theDevilX

Thought I'd share my little project with you US guys, bear with me for the first few posts as I'm just mirroring a blog I have on another forum.



I've been lurking around these forums for a number of years and decided I should probably get around to sharing my own little project.

She's a 1988 NA RX7 that I spotted on eBay around September time last year as a garage stored none runner, at the time I'd been working on the FTO and didn't really have time for another project, but I ended up going 'just for a look' and after some negotiation I ended up buying her for £600, which I reckon was a bit of a bargain.

The plan is to initially bring her back to great standard condition, and from that point onwards start making improvements after I've been driving it a bit.
But first I'll go over what I've done so far.

I got a haulage quote and had her trucked back home, the first thing I did was get out the camera and document the starting point.




Been a while since it was on the road.











The overall exterior condition wasn't that bad, there's a few tiny bits of rust, but its all surface, no cancer. And amazingly underneath its the same story, very little rust on the shell itself, I don't want to jinx things, but I really think I might be able to avoid welding altogether. I believe the car had been in the garage for around 16 years, and it shows
The interior definitely needs work though, the PO had lost the key, so they ripped up the ignition in order to try and get the car started (unsuccessfully) in order to sell it.

My first goal was to see if I could get the engine running, it definitely needs to come out, its in a state, all the hoses are cracking and disintegrating, and I need to pressure test it because every time I fill it up with coolant it goes 'somewhere'. But if I can avoid an engine rebuild for the moment and just clean it up and renew the hoses, pipes etc that's what I'll do and rebuild in the future once I'm clearer on the direction I want to take.

Some initial testing showed that there was basically zero flow of fuel at the filter, so I suspected the fuel pump. Which meant taking off the access hatch in the tank.

theDevilX

Fairly obvious what the problem is here! I did a short term fix by using a rust dissolving solution from Fernox and got a replacement fuel pump from eBay.




Put the tank back in, hooked everything up... same result. Car turned over but would't start, next stop was the injectors.
Turned out to be a good call, as all four injectors were completely blocked!
Also the fuel rail itself was full of crud.



Injectors cleaned, fuel rail unclogged, hooked it all back up and it actually fired up instantly! I couldn't get it to idle as I had a lot of vacuum leaks, and it was drinking water as fast as I could pour it in, but at least it started. I'm resigned to stripping down the engine now, so it remains to be seen what the actual internal condition is like.

theDevilX

So moving forward, my basic plan goes something like this:
- Remove Engine
- Strip Interior
- Strip drivetrain and suspension
- Thorough inspection of underside of car.
- Completely underseal car .
- Paint up subframe, wishbones etc etc and refit
- Clean and touch up paint in bay
- Rebuild engine
- Refit engine
- Refit interior

Problems I've found so far, though I'm sure there'll be lots more.
- Falling off bumper trim
- Engine to rebuild
- Fuel tank to seal
- Interior looks grey and tacky, needs retrimming and dashboard plastics painting black
- New radiator
- Sunroof only works manually, lots of friction
- Headlights don't pop up or down
- Heater blower motor doesn't work
Its quite a daunting list so I better get moving.

Starting to strip bits out:







Underside looks fairly OK.





Gear oil looked pretty manky, and as the above pictures I need a new shifter boot.




I've stripped out the front and rear seats today, and stripped the relief air pipe from the exhaust. I'll be ditching the air pump anyway so its not required.

theDevilX

First in the crosshairs was the starter motor.




Its odd, there's more corrosion in the engine bay then under the car, not complaining mind.



Next on the agenda, gearbox. Amazingly all the bolts came out with no fuss and literally within 20 minutes the gearbox was on the floor.
[img]http://i.cubeupload.com/3bCY39.jpg


I made a start on clearing 95,000 worth of grime and grot out of the bell housing and off the box. It looks a bit cleaner, but my alloy wheel brush is now ruined. To be continued at a later date.
Also with the gearbox I need to replace the shift return spring as it doesn't return to the centre from 1-2, while its out I'll replace the shifter bushings, the rubber boot (which was FUBAR) and input shaft seal.
Luckily I think the clutch should be fine, release bearing felt brand new and I have a receipt for the fitting of a new clutch a few months before the car was mothballed. (One of only 2 receipts that I have)


With the box out I used some orange line to hold the engine from rocking and straining the mounts. My engine crane arrives on monday so it's staying in until then.



