Cbus240's Restoration/Build Thread 56k

[Cbus240]

GUESS WHAT!?!? I CAN HAZ BUILD THREAD!

Hey guys my name is Charles, I'm 20 years old and I live in Columbus, OH. I have a 89' hatch that's been in my possession for almost a year now, and I've got the itch to finally start tearing into the car and making her my "own." I'm VERY meticulous with my cars, (as you will be able to tell) and I like to do quality work using quality parts. My build thread will be a total log of everything I do to my car, big or small, and will have everything from basic maintenance items, to restoration work, to a SR rebuild. I feel like with my build, I want to literally start from the ground up, so when everything is said and done, I will be able to have one of the cleanest 240's around!

EDIT:
-I've reworked the thread a bit more to my liking (deleted some stuff) so a few of the first posts in this thread may seem a little "random." haha no worries though, just keep reading away...

[gmac708]

Got to subscribe to the local build thread!
Nice work so far.

[Cbus240]

Got to subscribe to the local build thread!
Nice work so far.

Hey, us Columbus guys gotta stick together like the Lancaster crew does! lol but hey thanks for the props, I saw like the first page or so of your 240z build and like how thorough you are with your project. I am definitely going to subscribe and check it out soon!

[PyR0NiAk]

Ever drive down toward Portsmouth?

[Cbus240]

Now on to my current project:

Underbody/Suspension Restoration & Rustproofing



Ok, lol so basically what I'm going to be doing is giving the complete undercarriage of my car a little TLC. I guess you can say I'm a little bit of a perfectionist, I mean I know it's pretty unlikely someone will ever come scope out the underside of my 240 at a car meet or something, but I like to know that what I do have under there is clean and solid.

Here's just a basic outline of what I plan to do:
-completely degrease undercarriage
-fix bent/rusted pinch weld lip that runs under car, prep for POR-15
-find any rust in wheel wells and underbody, clean and prep for POR-15
-drop entire rear subframe assembly along with all suspension members
-POR-15/Paint rear subrame, respective suspension members, front suspension pieces, gas tank, and rear differential
-completely re-undercoat entire underbody/wheel wells with Dupli-Color Rubberized Undercoating
-new hardware for most suspension pieces and rear subframe

So last weekend I brought the car to my house to fix the bent up pinch weld, and degrease everything. Being that the storage unit I keep my car at doesnt have power, or a water connection for that matter, I have to plan things so that I get done whatever requires those things at the house before I take the car back to my unit for the remainder of the project.

First I got the car completely up on jackstands. Here are the pics of the pinch weld lip thing I was talking about. It was pretty bent up in different areas on both sides of the car, possibly from botched attempts of lifting the car from it in the past maybe?






note the smashed rear passenger frame member...previous owners


I went to town on the lip with a pair of channel lock pliers and a hammer. I was able to bend and straighten out the lip for the most part on both sides, I mean it still didnt look too hot but it's a lot better than it was before. After I got the lip as straight as I could, I took a wire wheel to the areas I fixed to get rid of the rust.




the driver's side up near the fender was pretty mangled up, I did what I could












this thing will be my main tool for the next couple of weeks haha


Well when I was pounding away on the lip, I did a little detective work with the hammer and found small patches of rust in both the driver and passenger side wheel wells. At some point there must have been rust in there and someone sprayed over it with undercoating or something because I didnt know rust was there until I chipped away at it with the hammer. Regardless, it's nothing too crazy, and I've caught it early enough and hope to address it properly, but I'm no body man by any means! lol

driver's side hole


passenger


Now like I said before I will be doing the POR-15 on any parts of the car that I cant take off, in my storage unit. So I just left the lip and rust areas down to bare metal, because I can do the rest of the prep/paint for the POR-15 from there.

Once I got that taken care of, I started the process of degreasing everything under the car:

simple green, no backyard project is complete without it!


just a little bit of scrubbing and some scraping, and a lot of grime came off the driver's fender well


I didnt really take any other pictures while I was degreasing everything(I'm sure you can imagine what it looked like). haha it was a pretty dirty process, and I didnt feel like getting up and snapping pics while I was sprawled out under there. I will say though, from being under the car, I could tell that at some point somebody sprayed some heavy undercoating on a lot of areas on the undercarriage. I'm not sure what went wrong though, whether they didnt degrease/clean it enough before they shot it, I dunno but for some reason a lot of it never cured right and it turned into a liquid tar/black grease substance and stayed like that. Nevertheless I spent a good deal of time ruining my scrub brush and scraping to get it off where it never cured. Here's a pic of some of what I'm talking about:

goop.


