The blackhole to my paychecks =p

[imstillonjava]

Just as I was ready to put the car back on all 4 feet, I decided to change the oil....and then fix some superficial rust spots at the front of the car by the stock tow hook area. When the car's up on jackstands, its way easier to see the flaws on the car that are otherwise no more than 4 inches off the ground...

before:


after:




and a regression of the progress...











I also noticed that the side skirt attachment points onto the front fenders were not nearly as secure as the points onto the metal body. After removing parts off the car a few times over, the holes on the fender were loosened enough that the sideskirts weren't holding on when I tried to reassemble.

So off the fenders went again for 24 hrs while I epoxied some thread sleeves.







Now the the cf sideskirts are mega-secure!
Car's got alignment and corner balance scheduled this Saturday. I need to get creative with my rim/tire setup for now, because it looks like I was a bit overly ambitious with the 315/30/18s in the rear. Absolutely will not clear and get me off the driveway with the alignment out of wack... so I'm moving the fronts to the rear for now and borrowing some temporary fronts off the boyfriend's Z33 for the alignment day.


Side note: I was watching Hannibal the other day, and check out the movie at 1:27:29....I see me a Montego Blue FD!

[prrex4ever]

Coming along nicely, looking better everyday.

[vex]

Gah!! So Jealous! I need to hurry up and graduate so I can actually afford to buy an FD.

[imstillonjava]

It Brakes My Heart (rear brakes ed).....that this car is still not on the road yet. haha.

My brakes were in dire need of an upgrade, so I had AutoRnD set me up with a RacingBrake rear OE bbk, and then journeyed down to local Fullerton to willcall it.

First to go...is the OEM brake dust shield in the rears. They don't clear the RB rotors, and they don't serve any particular function enough for me to modify and keep them. I looked all over the car and in the Mazda factory manual, and there wasn't an indication of how to remove it at all. It looked like a pressed/interference fit of the metal shell. So I tried the "delicate" route of dremeling it out with a metal cutter first. That took way too much time, and there were way too many flying carbon discs as a result...so I busted out the tiny arm muscles, and used a pair of tin snips + some can opener type action to rip those buggers off.


Tried cleaning some dirt off....did it work?



Removed the calipers, cleaned then up - and gave them some fresh black caliper paint.


Also painted the center bolt and hub. All done! Easy pea-sie. If only I knew about the PITA that was yet to come for the fronts.

[imstillonjava]

At the end of 2009, I purchased a used set of N-Tech Engineering designed AP Racing brakes. Came with a couple sets of Ferodo pads, brackets, stainless steel brake lines, rotors with plenty of meat left, and CP5200 calipers. I kept them stored for months, and finally had the chance to break them out.

Just around that same time, someone was selling their used sets of N-Tech Engineering brake ducts. It came with the plastic ducts to match up to a 99 spec bumper, hosing, and the backing plates. I picked up the set, and ended up selling off the hosing and plastic ducts. I decided to use the backing plates, buy new hosing (that wasn't orange :/ ), and fabricate some new ducts to work with the FEED bumper (still need to get started on that part).

The toughest part of installing the backing plates? Getting the aluminum hub cap off, and then finding a long enough bar to extend my "not long enough" breaker bar, and rip off that big ol hub nut. The rotor was frozen on insanely well - the two rotor screws were stubborn...and the impact driver sucked! It was actually easier using the screw attachment and a breaker bar.



After that, and about $3.00 worth of hardware in the form of long screws and misc washers and nuts....I managed to pop off the rotor by this method:
Youtube link to someone with a brilliant ideahttp://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mtsTJCRljAs.


After that, it was cake! (or so I thought).




I masked off the rotors to repaint some of the edges.
I also thought to give a try and change the color of the AP logo. That wasn't fun to mask off.

[imstillonjava]

Okay, looking good...right?
But wait! I should have checked this first! There's a crack on the passenger side bleeder screw. This caliper won't do anymore :/


....that was an unhappy week. hahah. Anyway, I sucked it up - and made my way over to Stillen in Costa Mesa, who's an authorized distributor for AP Racing. The benefits of living in So Cal Everything can be found locally! Really, really great customer service there - and they were a great help in working with me to purchase a replacement. The logo had changed somewhat, and the AP lettering is rounded off now instead of squared, so I walked away with an entirely new set of calipers and new lines.