And finally I got on with stripping the interior. Seats and rear seats are out, no rot underneath those at least! Glove box is also out, I need to remove the dash to take out the carpet. (And also just to clean everything up) But I'm stuck with the steering wheel. 
Getting the nut off alone was a mission, but even with it off, I couldn't get off the wheel no matter how much I pulled it, hit it and yanked it. Might have to try and and adapt a gear puller to work on it.

theDevilX

Not many updates as its hard to fit working on the car in with a 12 hour night shift.

My engine crane finally arrived, £115 off eBay, seems reasonably well built. Better than I expected for the money, there's a few upgrades I could do with making to it, drop nose pins for the jib to make it easier to use, but on the whole fine for the job.



Enlisted a friend to help me swing it clear. 





With the engine out of the car, my next job is to document everything in the engine bay with pictures so I can see how it all goes back together!
Then drop out the rack / subframe / diff /suspension. Get the chassis as high as I can and start cracking on with stripping back and undersealing it.

I also need to workout how best to mount the rotary onto my engine stand and get started on tearing it down.

theDevilX

Some progress, as ever, work is the curse of the idle man.
I have however got a week off starting next Tuesday which should give me some time to make some actual progress.

I finally got the exhaust dissembled. This may seems like a minor thing, but given the condition the bolts were in I'm surprised I'm managed it. It can now get out the rain and weather in the back of my storage lockup.




I got around to making up a bracket for putting the engine onto the stand, after a few coats of whatever colour paint I had handy in the garage it was good to go.



[img[http://i.cubeupload.com/PXidL3.jpg[/img]

Took a bit of trimming, but it seems to work quite well.
I did make a half hearted attempt at removing the flywheel nut, but it wasn't having any of it. I'll definitely need to come back with the right equipment.

Now a bit of a confession, I've been making lists of all the parts I'm going to need to get the thing running and it was looking pretty expensive. Some parts would have to come from the states with the associated import taxes and VAT on top. Some of it would have to come from rip off eBay and facebook sellers that want to charge ridiculous prices for worn out second hand parts. I saw one guy trying to sell a set of rear lenses (standard UK ones) in average condition for over £300!
In the face of all that I decided what was required was a donor car. Something I could mercilessly strip of everything i needed to get my car on the road, the crew member that gets eaten first to keep the others alive when lost at sea.

Anyway after some searching and studiously avoiding looking at my bank balance I bought this:

https://www.gumtree.com/p/mazda/mazd...mot/1256682358

I pick it up next Tuesday, the plan was to swap all the good bits onto my car and sell the chassis. However sans the sunroof that one looks body work wise to be in much better condition than mine, it's also only done 55k which is pretty crazy for a 1986 car. It has however had welding done in the past so my plan is thus.
Drive it for the summer, all I'll do work wise is a full service, all fluids and filters, timing, plugs, and repaint the sunroof. Give the chassis a really good inspection, if its been repaired well and its now well rust protected, then I'll simply swap across the goodies it's missing from my current car. (Alloy bonnet, cruise control, any bits like that) And simply make incremental upgrades, improvements etc whilst actually using it.
Or if its a lemon underneath then over the winter I'll swap everything across in the other direction.

Basically I'll keep the best bits of each car, and sell the chassis and rest of the stuff together as a project for someone. (Minus the engine, because a spare engine seems like a good idea);

So with a view to this I've started to collect the service bits I need. The steering wheel is so I can fit my legs into the car! I'll fit a better one eventually.

theDevilX

So quick update.

Carried on stripping down the engine bits I have lying around, the only one I got a photo of was the water pump and thermostat neck.
As you can see, its seen better days!



Anyway, today I went to pick up my donor car, the plan being to either use the shell I have, or this new one as the base and then add the best parts from each one to make one great Rex.&

First up, I think the seller must have used photos from when he bought the car, because it didn't look anywhere near so shiny in person, and the rust looked significantly worse.
And for a car that drives and runs 'perfectly' it has a few issues.