Once I had things all cleaned under there, I buttoned her up and drove back to the bat cave, where I then proceeded to put the car high atop jack stands once more, but this time it's going to be for awhile. The next phase is to drop the whole rear subframe and all related parts. Once I do that I will be able to disassemble things and take them back to my house so I can clean and paint them with POR-15. Obviously while I have all these parts off it will be a prime opportunity to get in there and fix any rust spots and spray the underbody with new undercoating.

Phase 1:
-drop subframe
-disassemble parts, wire wheel, then paint or POR-15 rear suspension components, including rear diff and axles
-drop gas tank, wire wheel, then POR-15

Soo here we go haha


I like this shot of the tires, why not throw it in?


this is what I have to work with...not bad, but could be better


half of the exhaust


Tanabe Racing Super Medallion...probably going to be selling in favor of a Greddy Ti-C setup, if anyone should want it




other half out


someone ganked my exhaust man!


supporting RLCA while I loosten the top shock mount nuts


TEIN Super Street coilover...gets the job done, might upgrade in the future


close up


rear swaybar end link a little crustyyy


rear swaybar bolts out


gas tank splash shield thing out


passenger rear gas tank splash shield out


rear driver's side:






rear passenger's side:




gas tank filler neck


I found me another rust hole woot woot!


close up, not too bad


rear brakes off


disconnected e-brake cables


NICO's fabricator's market at its finest haha


loosening driveshaft to rear diff. bolts, I found it's easier to leave the transmission in gear and then break them loose


maybe one day my car will make enough power to do this without even looseing the bolts haha...drive shaft chillin


peepin' at the diff.


Now first I was just going to use one board to support the rear subframe while I was lowering it down like this:


thennn I decided to get fancy and do the whole dual board set up, haha it kind of came back to bit me, you'll see


so I started to do work on the main front 2 bolts of the rear subframe that hold it to the car, hardware and plate


looky what I found! energy suspension subframe bushings, score.


then it was on to the back 2 main bolts for the rear subframe, hardware off


rear bushing


Then it was time to FINALLY lower this badboy. I started to let up on the jack and the subframe was dropping pretty nicely, but as it started to drop more and more, I noticed it was tipping forward a little bit. Hindsight being 20/20, I should have had the jack in a little farther under the assembly, but at that point there was no going back! haha it came down all right, just not exactly what I was going for:

outttt


then dragged it out from under the car and cribbed it up on the wood planks


Here's some pics of the subframe assembly and rear diff. in all its glory:














Here's my handywork at rigging up the rear calipers and driveshaft:







There's a little bit of surface rust above where the subframe sits, no biggy though:






it's so weird seeing it so empty haha


gotta give props to the shop manual, it does help sometimes!


SO, this is how I left her when I finished up this past Wednesday night, and is how the car currently sits. I'm FINALLY now up to date on where I'm at with the car lol and I hope more people start checking this thread out more, because I kind of feel like I'm talking to myself...let me know what you guys think so far!


PS: It's been awhile since I did all the research on how to identify your rear diff and I don't remember being able to find out anything on a 5 bolt VLSD that you can use on the s13. I will obviously research again if I have to, but if anyone sees this and can identify what car my diff came out of I'd realllly appreciate it, thanks!

[Lonismos14]

Lookin good subscribed.

[gmac708]

+1 on moving the BOV closer to throttle body.

I can tell from what I have seen so far that this is going to be a quality build.

[Cbus240]

Ever drive down toward Portsmouth?

haha actually I've never been to Portsmouth, the farthest south I've gone is probably Chillicothe, guess I live in a bubble huh? I take it you're from around that area then Pyro?

+1 on moving the BOV closer to throttle body.

I can tell from what I have seen so far that this is going to be a quality build.

Lookin good subscribed.

quadrupel thumbs up FTW! lol thanks guys

[PyR0NiAk]

Ever drive down toward Portsmouth?

haha actually I've never been to Portsmouth, the farthest south I've gone is probably Chillicothe, guess I live in a bubble huh? I take it you're from around that area then Pyro?

