As per normal at this time of year I had some holidays I needed to take at work. While others may go on holiday abroad to get a tan I opted for sunny Worcestershire. Welding tan plus a heat wave, I looked positively radiant haha.
The first job I wanted to do was to test the engine... to be fair I should have done this as soon as I bought it
. As I said before the engine was bought from a friend of a friend of a friend and all I know about it is that "it's good". My ambitious challenge of getting the car to the gathering is quite dependant on the engine being good. I really wanted to get it running on the bench before spending loads of time getting it in the car. At the end of the day if it doesn't work I may choose to change engine completely. I only have the Yamaha R1 because it was cheap. My brother offered me his Kawasaki ZZR1100 if I found the engine to be scrap.
Having been sat in a car with a car cover for protection for a long time the engine looked considerably worse than when I last saw it. All the aluminium was corroded, white powdery sadness.
The wiring was a mess, I would have been quicker to cut the loom off at the ecu and run new wires to everything I needed. Bypassing things like the clutch switch, side stand switch, tilt sensor, kill and ignition switches etc was a pain.
Once I found a fuel pump, fitted a battery, exhaust, throttle bodies etc and got everything rigged up it took just over 4 hours to get it running! I thought it was going to take days not hours.
I had an issue with getting the fuel to return. After messing I heard a pop and fuel started to flow. I think the pressure regulater was stuck. Remember I don't think this engine has run in at least 6-7 years.
Big smiles, the engine sounded good. I couldn't run it for long as I didn't have a coolant system on it. Assuming the gearbox will be ok I was happy enough to proceed with this engine install!
The next job was to empty the car and move it up to the flat so I could continue on the body work.
First things first, I put the cage and seats in place and imagined it finished
With the to do list already massive, I also had to revisit all the sheet metal work completed to date. When moving out of my rented house some 2 1/2 years ago I didn't expect it to be parked up for that length of time. The car was trailered away with bare metal on the outer surfaces.
With a wire brush they came up clean and for extra protection I covered it in rust eating primer.
After cleaning one arch I moved on to making a front brake disc adapter. The brakes I have gone for are a little strange. They're off a Mazda MX3 purely because that's what I found in the scrap yard. The rears are the same as used on the more common MX5 but the fronts are abit odd. The hub used to form part of caliper. The inner brake pad needs to be supported against the hub giving it the physical stop to butt up against. This is good in one way as it keeps the over all profile of the adapter to front brake face pretty narrow. With my silly wheels I needed this clearance to avoid having large spacers messing up my wheel turning clearance.
This job was a massive pain, a lot of grinding and quite a high risk of getting it slightly wrong. If I knew what all the dimensions were before I started I would have simply drawn them on CAD and got them water cut. Never mind that's one done! I still need to make the second but now I have a template.
A similar process happend for the rear calipers, luckily I had already made the brackets and they just needed tacking on. I've misplaced the rear right caliper but for this part of the process I just used the left one only.
I might have been a bit ambitious... new wiper blades arrived haha... I don't even know if the motor works yet but yeah...
After a lot more welding, completely doing the left rear arch. I primed, seam sealed and wax oiled both rears. If get time I plan to Schultz the entire underside including the arches to give a second coat.
Moving onto the front arches the car never fails to surprise. Looking for clean metal to weld to I find more rust and filler. A quick plate soon sorted it out.
Eventually all the arches were fully welded and good enough for me to move onto installing the engine. The fronts still need to be seam sealed and wax oiled etc but a mate was joining me for the weekend to help get the engine in. So I happily left that for another day.
The first job I wanted to do was to test the engine... to be fair I should have done this as soon as I bought it
. As I said before the engine was bought from a friend of a friend of a friend and all I know about it is that "it's good". My ambitious challenge of getting the car to the gathering is quite dependant on the engine being good. I really wanted to get it running on the bench before spending loads of time getting it in the car. At the end of the day if it doesn't work I may choose to change engine completely. I only have the Yamaha R1 because it was cheap. My brother offered me his Kawasaki ZZR1100 if I found the engine to be scrap.Having been sat in a car with a car cover for protection for a long time the engine looked considerably worse than when I last saw it. All the aluminium was corroded, white powdery sadness.
The wiring was a mess, I would have been quicker to cut the loom off at the ecu and run new wires to everything I needed. Bypassing things like the clutch switch, side stand switch, tilt sensor, kill and ignition switches etc was a pain.
Once I found a fuel pump, fitted a battery, exhaust, throttle bodies etc and got everything rigged up it took just over 4 hours to get it running! I thought it was going to take days not hours.
I had an issue with getting the fuel to return. After messing I heard a pop and fuel started to flow. I think the pressure regulater was stuck. Remember I don't think this engine has run in at least 6-7 years.
Big smiles, the engine sounded good. I couldn't run it for long as I didn't have a coolant system on it. Assuming the gearbox will be ok I was happy enough to proceed with this engine install!
The next job was to empty the car and move it up to the flat so I could continue on the body work.
First things first, I put the cage and seats in place and imagined it finished
With the to do list already massive, I also had to revisit all the sheet metal work completed to date. When moving out of my rented house some 2 1/2 years ago I didn't expect it to be parked up for that length of time. The car was trailered away with bare metal on the outer surfaces.
With a wire brush they came up clean and for extra protection I covered it in rust eating primer.
After cleaning one arch I moved on to making a front brake disc adapter. The brakes I have gone for are a little strange. They're off a Mazda MX3 purely because that's what I found in the scrap yard. The rears are the same as used on the more common MX5 but the fronts are abit odd. The hub used to form part of caliper. The inner brake pad needs to be supported against the hub giving it the physical stop to butt up against. This is good in one way as it keeps the over all profile of the adapter to front brake face pretty narrow. With my silly wheels I needed this clearance to avoid having large spacers messing up my wheel turning clearance.
This job was a massive pain, a lot of grinding and quite a high risk of getting it slightly wrong. If I knew what all the dimensions were before I started I would have simply drawn them on CAD and got them water cut. Never mind that's one done! I still need to make the second but now I have a template.
A similar process happend for the rear calipers, luckily I had already made the brackets and they just needed tacking on. I've misplaced the rear right caliper but for this part of the process I just used the left one only.
I might have been a bit ambitious... new wiper blades arrived haha... I don't even know if the motor works yet but yeah...
After a lot more welding, completely doing the left rear arch. I primed, seam sealed and wax oiled both rears. If get time I plan to Schultz the entire underside including the arches to give a second coat.
Moving onto the front arches the car never fails to surprise. Looking for clean metal to weld to I find more rust and filler. A quick plate soon sorted it out.
Eventually all the arches were fully welded and good enough for me to move onto installing the engine. The fronts still need to be seam sealed and wax oiled etc but a mate was joining me for the weekend to help get the engine in. So I happily left that for another day.
I knew it needed a fair bit of work but it looks like way more work than I would of imagined (and waaaaay above my skill level!). So glad you're bringing this back to life, got a bit worried when it went a bit quiet on Instagram. It's deffo in the right hands 
)