First up some pics:





My impressions so far:
Body:
Not great, the rust on the roof and sunroof is pretty bad, although fixable without welding IMO. The rust on the boot is again bad, but fortunately my boot of my other car is in good nick so that's not a huge issue.
Most of the panels seem to have decent albeit very faded in places paint.
The bonnet is steel and waaaay heavier than my alloy one.
I need to get a good look underneath, but first impressions are that I probably won't keep this shell. Its got some rust at the windscreen base, some rust nearly through at the petrol filler cap behind the door (no idea how!) I need to really look at it, but I think for the moment its the lesser chassis.

Engine:
Well it idles perfectly, seems to pull well and smoothly, especially at the top of the rev range.Temps stayed rock steady, even in heavy traffic, oil looks clean.
Some issues though, the clutch judders a lot when pulling away, I have a receipt for it being replaced last year and the cars only done 200 miles since, so maybe it just needs to bed in. Clutch release bearing seems to squeak when used and the clutch pedal got stuck on the floor once when I was in traffic, leading to a moment of 'oh curse word the clutch has gone'. Fortunately I was able to pull it up by hand.

The throttle cable feels a bit sloppy, but the main issue is on overrun and deceleration, its really quite rough, jerky and bouncy. A quick google leads me to believe this is most likely the anti after burn valve. (I'll test tomorrow)
Starts well hot, not had a chance to try cold yet.

Suspension.
Absolute turd, I have no idea how a car can pass an MOT like this, it clunks between accelerating and decellerating, weird knocks when braking, and feels a bit wobbly if I upset it. I'm pretty sure every single rubber bush is probably shot.
However despite all that the car was great fun to drive, the chassis really feels special despite the suspension.

Brakes were cack. They were binding half the way home (although its improved a bit) and I guess need a full rebuilt, discs and pads as well no doubt, hand brake didn't work. Pedal was very mushy and needed a lot of force to get good braking so I think a fluid change is in order.

Electrically everything worked apart from the stereo which I think isn't plugged in, which is a real shame as I'm dying to try this cassette I found inside it:



So current plan is, do the minimum amount of work on the new car to make it reliable, safe to drive and not looking like a complete shed.

Then spend my time thoroughly rust proofing and prepping the other chassis, finally swapping everything across sometime this winter.&n
More to come after I get some sleep!

theDevilX

I've pretty much made my mind, I'm keeping my original chassis.

Its a shame, because I would have liked to have kept the clocks saying 55k mileage, but since I'm rebuilding the whole thing I suppose it doesn't really matter.

The original chassis I have is essentially sound, with the odd spec of rust around stone chips etc, but on the whole good.
This new one, I keep finding new bits everywhere, its really bad around the sunroof (see later pics) but I also found a hole the spare wheel well, and various bits around the engine bay, and creeping under the windshield.

So current plan is get the car I'm driving now into 'good enough' condition, which means dealing with the obvious rust, full service, new discs and pads, fit my reconditioned injectors and a couple of other things.

Any who, progress has been made:

I've been trying to use the Rex as much as possible because after doing less than a 1000 miles in the last 5 years, it really needs some use, and it lets me pin point all the rattles and noises. She looks quite good from the right angles.


Pretty obvious which car I had to park next to. New and old.


So onto the progress, my first goal was to get rid of the rust around the sunroof. Halfrauds no longer mix up paint and they don't have the shade of red I needed, however for the purpose of stopping it rusting and making it look reasonable again I went with a Mazda 'Classic Red'.
Side note, can't believe how little actual paint they give you. I used two cans for two sun roofs and really could have done with a third.



So after some initial attacking it, I decided to get medieval and take the whole sunroof out, it would also let me strip it down and get the tracks cleaned up and hopefully working smoothly again.




Two cars, two sun roofs. The rusty sun roof was literally so bad it has holes in it, so I'm putting it onto my other chassis temporarily, when I swap everything across I'll do the same with the sunroof.




(excuse my feet in the back of the shot)


Not pretty, but it'll do for a car that's sat under a cover and has no engine. I filled the holes with epoxy.



Apres rattle can spray job it looks better than that in real life, and should polish up OK.

Now as I was removing the sunroof it was literally raining rust, so I was expecting some serious rot, I wasn't disappointed.




Now before I continue I'd just like to point out that I'm not keeping this chassis, the following in no way constitutes a proper a repair, its a temporary stop gap until I finish the other chassis. However if you're offended by bodges, look away now!

theDevilX

I epoxied a piece of aluminium to the back of the metal. I then used more pieces of alloy (not pictured) to build it up to the correct thickness where required, couple with metal epoxy filler.
As a job I'm ashamed of it, as a bodge using bits I have lying around, I'm quite proud!

