NICOclub Staff – BusyBadger

Staff Bio Alex (BusyBadger)

I joined the Nissan family in 2003 when I picked up a ’92 Nissan 240SX in late 2003 as a daily driver.

I had a Ford Explorer but Holli & I needed a second car when we moved from Bloomington, IN to Chicago. I saw the 240SX, knew the maintenance history and the price was perfect…my sister-in-law had it sitting in her driveway and asked if I wanted it! *laughs* It was love at first slide.

I don’t know if it’s because I had been driving the Explorer for so long but I was amazed at how nimble the 240SX was. Before the Explorer I had a couple of Honda Preludes, a ’73 Karmann Ghia and some friends and I even went in together on a Honda CRX so we could autocross it on the weekends but the 240 felt completely different. Then it hit me – it was my first FR car. With the Ghia I was constantly fighting the rear wanting to swing around and the Preludes had the host of problems that come along with front wheel drive but the 240 just felt right. I got to take advantage of the 240’s qualities in Chicago traffic, I once joked with Holli that during rush hour I could be a bully in the Explorer but I had to be crafty in the 240.

Like many members I stumbled across NICO while looking for some help…

If I could change anything about my 240SX it would be the heads up display. I love the way it looks – when it works. I had scoured the web looking for solutions and found NICO in the process, maybe it was a good thing it went out after all!

Like most members, I wasn’t content to let my 240 stay in stock form… I had a long list of improvements I wanted to make to the 240 but as most people know it’s hard to schedule a block of downtime for a daily driver.

I worked on a lot of build sheets and planned a lot of things out but nothing really happened until I moved away from Chicago to Tennessee. I took a vacation and spent some quality time with the 240 either fixing or replacing suspension part after suspension part. I drove it for a couple of years with the new improvements and babying the stock KA that was rapidly approaching 300,000 miles. I knew it was time for a heart transplant but before I completely settled on an engine & supplier I drove by a Nissan dealership that had a yellow pearl 35th Anniversary Z sitting front and centre. Low mileage, no issues and a decent price – after the test drive it was my new daily in less than a week. I recently convinced Holli to replace the Explorer with an Xterra, so now we’re a 3-Nissan household.

When I’m not working, on NICO, taking care of cats (we have eight) or sitting in front of a monitor you can find me driving somewhere along  The Snake (US 421).