars from the unit.

Once you have all the control arms removed from your 240SX rear end, you can remove the axles from your differential and slide them out of your rear spindles.

Now remove the main bolts that run through the back of your diff, connecting it to your rear subframe.

We are going to be upgrading to a Q45 rear end and axles in this setup, to make better use of our six speed CD009 transmission as well as the beefier axles.

Once we get the 240SX rear end lowered, we find a pleasant surprise in the form of a factory 240SX LSD equipped diff. Because one man’s trash is another man’s treasure, we’ll be selling this VLSD unit and it will contribute to Budget Beast.

Here’s an updated cost breakdown of our 2JZ 240SX swap :

Stay tuned for our next update to Project Beast, where we show you how to install a set of Megan subframe bushings in your Nissan 240SX rear end.

 

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