Job finito:



Next I did an oil and filter + air filter change. No pics, I'm sure we've all seen it before.

I ripped out the tape deck and installed a proper head unit, took an hour or so as the wiring was a bit everywhere. Amazingly the electric antenna worked.




The current job I'm working on is the injectors, the car smells a bit of fuel and had a very rich idle, and was very rich in general, especially at low revs. I suspect leaking injectors so I'm fitting the reconned ones I had cleaned on the other engine.

Unfortunately I got rained off so this is where I stand tonight.

If a MOD could correct my thread title to UK spec instead of 'UUK spec that'd be great thanks.

psyaddict

I enjoyed reading your thread
That sunroof looks baaad maybe if you can find a mx-3 you can take the panel from there

theDevilX

Cheers.

The sunroof I have on now has no rust on it so I'll swap it over when I change to the other chassis. After that the old rusty sunroof will be someone else's problem.

I got it back together with my swapped injectors but now it won't run, currently stripping it all back down again to see if anything obvious is wrong. If not I suspect the injectors may have seized again.

theDevilX

Finally got the car running again today. After the injector saga, it turns out my reconditioned injectors had seized up again, they're now on their way to the big scrap heap in the sky.

I had the already working injectors tested, cleaned and new seals etc fitted and put them back in.



Hopefully the last view I see of under here for a while, must have had it off about 4 times in 2 days! Those fuel pipes a real PITA to get on and off. I may end up swapping them for AN fittings.

The screw had fallen out of the pulsation damper, I carefully refitted it and ran a twenty minute pressurisation test with the yellow connector bridged. No leakage at all, so hopefully its still OK.



While it was all apart I did a full coolant flush and replaced the thermostat with a MAZDA OEM one. The coolant looked a lot more like water than coolant, so probably a good thing I'd done it.

I also replaced the plugs, which look like they've seen better days.



And finally a package I've been waiting for a while turned up.



I bought these several times from companies that claimed on their website to have them in stock only to find out later that they'd been discontinued. In the end eBay pulled through.

The pads aren't the greatest, but its only an NA, less power than the average family diesel these days, and I made sure to get properly coated discs, nothing worse than rusty discs.

Before fitting I'll take the calipers off the other car and rebuild / pain them, then I'll refit + flush the fluid at the same time and hopefully have an as good as new braking system.

theDevilX

Brief little update.

I've been using the car fairly regularly, and with work haven't had a huge amount of time to work on it. 
I did reset my idle, and adjust the throttle position sensor, which has made a MASSIVE difference to how it drives. A lot smoother on deceleration, and a none of the bucking and kangarooing I used to get while driving in stop start traffic.

There's still excessive lash in the drivetrain, but its far more manageable now, and I'll probably cope with it until I swap chassis.

Today I finally had a day free. so I decided it was time to stop procrastinating and rebuild the front brake calipers, and change the discs and pads. I'll also flush through new brake fluid. 

As I don't have a proper compressed air supply I could only do one side at a time as I was having to use the brake hydraulics to push out the caliper pistons.





Initially I started wire brushing it as one piece, but it was pretty awkward to get to all the areas so I ended up splitting it, good job really as there was tons of crud inside.



Installed the new seals and the pistons, which is again a lot easier with the caliper in two parts.




Couple of coats of enamel to keep it looking nice. I was going to paint the Mazda logo red, but I didn't have a small enough brush to make a proper job.


Thought whilst I was under I'd do the drop links, I'd picked up some Passat ones as according to the UK forum they're a direct swap... Well the length is correct, but unfortunately they are out be 90 degrees!


After being rained off the job I got back outside to get wrapped up on the passenger side.


Bled fresh brake fluid through and gave it as hard a push on the brake pedal as I could, no leaks at least. 
The plan was to crack on with the other side, but disaster struck.


