Well, ive decided that im going to try and clean and repaint as much as the engine bay as possible. Im going to remove and eliminate as much of the wiring as possible too, and im sure ill need someones help on that. Im going to try and document as much of this with words and pictures, so here goes.

Lets start in my work enviroment. I was lucky enough to get my house from some crazy old people. When they guy had the house built, he insisted on insulating and drywalling the garage. He also installed sheets of foam on the back of the garage door for even more insulation. Lucky for me, nice and warm in there, about 15 degrees warmer than outside. So its 70 in here, pretty decent conditions for painting. I have put up one flourescent light, and plan on one more between the regular lamp and the garage door.





Some of my tools/garage necessities: 3 cabinet Craftsman chest. I picked it all up for about $150, with the top and bottom on sale, and the middle chest on clearence. Some day when I get buku money it will be the ball bearing ****, but this works fine for now. Need a nice set of combo wrenches and screwdrivers, ill ask for them for Xmas methinks.

Also in here, Craftsman pro 4 ton jack. Saved $40 on it and gor it for $90. It has a 21 inch lift, and its a beast, I highly reccomend it. Also in there, jackstands, boombox & minifridge.



And now the beginning pictures:






Passanger fender untouched:


Drivers fender missing a few brackets:

 

A few of the little guys I got painted so far:

Top and bottom mounts for trailing coil, brake booster tube, relay by the firewall, alternator bracket, and main fuseblock bracket (man was it hideous.

Let me also mention, all painting is done with Dupli-Color's 500 degree low-gloss black engine enamel.


Heres a good before and after of what 90% of the parts looked like before I sanded them smooth and painted them.



Here are some plugs Id like to get rid of if possible. Maybe someone can shoot me a PM as to their functions. Im running a stand alone, so im sure most of them can be gone.

1st pic: The three white plugs, two small ones on the right, and the other white 6 gang plug mid high left (usually connected to main fuse relay bracket).


2nd pic: The two green plugs obviously.




Some other things I got done:

Repaint exhaust from catylitic converter back. Downpipe is jet-hot coated grey, cat back is being repainted aluminum, with Dupli-Color 500 degree engine enamel.

A pic of the canister(s):


And a pic of what they used to look like:



The asshat before me used what i believe to be the cheapest semi-light blue (wtf on a black car) spray paint known to man. The **** flaked off and had all kinds of light surface rust. Needless to say they look much better, but I still need to do the Y-pipe (above).

Got the wheels pained a dark gunmetal gray color (found on newer Mazda6s), as well as some new shoes for the feet.





Other things beside the engine bay I NEED to do:

Some stereo install stuff, put the head unit here:


Make this door:


Look like this one:



And finally decide wether or not to fix this, or get a new fender:



That pretty much sums it up for the first installation of this project. Hopefully I can find a way to keep my garage warm for some painting this winter. My ultimate goal here is to have a few bracketry as possible, and the ones I have to have to blend in with the engine bay, and also remove unnessascary wires.

 

looks good. ive got those same few wire plugs hanging around myself and have no idea what to do with them.

 

****, I forgot the list of some other things I wanted to do too,

Repaint inside fenders, the wheel pic shows that horrid fenderwell, do a brake job, get some new struts, possibly springs, repaint brake calipers and get an electric fan.

Someday drop all the rear subframe, repaint all parts, and do some kind of undercoating. Also wanna pull the front bumper and repaint the radiator support.

Any suggestions on a fan anyone?

 

looks good

 

Got the stereo taken care of this these past few days.

Kenwood Headunit:


Door speakers on the passanger side:


Got the amp installed, driver side storage bin was modified a little :-D




Closes fine


And the cooling I gave it, 80mm ball bearing Computer fan.

 

do you think you need like one fan blowing air in and one sucking air out for it to work properly?
looks good tho

 

damn fine work! love the re swap!

 

That's some good work there. I like how you ran the intercooler piping....Where did you get that 3 gauge pod above the idiot cluster?

 

On the pass side fender...at the very least remove that fender and inspect the frame underneath. There is a body seam right there that may or may not have rusted as well. I've had two cars with rust in the same spot and both had begun eating away at that seam.

 

me too!
can ya let us in on how you did that?

 

Wow, dude. You've done some crazy stuff I've not seen dome before. And by "crazy", I definitely mean "awesome."

I was wondering how you have the wiring to your amp run? I'm about to install a sound system in mine, and the way you've set up your amp looks very clean.

 

very impressive! i like the amp idea, that was done very well. i love the lighted RX-8 shift ****!! keep us updated on your progress!

 

Looks great . I like the IC piping as well Aaron.

 

is that an rx8 shift ****? btw it looks great good job!

 

Looks like he just got an intercooler with blank end tanks and made the inlets/outlets point up, or bought an intercooler with the inlet/outlet pipes pointing up. The rad support was then cut at the ends and a support piece welded on underneath (you can sort of see it in the picture) to hold up the rad support and intercooler. Quite a good idea.

 

what gauge pod is that?

 

I got it from a guy named FlyRx7. He has a page, I just got a universal 60mm one.

http://hometown.aol.com/flyrx7/Rx7-Gauge-Pod.html

A little late on this, but here goes anyway.

I kind of swiped the idea from a guy who installed a turbo 3.8 into a FC, I take no credit for any of it. He used to run a site, www.misred.com I saw the pictures on there, took them to my local custom speed shop and the guy hooked me up. He put some extra bracing in the radiator sipport to keep things strong. The IC is from an Isuzu NPR box truck, I had the outlets modified to come straight up instead of back .

Ive got the power running along the driver side, its 8 gauge, power the little amp and my fuel pump. It works well, the signal lines run up the passanger side, and the lines to the speakers up their respective sides. I just secured the bastard to the floor with metal screws.

Yep, shows a 5 speed configuration too, got it a year or two ago in a group buy on ***** from the UK.