Resurrecting a 144k FD by Fd3BOOST

So now knowing that I am dealing with the original owner , who has free & cleared owned the car since 1992. I'm thinking i have a major score on my hands. I counter offered him with $3000, We ended up at $3,500 for a totally stock, 1440 mile FD that I was going to drive home to Maryland. This deal is unheard of!

So here is the car the first day I saw it.

144K miles and still bone stock under the hood...

Rear side profile,

I was lucky, i already had a pair of VR replacement mirrors from a part out i did way back when. I bolted them onto the doors and headed home with my new fd. So right off the bat the pillow ***** were obviously shot. The rear end was beating itself to death on the ride home. Believe it or not the car didn't even have a boost gauge. Regardless the sequential twins seemed to be boosting pretty normal. I drove safe most of the way home but i started to light her up when I got home and i knew a tow bill wouldn't be to bad. Surprisingly the car drove fine aside from the bushings. 

So first thing on the agenda was to just clean her up and see what it would look like after a few hours of love. The P.O. really kept the inside dirty, you can tell he was a Doctor who lived out of the car. He was also a smoker so the car need a good cleaning. 

Wife & Daughter checking out the new fd..

Pic of me and my daughter washing it. 

Getting to the inside, and stripping it out. 

My son chilling in front yard. 

Starting to get to the meat of it. 

Okay so she cleaned up pretty good. 

&

But I realized that the paint is only going to clean up so much. The hood at this point was pretty well faded and needed to be buffed. Luckily for me, i have a buffer. 

So fast forward another two hours and I have buffed the car out as best I could. 

Now time to get her in the garage and get started.

So the goal for the car is pretty simple and straight forward. I plan to resurrect this car to a respectable street car. I will be doing all the reliability mods, a few power mods for twins, and improve the suspension/ bushings. 

But I like to start with the basics for a nice car which is paint. So the car was put on jack stands and i started to tear it down. I started in the engine bay and worked my way around and under. I've ghot it just about stripped all the way down now. 

A few pics along the way.... 

So now that I had the car stripped off it was time to start getting to the body work.

Molding the brake ducts into the fenders. 

Glue these down with epoxy, 

Then body fill, 

So about the car again. I had not originally planned on painting the car but in all honesty I just have no desire to own a red car. It's not my color, never has been and so the decision to paint the car was pretty easy to make. I know that I wanted blue but I wanted something different than the 99 factory Innocent Blue mica, which was on my last car. Now my wife thinks that using blue at all is silly considering I just sold a clean blue rx7. I'm a creature of habit so blue it is. I spent several days pouring over paint chips form House of Kolor. I really wanted to go with Cobalt Kandy blue but I've never sprayed a Kandy and they Kandy paint is not something to play with unless you're a professional body man, which I am not. So I decided to go with Lake violet Pearl as seen here...

So I made a list of all the supplies I will need, and placed my order through Amazon. About 10 days later the supplies started arriving. After I got a look at the paint I felt that it had more purple in it than I really wanted. Here is the House of Kolor Lake Violet pearl in the can.

Under light, 

Now after ordering $900 worth of painting supplies, I then decided that I did not like the color and wanted another House of Kolor paint, Majik Blue Pearl as seen here... 

At this point i called in and spoke to a rep at TCP Global, the supplier who I was getting the paint from and he sold me on a few more products. So another $850 later I get the remaining products to get rolling on the primer, paint etc... I have extra supplies that I will likely return when I am done to recoup some of my expenses. 

Here is the Majik blue pearl in the can. This paint is a lighter shade and does not have the added Purple. I have considered mixing two quarts of the Lake Violet into four quarts of the Majik pearl and renaming it the custom color " Majik Haze" Hey I'm a Hendrix fan...

Another topic, 

Front bumper: 

As you can see from years of using a front plate on the car, the front had become deformed. I never had a front plate on any of my three previous FD's so I never before encountered this problem. 

So I heated it up with a heat gun and rubbed it out as best I could and then started to do some fill work. 

It came out okay...

Then I got it in my head that I wanted to eliminate the side markers. This was a purely esthetic choice and really probably not legal, but since I have a car that is getting Historic tags, I won't have to worry about passing a safety inspection in Maryland. 

Here is the process of the removal of the side markers. 

Making a paper template, 

Transferring to 18 gauge aluminum, 

Cutting out on the bandsaw, 

Epoxy the blanks into place, 

Now to fill the void with Alumilite plastic 

Filled in, 

Starting to skim fill with "Rage" 

And the final result prior to primer,

And for those interested in how to do this, a 4 min vid. can be found on this link. 

I tried to embed the video but apparently I don't know how. 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YW1cx...ature=youtu.be

Tell me about it, This kid has been in rx7's since the day I met him. I was on my second Fd in 1999 when I met his mother. We were married the week before Rotorfest 2003. I even cut my honeymoon short one day to get back in time to drive up to Rotorfest. My wife & I celebrated our 10th wedding anniversary earlier this month. 

2003

Maryland BBQ 2004? 

Scrubs car in the background. 

Ernie T's car

Engine rebuild down time 2004

This wise *** now thinks he is getting this car....