The top caliper bolt sheared as I was taking it out. Given its diameter that along was quite impressive. 
It looks like I'll have to swap across the hub carrier from the other car, unfortunately I rounded the clamp nut on the ball joint off when I tried to take it off. I guess this is the consequence of working on a a 31 year old car. Luckily it seems like ball joint bolts on with two bolts, so hopefully its just a case of taking it off the suspension arm.
TBC.

theDevilX

Frustrating day. 
I had to swap across the hub carrier from the other chassis.
Once sentence doesn't really do justice to the amount of time it took to get them swapped. 31 years of rust had really done their thing, it took a good half day to do.

After I'd done the swap I got on with stripping, cleaning up and servicing the other caliper.







Finally got it all back together, bled the system, and did some hard foot on the pedal tests. Noticed it was leaking from around the hardline to caliper joint, tried to nip it up a fraction and the bolt stripped. That was enough for my, I packed up my tools in disgust. 2 days for a front disc and pad change along with a caliper rebuild.

I'll have to take it all off again and work out if the caliper or flare nut has stripped. As its an alloy caliper I'm guessing that. Will probably have to steal one off the other car... Which means another caliper rebuilt... FFS.

theDevilX

Some more updates.

I have a thread on a UK forum that I update more regularly. Unfortunately the forum code just different enough to make it a PITA to move stuff across.
Anyway, here's where I'm up to so far.

After the problem with the brakes I didn't get a chance to look at it again until after my Holiday, since then with work and other stuff I didn't have a huge amount of time to work on the Rex, but anyway I've got a bit done.

First off I got the brakes working, I had to use the calipers from my donor car, unfortunately the pistons were completely seized, after trying tons of ways to get them out I ended up losing my patience and drilling and tapping the pistons and using a bolt to force them out.
I then rebuilt using pistons from my other set of calipers.


After bleeding I went for a test, and something wasn't right, the brake pedal was mushy.
Opening the bonnet showed a mess of brake fluid everywhere under the master cylinder, it had chosen this moment to have the seal let go.

I ended up having to strip it off and swap across the good cylinder from the other car, which of course meant bleeding all four corners, which was a complete PITA.
But at least I know I have fresh fluid through out now.


With that done I turned my attention to the next important items, ball joints, inner and outer tie rods and new steering rack boots. I'd had to order my tie rods from America because on the manual rack they have a different thread size at each side of the car, and of course they weren't available in the UK anywhere I tried.




The tie rod ends were completely seized so I ended up removing the tie rods as piece.


Looks like someone managed to cross thread this one, luckily the new one managed to clean out the thread and screw in properly.


As I couldn't unscrew the tie rod end to count the turns, I used the Tipex method to get the alignment close enough.




With both sides done all I have left to do to this car is the rear brake rebuild, at which point I'm happy that its safe enough to use, and I can start getting on with prepping the other chassis for the swap.

She's now under the carport which should hopefully make work on her a touch easier.

theDevilX

I've been getting bogged down trying to fix an idle problem on the running Rex, when in reality its winter and I can come back to that when I swap the engine across.

One job I wanted to have a look at was seeing if there was any easy way to mod the seats to slide further backwards. I'm 6'4'' and legroom in this car is an issue, I just manage proving I wear trainers with thin soles.

As can be seen in the photo, there is room for going further back, additionally I'll be removing the back seats so should gain even more space.




Unfortunately, it looks like I'll have to move the seat further back on the slider, there's no simple way to do this. I'll return to it when I'm building up the other car.




I did take the opportunity to clean the rust of the rails and give them a coat of paint. I also dismantled cleaned and reassembled with fresh grease.

Back to the other car, my first job is the underside.
I want to completely seal it to prevent any rust from happening, I'll also be painting all the suspension components.

I've got the rear suspension out. I removed the springs / shocks / hubs. And then dropped the sub frame and diff in one go, it was rather surprising how easily it came out.





With the diff out the car, stripping it was a lot easier than it would have been in situ.




The only other job I did was to modify some Passat ARB links to fit the rear of the Rex.

theDevilX

The car had been having some problems with the fast idle when cold, namely that it didn't work and I had to blip the throttle like a two stroke to keep it running when cold. I imagined this would be a sticky mechanism, so I set about removing the throttle body and stripping + cleaning the mechanism.




This fixed my stalling when cold problem, but at this point another problem manifested. Now the car was idling incredibly rich, popping and spluttering, it also wouldn't idle above 500 rpm.
When driving it felt OK, but down on peak power, with a big flat spot near the redline.

