From lemon to lemonade Fast, reliable, cheap, beautiful; pick four
 

Ok I've been working on my new fb for a while now. My goal with this is to have a very inexpensive weekend driver, which can be easily used as a daily driver. I want it to be a fun fast street car, with no current intentions of racing it, but I play with the idea of autocross or road racing.

I bought it from a fellow forum member. When I got it, it was pretty rough, appearance wise, but it has a fresh engine and transmission. On to the photos! These first few are from before I prepped and painted it.

When I got the car it ran pretty rough. I changed the fluids, and gave it fresh spark plugs and rebuilt the nikki carb. That was apparently what it needed, because it then pulled harder than my previous fb ever did. It came to me with a 12a with a rb header and presilencer, to a monza muffler. It is an 83 gsl, complete with disc brake rear and lsd. The car was in iowa when I got it, and had some rust. I ended up needing to replace 3 of the 4 brake calipers.

Why didn't I rebuild them??? Well, that was the plan 'til I tried to take them apart and realized that they were rusted solid.

I loved to drive the car, but the 2 layers of weird yellow cracking off to show the original red beneath just became too much for me.

Paint it is, but as inexpensive as I could possibly do it. I've actually done a highish budget fb restoration, and, as nice as it was to not worry about pinching pennies, I actually had fun concocting the cheapest way to get this car to look good.

I used leftover paint from 2 other different projects (both the the same type and brand of 2 stage acrylic auto paint) One was a very dark purple metallic from my wife's Saturn sc1 3 door coupe project, and the other was a metallic red from my electric fb. It came out much better than I ever expected. I covered it all with only one quart of clear, which turned out to be enough.

More power!!

So my wife picked these beauties up for me. A weber IDA and a racing beat modded 48 dhla and a turbo prep kit for it.

I like them, but the previous owner of the car sent a beautiful old 70's nikki carb with the car. I rebuilt and turbo prepped it and recently put it on the car, along with an old school manifold and the increase in low end torque is almost enough to make me want to keep the nikki on for good. So I might end up selling these carbs, I haven't quite decided, the do make a lot of power.

I'll post pics of the old school nikki later.

Here is a pic after wetsanding and buffing and in the sunlight. It shows the color of the lucky paint mix a bit better.

paint color actually looks pretty good! it sort of looks maroon. but either way, a huge improvement over that awful yellow over red.

Very nice lucky paint job!

That color came out pretty cool! Surprised you were able to get enough coverage with only a quart of clear though. I've never been able to get away with less than 2 quarts it seems....

If you think you might be interested in autocrossing, then check out the rules now. That way, you won't make a change to your car that will put you into a doomed class.

CSP is a very fun class. Allows suspension, exhaust, carb, all of the stuff you'd want to do to your car anyway to make a fun/fast daily driver. I love my car and wouldn't change a thing. :)




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Color looks almost Burgundy to me... a favorite hot-rod color of mine since I was a little kid building models.

Looks great on a -7.

Thanks guys, appreciate it. It was my first try at a paint job on my own. I'm pretty happy with it. I love the color, although I wish for my first try I would not have gone with a metallic. I got a little striping in places. You can only see it if it's in strong direct sunlight, thankfully.

Kentetsu, thanks for the advice, I was thinking exactly that. There are some tempting mods I have in the works for it, and I'm trying to make them fairly easily reversible so I can still qualify for a class that won't be mega difficult for a beginner.

More pics of the paint to come

Here are a few more pics on the paint after wetsanding with 1500 grit sandpaper, basic common 3m rubbing compound (not the heavy duty one), meguire's swirl remover (a lighter finer cutting compound), and carnauba wax.

There was a decent amount of lemon peel and dust nibs on the car after painting it outside. It looked pretty nasty. I should have taken before photos. It looked very amatuerish. The whole process made it look almost like a pro did it, except for a couple small flubs. Except it took me 5 times as long as a pro with good equipment would take, ha ha.

