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ace chrome aluminum 2 cans free from trashcan at scrap guys place
cast coat iron 1/4 can $12.49
cast coat aluminum $12.49
rustoleum professional semigloss black $9.98
dei floor and tunnel shield leftover from the cup car
New totals: 1796.62 with 2000 recoup
About two months since the last update, and this one won’t be too exciting. Unless you like super OCD level restoration stuff, in which case welcome to your happy place.
So, lets pickup where we left off. With the frame rails. I needed t add some points to bolt the factory line set back in, so while the car was at dads place, I went ahead and did that, as well as ground down the wends some. And touched up some others. It was still ugly, but as the old saying goes: a grinder and paint make me the welder I aint!
For grinding, to keep it off the fresh paint and from going all over the shop, I hung welding blankets from the rockers and such all the way around the car with heay duty magnets. Worked like a charm to keep the mess contained and protect the car. No pictures.
After grinding, it was still pretty freaking bad, so I turned back to our lord and savior: SEAM SEALER!!!!
Needed to be done anyway, but makes it way prettier. Pro tip: to keep your bolt holes usable, put crappy bolts in them, then throw them away after the seam sealer cures.
No pictures yet. You have to wait. Mostly because oi have none of this point.
I then loaded the car up and brought it to my house where I can get tedious and ---- retentive. Which I actually thoroughly enjoy.
Step one was washing the car. Scrubbing the trunk and interior with a red scotchbrite/dawn/purple power to remove overspray and dirt, blasting all the cavities to get rid of yet more crushed glass blasting media, and then ceramicoated the jambs and engine bay.
The interior floor I did with a leftover can of rustoleum hunter green. No reason to waste the good stuff on parts that will be under carpet for the rest of eternity.
Before I really got moving, I mocked up the whole car, and rolled it outside and cleaned the shop. The mockup really was a shot in the arm. i needed it. I’m super happy I chose BRG. It was definitely the correct decision for my soul.
Then, ordered a bit of reflectix off amazon for added firewall insulation, and a little sound deadener I had left over from some project at some point. The amazon reflectix is not as thick as the stuff at Lowes, ad the mylar is not as good. I would not recommend it. I laid the firewall pad on top of it as a pattern, cut all the holes slightly oversized on the reflectix, and hung it.
Then, cleaned up the pad with Windex. Followed by soaking in chemical guys vrp to keep it flexible and healthy for as long as possible. It soaked in quite a bit before it started to pool, so I’m calling that a win.
Hung it on the firewall with fender washers and m6 nuts from my bolt bins. A note about my bins: there are YEARS of part outs, junkyard runs, leftovers, etc. in these bins. The salvage yards here don’t charge for hardware or body plugs, and I always leave with some nice ones to add to the stash, and therefore have an organized horde to use as needed. Most of the blue bins you see on the wall are metric.
Next, I put the car up on stands. It was time to get the underside painted, seam sealer touched up, etc. quite frankly, I LOVE a detailed and clean undercarriage. May be why I’m an *** man, I dunno. So, I started by knocking the crossmembers out from underneath, and grabbing two cans of Krylon matte black. The fusion stuff is really nice and bonds well to questionable surfaces.
Cleaned the tank and shot with rustoleum semigloss black. The heat shields got done with rustoleum antique pewter, as it looks like galvanizing. Tub in matte black. I used some leftover window AC foam to replicate the crumbling foam seal from the front of the tank to the tub upon reinstall.
I then cleaned and went to hang the lines. Which turned into an ordeal in its own right. Turns out I put the weld nuts in the wrong places in the frame rails, so the line mounts wouldn’t clear. I don’t have any pictures, but a bit of finesse with a carbide burr to slot the hole, and some hacksaw to cut the extra locating tab off, and it went in well enough. I don’t know what year these lines are from,but im assuming 99-2000. They’re the ones that came with the turbo car.
After this, I attacked the filthy rear suspension drop out. While disassembling, I used a cold chisel to cut the dust shields off the rear spindles, as they will not clear the larger brakes from the turbo car. I also cut off the previous PPF delete mount that I welded in that was denting the fuel tank and rattling on the heat shields.
After that, it was simple disassembly. Until the FU bolts. One came out nice and easy. The other took 4 days of mapp gas, penetrating oil, and impact hammering to finally break free. But it did.
Then everything was scrubbed down, and the control arms and cradle painted gloss black. The diff housing cast coat aluminum, hogshead cast coat iron. The hardware was all cleaned up on the wire wheel and sprayed with the free ace hardware chrome aluminum.
The axles wouldn’t come out of the spindles no matter what I tried. Ultimately, I cleaned and painted them all together. The spindles were cast coat iron, and the axle shafts gloss black. The cvs got a dab of green, and the CV boots got VRP. Then, the whole mess got reassembled in the car. Came out pretty nice!
I’ve also been cleaning up all the grommets and weatherstripping and rubber parts as I go. all of them have overspray, oxidation, and general sconge on them. I read in jeffbucc’s thread a tip about soaking in a purple power/dawn/water solution overnight to soften the surface contaminants before scrubbing with a brown scotchbrite or washcloth or scrub brush as the case may warrant. After its clean, I soak in VRP until it wont anymore. Then reinstall.
Next up, I sanded down and painted the roll bar. Three times kept getting what I thought were fisheyes. After getting art over here, turned out that I was experiencing dryshot in odd ways. So, it was finally done with rustoleum semigloss black.
