WOW, I love seeing these restoration before and after pics. Gotta respect elbow grease !!!

 

Appreciate the kind words everyone. Not much progress lately after some time getting the garage upgraded with some insulation and air conditioning to make it bearable to work this summer over the Texas heat and getting the hoist and stand assembled.

I want to get the engine pulled soon-ish, so that I can get the turbos pulled and sent off to BNR. I have no idea what the turnaround on those are, but like most everything thesedays, I imagine it's not short.

I did pull the hood latch -- which promptly broke. So that was a bullet dodged. I literally put ounces of side pressure on the green plastic catch and it snapped in half. A replacement was already forthcoming, but super glad I didn't have to deal with that at some point. I disassembled the latch, cleaned, painted, and lubed it. Simple task, but it sits rather prominent there at the front, so didn't seem right to neglect it.

I did the same for the headlight assemblies. Technically, outside of the black plastic and, of course, the covers, they are completely invisible. But I did a full refresh on those too. New paint, hardware, re-wrapped the small harness, etc. At some point, I'll replace the headlights themselves with HID/LED projectors. The lack of body color paint on the under-side of the covers bugs me too... if I remember, when I paint the engine bay, I'll try to hit the headlight covers too.

 

Wow, well done! The before and after photos give me hope for my parts. Would love to know your process for the headlight assembly cleaning/restoration process.

 

The engine has been removed.

Thanks to the posts on this forum I was able to remove the engine absolutely without any issue whatsoever. In fact, as far as the actual removal itself goes, I would say that it was remarkably easy. And I did it entirely on my own having never removed an engine from a car before. I followed all the steps, gave the engine a bit of a lift, jiggled it a bit, and it popped right out.

The only issue at all was that the top-center bell-housing bolt just about did me in. It was in there so tight at such an impossible angle to reach properly that I nearly completely rounded the head off and ended up having to use a bolt extractor and a 1/2" impact and even that barely worked. I've never seen a bolt that easy so each to reach yet so impossible to actually get a decent hold on due to how the firewall lip was in the way. In hindsight, as I type this, removing the UIM may have helped a bit but probably not enough to really bare down on it like I needed to have a chance of loosening it.

Dealing stupid retaining ring on the clutch which seems to be a rite of passage, wasn't really a problem. It absolutely would have been without advice and how-to's though. Still, one thing that worked for that I didn't really see explicily mentioned in any write-ups was manipulating the throw-out bearing while using the screwdriver. Without doing that, there was seemingly too much tension on the ring and i could not get it to release despite all my efforts. No amount of just twisting the screwdriver was going to move that throwout bearing. But, by pressing on the bearing arm by reaching through the hole that the slave cylinder was, I moved it just a fraction of an inch and then literally only had to press on the ring with the screwdriver to get it to fall away.

Makes me wonder if some of the difference in why it's easier for some people than others (some say they just reached it and twisted the screwdriver) is a function of whether they removed or did not remove the slave first which may change the tension on the bearing and/or different tensions on the spring may require manipulating the throwout bearing more than others.

I opted to pull the engine without the transmission because the general consensus seemed that was the far easier route to go, especially without multiple people to help guide it all out. Now though I'm left wondering how easy it'll be to get the transmission out separately. I'm also not looking forward to having to reinstall on my own, as lining up the bellhousing, mounts, and lowering simultaneously seems impossible. I think I'll have to marry the two together to have a chance of re-installing as a solo job.

 

Nice job on the removal! For getting it back in, I'd recommend you get a couple of friends to provide the extra hands, muscle & eyes needed to get it to drop back in. With the help, it's pretty easy to get the engine lined up with the tranny still in the car and get everything back together right. What works best for me was jacking up the front of the tranny a little bit to make alignment with the engine on the hoist going in easier. Once you get the tranny's input shaft lined up, and the splines engaged (rotate the e-shaft by hand until they do), the rest is easy.

 

Thanks, Pete.

The transmission's almost certainly going to come out at some point. The 5th gear synchro is shot. It's perfectly drive-able, but seems a shame to not take care of it while doing all this. I'm just thinking working on a transmission might be a bridge too far for me, and I don't relish the idea or cost of getting a transmission to a shop to have them do it.

So I think if it comes out, I'll just marry them together outside the car when it comes time to get everything back together.

With the engine out, I've already got 2 questions that don't really warrant their own thread here since they are really more out of curiosity than any real need-to-know, so maybe someone will stumble on this and be able to answer.

First, I noticed 2 lines on the vacuum manifold were not being used. Based on my reading of the old vacuum diagram, I'm 99.99% sure that this is someone doing the "double-throttle" delete at some point in the past. Seemed a standard old-school mod based on theads here from literally over 20 years ago. Anything that I need to take into consideration there?

And after pulling the turbos last night and setting them on the ground, I noticed some oil (?) had dripped out of one of the wastegate actuators. Strangely (to me), it appears to be completely clean, fresh oil and only out of one of the actuators. It certainly was not the color of the oil that came out of the engine or the lines running to the turbos. Is this indicative of some sort of blow-by on the turbos?

 

Slow going the past couple weeks. Too much time on video games... probably going to be the story the next few months to be honest.

Still gotta get the turbos off to BNR. He's been unresponsive on email/phone, but did post a couple days ago on FB to someone who was also having trouble reaching him to just send the turbos. So I'll get those headed that way soon.

