Restoration Questions.
 

I'm in the process of restoring a 1984 GSL-SE. My Thread I'm restoring the car to its original for except some Re-Speed suspension and exhaust. I will ad questions as I come up with them. I want to get everything right.

Right now I have a few engine bay questions.

1. What is the stock finish on the bolts, brackets, etc? Are they yellow CAD or yellow Zinc?

2. Are all the black painted parts satin?

3. I'm missing the stickers for under the hood (I think my car was repainted at some point). I've found pics of the GSL-SE under hood. I know the placement of everything and I know I can get new stickers through Black Dragon. My problem is, what is the yellow sticker by the airbox?

4. Can I get the above yellow sticker? If not, can someone send my a high res picture and dimensions of the sticker?

Interior question:

5. Is the brown carpet color in an 81-83 the same as the 84-85?

6. Anyone ever tried to redye a brown carpet? What dye should I use?

More to come

If I recall correctly, original black-painted underhood parts (pulleys, brackets, water pump housing, etc) are gloss black, not satin, excepting those that are body-color.

Not sure on the cad/zinc question. I suspect cadmium because they had that kind of distinct 'golden peacock' hue, but not 100% sure.

Many bolts (especially body bolts) are painted, not plated.

I've never seen the "yelllow sticker by the airbox." Might be an FB thing. Only yellow sticker I recall is on the brake booster.

the plated parts are cadmium plated. more of a goldish plating. i have many new hardware components and can post pics for reference. i've never seen a yellow sticker by the air box on an SE..

the black is more of a semi gloss and i have new painted parts i can post pics of as well for reference. the brown caprets are different between the S2 and the S3

if the yellow sticker is on the airbox side, it COULD be the one for the coolant. its got some warnings about 50/50 mixture and such.

the 12A cars have it on the coolant overflow, i'm not sure off the top where the GSL-SE had it.

i probably have new ones....

j9fd3s I bet you're right about the yellow sticker. I attached a pic of the under side of the hood I got off ebay. I have a couple other GSL-SE under hood pics and they all have it.

Any reference pics would be great. Thanks for the help all.

here are a couple underhood pics from my 85 that will show the correct hardware plating and painted bracket color. all are new oem mazda parts. as soon as photobucket stops acting up i will post more pics of some stuff i took pics of for you:

http://i246.photobucket.com/albums/g...7/DSC00356.jpg

http://i469.photobucket.com/albums/r...b/DSC08289.jpg

http://i469.photobucket.com/albums/r...b/DSC08439.jpg

thanks for the pics.

Where did you get the stock style hose clamps?

here are a couple more pics and i can get pics of anything on the car you want as the car is in my garage here at the house. all hardware and parts are bought at the dealer. i have a vendor account and get parts at 10% over list. the hose clamps are still over $3 per clamp though..

http://i636.photobucket.com/albums/u...b/DSC01018.jpg

http://i636.photobucket.com/albums/u...b/DSC01019.jpg

Another question I have is about positive battery cable. They don't sell the GSL-SE cable any more. What is the difference between the 12A and 13B positive cables?

the difference is a split from one into two wires in the power wire going to the fusible link block. i have pics but am at work and will post the pics when i get home from work.

i checked a couple weeks ago, mazda has plenty of those clamps.

i can look at my cable too, peepers ended up with a gsl-se one, i think since there are two underhood fuse boxes, there is a Y. or maybe its more of a W?

in the pics you can see that the power wire splits into two at the fusible link block secions. wheni converted the car from a 12A to 13B i found that the positve cable was NLA..so i used teh 12A cable but soldered in a section from a junk SE cable i had. the 12A cable is still available and can be easially converted for use on the SE:

dual power wire connecting to the fusible link blocks:

http://i636.photobucket.com/albums/u...b/DSC01024.jpg

location where i soldered the two cables together:

http://i636.photobucket.com/albums/u...b/DSC01027.jpg

Both Cadium and Zinc can appear different depending on the solution and process used. Tanks needs cleaning in time and the solutions get changed. Chemical strengths vary depending cleaniness and the amount (percentages) of chemicals used in the reciep. Both can appear dull or glossy or vary in both hue and texture.

I've been using gold zinc. A local plating shop charges me $35 for a batch. This can be a whole box of small parts and hardware. If they can run it all in a tumbler it's $35. If I have another bulky item that has to be run by hand, it's an additional $35-for that one item. Or, if I have something done in clear zinc (silver in appearance) it's the same, another $35 charge. Nothing finishes off a nice engine bay like new hardware. :icon_tup:

Damn Banzai, that looks good. Any under hood pics?

Mazdadave- thanks for those pics. I will do exactly that since I already have the SE cables to get the y section from. My cable are just getting old and are needing replaced.

Banzai- thanks for the plating info.

I will get some pics of the engine on my car this weekend since I've cleaned things up.

Funny how things change as I age. I bought my Galaxie as a car to hotrod. Even went as far as painting it flat black with flames, red painted wheels, and dual exhaust out the side with glasspacks. I now want to restore it.

I bought my first RX-7 to be the fun modify car. Now I get this car and I want to restore it. The only reason I'm doing suspention upgrades is because I plan to autocross it now and again. I know I can do this with stock parts but I want to make it a little more fun. I plan to keep all the stock parts so I can always change that back.

I found this link about identifying different plating: http://429mustangcougarinfo.50megs.com/new_page_26.htm

This also had great info on plating at home: http://forum.ih8mud.com/40-55-series...d-plating.html

It does seem like most everything is yellow zinc and not yellow cad.

Here are some pictures of my engine:
http://i293.photobucket.com/albums/m...E/IMG_1104.jpg
http://i293.photobucket.com/albums/m...E/IMG_1103.jpg
http://i293.photobucket.com/albums/m...E/IMG_1105.jpg

Your bay looks nice RX Chris. Most guys are more into a modified, clean (sparse) look now a days. I lean to the original look like yours. Here's some shots of three cars I have. Two 79's and an 80. Once you start cleaning, it only makes the not so nice things stand out like a sore thumb. Just keep polishing the rough spots down finer and finer untill it all shines...

Those are very clean engines Banzai.

I figured having things like bolts, brackets, and even the long metal vac line would be easy to have plated. What about the charcole canister, valves, etc? How would I plate things like that?

Well you may not be able to do some things unless the component can be disasembled into the basic part you want to plate. When I do the relay covers, they are removed from the actual mechanism because there's no way the relay itself would survive. You can't Zinc non ferrious metals, aluminium brass, copper and such. The chemicals will eat those materials. Different process's are used on these like anodize for aluminium. So, depending on what you want to do and if it can be broken down, it may or may not be doable or worth the effort and work.

question about this cleaning.......

Bought my '85 last september and now busy to get it back to stock. I also want to clean the enginebay because there is 25 years of dust and other stuff. It does not have to look shiny and new, just clean.

I hesitate of cleaning it with water on high pressure (don't know the exact word but i think you know what i mean) but what would be the best way and what product do you use?

Marc

for cleaning, i use a diluted simple green and i hand clean every component. it literally takes hours. but its worth the time and effort.

I use mainly low-pressure water and a brush, but that only works once you've got it initially clean, to keep it that way.

First time cleaning, you can use low-pressure steam (like from a clothing steamer) to good effect on caked grease and such. But to get it really clean requires disassembly and reassembly of a lot of parts.

I did most of the cleaning of my car with simple green and it worked great.
If you look at post 8 in my other thread you can see what simple grean did with only a spray on and wipe off: https://www.rx7club.com/showthread.php?t=924632