Marine Corps has me in Cherry Point, NC, but yeah... I'm originally from Portsmouth. Chillicothe is only about an hour away.

[Cbus240]

UPDATE!

OK, so this past Wednesday I was able to get back to the storage unit and continue tearing apart the rear subframe assembly...

driver's axle and 2 arms removed


side shot of axle






driver's rear hub and e-brake assembly


bustin bolts


removed




rear upright


removed


e-brake cable


a shot of the SPC RUCA and rods, basically a nice quality cheaper alternative to the high end pieces like SPL


closeup


let me just say, this thing is one BAMF impact and is a lifesaver when you don't have any power haha


As you can imagine, it's pretty much lather, rinse, repeat for the other side, and I didnt hit any snags along the way, so I'm going to leave out all those pics.

Here's how I WAS going to leave it for the night.


I started to pack up shop and decided to say "well WTF I'm already this far" and just bust the 2 diff carrier bolts along with the rears and free it from the subframe

TA DA!




loaded up and ready to take back to the hizouse


I finally have some more room to work with haha

Marine Corps has me in Cherry Point, NC, but yeah... I'm originally from Portsmouth. Chillicothe is only about an hour away.

Nice, I knew they weren't too far apart. When I was in Chillicothe I was actually working on the refrigeration equipment at the Mead Paper plant, not sure if you're familiar with it but it stinks like hell! hey thanks for serving man, I have a few buddies that went into the Marines, you guys are f*n crazy lol

[Cbus240]

Well first off, Saturday I ended up selling my first vehicle I've ever owned.I pretty much learned the basics of how to work on cars and how to do partial restoration work with it. I have tons of good memories in this truck since it was my ride during high school (even won Senior Fav's "best car" with it) and it absolutely killed me to see her go, but with another daily driver plus the 240, I just lost interest...

1978 Ford F250 4x4




goodbye my love

This weekend I was able to make some good progress. I already had the diff and subframe back at the house from Wednesday, but I went back to my storage unit and snagged up the RLCA's and uprights, along with other various suspension pieces that I needed to strip down to bare metal.

The goal right now with all these parts is to take a wire wheel to them and get off any old paint and rust to give me a clean surface to lay down the POR-15. I'm pretty much coating all pieces with the POR, then I will actually paint different parts to dress them up (gloss black, semi-gloss, aluminum) you get the deal, I just want the underbody too look almost like it just came from the factory.

The first piece I started with was the rear subframe. I put it up on sawhorses and got it ready to go:




it was a beautiful day haha


then I got to work, I took almost a good 2 hours to get it to this:












Due to all the little nooks and crannies on the subframe, I'm still probably going to have to go through with a Dremel and clean up all the areas I couldnt get to with the grinder.

After that badboy, I moved on to various other pieces


rear dust shields




rear sway bar


all together


THEN it was time to seperate the RLCA's from the rear uprights so I could clean them up:

the specimen


pull out cotter pin


bust a nut


my electric impact was struggling to break the nut off, so I had to bring in the "enforcer" lol


donezo


At this point I just used my HULK LIKE strength and ripped apart the RLCA from the upright .....ok just kidding

this is what you need


I used the air hammer because I'm lazy...and weak


I forgot to take a pic with the seperator bar between the pieces, but here's the finished product


care to take a guess as to who will be replacing their rear ball joints???




Here's the reason for my madness guys, you can see one of the previous owners painted the suspension pieces in like a silver color, which is cool, but they basically just painted right over rust, which doesnt solve any problems:








you can see how rough the surface is under the paint from the rust


here's a pic of the rust on the RLCA


SO next I started to do work on these pieces bring them down to bare metal"

RLCA's








stamping


annnnd here's the uprights:










Obviously with all the hard to reach areas on these parts like the subframe, I will be using the Dremel with a flapper wheel to clean them up completely before coating, but you get the idea haha

I also made quick work of the rear diff, I will be pulling the rear cover off later to do a little "custom" work to it




This is where I'm currently at as of last night which was Sunday. Today I might take advantage of the 3 day weekend and start to do a little of the meticulous work with the Dremel on the subframe and other parts, but it just depends. lol I guess you can say I got a little burned out from all the wire wheeling with the grinder this weekend, we'll see.

