Looking forward to seeing you post about the bushings. I'll be doing this soon too. I have shocks and am close to ordering springs. At the same time I'll be putting on my 5 lug swap. Figured if I'm doing that I should go ahead and pull off the arms and change the bushings too.

I've seen a few detailed threads about switching bushings on an FD but not FC. Take lots of pics please!! :)

ill tell you first hand, the bushings make a HUGE difference. i had tokico illumina with tanabe springs, poly U bushings everywhere, it handled like a dream.
if youre going to use poly u bushings, either get the black ones or wrap everything in teflon tape to keep it from squeaking, unless you got delrin bushings like i have.

Lloyd

Agreed completely I did all the bushings on my first vert and my last coupe, dont remember what I used on the first vert, but on the coupe I did all the MMR stuff and the differance was insane.
A lot of people forget that all that rubber stuff wears out by 60k and gets worse and worse and worse. Ive done bushings on almost every car I've had lol. As I say you cant build a mansion on swamp land, all that looseness and play just makes everything worse like not putting power down and breaking shit.

It seems recently a lot of people are having issues with MMR, what did you end up using for yours? Can you go into more detail about the teflon tape and the squeaking. The older I get the more bitchy I get about ride and noises. I remember I had all the delrin MMR stuff and Ksport coils on the coupe and while I remember it feeling really good but I dont remember how the ride was. I want tight but I dont want any extra roughness as like I said I'm getting too old for this shit lol.

Will do, I have a few pics of my older cars but I'll take new pics and maybe do a write up, theres def a few that are a pain in the ass like the metal sleeves that are part of the DTSS bushings.

If you have the pictures available I'd appreciate if you could link me to an album :)

Havent done much lately, bought a new daily, waiting for the 335i to sell before I proceed with the next steps of the project. Energy suspension bushing kit, new ball joints and tie rods and BC racing coilovers.

Also ended up picking up an rtek 2.0 and will start messing with that later on. Car currently idles at like 9.5 AFR which is horrible lol.

Unfortunately looks like my interior... Missing EVERYTHING!
Good luck with your build, looking good so far!



BTW: What did you use to dye the carpet, it looks fantastic!

Thanks,

Its Duplicolor fabric/vinyl spray paint. Most auto places sell it, I got mine at Advance Auto. Second time I've used it with great results, I only did on coat on my black carpet. Before in my previous 7 i redid the carpets from blue to black with also similiar results although I would recommend doing two coats in that application. They are only about 6 bucks a can and it dry's really quick. I actually dyed the seats from blue to black too with the same thing although I think they need one more coat.

Once it dries does it make the carpets all hard like spraying "regular" spray paint on carpet?

There's lots of intense tedious work in this build. I like it.

I'd never seen anyone add a form of sound deadening to the backside of the dash. My car is currently in thousands of pieces and my dash and dash frame are separate right now, so now would be the time to do something like this. Do you think it cut down on squeaks and rattles? My gut tells me fixing all the broken tabs and mounts maybe helped with that more, but a little bit of added protection surely can't hurt.

I wish mine idled at 9.5.... at least 9.5 registers on my wideband. Mine idles at 9.00, which is the absolute richest it'll display :) I just need a good tune on it. I can build stuff all day, even electronics. Tuning an ecu is not my forte apparently.

Great work you've done there. I hate pulling dashes, but I guess it's the only way I'll ever get rid of my convertible squeaks and rattles. I... HATE.... squeaks and rattles. Did you glue some of that foam behind the door panels? You can really bring the noise down by shoving some sound deadening material in there.

Just where did you find that closed-cell foam anyways? Local stores sell it?

Nope, the carpet still feels "good" . At least with one coat on it, i cant really tell that it got hard. ( thats what she said lol).

Thats the way I saw it, I still have some louder creaks to deal with from other stuff but if anything overall it made it feel sturdier and less prone to cracking.


Thanks and yeah rich idle and premix blows. When people ask me what kind of gas mileage it gets I say 10 clubbed baby seals per mile lol.

Yeah agree on the doors, maybe the sound insulation around the dash did really do more than I thought since my doors seem to be rattly as shit. Thats next, insulate the insides of the door, lube the window motors, spray the carpet bottoms of the doors black and do the centers in black suede.

