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Good to see you getting back on your car - did you ever figure out your upper RPM ign issue with your new IGN box?
Congrats on the new job !!!
The IGN box was a few issues.
First, leading coil was getting weak and the Twinpower was masking that fact. I swapped in a low mileage JDM coil that I've had floating around and it was better but still was jerking and acting a fool at high RPM.
Then, I had a revelation. I had reset the PFC map and built a new map. The boost levels in the PFC boost control were set to defaults so I was hitting the PFC's built-in boost fuel cut. Felt like a dummy when I realized that. Bumped those values up and that did that.
The car does get flat power-wise after 6k or so, I think that's just needing to tune in the map. But, overall pleased with the new ignition box.
OK, so here's where I'd like to hear some ideas from you guys.
On the bumper, pros and cons:
STOCK BUMPER
PRO: looks good, in good shape, I already have it, bumper bar works with it, bolts up good.
CONS: Could be something more different, fit around passenger headlight is weird for some reason.
KNIGHTSPORTS BUMPER
PRO: Neat looking, OG for sure, I already have it, seems to fit well.
CONS: Has 4 giant fog lights that would all need to be replaced and I don't really need that much fog light. Does need some minor body work done to it. Will need to hack up the bumper reinforcement for it to fit. Will need to fab new fiberglass ducts for everything. It's fiberglass and could be fragile long term.
99 SPEC BUMPER
PRO: Awesome looking, OEM fit and quality.
CONS: Pricey, would have to buy it/get it shipped, would need to get a lot of other things with it - new turn signals, new ducts, etc. etc. etc.
Any input or good ideas or experience on this would be awesome!
Also thinking about the side skirts. I have a set of no-name side skirts that seem fairly decent in the attic I've had forever, going to test fit those and see if they would be decent. The Shine 99 spec replicas are also a possibility, I like that they look like the 99's without the crazy foam structure and they aren't as heavy.
Dale
My vote is stock.
Also are you switching out the fenders because you don't want the turn signals anymore?
The car does get flat power-wise after 6k or so, I think that's just needing to tune in the map. But, overall pleased with the new ignition box.
Dale
Hey Dale, awesome desk build, makes me want to get a table saw to do one myself!
As for power flattening out beyond 6K or so, tuning your PFC map will certainly help, but ultimately the shape of that HP/torque curve will be highly dependent on how much air can flow thru the engine at its various RPM & MAP points - intake/exhaust, porting & turbo(s) are all big factors here. The power curve on a stock 13B-REW starts to take a dive at about 6500 RPMs, so you might expect your peak to be somewhere north of that - but how much really depends on what you've got going on WRT mods.
Short digression, pictures of the new desk . All 100% built from scratch, the white cabinet is 3/4" plywood with 2 drawers on full extension ball bearing drawer slides. Desk top is edge glued panels that I stained and coated with poly. Underneath the desk is a bunch of mini shelves and brackets that holds all the supporting junk (fiber modem, wifi router, 2 UPS's, hiding place for my MacBook) so it's all up off the ground and hidden from immediate view.
The right side computer is the work laptop with 2 22" monitors on a VESA mount. I have the laptop up in the air to act as a 3rd screen and also can use the webcam at a good height.
Left side is my personal stuff, I have a MacBook Air M2 hiding under the desk with a USB-C adapter to hook it up to the wall mounted monitor. There is a desktop PC under the desk for games and PC/Windows stuff, also hooked to the same monitor, just switch inputs to use it.
This is the result of a LOT of Youtube watching, lots of time thinking about my setup, screwing up and re-doing a few things. Overall very happy with it. Key tool for the whole project is a table saw and a pocket hole jig, this stuff isn't that hard and it's great to be able to custom-make stuff like this to your specs and how you want it to be.
Nice looking setup Dale! We have a very similar desk setup (except mine is just a store bought glass top L desk), even down to the same Yeti
As for the bumper, I vote stock + MS lip, but I'm a little bias on that
Short digression, pictures of the new desk . All 100% built from scratch, the white cabinet is 3/4" plywood with 2 drawers on full extension ball bearing drawer slides. Desk top is edge glued panels that I stained and coated with poly. Underneath the desk is a bunch of mini shelves and brackets that holds all the supporting junk (fiber modem, wifi router, 2 UPS's, hiding place for my MacBook) so it's all up off the ground and hidden from immediate view.
The right side computer is the work laptop with 2 22" monitors on a VESA mount. I have the laptop up in the air to act as a 3rd screen and also can use the webcam at a good height.
Left side is my personal stuff, I have a MacBook Air M2 hiding under the desk with a USB-C adapter to hook it up to the wall mounted monitor. There is a desktop PC under the desk for games and PC/Windows stuff, also hooked to the same monitor, just switch inputs to use it.
