One of the few wires that were brittle in the harness was the oil pressure wire. It was bare in the engine bay, exposed with direct heat. I just bought a pigtail and solidered one on. I then added some heat shrink and loom. Hopefully, it will help to keep the new wire soft?







Solidering in such a tight spot was difficult without a helping hand, etc. It looks like a cold solider joint... I was pretty happy to just get the wires stuck together at all after so many tries so, I just stopped. Maybe a mistake, I suppose we'll see.

 

Around this time I started the radiator and the weather striping that seals things up for better cooling than without. I bought some 1"x1/8" closed cell foam and some 1"x1" open cell foam. I knew from the factory that there was some foam across the bottom and on both sides. I started with the bottom I only cut a piece big enough to cover the bottom of the radiator with no over hang, I thought was a mistake after i saw it completed. I added the thin pieces on the back of the mounting brackets. This will seal up better but may transfer vibrations more. It could lead to a cracked radiator later.



I then poked holes and mounted another 1x1 strip across the upper piece of the radiator that is close to the top and the body of the car. This will seal up much better to but could also transfer vibrations.



You can see the foam here after a test fit



Next was to fill out the sides and the rest of the bottom.



You can see how badly I screwed this up. Your way is likely better than this. Thinking that I should have made the bottom piece longer. the second piece was longer. This was actually the mistake. Gravity eventually pulled this piece off partially before I mounted the under tray. Shorter bottom ones with the width being taken up with the side pieces would have been better. Also, hard to see was the Puzzle piece right side, another mess up.

Once installed, the side with the air pump hose it was tight, you can see where I tried to melt is with a soldiering iron and failed. Some sculpting here with better strategy is ideal.




I was able to get this side sealed up good without deforming the hose, not great but acceptable.

The other side worked pretty well. I sill had the stock piece that clamps the hoses to the frame that already had foam on it. so, that sealed the far edge and the foam deformed enough to overlap the bracket.



This was the only area up front that didn't get sealed or at least an attempt.



This setup was very tight to screw in place, perhaps too tight. I might pay for this with a cracked radiator later. Considering, I am probably on borrowed time with the original radiator anyway. Some day, this will get upgrade to full aluminium and two cooling fans. I think.... two small fans that fit in the place of one larger one will give you more CFM. Plus, multi-stage and/or multi-speed cooling would be cool to have. Pardon the pun.... Maybe a soft start or a PFC? If sure sounds fun to me, anyway.

There is a little bit more to this but I will explain later as to not bounce around the time line to much.

 

I needed to mount the BAC and hook up the hoses. I had one and my spare that I ruined cleaning and testing it. The both leaked while closed about the same. I decided to roll the dice and see what happened. I cleaned the one on the left up and installed it.

 

I made the decision to only clean and not rebuild the throttle body. It was a hard choice but I am really dumb with throttle bodies and was short on time. No pics really just one before I cleaned the plates.



Now it was time to install the throttle body and the remainder of the vacuum hoses. Just as an aside for those that haven't had the top of the engine off, do not reassemble the trailing injectors, etc. before the throttle body is installed. It is a little easier to reach the nuts on the throttle body.

After double checking everything, it was time to charge the battery, fill the cooling system with water and start the car.

 

I was a bit nervous to give it a start but it immediately fired over and rev'd past the 3,000 rpm and held. It seemed a bit off but encouraging. As the car warmed, I had the upper coolant fill open. What a massive mistake this was!! It start to spit out rust water all over the engine compartment. To make matters worse it was still incredibly rusty in spite of a lot of flushing. Much of my hard work cleaning and painting was ruined. The rust water is hard to get out of all the little spots without a more professional approach.

To those of you that saw the rust in the filler neck in the pictures, kudos. This will end up being a problem. I will be lucky if my passages aren't one small step away from letting go. I suppose I will have to see how it goes.

As the car was warming I closed the top cap and added water to the radiator and flushed, waited, flush and repeat.

Once the car was warm, I was disappointed. It still had the slight miss that it had before all of the work. I assumed it was leaking leading injector seals. I did the idle set procrdure and adjusted the TPS. It was steady for the most part with a miss still. I pulled the TPS after some time getting readings from the ECU and testing sensors.As I was putting the TPS back on, I heard a hiss!! Well.... this isn't good. I got a piece of hose to use as a remote listening device and heard it commong from under the intake. So, I got my endoscope and started poking around. Gas was leaking and had filled the valley between the keg and the LIM!!! I felt lucky that the car didn't catch fire!!! I was running the car for more than an hour by then.