All the foam was bought from http://www.secondskinaudio.com/

Next up: Suspension

http://i150.photobucket.com/albums/s..._5372560_o.jpg

Tein Flex's with EDFC. Energy Suspension Bushing kit, new tie rods and balls joints. Getting ready to install this weekend, just need a set of s4 endlinks.

why did you swap out a strut? they were all new with new springs and only 30 days of drive time.

Front drivers side strut mount looked like it was dremeled out , maybe for more camber, I think the passenger side was too. The strut bolt moved around there and thus shaved down a good chunk of it to the point where it made an indent on it and it was impossible to tighten it down completely as the threads were totally done. Thus the strut was totally loose and this was a few days after I got the car, I was going to try to rethread it but considered how big of a chunk of the actual strut bolt was "chewed away" it was just unsafe. So I ended up throwing a washer under it to keep it somewhat in place as it had to have moved around a lot to do that much damage to the strut bolt. A friend had a set of Tokico Blues on his car so I swapped to those , they ended up being blown , so I said fuck it and bought Tein Flexs lol.

good shit so far man, i decided to go baller and get zeals, delrin bushings, powder coat everything, and go t2 drivetrain on my vert!
mines black as well!
cant wait to see this shit finished, so i have something to compare mine against, keep it up!

Lloyd

Beautiful.
I especially love the attention to detail w/the gauge wiring. I made a fused distribution block (3 actually pwr, ill, 12v) when I put my gauges in and it has made trouble shooting a breeze. Also the dye job looks really good, a friend of mine redid his blue interior and it looked amazing as well. Wish I would have thought of the foam myself, I did a complete 10ae interior swap and that would have been the time to tackle the dash. Oh well, I'll do a restoration someday.

The one bit of constructive criticism is the dash mounted WB and the idiot lights. Considering how much effort you put into wiring and refinishing the interior I would have hoped for a cleaner install the "3+1" look doesn't do your interior justice. The idiot lights are pretty useless in the glove box (unless its open all the time in which case.....umm, yeah) a better location would be under/above the radio so they would still serve their purpose.

Overall, great build and keep up the excellent documentation.

Thanks Lloyd, and yeah I can't wait to finish it too lol. Good luck with yours, black turbo2 verties are where its at lol.


Thanks,

The reason I put the idiot lights in the glove box is I didnt want to completely get rid of them. From what I understand the coolant buzzer is part of the idiot lights and the glove box was the easiest place to put it plus I just dont like the way it looks lol so I just hid it. I usually just glance at it whenever I need to and close it back up.

The wideband, I agree to a certain extent but I wanted it visible and easy to glance at thus I placed it right next to all the other important gauges like boost and water temp. Its not the cleanest place to put it , but the most useful place I could find as I already have the other 5 gauges and dont have much real estate left lol.

cant wait to see it with the new suspension. Struts/shocks to coilovers is like night and day.

I dream of having a built fc vert.. still very sexy cars for their age compared to newer cars.

Yeah, coils are where its at. I've had them on most of my cars. The reason I didnt do them right away on this is because it already had decent struts and spring on it and sat nice, rode really good and handled good. I've had the flex's on the car for about a month now, drove it the first time and it was on full stiffness and it was pretty bad lol. Finally got around to making them softer yesterday and it feels much better. The only problem is I didnt want the car sit too low as the entrance to my driveway is all jacked up so I make it sit high and well its sits like a monster truck lol. So this weekend I'm doing all the control arm bushings, running the edfc wires and lowering it back down to a proper height lol.

+1 for the duplicolor vinyl fabric paint. I redid my whole interior with that shit and it looks great.

Epic build thus far.

damn, it seems like you and i are doing a very similar build lolol.
i have s4 control arms with new ball joints, cross drilled/slotted rotors, new bushings, but mazdatrix end links
good shit so far, keep it up!

Lloyd

Amazing work arkady151. I have been working on the same project car for about 5 years and have lost a lot of motivation to work on it. Similar to you I have spent hundreds of hours on it. But after seeing all of this I'm going to finish it. Keep up the good work.