Let the strip down begin!

Rented a tow dolly to get the car to the body shop with the engine out. Had my best friend DJ for me while I work, and help me with with the pull. :D

More, and the new car my parents just bought, I just detailed it in that shot.

So, my instructor told me that I cant weld in the engine bay unless I take out the sound deadening fabric on the back side of the firewall. Well, to do that, I would need to remove the dash... and pretty much everything else there:

HVAC
Pedal Box
Steering Rack
Main wire harness
speakers
stereo wiring (I am SO redoing my wiring when I put it back together)

I forgot to take a pic of the car with the wiring harness pulled through the firewall, but I DID do it... and yes it was a pain, but it's the only way!

Oh, and btw, Volvos are awesome! They hold more shit than my dad's pick up truck!

I have that same Greddy RS BOV, & had to remove one of the springs inside, like so, http://www.evomoto.com/tech_info.php?tPath=1&tech_id=7 to get it working right.

ok cool, thanks for that info... had no idea it was so complicated. I havent actually even run the type S on my car yet because i never got a flange for it, but that will all get straightened out once my car is painted and the motor is dropped back in.

a little clean up before the final spray:

Ground down some stuff, sanded some stuff, and treated some stuff with rust converter. Spraying the sealer and color on saturday, an praying that it turns out well.

After pricing out Lexus Pearl White ($670) I decided to go with normal White: ($265 total)

I realized that I gotta stick to a budget, and that the money could really go to some other areas on the car instead.

Very nice. I'm in the process of restoring my Turbo, and being that I'm doing bodywork and repaint on the exterior, I keep debating on pulling the engine and respraying the engine bay at the same time. In my case, space is the major issue, as I'd have to do some serious garage reorganizing. I'd probably also have to move things inside the house and keep them there. I'm pretty sure my girlfriend wouldn't be too keen on that.

How much stuff is on the interior side of the harness that comes through the driver's side of the engine bay? I'm debating whether or not I should pull it out when I paint my engine bay. Is it even feasible without removing the dash?

budget? What is this thing you speak of :rofl:

Budget's and hobbies don't mix well I've found

no it's not.

If you go in, then GO IN!

Pull the dash, pull the HVAC, pull the pedal box, the rack, EVERYTHING!

Cause once you start, might as well do it all, or not even bother trying.

Mind you, if you're only doing spot painting and keeping the bay the same color, then there's no point... but if you are completely changing color like me, then it's worth it.


dude, brian right?

After I get the car painted, and buy all the clips, bolts, and etc to put it all back together, I still need:

NEW TII driveshaft
BNR Turbo Rebuild
Coilovers
Wheels
Tires
stereo
speakers

And that's just the big stuff.

Along the way I might pick up some stuff like new carpet, floor mats, door seals, etc.... so $380 saved on paint is a BIG deal.

Yeah, and if you had waited a little while longer before you bought the paint, you could have the color that you wanted, not the color that you settled on. It's not like you held off buying a set of wheels that you can bolt on later, you made a decision that is not easily reversible. I would've waited until you could've afforded the color that you were most happy with.

Dude, I still got BMW M3 Alpine white... settled? Hardly. The pearl was a college student's baller pipe dream anyway. Besides, sometimes, with time and money constraints, you gotta have some give-n-take or you will never get shit done. I learned this the hard way. =)

Anyway, on to my update:

Got my Pineapple Racing engine-stand adaptor, OMP rebuild kit, and some other loose ends.

I degreased the left side of the block real quick because it's a to do it when it's bolted to the stand.

Painted the bay this morning :)

Started working on the dent in the rear quarter... After the engine bay, it was the second worst part of the car. Got most of it out, but still have a bit to go.

some more pics:

Not perfect, but for 3 hours of work, it's a hell of a lot better than when I started. The S5 molding now at least somewhat fits flat.

Well, I got the quarter back out pretty well... spent a lot of time on it...

I sanded off all the paint, then hammered out as much as I could, followed with some stud welding and a lot of pulling. After that hammered the metal, and ground down some of the pitting left from the stud welder.

At the shop, we had this 3M Fiberglass reinforced body filler, made for thick applications and shaping panels back in place. Unlike Kitty hair, and other glass fiber body fillers, this stuff is top notch! The strands are chopped so fine you cant even see them, it applies easy, hardens like concrete, and stays flexible enough to avoid trouble. If I ever recomended a filler, this stuff would be it!