Before the engine was even fully cooled off, I had stripped it back down to the LIM. I found the gas and injectors that had most of the paint missing.



The injectors were not seated correctly to the fuel rail and I ripped the top rubber seals on one of them.




I was beat and frustrated by then at 10pm so, I called it a night after ordering parts.



I needed a intake gasket, this one ripped. Had I not used the silicone, it might have not needed replaced. I will still use it again as removal was still very easy.

I don't think that I touched any of the intake for at least another couple of days, at least.

Edit: I looked at my picture dates and this mess happened July 4th, the day I was hoping to be finished working on the car. It was a late night and I was still not done yet.
I realized that I had not taken many pictures of the prior week paint work. I was off work for an entire week before this. This is one of many failures that week. I will need to back track a bit, you get the idea though.

 

I've made that mistake installing o-rings before. Glad you caught the fuel leak before it became an even worse situation.

I take my time installing anything with a press-fit style o-ring connection. I usually generously lubricate them with engine oil and wiggle them in carefully.

You're making good progress Jeff, keep at it.

 

Do you have a part number for the pigtail you used? I couldn't find a connector with the side opening for the oil pressure sender. I only found terminals and was just going to cut something up and slide it over lol


Great progress !

 

Thank you for the heads up about engine oil. I installed these injector into the fuel rail first, for the reason that you mentioned, then into the engine. What happened is the block off plare sat so close to the rail mounting spot it was very difficult to line up correctly. So, I pulled off the fuel rail and put it back on crooked and pushed. I did finally get it to line up, or so I thought. One wasn't sealed and the other had a ripped seal.

There is a bit more Dohhh...... to this part. I will save it for later though.

There is also plenty more fail and questionable repairs to come.

 

PICO5665PT GM Coolant Temperature Sensor Sending Unit. I think that I typed, "Oil pressure sensor pigtail" and started to look at pictures. I choose what looked correct and got lucky.

You can use female slide connectors, too. Just cut the plastic on the open side. There are many different sizes though. It helps to have a variety. I used them in some applications on industrial electrical wiring and we had a good selection to pick from.

 

I remembered why I waited to install the throttle body near the end of this process. I needed time for many other things and didn't know if I would have time for a full rebuild, which I didn't. According to my own preset timeline anyway.

At this point, the throttle body was still off. And I had a vacation of a week to get this finished. I started more prep on the painting stuff, which I will go into later. In between rain or paint drying, I did some other things.

I sent my speedometer off to "fixed" just before my vacation. Why I waited so long, is beyond me, a money thing maybe? I decided to call to make sure the package was delivered. They said that it had not despite what tracking said. Then the extremely helpful receptionist then asked, what address it was sent to. It turns out that the local drivers with USPS per USPS policy, deliver packages to the address posted to the package. Regardless if the name is correct or not. I addressed the package to a south address instead of north. I was told that this other place of buisness with a south address does not speak english and does not hand over packages very easily. My original thought was, that sounds like robbery. She told me that she would call the place but gave me no guaranties. '
In the meantime, I went to work finding out if it was illegal to accept a package and keep it, if it has a different name on the package and the correct address. I still don't know....
I called the post office and they said it was delivered to the address on the box, we can't help. Local police couldn't help because I didn't live there, where I sent the box. My local police can't help without direction from a third party. So, I called the post master general only to be transferred to the first lady that I spoke with and told me that I am SOL.

Lucky for me, the awesome receptionist at the repair shop called to say that she has send a tech to the location with a phone translator to attempt a recovery. Not long after, I got the call that he was successful and was on his way back to the shop. What really burns me about all of this. Those people at the other business were likely, in the past, being safe and not trusting a random stranger walking in asking for a wrong delivered package. It is so incredibly frustrating to know that so many shady people has eroded trust is that way. I just assumed, the trust thing, that they were thieves. Maybe so... although I would actually like to beleive that they were doing the right thing, even if I originally did not trust them. It all worked out so... does it really matter anyway?