[Az24tsx]

How much you get for the Truck? It was beautiful by the way

[RustspecS13]

Looking good pat! Why didn't you just drive it? Nick and I just finished it! The things your doing needed done but you could have at least driven it a little!

And I hope you marked the rear arms, I just aligned those!! And some of those will need some new hardware, for some reason nick didn't have the exact right bolts or the SPC arms needed longer ones.

Glad to see the BOV is fixed, When I saw it wasn't hooked up to last year and we plugged it in it started doing that. And that was part of his 2K idle problem too. That and the throttle body being opened up and the iacv unplugged.

~Alex

[tmwnn]

I love threads with so much detail. Even if its for the little things, it makes it an awesome resource for noobs (like me) to look through and understand how things work

[bllabong89]

looking good man. I am kind of in the same spot as you were/are. I am working on getting the rest of my suspension off and my wiring out so I can fix the rust and coat with POR-15. That stuff is the s***. Once I get the rest of my suspension off, I will be tearing into the underbody coating because, like you, I want my car to be like new and do everything right the first time. good luck and I will be watching this ofr sure

[angelscrx]

Wow great progress man. keep it up.

[Cbus240]

How much you get for the Truck? It was beautiful by the way

$5k cash...I broke even with what I had in it, the paint needed some work (clear coat was peeling in some areas) and the truck itself just needed some TLC, so I'm happy with what I got for it.

looking good man. I am kind of in the same spot as you were/are. I am working on getting the rest of my suspension off and my wiring out so I can fix the rust and coat with POR-15. That stuff is the s***. Once I get the rest of my suspension off, I will be tearing into the underbody coating because, like you, I want my car to be like new and do everything right the first time. good luck and I will be watching this ofr sure

hey thanks buddy, you couldnt be more right about POR15,I absolutely love it haha. it's nice to see someone else who is meticulous like me, I dont feel so crazy for spending so much time on something nobody will see! good luck with your project!

Looking good pat! Why didn't you just drive it? Nick and I just finished it! The things your doing needed done but you could have at least driven it a little!

And I hope you marked the rear arms, I just aligned those!! And some of those will need some new hardware, for some reason nick didn't have the exact right bolts or the SPC arms needed longer ones...

~Alex

Alex! what's up buddy, hey Nick told me you picked up a RB25 or something, what's the deal?? but I know, I know...lol I should have atleast driven the thing for a couple months before tearing it apart, but I guess it's just that I want to take the time now to clean up everything underneath while I have the motivation to do it, plus I will have the rest of the summer/fall to drive. and yesss, haha I marked/labeled all the arms and just about everything else I took off, I'd hate to ruin all your hard work! I need to get your # man I could def. use your help on some things, especially when I get some new tires...

thanks for the comments guys, keep checking out the build and let me know what you think

[Cbus240]

Update!

All right, so like always it was a pretty busy week with work and I didn't get too many opportunities to wrench on the car. On Wednesday I placed an order with FRSport and got fancy Moonface drain/fill plugs for the rear diff, and I also placed an order with Courtesy Nissan and got some miscellanous hard to find hardware/clips and other goodies I will need to finish out the front/rear suspension.

I was also able to get out to the storage unit Wednesday. My goal was to drop the gas tank and remove it so I could take it back to the house and clean it up, then coat it with POR15. Well, needless to say I went through all the proper procedures to disconnect the fuel tank and lines, and I dropped the tank down to the ground. It was fairly simple and took maybe an hour:

half way


down


OK, so I got it down, but here's where I started to think, and it's never really a good thing when I start thinking haha. The tank itself was probably still 1/2 full with gasoline, and when I tried lifting it off the jack, it sure wasn't easy. Why I didn't think of this before hand I'm unsure of. I started to realize just what a hassle it would be to remove the fuel pump and drain the gas into a suitable storage container just so I could move it into the truck. Just the whole job of doing this just so I could spruce it up a bit started to be a little over whelming to me, so I sucked in my pride, admitted defeat, and PUT THE TANK BACK IN THE CAR...right after I just took it out....FML

Not all is lost, here's my plan for the gas tank. One of the previous owners sprayed the tank with that spray can bed liner stuff, it was a good concept, but as I've said before, lack of prep work caused the bed liner on the bottom half of the tank to start to flake off. But when I had the tank on the ground, the top half of it still had a nice solid coat of bed liner on it. So, once I get everything buttoned back up on the car and get it mobile again, I will bring it to my house where I can clean and coat the bottom half of the tank while it's still in the car, and wont have to mess with dropping it an whatnot.

