dieselmiata

iTrader: (3)

I lied. It is a Miata. It's red. And slow (but we're gonna fix that).

This is my Miata.


This is Diesel.



This is Diesel on a Miata.



I flew down to Texas to pick this thing up and drive it back to the Chicago area. This one won't see salty roads like my 95. Got a good deal, 3K for the car with hardtop and new paint. It was "Texas Red" read:sunfaded to pink.

Looks good when clean.


Started tearing into it a bit. Not too bad looking.


Cam seals were leaking something fierce.


The wires were dryrotted and cracking so I tore the old stuff off and retaped them. I also powdercoated the brackets in an attempt to "hide" them and make the engine bay look a little less cluttered. The pictures don't reflect how well it blends in. I'm pretty happy with it so far.

dieselmiata

iTrader: (3)

The plan for now is to strip it down pretty far, clean, paint, powdercoat, and polish everything possible. I want this one to look like it just rolled off the showroom floor by the summer. I just got done polishing the throttle body and dashpot. Dremels are awesome.

I took the valve cover off for the first time. Pretty varnishy (that's a word now) inside. I'm sure I can fix that though.

Powdercoating is fun!


For my next trick, brushed aluminum!






I think I'm getting a little carried away with polishing stuff. These are my water pump pulley and alternator pulley. Well, half of it anyway. I'll get to the other half later. The water pump pulley only took about half an hour. I cheated and bolted it to my bench grinder and just held different grades of sandpaper to it.

dieselmiata

iTrader: (3)

I took a break from polishing and broke out the trusty old pickle fork. Disconnected the suspension inner workings and am starting the cleanup process. EVERY PART ON THIS CAR is coated in a nice 1/4" layer of Texas dust. But I'll take dust over rust any day. It's gonna look great after I clean and paint everything. I also put the injectors and fuel rail back on. It stands out a little more than I hoped. but we'll see after I get everything else put back together. On another note, during my reassembly of the crank boss, I found that my clutch is weak and in need of replacement. Time to drop the tranny...



Hard to see in the crappy pic (i'm not an artist) but my beltline moldings were in really crappy shape, so I pulled them off, used a razor blade to scrape all the old rubber off, and plasti-dipped them. Turned out better than I had expected.




My control arms are in pretty bad shape.

So I pulled out my weapons of mass de-rust-ion


Prepped for paint




Same process for the calipers.


And I fixed that dust problem with new undercoating.


Because everybody likes clean nuts!

dieselmiata

iTrader: (3)

Got the timing belt done, and the engine is almost all buttoned up. While I was in there, I pulled all my lifters apart, got the nasty black oil from out of them. Next I'm going to remove the power steering pump and see if I can polish the pulley. I'm really liking the water pump pulley, but if the others don't match it's going to drive me insane.


I just dropped my power steering pump and rack. Holy crap what a mess. The boots are all but gone, the top seal is leaking, and it's all covered in a 1/4" thick layer of grease and dirt. I've go some real work to put into this.


Cleaned up the steering rack, and figured out a way to match the power steering pump to the rest of the engine. The pulley still needs some polishing, but the brunt of the work is done. I painted the pump body with the same black as the rest of the chassis to help it blend in a bit. I have no ^&%$#in g idea how I'm going to polish the A/C pulley without removing the compressor. Maybe once I get everything up and running, I'll just use the natural rotation of the engine and hold sandpaper to the pulley as it rotates



Had to take a break from car work to rebuild the head and put a bigger motor on my air compressor. But now I'm back in action, and now have more motivation to restore parts!

dieselmiata

iTrader: (3)

Just ordered a buttload of stuff from Rosenthal Mazda.

Your Order Contains:
2 x SEAL, DUST (NA01-34-548)
1 x BOLT (0259-54-292A)
1 x SEAL, PCV (E301-13-338A)
2 x SEAL,DUST-BALL JOINT (H266-28-448)
1 x HOSE,WATER (B61P-15-261A)
1 x HOSE, LOWER WATER (B61P-15-185)
1 x HOSE,VENT (B61P-13-742A)
1 x HOSE,WATER (B61P-13-691A)
1 x HOSE, WATER (B61P-13-682A)
1 x HOSE,WATER (B61P-13-681B)
1 x VALVE,PCV (BP05-13-890)
1 x HOSE,P.C.V. (B61P-13-741)
1 x TRAY, BATTERY (B095-56-032)
1 x VPM,HARDWARE KIT,REA (BWZH-26-49Z-MV)
1 x CLAMP, BATTERY (NA01-56-03XA)
1 x HOSE NO.1,WATER (NA75-61-211)
1 x VPM,HARDWARE KIT,FRN (NAY0-33-29Z-MV)
1 x MUD GUARD RR MIATA (NA75-V3-460G)

I had to throw the mudguards in there. They look good. All I need now is a battery and a new rear caliper and she'll be ready to rock and roll!

A few glamour shots of her current state. I reinstalled the power steering system, soldered in some new wires to replace the old hardened stuff, and finished bolting down all of the wiring harnesses.




And all of this is would be much easier without some damned wildcat smacking all the nuts and bolts onto the ground.


Painted my new mudguards, not a bad job if I say so myself..


Color match is GO!