NO.  

So after the car was prepped, the worst of the dents filled and sanded down through 240/400 grit it's ready to be primed. I put on 4 good coats here...

The fenders look good so far. They do need some more acrylic fill and block sanding before i get ready to seal them. 

Well for better of for worse I have been absolutely swamped with work these past three weeks. This has prevented me from making any real progress with the car. I marked today (Sunday) off to get time in on the car. I have worked the past three Saturday's and Sunday's combined so this we necessary. 

So the most notable thing for this post is the brand new PFSupercars bumper. I called Ray and he had a new bumper made just for me.... I feel special Raymond. I ixnayd on the stock bumper and was happy to get the new jonta! 

Here Is what is left of the old one after I snaked all of the mounting hardware off of it...

New one some more...

News flash, 

Running a 3/16" drill bit straight through your finger is no fun!

Here is the entrance wound.

This was the exit wound..

A word to the wise. Don't drill holes in your fingers. It sucks. I'ma professional too, you think I would be able to watch out for this ****!

Okay I am lucky enough that my father who used to own a body shop will still come and help me on occasion. This is my pop helping me sand out the primer. 

A closer look at working in the new bumper. 

Fitting a greddy 2 row front mount IC....

Lining up a legit set of Feed side skirts...

I spent time today moving this project along. I will post more photos this week.

In sealer, waiting for base color.

More photos of the base color.

Well I have decided to add a few coats of Cobalt Kandy Blue over top of the Majik blue pearl. I ordered two quarts of Kandy base coat today. I was going to go ahead and shoot the clear coat this Sunday but now i will hold off another week. 

So a few things I wanted to bring up. First, as with any old fd the head light covers rear mounting tabs are broken off. So I figured I would go ahead and try the ones I see on eBay. The shipping took a month because the parts came from China. I was not surprised at what I got to be honest. They look okay fron the top although there are spider cracks in the surface. However the sides are pretty rough and would need alot of work. The mounting tabs are also questionable. I have my doubts that they will actually line up properly so I have opted to paint the originals and just add my own mounting tabs. 

Anyone have any idea what a new set costs from Malloy? 

Stock Vs. Ebay..

Here with a few coats of House of Kolor Majik Blue pearl Shimrin base coat. 

I've already shared most of these photos. The color is really interesting so far. i can't wait to show it off. It pitches from blue to purple. Like I posted I'm going to shoot some Kandy Cobalt blue over this base layer before I clear it to add some extra depth to the paint. 

My shitty iPhone cannot capture the color as it looks in person. It's something to see in person. 

And the last one for tonight. The molded in fender vents. 

What do you guys think? Looks pretty good to me so far.

Starting shooting some of the parts in clear this morning. I have work obligations so I can't fool with it any more this morning but i plan to spray some more clear tomorrow.

Bumper came out good. I had a few runs on the fender that ill have to sand out. Nothing I can't fix.

This paint looks great if i do say so myself. Iridescence in sunlight...

I'm working with the wrong reducer for the temps so I'm getting some runs. I've just ordered the correct reducer to get it to flash faster. I can get the runs out no problem. Just makes more work. The work around the vent looks good otherwise. No shrink in around the molded vent seam.

Ill be in a holding pattern at this point waiting on RU310 reducer to arrive via brown Santa.

Still have the doors, hatch and the unibody to clear and then it's onto sanding and buffing.

I'm not ready to reassemble. I'm getting slightly closer though. All of the paint work is done. I started to wet sand out the clear coat earlier today before the football game came on. I hope to be able to start buffing next weekend. I also went ahead and placed my order on the new pillow ball set and a complete set of Super Pro suspension bushings. I will be working on that directly after the paint is buffed out. I'd like to get the car back on wheels so I can move it around. The interior will probably get stripped out right after the suspension gets re-assembled. 

Anyway here is some photos that I wanted to post, Enjoy. I have a 27" iMac, sorry of these are to large for your puny little screens...

A couple more..

Sup little buddy!

Sup guys, 

I've been slacking on working on the car. I bow hunt and the rut is kicking in so I've been spending my free time chasing bambi through the forests of Southern Maryland. 

Last night I spent a few hours compounding the paint and it looks pretty good. It will have to be buffed with glaze after the I'm done compounding the sanding marks out. 

I snapped a few photos when I wrapped it up at midnight. I don't know when I will get back to wrapping this up, hopefully soon. i accidentally splashed lacquer thinner on one of the fenders so I ended up buying a new fender and have to start one of them all over again, which really blows. 

The color of the paint is pretty well discussed on previous pages. It's House of Kolor paint. "Majik blue pearl

Well I don't know about any of you guys but I am done with winter. I have been snowed in all day and I'm bored to tears, Not sure why I have plenty of things I should be doing but I digress, I thought I'd post.

I haven't made any significant progress on the car but have the ball rolling in the right direction. Until the weather warms up I am not going to finish wet sanding and buffing out the paint. Not to mention I have to re-do the drivers side fender. That being the case i changed gears and turned my attention to the suspension. I've removed all of the pieces and started pressing out the pillow ***** and bushings. i ordered a super pro kit from J-Auto a few months ago. Juan was a nice guy and I would recommend him if anyone is looking, His price on OEM pillow ***** was actually less than what Ray Crowe at Malloy Mazda could offer them at if you can believe that. 