Thursday:
I was able to do the "detail" work with the Dremel on all the hard to reach areas on the parts before coating. I tried snapping some
pics of some of the pieces I did, but it's hard to see on some:

















Friday my order of POR15 showed up...pretty much the star of the show haha

total package


gloss black


Marine Clean--> heavy duty degreaser Metal Ready-->surface prep (leaves zinc coating for POR15 to bond to)


Also on Friday my package from FRSport came in the mail that I ordered just 2 days before. Let me just say how impressed I am by the customer service and super fast shipping by these guys, I will definitely be doing business again with FR. Here's the goods:

Moonface rear differential magnetic drain & fill plug





uses a 19mm hex so you dont have to worry about rounding out the factory square oddball size plug (which I did) haha


So my goal for the rest of the night was to get all the parts together and degrease them with the Marine Clean, and then after that lay down some Metal Ready on them so I could have everything ready to coat Saturday. But,I still had to finish up prepping the RLCA's, and that meant removing the old ball joints. So I swung on over to Advance and rented their fancy dancy ball joint remover/press tool. I also placed an order for new Moog ball joints (Part # K9633). As a lot of you may know, you can't get just the rear ball joints for the s13, so you have to source the front ball joints of a 89' Sentra which are pretty damn close I guess haha

$159.99 deposit for this damn thing, but it's brand new and I got to be the first to break her in




removing retaining ring


goodbye


remover installed




then turn with ratchet to press it out


finished product






THEN, that night I degreased all the parts with Marine Clean, and then I let them soak in some Metal Ready. This basically puts a zinc coating on smooth bare metal, and gives a "tooth" to the metal which allows to POR15 to really bond to it. You can also use the MR right on rust which allows you to paint right over it with the POR. I didn't take any pics of the actual washing of the parts (not much to be left to the imagination), lol but here's how everything looked yesterday morning after setting in the garage to dry over night:

you can barely see the zinc coating (white in color) and the surface rust from the water is not a problem












Yesterday morning I taped off all the parts and hung them up:













....and FINALLY after all the prep and dirty work, I was able to lay a paint brush to the parts! I was in a hurry and snapped some really crappy pics yesterday after the first coat (2 coat minimum, 3-4 hours between coats), but you can get kind of see what they will look like, pretty much a nice gloss black finish:

















My garage is starting to look like a slaughter house with all the stuff hanging haha


So after that I applied a second coat of POR and that's where I left things as of last night. I'm hoping today to snap some better quality pics to show the detail of the coating. I'm also thinking I will go ahead and spray some aluminum paint on the knuckles and rear sway bar. This was a huge chunk of work to knock out in a weekend, it took almost 4 HOURS just to put the first coat of POR15 on all the parts, the second went on way quicker since everything was already coated, maybe like an hour and a half? I can't say enough about this stuff, it's a great ONE TIME solution to take care of any rust problems you may have. POR makes all kinds of different products, and their rust preventive paint comes in different colors for your needs. It dries to a really nice hard durable finish, you can literally hit it with a hammer, or even bend whatever you paint it on, and it won't chip and crack like spray bomb paint. Anyway, enough product endorsment, I should be getting paid for that much but, should any of you guys be interested in using POR-15 on your project, or if you'd like to know what it is and how it works, here's their website:

POR-15

That is all for now! Hopefully I will have an update by next weekend or sooner with a lot of pics. This week I want to start working on taking care of the actually rust holes on the car (patch/POR-15) and I also want to start working on my little “custom” project for the rear diff cover…

Let me know what you guys think!

[PyR0NiAk]

Truck bed liner works well, too. I've always heard good stuff about POR. Also, your link is broken, but I fixed it for you.

[Steady_One_S13]

Subscribed! I <3 the detailed work. Craftsman tools ftw!!

I need to get my mr2 running so that i can start a similar project on my s13.

[Cbus240]

Update!