Fast forward to the Monday after July 4th. I get a call from the tech. I had spoke with him to describe the issues I was having, an inaccurate speedo after I had some grounding issues that melted at least one number in the odometer. I "thought" that I had tested my spare without issues, too. He was incredibly helpful, knowledgeable and willing to explain things, incredibly well. This is why I chose them and most places won't even look at these old things unless it is odometer resetting.

Back to Monday, He asked me to explain the issue again and he proceed to say that "tire sizes will"....... I just tuned everything else out after that and refused to listen. My thoughts were, this is a crock of, you know what... WTH this guy is thinks I 'm stupid. The conversation did not go well. He just politely said, "you are not listening, I will return this to you." What.................? .......did I ever feel dumb. I was being an *** and got what I deserved. TBH, this project at times has been stressful, I just I let it loose in the worst way possible. No excuses on my part, I seriously F'd up here and felt like hell and still kind of do.

Fast forward to when I was able to install and drive the car, it worked perfect. He benched tested it, found no issues, called me to verify what problem I was having and was going to ship it back. Wow...... now I really felt like an ***. I owe the receptionist and the tech a nice Christmas gift after this one. I won't feel any better by doing it but it might be appreciated after all the BS that I put them through. I know that I look like a big a'hole but it is part of the story so......

The speed/odometer in question



I was correct about the speedo being off and so was the tech about it bring correct.. I was wrong about using my spare cluster, my memory really failed me. I had run my tires down so low in the rear, it knocked off the reading. I have never seen such a drastic change before, like 8 miles+ off. What a mess with a non-broken part and me being an a'hole. Life will surprise you in the most humbling ways......

 

Speaking of the instrument cluster, my mounting tabs on the bottom were broken. One day while sitting in my car in the last few years of this refurbish, I pulled to check high beams and the whole cluster moved out instead of the switch clicking.




I saw a post on here with something similar. I couldn't find it and still can't. I just folded over some metal and drilled the tabs. It took a bit of adjusting but it worked. No glue here, it probably would help but I didn't bother.

The funny thing is that when I pulled the cluster, I realized that the right side had been fixed by me before many years ago by jamming a drywall screw into any piece behind the hole that it would catch and stay in. I screwed it into the box that held the flasher switch. Other than a small hole, it works just fine now. My younger days surprise me still.

 

I started the under tray in March. I did some plastic welding again as it was cracked it mutiple places.








I had some melt through spots. Way more than what you see here. I did not pay attention to my aim of the torch and burned a few spots the size of a 50 cent piece. I did fill those in and sanded them out. Not so well, good enough because I hate sanding.





Then, it sat for a few months before I sanded the entire thing.



I then sprayed it with adhesion promoter and painted it with the left over lousy paint from the battery lid. I just wanted to use it up and be done with it. After I sprayed it, I did not like how it looked as the spray was a bit choppy. The paint was gone and it was totally covered, good enough. Then while the paint was wet still, the wind kicked up and flipped it paint side down into the grass. I picked it up dejected let it dry and sat it aside for another month or more.

The surface felt like dollar store sand paper. So, sanding this was necessary. I did sand it again with 400 grit paper. and it sat until I got the new paint that I ordered. I have seen many threads that mention trim black by SEM. Since, the paint store near me had closed, I ordered the first thing that I saw online.

It was SEM trim black matte. this stuff sprayed very well and looked great when finished. However, it was not as black as anticipated and not shiny enough. I left it that way because it was good enough, even though there was no drop fill. It's a bit rough but much better. At least it shouldn't crack in the same spots, fingers crossed.

I did order some SEM trim black semi-gloss. I will try this on t the battey lid later. I will report back which matches the stock trim and or interior pieces when I find out. I just saw trim black mentioned here, not if it was matte or other.

 

This is the only picture that I have. It got wet, dried and wet again. You can still see the Frankenstein welding but I am happy.

Just as a side note, part of the way through this I realized that I had an extra tray. I looked at it and it looked like it had been dragged through wet paint. It would clean fairly easy and might not need painted. Then I saw a giant hole, kind of a relief. I hard passed on that one.

 

During all of the week that I had off work, I started draining the rear diff and the transmission. I started having trouble getting off the fill plug for the rear diff. This is what was left of the fill plug after I had to chisel it off.



