Finally got around to cleaning up my engine bay... really regretting not taking some before pictures. The car had 25 years of grease and grime all over the inside of the engine bay and on the motor. Still have a little more work to do but I think it's looking pretty good, especially being that it's all original paint that was just covered up by grease. Also installed the new aluminum radiator and silicone hoses. What do you think?

 

looks great!

 

nice and clean. she will drive better now

 

Nice work cleaning that thing up. I like the color too, same as the original color on mine

 

Creative idea on the battery hold down

 

Ha ha... yeah, gotta do something about that. When I got the car the previous owner just had the battery sitting there loose, flopping all over the place. That ratchet strap was the quickest thing I could in the garage to strap it down. Gotta re-visit that sometime....

 

no worries, i ran it for 2 years without anything holding my battery down, i've checked into getting replacements, but black dragon is way overpriced for those pieces

 

looks really good clean, now the challange is to keep it that way!

 

would have been sweet to have re-sprayed the rad support panels when swapping the rad...
still doable if you pull one at a time. New painted parts always pump the Bling-factor.

I started doing what you did too and ended up with most of the hardware pulled from the engine bay before I was happy. laid up the car for 2 weeks...
no self-control.

Does make it run better tho, as suggested by others!

Stu Aull
80GS
Alaska

 

found a cool battery hold down. made by Whaler boats, has a bottom tray two long bolts a top ring and thumb turn screws. Just dropped the bottom tray in place, drilled and mounted with number 14 sheet metal screws. dropped the battery back in and mounted it. had to cut down the long bolts the clear the hood but works awesome and is very solid. very heavy duty as it was made for a marine application

 

so clean!! im gonna clean my engine bay right now 8]

 

was it something like this that you used for the battery?


http://www.iboats.com/Battery-Hold-D...-view_id.38670

 

I use a Miata battery, since it is 50-70% of the weight of a stock size. Plenty of starting power. It fits in a U1 plastic battery box bolted through the bottom to the stock battery support. Nice and clean and simple. The box cost $10-$12. I'm not sure if a standard battery with a box would work. Might be too big.

Carl

 

OP

what radiator you using ? looks like a nice aluminum piece

 

It's an American Eagle radiator. Got it off of e-bay for $185 shipped. Quality seems to be really good, has all of the ports for the sensors to screw into. They said it was an exact fit, but it was really a hair bigger than stock and took a little bit of manipulating to get into place, but wasn't bad at all.