I had the intake on and off several times, checking all hoses, and anything that could cause a problem... Nothing.
Now I had heard that the ACV on these can cause idle issues, so I decided just to get rid of it, its purely for emissions anyway, I dabbed up some ally blanking plates and installed.
I also had to make a temporary solution to block off the pipe that injects air into the exhaust manifold as I didn't want hot exhaust gasses filling my engine bay.




This made naff all difference to the idle, but it did make the exhaust back fire on every single gear shift, even while cruising at 30mph! A friend driving behind me said that literal flames were coming out the exhaust, very initial D, but not so good for the engine or fuel economy.

A test of the plugs showed obvious problems with the front cylinder, with massive carbon build up compared to the other one.

Unfortunately shortly after, the engine refused to start. A compression test reveals what looks to be a broken or hopefully stuck apex seal. The forward cylinder had good even pulses of compression, the rear was very erratic.

With an engine rebuild now on the cards there was no real to spend any more time on this car, so I've started cracking on with the good chassis to hopefully get it ready for next spring.





Again, I'm surprised how overall rust free this chassis is.
The plan is to strip what I can off and seal the underside / under the wings / bumpers etc with epoxy mastic.



Underneath I've removed the fuel tank, brake and fuel lines, the last suspension bits, rear towing eyes, pretty much anything bolted on.

I plan to underseal in stages, if I try and do it all in one go then it'll be a bit overwhelming, so first the rear, and then the front.
The chassis rails looks like they've taken a couple of whacks, but the chassis looks straight still. I think I'll put MX5 frame rails on to stiffen it all up.





In preparation for a Megasquirt stand alone ECU I've stripped out all the wires I will no longer be requiring from the standard engine harness. As you can see quite a lot went into the bin!



And finally to sort out the awful electrical charging. (The alternator can't even keep up with the electrical loads from the lights driving at night! I picked up an RX8 alternator. The pulley was the wrong size so I got a double one off eBay, as I'm deleting the air pump this allows me to run two belts on the waterpump for added security.

It doesn't quite fit yet, I need to make up a spacer to let the pulley fit.

theDevilX

Did one of the rear arches today.




Absolutely no rust, not even a little bit. Time to keep it that way.



That's one of about 6 lots I swept up, most of it landed in my hair, face etc. Took about 2 hours grinding with a knotted wire wheel to remove the underseal and paint.
I did try to strip it with white spirit, but it had naff all effect.




Note it doesn't matter that I didn't get every tiny bit of paint etc off, as long as its a good surface, with nothing loose.

Next I mixed up my rustbuster epoxy mastic. This was actually pretty difficult, I should have heated it up before hand, the colour was easy enough, but the catalyst / hardner was gloopy.

I thinned it down 10%. In hindsight I should have gone 15 for better flow and coverage.
Still I got the job done, I'll have to do one more coat as it was still to thick and there are a few places where the brush dragged and the coverage wasn't as good.




Of course spraying would have been better, but I don't have the equipment. After the final coat, I can't decide if I should cover it up with some wheel arch wax as well for extra chip protection, or leave it as is so I can see the condition of the metal.

theDevilX

End of week update.

I've been getting on with stripping and undersealing underneath the rear, probably one of the most awful jobs I've done on a car. Dust, dirt, bit of underseal landing in my face, hair, clothes etc. Progress is very slow.

Anyway, so I coated the other rear wheel well.




Rear stripped down and ready.




Time to crack on.



Again, I don't have to take off all of the paint, just anything loose and to key it. Obviously the epoxy won't go over the rubberised under-seal so that has to be covered.

I gave the rear bumper bar a couple of coats of black enamel after some rust removal and priming.


The rear of the wheel well was coated with epoxy and then oversprayed with black enamel, the reason for this is that its actually slightly visible below the bottom of the bumper, so I needed something a little smarter. Also the epoxy doesn't like UV. Fine under the car, but not where the sun can touch it.



Finally some pics of the undersealing, I'm as far forward as the prop tunnel, I'm having to do this area in sections as it takes a long time to get into all the nooks and crannies. In future I'd buy the equipment to spray as the finish would be far better.




I'm not too sure if I'll leave it red, I may overspray with a paint chip coating to smarten things up a bit and to ensure coverage in the areas that were hard to get to. I'm undecided.

theDevilX

I also picked up these:




They are frame rail stiffeners for an MX5. I've seen an article on the forum that shows them being fitted to an FC. As my rails have taken some hits, these should be a good addition.

theDevilX

Yesterdays progress.