This is what was on the magnet, in black, and then the fluid. I thought it would be way worse. I never changed it in the 30,000 miles that I drove it and who knows before that.



The transmission plugs came off easy. The magnet, in black, and the fluid. Same to be said about this as the rear diff. This almost didn't look used much, I know it was.




I let this drain most of the week and filled with Amsoil. I had used the trans fluid in a Nissan that I had with brass syncro's and had good results so, I used it again and in the rear diff I used limited slip. I bought the bags, refilling was a breeze.

I had already renewed the engine oil, plugs and wires earlier in the project so, basic maintenance was completed. Well... besides the coolant.

 

I started to shift, pardon the pun, completely to the interior. The shifter was next.




The boot here was shot and you can see the inside of the housing. This was missing the spring, ball and bolt so, it never had any fluid. Not only that, the shifter bolts were completely loose. The shifter had spun and marred up the ball.



More old stuff so, I ordered all new stuff.



I added fluid, the bottom spring and bushing. I softened the burrs on the shifter ball and added the shifter boot with the screw down metal piece. I then realized that the top bushing was missing. So, I ordered a new one, only to realize that you can not add the top bushing with the new boot on. I couldn't get the boot off so, I cut the top bushing. I also cut the top spring, installed all of the top pieces. It was so incredibly tight. I took out the bottom spring and reassembled, still tight but better. I now realized that the S4's might not need the bottom bushing. It is a bit looser now but I might pull all of this apart later.

I added the big boot and then the tricky plate.




Screwed that in place and added the next two rubber pieces.



The old insulation around the edges.



The new insulation on top.



I added the boot teporarilly until the dash was put back together.



The shifter **** was added back after the dash was done. Very tight and missing the return spring.... 1 of two isn't bad. Considering, the previous setup was leaking air and so loose a hard bump would move the shifter in nuetral because it had no bushings or even one spring..

 

Nice job on the shifter rebuild, and the quality of life with the boots and insulation will make the car feel so much better to drive.

 

Big Oopsie moment there with the cluster, must have been some really bald tires! Love what you did with your undertray, when I bought my car, it didn't have one, i eventually sourced one, but it was in poor shape, I ended up just taping all the cracks and holes with green duct tape (Hoping no one ever looks there). This reminds me, my shifter needs rebuilt badly, I actually have all the necessary parts, ordered them in like 2014, been sitting in a box ever since. Loving the detail you're putting in Jeff!

 

Mixed results so far. It is so stiff, it is a bit tough to tell when you are engaging a gear. So, less notchi-ness but third has become tough to find consistently and it's hard to know when I am fully in gear.

From the looks of this, I need to remove the bottom bushing. I should have looked before now. I think that the Mazdatrix tutorial is for S5's. That should fix things quite nicely. I will wait until next season. I want the oil to gather up as much dirt as possible before I replace the oil. I will just do both at the same time.



This for me has been more about safety. I wrecked my second one because of exhaust gasses. I was knocked out at 70mph with the cruise on, in a construction zone. Nobody was hurt but damn... I was so lucky.

 

Tape works, it keeps it from cracking further, blocks the holes and nobody see's the modification.

This has been the curse of this car so far, most of the work that I have done so far, other than the engine bay, nobody will see.

And thanks for the compliments! Thiough I will say that, I don't think any pro car restorers have any worries about me taking any of their buisness.

Had I focused on cosmetics, I would be broke and not have a car that was inspect-able yet.

 

I had taken apart the dash, arm rest, both front door kick panels and other parts near the dash to fix stuff. Next i need to finish removing old speaker amp wires. I had already pulled them out of the das and foot well. I need to get them from under the seat now. I removed the friver seat and found that I removed the amp already.



This install worked but was done with scrap that i found in the garage do to being broke. Power speaker wires, to and from the dash. I grounded the amp at the seat belt buckle.




I unscrewed many pieces and attempted to remove plastic pieces to remove the wires, only to realize that simply pulling on the wires was enough to get them out. Nice benefit of doing a crap install. Unfortunately, one piece did not make it.




Old brittle plastic, I do have a spare panel but maybe some glue will hide it to be good enough. Another project now for the list......

After the wires were out I vacuumed as good as I could. I then realized that I never removed the seat to remove the glass in the car.