Anyway, so, we did a nice thick coat, let it set, and then used a 12" grinder pad on it to shape the filler somewhat. there were some low spots, so we went for another coat.

The next day, I used the grinder to cut into the filler a bit, and then used an air sander (the reciprocating long board type) to sand the panel straight.

Now, this is where I am right now, and it's damn near perfect already. On monday, I'll add a bit more 3M stuff on the bottom section near the trim, but otherwise the panel is ready for some convetional filler (imperfections n stuff) and a coat of paint!

I wont have the time to spray the whole car body color, but at least I got the quarter and the engine bay done... These were the two hardest things, and the worst cosmetically.

Anyway, here are the pics of the somewhat finished progress:

And.... surprise!

I ran out of time. So, I guess stripping down a car, and completely painting it in just 10 4 hour work days was a bit unrealistic... even if I DID strip it outside of class.

I'm glad I got the two worst areas done though, the engine bay will never need another paint job again as long as I own the car, and the dent in the quarter would have probably cost me somewhere like $1500 to fix at a body shop.... Now that that's done I can reinstall the engine, and get the car running again so I can enjoy the rest of the warm weather. :D

EDIT: I found out that they ARE going to hold a Saturday hobbyist class during the fall semester. I think I'll sign up for it and get the car running in the meantime.

That rear quarter looks pretty good! Did you use the bondo-glass product to get all the imperfections out?
http://multimedia.3m.com/mws/mediawe...SevTSeSSSSSS--
Also how did you manage to get the line of the body above the wheel well to be nice and true?

.........yeah tell me about it :banghead::cuss:

tell that to my wife :rofl::(

Hell nah, I used some ultra mega crazy 3M shit! I DID hammer and pull the dent out as much as I possibly could though, so it's not as thick as you might imagine... What we did was to pull the part under the line out first, and then go back and pull out the part above the line. After that, caved and paved the 3M stuff on, and used a wide sanding disk on a big orbital grinder to shape the panel.
Went over this with 3M again, and after that, used a long bladed air sander to shape it into what you see there. Now, after this, the panel still needs just a real thin layer of bondo and glazing putty to make it perfect, but the fiberglass shit took care of mostly everything really. Honestly, the hardest part was to shape the dip for the rear trim piece, that area got distorted really bad.

Also, having instructors with 20+ years experience helps too.

Anyway, after letting the car sit for a while, I finally got around to ordering more stuff and started installing the polyurethane bushings... so far I got the front control arms done.

I think I found mecca btw, and it's called Himni Racing!

They are the ONLY place I found a full ss harware kit for my engine, as well as a samco interooler hose kit to replace the stock FC hoses, and a greddy bov adaptor. Usually, to run a greddy bov, you need to buy a $150 cast pipe, or weld in a flange. Himni sell a flange that just clamps right on to the stock hose, genius! (this way I can go back to stock Bov if I sell the car or if I have any problems.


PS: Also ordered like $250 more worth of gaskets, seals, and orings from Mazdatrix, I swear, by this time, it would have been cheaper to just get an entire fucking rebuild kit.... damn. Got an OMP rebuild kit from Pineapple racing as well while I'm in here.
Pics of all this being installed will be up within the month cause I'm trying to finish my car for a drift comp at the end of the month.

If you were able to make that damage look good, I should be okay with my major crinkle.

http://i189.photobucket.com/albums/z...4/IMG_0208.jpg

very nice project you've got there. i respect anyone that does their own bodywork and painting. i tried once, many, many moons ago and i decided to simply have respect for my limitations. however, you also mentioned that you took a class, so i guess it was a learned talent. maybe one day i'll do the same and also take a welding class, too.

anyway, like that you're starting out with the details first, and working your way out. it's a different approach. keep the updates coming.

Nice progress!
Thats almost exactly what my FC looked like when I got it....add in that dent and its about what it looks like today lol. I've never even considered fixing it myself because the investment in equipment would not be worth it, but I'll have to look into this class situation...

Hey guys! Thanks a lot for the compliments, it gives me inspiration to finish it up.