Its been getting pretty cold, so I'm having to bring paints epoxies inside to sit in the sun by the window to make working with a bit easier.




Epoxy is great stuff, but a real pain to mix up. The colour isn't so bad, but the catalyst is a bit too viscous to easily measure.




Rear half of the car finally finished with the epoxy.




Bumper bar reinstalled. I ditched the old (and perishing) neoprene seals and used butyl tape to seal the holes. This stuff lasts forever, and if it keeps saltwater out of my boat when the decks are awash then I'm sure it can cope with a few puddles.




Today's plan was / is to carry on with the sanding underneath, but its raining so it will have to wait.

I'm also thinking of investing in a compressor and LVLP spray gun to do the rest of the underside + epoxy prime the car. Watch this space.

theDevilX

Some parts arrived from the US of A, for a relatively modest price which was promptly doubled by customs and the scalpers at Parcelforce.

Included is a clutch alignment tool, a pilot bearing tool and most importantly a fly wheel locking tool , but more on that later.




Since I was feeling motivated I decided to crack on with some jobs that I'd been putting off. First to succumb was the sticky petrol cap release mechanism, cleaned and lubricated.




Next in my sights was the steering wheel, which is in the way of the dashboard removal.

Ostensibly an easy job, however it appeared to be unhappy with the idea of parting company from the column it had been part of for so long. A combination of a gear puller and a lot of hitting finally got it off. Fortunately I had the foresight to leave the nut on and stop it getting the last laugh by smacking me in the face.




While I was in the groove I pulled out the instrument cluster, which was elementry once I realied I could push the speedo cable through from the engine bay and gain extra working room.




Finally I coated both rear wells with an anti stone chip paint. (2 coats) In theory the epoxy doesn't need it, but I'm paranoid about Rust and its impossible too be careful when defending against the old adversary.





I know I have some red bleeding through, the can ran out and I need buy another.

Another post to follow.

theDevilX

Now onto the good stuff.

Since the engine I was planning to put into this Rex is no longer operating, I had no choice but to face the dark and expensive path of the rotary rebuild. However at £1500 quid for the absolute basic rebuilds this was definetely a job I'd have to do for myself.

Now the engine was stripped down to just the block, however there's one thing standing between me and opening this Dorito sandwich... The flywheel nut!




Previous attempts at moving this had proved futile, it laughed in the face of my ryobi torque wrench and eluded any attempt to lock it place so I could swing on a bar. The problem is that apart from being ridulously tight from the factory, they also use red loctite, which is unfortunately rather too good at what it does.



Finally I decided to get the correct tools, enter the afformentioned flywheel locker. I also bought a gas torch to free up the loctite. With these weapons, nothing could stop me.




Unfortunately my best attempts last night made no impact, despite heating with the torch, even with applying all the force I could on a 1m breaker bar it just wouldn't budge.



After sleeping on it I got out of bed with just one goal. Get that curse word off.

I borrowed a 3m fence aluminium scaffolding tube from my neighbour and after letting the nut cook for a while I gave it everything I had.




Yep, it broke the breaker bar.

Now my socket is actually for a 3/4" drive, and the breaker bar was 1/2" with an adaptor. Determined not to be beaten I headed down to machine mart and picked up a monster 900mm 3/4" breaker bar.



Back in the garage, the next problem was that I was applying so much force it was not only tipping over the engine, it was lifting the large double decker rolling toolbox I'd put on top to stop it moving!

Eventually I ended up having to put ANOTHER engine on top of the stand just to hold it down, and even that was starting to lift off.




This finally did it, the nut came off with the noise of a gunshot! The socket fired off the bar and ricocheted into the wall, luckily avoiding anything expensive.

theDevilX

Now I could start on the engine teardown properly. First came the sump.


Then the oil pick up.




Oil pump, counterweight, chain, torrington bearing, spacer and stationary gear.





Flip the engine, and remove all the tension bolts.





Time to open this bag of Doritos.




I'm taking the time to label the seals incase I end up reusing any of them . If they are well within spec I see no reason not to.



This is where I finished for the night, the other half will get disassembled tomorrow.