we'll just rename this project to save the FD

 

Glad you're starting to get somewhere. I admire you're commitment to the rebuild and i'm sure that once done, and done right, it'll be worth keeping.

I think most of us are making our statements of getting a new shell to move stuff over to based on doing it ourselves, and not getting a shop to do it.

Please take lots of pics and give us updates, as i'm sure everyone would love to see this thing come back to life and learn some things from it!

 

So since I've had some down time and there hasn't been any progress at the body shop cuz they're back up like you wouldn't believe. They have to take care of their insurance work first which I can understand. I've been working on the motor, cleaning it up and such:

I used my dremel with a steel wire brush to get all of the corrosion off and kinda polish the aluminum. After that I taped everything up to prep for paint.





Then I started to spray away! One coat only took about 10% of the can, so I just kept applying more until it was all gone. This is only primer right now but since it turned out so nice I might to my tranny like this as well.









I used some Ultra high temp primer (2000 degree high).

I'm actually really pleased with the results, I honestly didn't think it would have turned out this good.

I'm thinking of going with an aluminum finish paint so it looks like a reman.

I'm picking up my oil pan from the powder coater tomorrow and I have a bunch of parts enroute right now:

Oil pan brace, bunch of gaskets, IRP soft motor bushings, steel motor mount, SS omp lines, more stuff from the powder coater

That's all I have right now but i'll keep updating this as stuff happens.

 

If any of you noticed, I'm missing an exhaust stud and when I took it out, it damn near stripped all the threads in the rotor housing, the nut was stuck on the stud. I went and got a tap & die set to tap it and I was so worried about messing it up cuz the rotor housing is aluminum. But it all went perfect! The tap threaded it so well, I was actually able to put a die on the old stud and thread it back in the rotor housing by hand.

 

So things have been rather slow lately....my truck needed a $1000 repair and the progress at the body shop is nil. I've just been working on the engine and getting a bunch of parts powder coated. This is what I've been up to, not much progress but it looks pretty good if I do say so myself

Base coat of aluminum color:







Painted the OMP:





Then, all finished up, with black on the irons:







Still waiting on a bunch of parts to be delivered and the powder coated stuff will be done on Monday so I can start putting everything back together.

 

beautiful motor, should look good in the bay when it's done!

 

Interested to see how the body work turns out. Engine work looks great, I may do something similar when my build gets started.

 

lil bit of an update...they started working on my car


should I be worried? I think I'm still in a kind of shock after seeing this











My body guy Mike in the background....he's doing a really good job



All in all, it looks like it's turning out well and the clip is damn near perfect and they are taking their time in making sure everything is going to weld up straight and tight.

I decided to get the paint done on the car at the same time so it wouldn't be nearly as expensive as it would be in the future since the car is already in pieces.

But mother of god, no one really wants to see this done to their car!! Nervous and excited

 

Fingers crossed for ya buddy!

 

looks pretty good on the interior of the panels though... should be a nice straight car when they get it done...

This type of grafting can only be done in a shop with a frame straightening machine...

 

when you said front clip i expected firewall and front frame rails to be replaced along with strut towers and front sheet metal. I guess my definition of "front" is wrong.

 

thats exactly how my 180sx was converted

 

My "clip" was a whole car and my body guy wanted to use as much of it as he could because of the rippling on the tranny tunnel and in some of the floor towards the front. They didn't want to cut where there wasn't already factory welds/seams unless they had to like in the rocker panels and the pillars. The way they are doing it makes me feel comfortable and since I'm having them do paint at the same time, it'll be like it never happened.....hopefull, lol

 

Understandable, why create a new seam if you have all the pieces to rebuild from factory seams. Hopefully it all works out in the end with this car. It looks like quality work so far so I think you'll be in good shape after it's all done.

 

yea. there are a lot of hard work.... but i`m glad to see good quality work! respect . how much that work cost?

 

it costs less than a roller.....

 

I'm curious how that turned out for you.

do you have any pics of before and after, I'd like to see them if you do.

 

Wow, your commitment is inspiring to say the least. Some of these pictures are what nightmares are made of! Can't wait to see how it turns out.

 

Wow that's some crazy stuff. I hope it works out well for you

Those boys must work cheap. I hate to think what something like that would cost at body shop in my town.

For the record I've sold nice clean title stripped chassis for 1k to 2k and rollers for 3k.

You should of contacted me

 

before I started on this endeavor I thought about taking that VR off your hands but I just couldn't do it when this one is paid off, lol

 

I think a piece of your car is missing

 

whats new?

 

This is crazy!

I would be so scared! for cutting frames like that but hey they are body guys and I am not.

 

today I stopped by there to take a couple snaps of the progress....too late to upload them now but I will tomorrow

it's coming along nicely and everything is lining up like it should, they gave me copies of the printouts with the before and after off center measurements

 

this is where we are right now