This is the result of a LOT of Youtube watching, lots of time thinking about my setup, screwing up and re-doing a few things. Overall very happy with it. Key tool for the whole project is a table saw and a pocket hole jig, this stuff isn't that hard and it's great to be able to custom-make stuff like this to your specs and how you want it to be.
I love seeing stuff like this. I'm in a similar boat but I gutted my house completely and built an office so I'm still at bare drywall that needs to be finished with my old desk. I have a Sit-Stand desk I need to bring in to replace my current one but I need to build storage to put everything that is in my current desk since the sit stand does not have any storage. I also need to build something to house my server, UPS and a few other things. I already have the rest of the hardware (Firewall, Switches, Miner etc. organized in the back part of the office.
Side Note: My son has the same Lego sets on his desk shelves.
Thanks for the compliments on the desk! It was a good amount of work and I put a LOT of planning into it but I'm super happy with it.
At this point I'm 99% stick with OEM bumper. It just makes the most sense.
@Pete_89T2 the car did pull hard to redline originally, I swapped out the igniter and re-did the map so there ya go. I just need to get off my butt and hook the Wideband back up to the Datalogit and go do some logs and tunes.
On the fenders, it was twofold: getting rid of the JDM fender holes and one fender having been crunched into the garage door opening when I pushed the car out. I bought some used JDM fenders ages ago and one was OK and one wasn't so I put on one of the fenders and cut a hole in the other for the side marker. Also considering I got a super clean set of US fenders for free locally sealed the deal.
BTW I got some new fender bolts from Amazon, will do a good check out of them then post the link.
At this point I'm 99% stick with OEM bumper. It just makes the most sense.
Dale
agreed. if you don't sell the Knighsports bumping device, the other 1% of the time you should paint it, cause that way you could put it on later if you wanted
Sticking with the USDM bumper cover on a stock body is the right choice. As time has passed and I see more '99 spec or other out there I've grown to appreciate the shape and curves of the early OEM bumper skins more and more. It really just looks good and fits the design of the car as intended. A black lip or splitter and sidesteps are nice accent to give the car a lower look and tie it with the OEM black rear valence.
As far as the bumper fit goes, aligning them around the headlights can be tricky and take a lot of time and persuasion. It almost looks to me like your car could have been involved in a low speed collision at some point because of the way the steel is crinkled by the front hood bumpers, as seen between the charge pipes and hood bumpers. It appear that the center of the core support is pushed back slightly, if the bumper was repainted as a result of the collision that could explain why the paint is so bad.
This picture isn't the clearest but if you compare yours to my '94 here there appears to be another crinkle on yours but it could be an illusion.
Yeah I know the front passenger corner was hit at some point before I bought it, the oil cooler mounts were jacked up (it's an R2 with the passenger oil cooler) and some other things down there were goofy. I think it was a pretty light hit.
I had the front bumper repainted in the past and they did a crap job.
There's SOMETHING there not fitting well or bent slightly, but that will take a little time on my end to fool with.
FYI, when you get a new paint job, I'd ask around about PPF. My PPF guy who did my ceramic coat told me I shouldn't do PPF. He said the issue with aftermarket paint is that it's good but never as good as OEM paint. He said there is a real chance that if the PPF ever has to get removed, it will pull up the paint. He does a lot of high-end cars in my area including some of the local dealers and he turned down my money because he wasn't comfy with the risk or liability if it ever had to come off.
hmm. I've had PPF for 4 years on my Jeep Grand Cherokee and it looks as good as the day I got it. My only gripe with PPF is if you don't get bugs out ASAP, they etch in
Want to start trying to get the body panels to line up and see what's needed there.
my little lining panels up tutorial is a little fiddly, but its easy. the way Mazda did it was to have 2 holes in each fender (which they then put little pieces of tape over, and then painted the car, so its easy to tell when its been messed with), and the body, you line these up (10mm socket fits), bolt the fender down and if everything is new, it will line up
if everything is not new (hint, its not). you start by lining up the holes. then you need to measure the gaps, the specs are in the Body manual, and i think the FSM too. hood to fender is 4.5mm +/-1mm with a vertical tolerance of 1mm.
i have some shims that are actually wooden shingles that i cut to the sizes i want, its nice because its wood and tapered, amazon has plastic ones. you basically loosen the fender so its snug, and then put the shim in the gap, usually one at each end, and then tighten fender down, its easy
the hard part here are the headlight lids, its a compound curve in 3d.....
Also I'm actually starting to lean towards painting the car myself.
Hoping to actually mess with the FD this weekend. Another $500 RX-8 has entered the chat and that's been eating up a lot of time.