But how am I supposed to replace the AP original aluminum pistons, with the upgraded stainless steel pistons in my old set? (Please keep in mind, I've never done brakes before...so the fact that this tiny little chinese girl has figured this out for herself thus far, means you can do it too! Because my Mech Eng degree be damned, we learned theory - we weren't taught to be mechanics!) Well, bless the internet...turns out all I needed was the right compressed air attachment and some wood sheets to keep the pistons cushioned and balanced to pop out equally. It was annoying since different pistons chose to pop out all the way and remove pressure from the caliper system individually, but it became way easier with each passing caliper.


That's right, these SS pistons are sitting on a Michaels Arts & Crafts receipt. That's where I buy my wood piston cushioning car tools. Where do you buy yours?


Comparison shot.




....anddddd FINITO! (not really)


I stripped the flare not bolts for the hard steel brake line that connects to the flexible brake line on the driver side, and now I'm waiting for Ray at Malloy to save my day with a new hard steel brake line en route....

but for the most part, front calipers, rotors, flexible steel brake lines, brake pads, and brake ducted backing plates are installed!

Just need the driver side replacement hard brake line, duct hose, and to fabricate some fiberglass ducts now.

PS - I also took the time to clean up the trashed caliper....resurfaced it, and repainted it, and now its this really super nifty business card holder that I use at my cubicle
Anybody need a single spare AP caliper? I've got one good one sitting around missing its pair :/

PPS - One car always gets jealous of another. The DD S2000's brakes went out while I was working on the FD's brakes. Talk about last minute reminder on the indicators! I had to rush to get some new Stoptech rotors and pads for my frontsies. Not good driving 80 miles a day on brake pads that looked like this!

[Silver86]

looking good!

[Max777]

your parts list on this car reminds me of this:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DuzzMfHZR8c

And that's the only way to do it, rock on!

[imstillonjava]

Originally Posted by Max777

your parts list on this car reminds me of this:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DuzzMfHZR8c

And that's the only way to do it, rock on!

gotta do it right, right?

[imstillonjava]

While I wait for the driver side hard line, there was one more thing to zap out of the way - the master cylinder.

What's the point of upgrading my 4 corners of braking, if the pedal feel blows? So I figured, take it all out in one shot!

I looked into the FEED master cylinder upgrade, and IMO, it was a very overpriced option, for what we can put together here on our own w/o importing anything. The FEED master cylinder upgrade brings the stock 15/16" piston to a 1" piston size...for about $450 bucks. Where as the 929 master cylinder also brings the piston size up to 1", but the cost is closer to around $100-200 depending on whether you go new or remastered. So I went with the 929 cylinder from Ray at Malloy, and bought a new tank to replace my yellowed original one. I followed a couple different writeups I found online, and bought several 12" brake lines that were already inverted flared on both ends. It took a few tries to get the bends in the lines just right....but I finally got them done to my satisfaction. One line needs to be invert flared on both ends, and the second line was invert flared on one end, and used a banjo fitting at the other.

I also stripped and repainted the black bracket, and cleaned everything else around.

Tah-dah! I'm rather proud of how well it turned out.

[MaczPayne]

Carol, I didn't know you were an ME! I just graduated 4 weeks ago in ME as well

Looks like you know brakes now! Gotta take her out on the track when she's done!

[JShiz]

This build thread is like a hate/love relationship for me. I love looking at the build quality of this car. I hate the temptation that it gives me to blow all of my money on the 7

[speedjunkie]

^Amen to that. AFGMoto's is another one. Carol, people like you and him doing this stuff to your cars makes me wish I was a druglord or something lol.

[Herblenny]

Originally Posted by JShiz

This build thread is like a hate/love relationship for me. I love looking at the build quality of this car. I hate the temptation that it gives me to blow all of my money on the 7

I know... It is thread like this is how I ended up blowing money on my FD for the past 10+ years.

Carol, GR8 build!

[Prodigy]

I know... I get so jealous when I see the progress on these types of builds..

i have put almost $10,000 into my car since I bought it (Jan 2010) and yet it is still not running...

now that 10K does include a multitude of mostly used, some new parts, almost all the body pieces I want to add and some half ass shape BBS'

but this thread still rains on my day sometimes...

before you put that awesome rebuilt 929 unit back in there... you might want to consider "bench bleeding" if you have not yet... it makes the rest of the bleeding process quite a bit easier and sometimes go smoother...

this video show it...


looks awesome!!!! keep making me green with envy


J.