I came out of an evening gig doing sound for bands to find a rock on my seat and no window. Glass was everywhere... I never had anything like this happen before or since. Lucky for me, I saved a driver door from my wrecked 2x2 auto and replaced the window. This was maybe 15 years ago? Yikes, this car needs a deep clean.




You can see the color difference here. Without knowing this, it looks ok. The interior certainly isn't trashed despite the cracked center surround.

After a vacuum.




You can see the rust from the seat that did not get repaired and the carpet was not scrubbed/cleaned. Wow... was it ever difficult for me to put the seat back this way. I just didn't want to sacrifice the time.

 

The arm rest was next. I need to clean out the ash tray and the storage in the arm rest.

15 years ago it was left there like a time capsule.




I am happy that I have an extra large spacer for the alternator. The last picture was the storage from the arm rest. The crucifix is not mine, it has a very long weird story how it got there though.

I knew the lift up lock was missing a pin but I had most of the parts. After dumping the contents into a bag, I heard a piece of metal hit the ground. When I looked for it, I found the missing pin to hold the tab in place. It fell apart into the arm rest, lucky me. Now at least I would just need to reassemble the piece and figure out how to add a spring.

The part with the pin that I found



I have a problem keeping stuff, I have cleared out the garage and my house mutiple times and I still have more to go. This includes a box(one of a few) of old (30+ years for some) screw/parts from home stereos, t.v.'s, etc. This box almost hit the trash because this stuff is easily avable on Amazon or other websites. Guess what? I found a spring in the box.

The box



The spring



After I stretched it and added a tiny hook, it wedged perfectly where it needed to be. I guess that I need to keep the box of junk now. It might come in handy.

All done but not clean.



There is something else to...... hmmm. Well... I guess out of all the stupid stuff that I have kept, I still lost the back of my radio. Luckily I only see that when the car is off. I removed the piece to replace the ribbon cable once a long time ago. I did not attach the cover very well. This side is just black plastic to deter theives at a quick glance. It then flips over with power and you then see the controls.

Those cracks in the surround are not super noticable in low light. When I get a proper double din radio I will replace the surround. Also the EQ is disconnected. Most Double Din radios have multiband EQ and time delay settings. I am not a "keep it from the 80's" guy. I am looking to have an Android radio that interfaces with an aftermarket ECU. Having a GUI on the radio would be really handy and clean looking.

 

In preparation for hopefully finishing the front end, I needed to get the front right fender liner put back together. It fell apart where the I think, staples held it together. I drilled out the small holes to add rivets. I was hoping it might work and it did.



I then disguised the aluminum rivet a bit sloppily with paint.



I washed the paint in the wheel well from last year with soapy water, let it dry and hand brushed bed liner in the front wells as I did the rears. It did not turn out as well as the rear but was acceptable. later I noticed a few spots where the undercoating dried and pulled up the paint layers.



When I cleaned these spots up it went down to the original paint. I must have not cleaned it well enough. I cleaned it up enough to get the paint to stick. It looks a bit sloppy but it is now protected.

During this I was working on the prep and paint for the fender and the bumper. I also finally bit the bullet and ordered lower control arm bushings, they were competition bushings. Despite waiting on back order for OEM ones for the rear of the arm, they never became available. I pressed in the fronts with a vice and I quickly realized that I needed a proper press to get the rear ones on. I took them to a local tire/alignment shop. I just said that when you get a moment, can you do these? He agreed and off I went. I get a call later in the day saying one boot ripped when installing. I indexed them and color coded them for left/right and correct positioning before I took them there, however, I do not remember if I lubed both or not. I just assumed he would pull it off from what little I could get them on, lube them and press fit. I told him I was out $110 and a week to order more. He handed me my stuff and without paying and I left.

I then looked at the bushing after I got home and realized what happened. I re indexed the bushing and realized there was no lube AND the burr that I accidentally put on the arm cutting the old one off, was still there and slightly sharp. Bingo!! I felt pretty dumb, although I wish he would have done some prep work. After a week, I was back there with a smoothed out arm, indexed bushing with lube. He said, "wait here" and came back with a completed arm. I was charged $30, I thought was fair, and got an admission he should have checked before he pressed the old one. I apologized for setting him up for failure and went on my way.