Want to start trying to get the body panels to line up and see what's needed there.
Also I'm actually starting to lean towards painting the car myself.
Dale
That would be a monumental achievement, DIY painting is tough - just finding the space & materials to build yourself a make shift paint booth with decent ventilation can be a daunting task!
I've actually been motivated by body shop sticker shock to paint a spare FC sunroof panel to match my FC. The existing one has a growing rust bubble, but in the process of restoring the entire guts of my sunroof assembly, I acquired 2 used FC sunroof assemblies with decent rust free panels. I was planning to have a shop prep & paint the better of the 2 spare panels to match my FC, but the 3 local shops I asked want about $500 for the job, which is just crazy. Since painting the panel won't require a big paint booth, this is something I think I can DIY in my garage. Just haven't had the time to do it yet!
In all seriousness, it can be done with a little skill and patience. I don't think I would ever do it again in my garage, but I know all the things I would change to lead to a more successful job. My garage painted FC is about a 10 footer, any closer and you know something isn't right. The biggest problem was the not so smooth base coat. Throw enough clear on it and you can wet-sand and polish it smooth, but if the base isn't also smooth, it's going to look off.
I think Dale got the thought in his head after doing a great job painting my engine bay. I agree with Pete about the sticker shock being real, but the cost of material and the amount of labor that goes into paint quickly makes sense. Me and Dale painted my bay, because I could not find a shop in the Pensacola area that would paint just the bay. The painting part was easy (albeit the paint materials were kind of pricey) the actual labor of removing every single bolt, wire, clip, and line and then scrubbing the bay before paint, was probably the most painful and time consuming thing I have done with this car.
He has some videos showing doing paint work in a regular 1-car garage. The other advantage is the FD is a pretty dang small car and has a pretty smooth surface, no weird angles.
Big thing is TONS of prep and sanding. Actually laying the paint down doesn't take long at all.
I've done paint work at home before, just tarp up the garage to keep overspray off everything and get a box fan to get air moving. You can also do it outside, we did Stephen's engine bay in the driveway.
Big thing is how much body work you need. My car doesn't need much.
Still thinking about it but the fact that it's not a fancy pearl paint color, I don't need much body work on the car, the paint on the car is shot but it's not peeling/flaking, all adds up in my favor. And I do have some experience already.
Worst case with painting is sanding it down and doing it again.
In case my last post was not clear: I think Dale should paint his car. He did a great job with mine. I had my body painted at a shop and the most frustrating part about it was them getting it wrong and me having to take it back and forth for 6 weeks to get it right. DIY you know you did it right.
Originally Posted by DaleClark
So there's tons of good Youtube videos on painting a car yourself. One of my fave channels -
He has some videos showing doing paint work in a regular 1-car garage. The other advantage is the FD is a pretty dang small car and has a pretty smooth surface, no weird angles.
Big thing is TONS of prep and sanding. Actually laying the paint down doesn't take long at all.
I've done paint work at home before, just tarp up the garage to keep overspray off everything and get a box fan to get air moving. You can also do it outside, we did Stephen's engine bay in the driveway.
Big thing is how much body work you need. My car doesn't need much.
Still thinking about it but the fact that it's not a fancy pearl paint color, I don't need much body work on the car, the paint on the car is shot but it's not peeling/flaking, all adds up in my favor. And I do have some experience already.
Worst case with painting is sanding it down and doing it again.
Dale
I agree that the worst case is sanding it down and doing it again, plus if this one comes out good, you have a grey Rx-8 that could use an affordable paint job too.
Yeah I've thought about doing the learning curve on the grey RX-8. It could use a lot of "spot" paint, like repainting just the roof. That's a lot easier to deal with than a whole car.
Body shops are also just CRAZY busy these days, takes forever to get a paint job done and will cost a bunch of money.
Of course you will spend a LOT of time here, sanding, sanding, and more sanding. The actual paint part of it takes no time at all.
So I've been distracted on another car for a bit. Let me digress a little then I'll let you all know what's new on the FD!
My wife sometimes goes on walks through the neighborhood, a while back she spotted an RX-8 that looked like it had been not moving in front of a house about a mile from mine. A while back I dropped off a "hey I would be interested in buying or working on your car" note in the mailbox and heard nothing. The weekend I went to Stephen's to paint his engine bay (see post from @suzukisteve above) I drove by that house on a whim and a guy was outside. Stopped and talked. Long story short, ended up buying the car!
So, it's a 2004 RX-8, fully loaded with GT package, appearance kit, and the navigation system. Around 115,000 miles. Best guess it's been sitting around 4 years. Paint is shot and it needs some body work, interior is OK, but it's COMPLETE and hasn't been butchered on.