But spent some time on the Battery Harness. Completely stripped it of all the loom and tape. Did everything short of de-pinning/re-pinning the plugs. Cleaned the 30 years of grime and oil build-up all over the plugs and wiring and went through an entire can of CRC electrical cleaner. Re-taped everything with Tesa tape, new loom, and new sleeving. This one relatively short harness has 5 different sizes each of loom and sleeving. Painted the brackets, replaced the rubber boots on the battery and the alternator ground, and polished all the ground points.

The old terminals were absolutely destroyed. Not only was the hardware completely stripped but the terminals were so thinned out from decades that the negative one was completely split.

 

2.5 years since the last update.... and not much has changed.

Lost the mojo. For a lot of things, honestly, not just the car. But, been working on improving my physical and mental health lately, and needed to get myself a small victory of progress, so I finally got around to stripping the rest of the engine bay and pulled the gauge cluster so I could get that off to Michael Gagne.

With all the hydraulics on the firewall finally off, I rebuilt the master cylinder with that of 626 internals (and its' reservoir) and cleaned/buffed/painted everything.

 

Nice progress! What method do you use for cleaning up the cast aluminum bits? They look brand new.

 

For the most part, just a lot of the ol' elbow grease. A whole lot of degreaser (concentrated Simple Green HD Pro) and a lot of rags. Once all the dirt and grime is gone, back when I first started this and did the suspension, I used a lot of fine steel wool to polish everything. But now I just use a lot of these pads that go on a die grinder. The smaller ones could go in a Dremel as well.

Larger ones for bigger parts/areas:
Smaller one for the tighter spots:
Just watch your fingers. It's not fun having a steel wool pad moving at 15,000 rpm hit your finger let me tell you.

For the master cylinder that I just did, I tried something new as I wasn't looking for a polished look there. After thoroughly cleaning/degreasing it, I painted it using a product called Alumi Blast (over an etching primer). It's a paint that purported contains actual aluminum. It's definitely the most natural-looking metallic finish I've ever seen.

 

Crate engine was sold. The pullout engine is off at Banzai.
Needing to paint the engine bay for certain. And about 90% sure to replace the sunroof with a slicktop. I have been considering possible alternatives to the paint color. I have purchased literally DOZENS of different aerosol cans for paint samples. The problem I am having is that I think the best color ... isn't much different than what's on it already.

It's been re-painted at some point. That much was clear from the beginning due to the fairly competent paint job having been done without removing all the window seals and the like. And, as near as I can tell, whatever it's painted now is NOT proper "Vintage Red". Whether it was someone's attempt at matching Vintage Red or something different, I don't know. It's close, but definitely significantly darker than not only any samples of Vintage Red I've gotten (and I've gotten several -- all slightly different) but also slightly different than even the door jambs, but only to a degree that's noticable when looking for it. It may be Vintage Red, but was supposed to be applied over a White or very light gray primer and they instead painted over factory paint leaving it a darker shade.

But, regardless, the 'modern' reds just don't seem to suit the car IMHO. The ubiquitous suggestions of Soul Red (whether Crystal or Metallic), while beautiful in direct sunlight, get WAY too dark at off-angles or less-than-bright sunlight for me and doesn't complement the curves of the 7. Mitsubishi's similar version, Red Diamond, is far better IMHO, but still suffers from the same problem. Numerous red 'candies' are just too flashy. Vintage Red with a bit of the mid-coat flake from the RX-8s Velocity Red is a contender, but I worry about the ability to consistently duplicate the look and am not completely sold on the metallic red flake on the car.

I keep coming back to preferring the non-metallic bright red. Not only do I think they look the best but I also am certain that -- as a first-time car painter -- I have a much higher chance of success with a 2-stage paint than a 3-stage. BMW's newer Toronto Red is a strong choice as a red with only the tiniest bit of flake at close observation. And it ties together my love of BMW and Mazda, a nice bonus. But looks very orange or even umber-ey from some angles. GM's Torch Red is probably the favorite for true non-metallic red right now, followed by Vintage Red over a white primer which really pops.

Decisions, Decisions. But I gotta decide soon as the engine bay needs paint before the engine can go in obviously.

As for the actual work being done with the engine gone, I've taken the opportunity to rebuild the power steering rack and the ABS pump. The ABS pump as in DIRE condition, mostly from sitting out of the car. It wasn't that bad when removed. But was literally CAKED with brake fluid corrosion. It was entirely torn down to the very unusual and small components within -- a project that doesn't appear to have been attempted many times. I could only find a single thread about it. Everyone seems to just delete the system instead. The screens on the pumps were completely clogged. Not even light could pass through.

I didn't completely remove all of the visible corrosion on the solid aluminum body. It would have required significantly more work, and in some places would have been near-impossible as the pitting was very bad. It's all hidden behind the heat shield anyways and there's a non-zero chance this won't work correctly and I have to delete ABS anyway.

(And, yes, the brake line banjos are on backwards -- when installing I'll flip them around)

 

Nice job, great attention to detail.

 

Looks good man, keep on plugging! My only advice is to not rabbit hole too deep on refurbishing ever little piece, it's easy to get burnt out or have some never ending project. Most of us work our asses off all week and the longer a project goes on the more burnout we get, and the more likely that it sits for another 5 years. By all means keep on your path, it's looking great, but sometimes you gotta slap some **** together and enjoy your car. They are made to be driven, after all!!