Wooow, so things have been really busy at work lately, and I haven't been able to get a lot done on the suspension. A few days after my last post, my Moog ball joints came in and later that week I installed them and took plenty of pics. I also took some pics of the knuckles and RLCA's after the POR-15 was laid down on them so you can see what it looks like. I painted the knuckles and rear sway bar with some Duplicolor Aluminum paint, and snapped some pics of those. I placed an order with Courtesy Nissan 3 weeks ago, and it still says there is part(s) on order, I'm starting to get a little worried, as this is going to really stop me from moving forward if I don't get the parts soon. I still have yet to touch the underside of the car (patch rust holes and POR) and until I do that, I can't lay down any undercoating. This weekend I'm going to work on the rear diff cover, (should have some pics by tomorrow) and I'm also going to lay down a light coat of semi-gloss black on the SPC arms to "freshen" them up haha. Lastly, I've been doing the painful task of going through and figuring what length and size nuts/bolts I am going to need for the rear suspension, and I'm hoping to place an order with Fastenal by Monday and get the gears turning on that. All right, enough chit chat, here's some pics of what little I DID do the past week or two lol

Some pics of POR parts:

















So I picked up the ball joints from Advance and got to work:

heres the ball joints and what you get with them, Moog Part #K9633


quality parts, and they give you all the necessary hardware


comparison of old/new




So even though I taped them off, the races on the RLCA's which the ball joints press into still got some POR in them, so I had to take the Dremel and clean out the races so I had a smooth surface to press the new joints in

the culprit


I used an 80grit flapper wheel on the Dremel


all clean


try to get the ball joint to seat by hand


then attach your handy ball joint press




make sure everything is lined up


theeenn go to town! now I used my impact to drive it home, you're really not supposed to, but Advance will never know


and VOILA...finished product:














I didnt put the hardware on the ball joints as I will do that when it comes to final assembly. Like I said earlier, I haven't had a lot of time to work on the car, but I was able to spray some aluminum paint on the knuckles and sway bar. I painted the sway bar because I think it will give a nice contrast to all the gloss black that will be under the car.

painted up:














That's it for now, I'm hoping this weekend to get the rear diff cover coated in POR15, then I can start the detail work on it with the Dremel. I am also going to finally start working on the underbody of the car; patch rust, coat in POR, then begin the undercoating process.

Truck bed liner works well, too. I've always heard good stuff about POR. Also, your link is broken, but I fixed it for you.

haha I didnt even check it to see if it worked, thanks for lookin out Pyro

Subscribed! I <3 the detailed work. Craftsman tools ftw!!

I need to get my mr2 running so that i can start a similar project on my s13.

thanks Steady! I'm glad you appreciate all the detail, and yeah I guess you can say I'm kind of a fan of Craftsman tools, it's the poor man's Snap-On lol. yeahhh I definitely wouldnt be able to do any of this with out having the Ranger as a daily driver, what year is your MR2??

[night240]

man u such pride in your car. everything looks soo good I wish u could do mine.

[Cbus240]

man u such pride in your car. everything looks soo good I wish u could do mine.

thanks man, I really do take pride in it, even though at the end of the day it's still a 240 lol. I'd do it for other people if it didnt take soo much time and effort to do, haha I will be so happy to have this suspension finished up soon

[night240]

man u such pride in your car. everything looks soo good I wish u could do mine.

thanks man, I really do take pride in it, even though at the end of the day it's still a 240 lol. I'd do it for other people if it didnt take soo much time and effort to do, haha I will be so happy to have this suspension finished up soon

If I don't have enough guts to do all rear subframe like u did. I guess I'll have it touch my rear subframe whenever I get some money flowing.

[gmac708]

It's coming along nicely, keep up the good work.

[Cbus240]

Update!