I had ordered new JIS hardware for the anti-sway bar links and got those installed. I then installed the control arms and re lubed the front wheel bearing, used a scale to get the tightness correct and buttoned this part up. With the addition of the inner fenders and brand new hardware. This is before the liners were in.




The new hardware finally added to the new links.



This part of the story is not really over yet but I will save that fail for later.

And this questionable repair is last. I snapped some plastic removing the brake cooling ducts. This one and another, I skipped the other. It looks rather amateur but it worked pretty well. Rivets, sheet metal, paint, body clip and bolt.

 

As an aside, you see that the fails are stacking up. I damaged the front caliper paint putting the wheel on last fall. This was touched up later, you can barely see it now.

I replaced a few broke bits and bobs in the front and more paint. The pinch welds needed to be cleaned up on the out facing side. I had taped this up underneath last spring thinking that I would get to it later. Yeah, a lot later, now some of the the tape was a gooey mess. It was sticking so... there's that. Unless the edges were painted black from the factory, which I kind of doubt, some coating had been added, perhaps as an add on upon purchase at the dealership.




I took a wire wheel on a drill and started to clean it up.




I then sprayed it with Rust Kutter, left it dry over night and washed it off. Next was regular primer this time and then the appliance paint.




Don't mind the bricks..... They kept me safe so..... I call it a success.

The primer and paint took well. As you can see the tape left a ton of residue. I will revisit this part of the rockers when I get side skirts. Some rust cutter and some brush on paint after some goo gone and a stiff plastic bristle brush washing should help keep these rust free.

As I was doing this I used a scope to look into the outer rockers on the driver side. From the middle of the driver rocker to the front at the end of the foot well, almost totally rust free. From the driver side middle rocker to the rear wheel well, there was some rust. I did treat it with some corrosion free but it will need sand blasted and properly treated some other time. This reminds me that some of the rubber body fillers were shot, I tried to replace some and never really found a correct size. These being bad will let water in, causing rust. Something for later, considering other than washing the car, this car will not likely be very wet at all.

As far as rust goes, this car had very little besides the engine bay where brake and clutch fluid removed paint. This section below that was treated and painted last year, started to peal off. I took a wire wheel to it, cleaned with wax and grease remover and brushed on the rust primer I used in the engine bay.




This is right near the driver foot well. This is wreck damage from the previous owner that was never fixed or treated. There are rust holes here, too. When the interior comes out in the future, I will see about getting a new piece welded in here after removing this section. I did paint his later with more appliance paint. Some of this channel on the rear passenger side and possibly more is damaged, too. Also is likely damge from the off roading the old owner did during his wreck. Those are still mostly clean, just dented.

More fails to come..... like... a lot more.

 

During this time, I worked on the e-brake again. It did not have much hold. When I moved this car in the late fall I added the front calipers after the rebuild and I did not bleed the rears afterwards. So, the lines needed bled. I followed the procedure and realized that even a year or so with new fluid, it starts to turn darker already. it did make it easy to see when the old was out. I used my hand pump vacuum bleeder and it worked out well. I get back to the brakes and still the ebrake isn't tight enough, one side worse than the other. I adjusted all adjusters to the maximum and just hoped when I got the engine started, it would be good.

I vacuum tested my brake booster after replacing the hose by the booster and adding the one way valve. That checked out, too.

I was getting close to the end of everything and needed to make sure the flash to pass were ready to go. I broke 3 of the 4 studs off and needed to check to see if my earlier half ***'d glue repair worked. No, another fail, they broke off during a test fit. So, I decided to use glue and some melted tie wrap. Initially they didn't fit, I then realized that the built up plastic was the issue. I took a dremmel tool to the plastic on the side and that section stared to fall off. So, I added glue and melted plastic to the missing little piece on the side and that worked. Then the dremmel again.
Supper sloppy, but still cheaper than finding other ones just as brittle as these.




I then polished the lenses with buffing compound.

Before on top, after... You know .



I then sat them on my dash so I wouldn't break them. And this happened after a day or two....



The glue off-gassed on the lenses and the windshield. Luckily, a quick polish fixed that. These look ok here but when installed, you can see that they have yellowed a good bit. It's good, I like them on the car, even yellowed.

 

I went and bought hardware for the new front three cat's. I had loosely attached the old cats just until I could get the engine tuned.
I also noticed that the rear exhaust was missing lock washers.