My best friend Matt who lives in Nashville has been wanting a fun car on the cheap that could be fixed up so that was that. Got it for $500 and towed it home.
Also long story short, the car needed a LOT. Big things it needed off the bat -
- One of the vacuum solenoids had failed, popping a CE light.
- OMP position sensor had failed, putting the car in limp mode.
- Tires were SHOT from sitting, like riding in the Flintstones car.
- Brakes were shot and rusty
- Clutch hydraulics were shot
But the good thing - the main cat WAS THERE and WAS GOOD. They go scrap value for $800-1000. The ENGINE WAS GOOD, it starts easily hot and cold.
Pic of the car as it was first delivered at the house with my black RX-8 -
So, Matt said "let's do this right" and we got to work. Major stuff done -
- All new Powerstop brake setup with pads, rotors, and new powder coated calipers on all 4 corners
- New 18 pound Enkei wheels with new tires
- Good used OMP
- All new vacuum solenoids
- New water pump, thermostat, hoses, and expansion tank
- New belts
- New R3 300RPM starter and new battery
- New front suspension bump stops and boots, new rear suspension bump stops
- New AC condenser and charged up
- New ignition coils/wires/plugs
Few weeks ago he flew down from Nashville one way and drove it home, made it home no problem. Still needs a lot but it's now solid, drivable, and reliable.
Some various pics of the work -
And finally with the new wheels on ready to go home -
Was a lot of fun getting that car happy again! But that's been all my weekends from November to the end of January.
After the RX-8 resurrection the garage was a DISASTER, I had to take a weekend to put that all back together. SO MUCH CRAP everywhere. This is all the boxes I took to the recycling dumpster, many were from the grey car, some were from Christmas, but they were EVERY DAMN WHERE in the garage -
And I have a 1 car garage, I don't have a lot of room to goof about.
OK so with that cleaned up, I had other odds and ends going this past weekend but on Sunday I finally spent some time on the FD.
Things accomplished -
- Driver's side skirt removed. The bolts holding it on that went into Riv-Nuts wouldn't come out since the riv-nuts were spinning. I found a way to load the riv nut to keep it in place and was able to undo the bolts. YES. Got that off. Long term I'm doing some sort of fiberglass side skirt, the OEM ones are too damn goofy and heavy.
- Got new OEM-style captive washer body bolts to attach the new to me fenders.
- The holes in either side under the fenders where the air bag wiring ran needed to be properly plugged, I found some nice metric rubber plugs that fit perfectly.
- Started working on getting the front end to line up. I have JUST the hood on the front end now, going to try and get that centered and square then reference things to it.
Didn't get many pics but here ya go -
I WILL be taking the FD to Deal's Gap this year whether it's painted or not!
So, general game plan -
- Figure out how to get the front end to line up properly. I want proper gaps around the hood, headlights, etc. I also have a metric measuring tape coming that will help with that end. I think the car was lightly hit in the passenger front corner ages ago but most everything SEEMS straight.
- Figure out some side skirts. I have some in the attic that I think are 99-spec style I bought AGES ago, they are fiberglass. Need to see how they fit, if they fit crap or I get a bad vibe I may get some from Shine.
- Start sanding! Going to need a LOT of that. Many body panels are good and straight at least, should just need to be scuffed down and re-sprayed.
- Blow the car all apart for the paint job
- PAINT THE DAMN THING
I am 100% going to paint it myself in the garage. Been watching a lot of Paint Society on Youtube and I have some experience running a spray gun. With body shops now I'd be looking at a LOT of money to get the quality I want and the wait times are going to be NUTS since they are short handed and backed up. Also a lot of body shops would rather do a quick collision repair for big insurance money that they can turn around in a few days than a time consuming full paint job. When those little jobs come in you go on the back burner. Worst case is sand it down and do it again.
So I've got some momentum going, just gotta keep hacking away at it!
10-10-22, 09:14 AM
. All 100% built from scratch, the white cabinet is 3/4" plywood with 2 drawers on full extension ball bearing drawer slides. Desk top is edge glued panels that I stained and coated with poly. Underneath the desk is a bunch of mini shelves and brackets that holds all the supporting junk (fiber modem, wifi router, 2 UPS's, hiding place for my MacBook) so it's all up off the ground and hidden from immediate view.
I agree with Pete about the sticker shock being real, but the cost of material and the amount of labor that goes into paint quickly makes sense. Me and Dale painted my bay, because I could not find a shop in the Pensacola area that would paint just the bay. The painting part was easy (albeit the paint materials were kind of pricey) the actual labor of removing every single bolt, wire, clip, and line and then scrubbing the bay before paint, was probably the most painful and time consuming thing I have done with this car. 