Ok, so I've realllly been lacking on updating this thing as I continue to make progress. I've gotten A LOT done in the past few weeks. The rear end is all back together and pretty much buttoned up! (no pics yet ) Since my last post I've undercoated 3/4 of the car (still havent done front end), I brought some new life to my rear diff, my parts from Courtesy finally came in, painted some odds and ends, and I reassembled the whole rear suspension and finally got it all back in the car. Instead of typing a lot of stuff nobody will read, I will just show the pics I have of my recent progress and add a lil text as I go....

at some point my little b.s. order of parts came in from Courtesy:







new stud for rear diff cover (it was all jacked up) never took pics of install though


yeah, I think I'm OCD sometimes


OK, so first I tore the cover off the rear diff:



lookin pretty tired


taped and prepped the cover, then hit it with POR15


after everything cured for a few days, I hit the cover with the Dremel to do that "custom" work I was talking about





So now that I had the cover done, it was time to give it some bling

here's a pic of the pieces I used to dress up the diff; Moonface fill/drain plugs, Socket Cap cover bolts, new VLSD sticker to make things official


first was reassembly; new gasket


stuff from work I used on mating surfaces


inside DA DIFF!


placed gasket


looks good enough to eat!


then bumped nasties and torqued her down


put on my OCD fresh VLSD sticka


annnd here's the payoff















...I think it turned out well, and I like the fact that it's something original that hasn't quite been done yet.

Anywho, after that little project, I moved on to ghetto-fixing the few rust spots on the car, and hitting any rust areas with POR15.

what I used to patch the holes....I know... but hey, cutting/welding is just outta the question for me right now...


yumm


driver's side wheel well hole patched


passenger wheel well patch #1


passenger wheel well patch #2


here's some pics of the areas I coated with POR15











Then I began to prep the car one last time before undercoating it. This included the scraping of more gunk (old uncured goopy undercoating) from the underside of the car, along with scuffing up all surfaces, and finally taping off all areas of the car to protect from overspray.

(scraping off goop, taping off stuff)







crap on floor


pile of said crap










masking things off









here's the undercoating I used. it covers well, is flexible, and cleans up easy. all in all, it just makes everything look uniform


then, it was time to dive in...

Before


After






















*Note: The flash from the camera made the undercoat look a little funky in some of the pics, but it is all a nice even black coat.

So needless to say, I was very happy with the results. I just wanted something I could re-undercoat the car with properly, and get a nice even finish. My car will never see snow (since she won't be driven in winter) and rarely rain, as I plan on only driving/tracking on nice weather days lol, so this was a perfect choice for me. If it were to be my daily, I think I would have definitely chosen the "truck bed liner" route...

Soo at some point I painted a bunch of odds and ends so I could start to piece things back together...

I taped up my adjustable rear suspension pieces, and shot with a new coat of Krylon semi-flat black






I also sprayed the rear gas tank splash shield thing with a fresh coat of Krylon semi-gloss plastic paint


hit the z32 ebrake extensions with some gloss black


then sprayed the exhaust heat shield and rear hubs with some aluminum




The following week, I loaded up the rear diff along with the rear subframe assembly, and took them to the storage unit so I could bolt them back up to the car.

So fresh, so clean! be jealous kids (yes I know I reversed to position of the acorn nuts, who cares)


up, up, and away


in its final resting place, as I AM NEVER DROPPING THIS B**** AGAIN!


The next day I loaded up all the other parts to start the final assembly of the rear suspension.


This is the last pic I have.I haven't taken any pics of everything put back together in the rear yet. Let me tell you, it looks amazing, like literally as it did when it rolled off the assembly line. I hope to have some pics up by this weekend. I've already started to rip into the front suspension. Everything is out; FLCA's, sway bar, tension rods, knuckles, coilovers, and tension rod bracket things. I've started taking a list of all the hardware I need to buy for the front. I placed an order with FRsport and have new OE FLCA's coming in, along with some Energy Suspension rear sway bar end links(need them to finish rear). The next steps will be to prep and undercoat/POR15 the front portion of the car, as well as POR15 the front components that will stay, hit them with paint, then reinstall everything back together.

Houston, we are NOW UP TO DATE!! woot woot

I'm thinking I should be able to add more progress pics by the end of this weekend, so for the TWO people that actually follow this thread lol, stay tuned....

[ILoveMyRHS13]

Holy s*** dude, MAJOR props to you. I wish I had the time/money/motivation to do this sort of s***.

Keep it up, we need more people like you in this community.

[RustspecS13]

WOW pat looking amazing!! I can't wait to start on stuff like this for my car, I'm fabricating a bunch of things right now so its pointless for me to be painting things. This is definitely motivating to get working on my car!

~Alex

[S13_love]

Good job! Keep it up man...

[gmac708]

Super job as usual.
That rubberized undercoating looks interresting...hmmm.