Right now, I've been putting the car together slowly and ordering more and more parts... I've spent about $500 with mazdatrix alone in the past month. =) (and that's just on oem parts, nothing fancy)

I was planning to get coilovers, but those may have to wait, because I found an S12 for sale that I might pick up, and after seeing THIS:

http://speedhunters.com/archive/2010...t-an-ae86.aspx

I'm pretty sure I'm gonna get it and sell my volvo 740.


Anyway, I'll post up some pics of the progress tomorrow, got quite a bit done.

Well, Decided that I'm too broke for an S12, so I went and bought some stance GR+ Pro coilovers instead!

Got these barely used for $440!

some update pics of the car:

moar:

I have the same strut tower shot, lol....

Car looks good...

Engine is IN! Today! Got 3 more days to get it running! :D

Good choice! an S12 woulda been kinda cool, but it would have siphoned funds away from the real project and would never be as good.

Update:

So.... I ended up getting a Microtech LT8 for $450 with a harness!

I got the ecu, a harness (a bit chopped up but fixable) and the "dongle" thing that you save your maps to, as well as a windshield wiper harness section.

Right now, I'm looking up the entire wiring diagrams and about to re-do the harness to make it nice and tidy.

Great progress!

car is all back together, pics will have to wait until I can get it started.

Yesterday I finished putting it together, put in gas, coolant, oil, reinstalled the battery, and went to fire it up... no crank!

Well, I didn't expect things to go so smoothly anyway. I've been having intermittent solenoid problems with the starter for like half a year now, so it may have well just rusted stuck in the 3 months it hasn't been used. I'll go test it at autozone today... If that's not the problem, then I'm not sure where to go next...

Perhaps the ground cables?


PS: Engine bay looks clean as fawk.

Update since last post:

installed starter,

car cranks,

no compression...

Put in some MMO and let it sit overnight, cranked the FAWK out of it the next day, finally flooded it 3 times, and it fired up... Compression is back up to 100psi front and rear (roughly) and the cars starts and runs, doesn't die, and doesn't catch on fire... thank god..

Next thing I notice is that the boost gauge is reading 5inHg vacuum at idle... And the car wont accelerate past 3800rpm very well.

Also having problems with bleeding the brakes, the master cylinder leaked right onto my fresh paint job, had to buy a new one.

I bench bled the MC, and bled the calipers twice, but my brakes still feel like crap.

Right now, I havent had time to mess with it again for a while, but I'll try to keep this updated more often.

The brakes are tricky on FCs, my buddy and I bled his about 4 times over a month until they stiffened up. Build looks good! Keep us posted.

Well, they are nice and stiff when the engine is off, but once the vacuum booster is active, the pedal goes half way to the floor before the pads start having enough force on them to slow down the car.

Update 11-30-10:

I've been messing with the car, and I noticed a problem when trying to adjust the TPS:

When in range, one of the LED's on the TPS sensor "tool" lights up, but the second one does not. Before I messed with the car, the TPS sensor tool lit up both LED's when you adjusted it too far.

When I unwrapped the harness to cut out the extra emission wiring, I accidentally cut out the TPS wiring...

Got another harness and soldered everything back in, and all connections seemed good, but now after I put the harness back together, only one LED lights up, and then goes out when you push the plunger in too far.

I'm assuming that I mucked up the wiring somehow, but the car starts, runs, and drives just fine below 3800rpm. Perhaps the full range of the TPS sensor circuit is messed up?

So, ever since I tore apart my car to paint the engine bay last year, it never ran quite the same after reassembly. I messed around with it but it never got very far, always running into issues.

This summer, I got tired of trying to make it work on the factory ECU, and had Chris Ludwig install a Haltech Sprint-RE standalone ECU, thinking that this would solve all my problems. He did a great job, and my car picked up 30ft-lbs of torque from stock on a Mustang Dyno, however we ran into an issue with the factory S4 TPS. Since it's a short range sensor, it only reads about 30% throttle input. Any more, and the ECU thinks it's being given 100% throttle.

This wasn't an issue for full throttle tuning, but it did result in a lot of hesitation during part throttle cruising. The recomended fix was to install an S5 TPS and throttlebody and use the full range TPS that normally controls the OMP function.

I also managed to score a godspeed front mount kit for cheap for the same person I got the TPS from, so hopefully they get here soon.

Besides the engine woes, I also have been neglecting the rest of the car for some time. It really needs a paint job, so I've been saving up for that.