The biggest problem that I encountered with pressing out the bushings is articulating the parts in my press. I actually broke one piece of bar I was using and caught my finger pretty good doing so. 

This was yesterday. I have not pressed the new bushings into place yet. I ordered some zero fittings off of Amazon and was going to drill the control arms for the zero fittings to avoid any possible future squeaks that might arise, although I have searched and did not find anyone complaining of that. 

Here are a few pics to stare at.

Completely off topic but again, I'M SNOWED IN WITH NOWHERE TO GO.... REDRUM...REDRUM..

So I picked up this RE street diffuser and some Feed side skirts off of Fritz this past summer. Should make the car look diabolical. 

No fake **** here.... 

And I pulled out the A/C equipment along with the sway bar and the steering rack. 

I just ordered some boots and tie rod end from Mazda Trix a few minutes ago to freshen up the rack. 

I also went ahead and ordered a new Racing beat front sway bar. That should just about wrap up the front suspension. I have no plans to do a new sway on the rear, I want that nice and soft. I will however order some softer rear diff bushing mounts. I think the Super pros may transmit to much vibration. I was considering the Pettit offering, Anyone have any thoughts? 

As far as the A/C is concerned. I have to do some more homework, started reading up on it last night before the eyes got heavy and I Zonked out. I want to have as cold A/C as possible, what ever it takes is my motto there. 

Anyway random photo of the stripped out engine bay.

This picture just makes for an interesting comparison. 

My spare jeep tire (36" iRok) next to the pulled motor. 

Brown Santa paid me a visit this morning. I snagged these new handles out of the for sale section here on the forum for half the price that Malloy wants. 

I got this set of gauges off of Rich (GoodfellaFD3S) A month or so ago. He had them up for sale in the classifieds. I saw several bumps and an opportunity to offer less than asking and he bit. 

This buy was probably a little indulgent on my end and I really should have put the money into parts to get the car on the road but **** it, YOLO. I went ahead and ordered the new lens/chrome plated bezels for it today from Malloy while ordering some other odds and ends. 

Here is the set of Tokicos with RSR springs that I plan on using. This is a street car, In my opinion coilovers would be "poseur over kill" for me. This is just about perfect for the street. I bought this set used off a local so the powder coating on the front shock tubes is kind of gnarled up a bit. I might repaint these, not sure how I **** I want to get over shock tubes. When it's all said and done I will probably end up painting them anyway. Again, I'm not assembling a track beater here, so style points count to an extent. 

I plan on having the suspension re-installed within two weeks at the latest and then I will move on to the brakes, replacing wheel bearings etc.

Well I got all of the bushings installed this weekend. I drilled and tapped out the bushings for zerk fittings as well. There was some slight confusion on the front lower arm bushings. I called in to J-Auto to speak to Juan. The part diagram shows the part to be P/N SPF2822K and the bag was labeled as such but inside the bushings are stamped 2823. The bushings on the lower front arm are two sizes. 

Anyway long story short, Juan says that all companies made them incorrectly short and this is normal and won't be an issue. 

Here are the photos I snapped yesterday, Enjoy.

I'm waiting on parts from Malloy and Racing Beat. Next weekend will be the steering rack, sway bar and the wheel bearings.

Reminiscing over my old one... 

Don't know if i have the patience to re-polish all of the manifolds again, ugh.

This Friday I was down in Woodbridge so I stopped into Malloy and picked up the new wheel bearings for the front & rear. The fronts actually come as a spindle with the bearing pre-installed. These pressed out much easier than the bushings did. The rear requires that you press the spindle out first before you can get the bearing out. Still pretty simple either way. I cleaned all the parts really well and went after them with a wire wheel. Then I painted everything with high temp caliper paint out of a spray can. Everything turned out pretty well, Only need to reassemble the parts at this point. 

Going to get some new rotors, lines and pads to wrap up the brakes though before I slap it all back together. 

New bearings

Rears off the car

The basic set up for rears

Separated 

Wire wheeled off the barnacles growing on the aluminum

Then painted...

The fronts cleaned up just as well. 

Degreased & touched up with fresh coat on the subframe

Then jumped on the calipers, got one knocked out. Finish this off later...

Wrapped the day up with a trip from the Fed Ex man. 

I read that Sake Bomb Garage is going through finding a new lease to operate out of so I jumped on it and ordered some premiums, and a door handle since they might be out of commission for a while. 

My initial impression of SBG is a good one, customer service was very good. Heath is very personable and the parts look really striking. Nice quality manufacturing from outward appearances. Obviously I won't know how nice these lights are anytime this month. 

I am ordering a stop tech basic brake kit today, with rotors, lines and pads. I also bought a PFS SMIC with intake and a set of 99 spec twins out of the classifieds this past week. 

So this weekend I will be remounting all of the suspension parts and then re-working the steering rack. I bought new tie rod ends and new boots for it.

A few pics for Thursday morning.