Here's how it went down. I finished putting everything together (engine wise) today, and with my trusty Haynes manual in hand, I went to fire her up. All I got was wub-wub-wub-WUB-wub-WUB-wub. Yeah, It sucked. So After double checking everything, connections, air, fuel spark systems, I tried again. More of the same. Maybe bad gas I thought. It's been sitting since October, off to the gas station to get a couple of gallons. Put em in, tried to start, same story. So my wife hears the noise and comes out to see how things are going. I told her what was going on, I told her and she asked if I was sure I had the spark plug wires on right. Initial reaction(in my head)

WOMAN, HOW DARE YOU QUESTION MY AUTOMOTIVE SKILLS?!

I checked the Haynes manual and I had the wires right for what was listed from 1992 and later. I had the wires exactly as listed, but decided to change the order to the 1990-1991 order.


Dammit. Pwn3d by the wife. So she's running. Good. But at the end of the video you'll see smoke rising from the exhaust header. Who's got two thumbs and forgot to tighten the O2 sensor? This guy! Tightened it down, let her warm up, and after about 20 minutes the ticking went away. I expected it would take longer because i took all the lifters apart to clean them. I started noticing a strange metallic ringing, and traced it to the exhaust tip. The baffles in the muffler seem to have broken and making a god awful ringing sound. Got a new muffler on standby though, so no worries.

So that's a project for another day. A little later on I started to hear a strange popping noise from the engine bay, sort of like bubbles popping. Looked around, nothing obvious. And then I noticed my radiator overflow tank level rising. The damned fan failed on me and it started to overheat. I got her shut down before the needle climbed to the danger zone. It was cold out and I threw a box fan on the engine to cool her down. No damage done, compression is still good across the board. anyway, enough rambling. Here's a quick video of her idling. *WARNING! There are some people who have no business taking pictures or videos. I am one of them. One day I'll have someone else take decent pics/videos to put up.


Installed the Mudguards, I had no idea how drastically they changed the profile of the rear end! The paint came out a perfect match too.

Oh yeah, and i got my plates. I can drive her now! (once i source a rear caliper.)

AlexL

Impressive cleaning and "restoration". Are you sticking with the 1.6?

dieselmiata

iTrader: (3)

Holy crap what a day. She's on the ground now, all suspension pieces on and torqued down. What a bitch that was! The tie rod ends were a monster to get back in and torqued down. Still needs an alignment, but that will come soon. Put the sway bars back on, after a thorough cleaning. Put all the pads in the calipers and set the parking brake adjustment all that is left now is to bleed them. I'll wait till tomorrow to do that. Rebuilt the shifter and bolted it all together. I bought a new HVAC panel from BTDT and swapped the old dingy panel out. It looks 100 times better now. Radio is in, and the tombstone is in place, the plastidip job on it looks better than I'd hoped. Put the instrument cluster and steering wheel back together.

dieselmiata

iTrader: (3)

I pulled the top off today, it was old, cracked, and mildewed. In case you haven't noticed, i'm a little bit of a clean freak, so I was NOT happy with what I found. I'll let the pictures speak.






I needed a moment to take that in. The AA battery had me worried about corrosion underneath it, but it was sitting on a protective barrier of leaves and dirt. At least I found the source of the musty smell.

Much better now.

mgeoffriau

iTrader: (7)

Wow, looking fantastic. I doubt any car I've ever owned has been that clean.

2 nitpicks:

Not digging the body-colored mudguards. Really prefer they stay black.

Also, can't stand repaints that don't keep the black strip at the bottom of the doors. Mask it off and spray it with some Plastidip?

dieselmiata

iTrader: (3)

Most of this thread up to this point has been copypasta'd from MiataForumz. There are likely breaks in the dialogue/conversation that did not make it into the thread, so I apologize for any confusion up to here. The top has been replaced with a Robbins glass window, she got new tires, and I have her running on the DIYPNP that I built for my 95, which has been sold due to lack of interest and Chicago winters.

I wanted to bring the thread here due to interest from other people, and this:




It's a Greddy TD04H with an EDT manifold I picked up from another member. Needs to be cleaned first, but this should be fun. I'll get more pictures up in a bit. Oh, and more cat pictures.

dieselmiata

iTrader: (3)

I wasn't sure about the mudguards. They looked somehow "off" when they were black. Agreed on the black strip at the bottom though. I've thought about fixing it when the weather gets nice enough for painting. But I think this turbo will be taking up the majority of my time, so we'll see where it goes.

mgeoffriau

iTrader: (7)

Like dis:

adamiata

iTrader: (1)

I like your idea of plasti-dipping the beltline moldings. Mine look like **** too.

dieselmiata

iTrader: (3)

The plastidip has held up for almost a year now and counting. The hat trick was separating the old rubber stuff from the thin metal frame without bending it all to hell.

rleete

iTrader: (21)

Just a little bit? You're way over the top, mister.


Looking good, though.

Fireindc

iTrader: (13)

Damn man, how do you even drive your cars being that OCD? I live down a 1/2 mile dirt road, I bet that would drive you insane.

dieselmiata

iTrader: (3)

It's probably overkill, I know. I just like a clean car. It makes it easier to work on.

In other news, I pick up the keys to my new house today! More room to work!

viperormiata

iTrader: (24)

damn that's shiny

thenuge26

iTrader: (2)

Gonna need this eventually to match.

2ndGearRubber

Super impressive! I hope to do this to my 94 someday.

Keep it up!