So I guess to those of you who are shying away from painting a car for the first time, as long as there is enough clearcoat thickness, sandpaper and rubbing compound can make everything good again.

Because I used leftover paint, borrowed my father-in-law's compressor and gear, and bought good 3m sandapaper (which lasts longer than the cheap stuff and in the end turns out cheaper), I only spent about $80 in total for this paint job. It looks ALMOST as good as one I paid a pro to do on my other 7. And it was fun! Note: I find wetanding relaxing, and I don't mind a project taking a long time. If you hate wetsanding and don't like waiting for a project to be done, it may not be fun for you.

Here are a few pics of the engine bay and old nikki carb. I still need to to more work to clean up the engine bay. I plan on re-doing the engine bay in gloss black; i figured it would look good in flat black, but now that the paint is on there, I don't like it so much.

Also, if anyone can ID the vintage nikki, it would be greatly appreciated. I'm really loving it.

A couple more...

That is a nice old Nikki... full-vented bowls, no vapor recovery system, no inlet spider.

Wish I could get away with doing that.

its a little hard to tell, but it actually looks like the whole engine/intake/carb could be 76-78 rx3.

^Good advice in this post for sure. My paint jobs always look kinda rough right after shooting them, either the clear went on too thick and got a few runs, or too dry and has orange peel, but as you said wetsanding and using rubbing/polishing compound makes a world of difference. As long as you're willing to spend the time wetsanding the results should come out good!
On a side note, the last car I painted was my Trans Am and to get it done quicker I used a one stage paint, and it is MUCH easier to work with. From now on (or at least until I have a better shop to paint in) I will be using one stage.
Looking real good, I like that color! Can't wait to see it with some rims on there!

Thanks 82transam Yes! Wheels wheels. One of my carbs and manifolds might just have to go to fund some wheels.

I don't know why, but I have fallen in love with the look of steelies on a 1st gen! Like diamond racing, or any other company who makes steel wheels. I don't know why. They are mostly seen as the cheapest functional thing, but I actually think I'd take them over a set of meshies, rota rbs, or konig rewinds. In this case I'm glad I have weird taste, cause they're the cheapest by far.

Love the Nikki,
I have one similar to it, not the same. I think it's older.

The stock FB steel wheels restored/painted correctly actually do look pretty good I'll give you that. I still prefer my rewinds though ;)

Can't tell from the pics, but did you pait the door jams etc?

Either way you've done a great job transforming that thing. :bigthumb:

Thanks a lot! I did paint the door jambs, but in black. I had very little paint to work with, so I used it all on the outer chassis. You cant easily tell the jambs are a different color not the same color, cause in the shade it all looks black.

the steels look good on there man, i too like the looks of steels on cars. i have a red 89 camry, and the P.O. painted the steels gunmetal, but put the hubcaps back on. i took them things off and that itself made the car look a hundred times better.

with that said...where/what car has 4x110 steels on it?

I think some older corollas have them. But I am really thinking of picking up a set of diamond racing wheels. Or any wheel shop steelies, probably D window wheels. 15x7 or 15x8 like food7373's car. https://www.rx7club.com/1st-generation-rx-7-1979-1985-vehicles-109/1979-mazda-rx7-widebody-940496/

Black door jams work perfectly with the color you chose, I like your budget approach :)

New wheels for the FB Bought them from a forum member. I have no idea what sort of wheels they are, but they are 15x7, 4x110, and they fix the SA they were pulled from beautifully. They need a bit of restoration, but a nice find at a terrific price, I think. I have never seen a set like them, if someone could help ID them, I'd be appreciative.


Thinking of stripping them and either re-painting the black parts black, or painting them all flat black.

Look pretty similar to a set I have.

Mine are American Racing Eagles and they are only 13"


http://i821.photobucket.com/albums/z...075/Wheel4.jpg