Used up some leftover dei floor and tunnel shield in the trans tunnel. I bought two of the biggest rolls they sell for the stock car, and this was all my scraps. It photographs well, and will look way better with a transmission in the way.
To end the update, lets talk about the turbo car. It has started smoking heavily, and had developed a misfire. I wound up trying new plugs in the flyin miata and that fixed the misfire. Previous plugs were fouled from fuel, and it ran way better. I then pulled the exhaust to swap the broken driveshaft. In the process, found that the cat was partially plugged.
It ran way, way better. Tire smoke show in fourth gear, no more vibrations, trans shifted way better, noise from trans went away. Amazing what all 8 u joint caps do for you!
However, it still smokes heavily. Doesn’t smell like oil. Possibly fuel, or a popped head gasket from the “no wastegate and I pegged the boost gauge” initial runs I did. I’m nervous to pull it apart, but I think at this point I’m going to have to. Thankfully the challenge rules allow for repairs for damage due to testing. As long as I’m not upgrading anything while its apart, I’m ok there. But I’m still very, very nervous.
Question to end the post: is the turbo back flyin miata exhaust pictured the same as the stock catback in length/shape? At some point this exhaust will go away, as its pretty rough, and id like to keep my eyes open for a good used one that wont make my life a living hell later.
Remove wilwood prop valve, plug wires, chassis bracing and boost controller from budget to get us 250
Boght 2003miata roller for 150 off facebook
Sold depowered rack, front suspension, brakes, ocilovers, 14 inch wheels, steering column, pedals, and other little bits from the 2003 roller to Adrian on grm for 250
Neoprene foam 9.99 roll, used uder 1/3 3.33
New totals: 1699.96 with 2000 recoup
At this stage of a restoration, im always jumping around like an ADHD first grader jacked up on sugar cookies, red bull and meth. So, please, don’t expect a logical order for a while.
Last update saw me with a fully finished undercarriage, up to the firewall. So, I guess we’ll start there.
I pulled the crossmember, taped up the wheelwells and engine bay, and blacked out the wheelwells.
Get done with that, and then topcoat the ceramicoat with a few coats of wax. I scored this bottle on closeout at the parts store for like 3 bucks, and am SERIOUSLY impressed with it so far. Topcoated the hood on the daily for a longer term test, and even if it doesn’t hold up too terribly long, I love its performance.
Around this time, I bought another parts car. It popped up on Facebook for 150 a few miles away, the young dudes selling it part out Miata’s to make a living, and it had “nice” carpet and top. And I nice looking power steering rack, and coilovers, and wheels, and a scruffy top, and….
I proceeded to get all the good out of it. one of the main reasons I bought it was that I knew a local GRMer is building a locost and needed suspension, brake, steering, and wheels. All of which this car had. I told him to give me what he felt was reasonable, which was 250. I kept what I needed from the rest of the car to use, such as brake lines, carpet, tops, ac parts, heat parts, dash parts, nb2 chassis bracing, emissions bits, bumper bars, latches, strikers, grommets, brackets, nits, bolts, weatherstripping, pretty much everything I could get off the thing to make sure I got my negative hundred bucks worth. I took the top and windshield trim after these pictures.
So back to the front suspension, now that I have a power rack to work with. I took it and my k frame and carpet over to work where we have an industrial hot water pressure washer and pit. And sandblaster. That my salesman self can occasionally use on the weekends.
Same process on the other parts I took/take there.
Brought it all back, painted the steel parts black, refinished the hardware, and assembled on a set of $15 no name coilovers I got off Facebook for exactly this reason.
I also started looking at the emissions and fuel system parts. Pulling the nice gold cad plated stuff, cleaning it up, using nice gold cad plated hardware to match….
Cleaned up and painted the bigger master and booster setup from the 03, but wanted to retain the 99 brake lines and prop valve setup. So, I cut up some of the lines from the parts car, used the 10mm fittings, a little flare action, and done. Doesn’t look factory, but doesn’t look out of place either.
I then moved on to the pedals so I could hang the booster. Took apart the setups from both cars, added cruise control lever, cleaned, painted, lubed, etc.
Somewhere in here, I started rebuilding the HVAC boxes. I have a bad heater core in the original to the car, the parts car had some broken bits but a good heater core, and there was another couple of boxes in the trunk of it. took all the best parts and built one box, and in the process put new foam and grease in it throughout. Used a self-adhesive neoprene 1/8 thick foam I found on amazon. Seems like the right product for the job. I hope.
We also finally got the windshield frame painted. I used my laser level to make even lines at exactly the same height in both door jambs, taped off the shop and car, and we shot it with acetone thinned semigloss black Valspar. Came out glossier than I expected, but I’m not mad. However, I really should have done another round of high build primer and sealer on the hardtop. Theres some printing through the paint that’s pretty obvious. I may have to repaint it. don’t know yet, as I’m not there yet. That’s a decision for after I paint the passenger’s door/mudflaps/mirrors, and reshoot the driver’s fender I damaged.
Worked the top a bit. Still funky after pressure washing, but way less bad. That’s something embedded in the canvas over the bow. It was over every bow, but most of it came out. Except this one.
There was a seam at the back coming undone. A negligible amount of shoe goo from my wife, and a bunch of clamps later, we also reinforced some questionable seams spots around the rear glass.
Prior to putting the top in, I pulled the rain drain tubes from deathtrap and cleaned them up as they were in FAR better shape than the ones in this car.
Then proceeded to install the refinished rollbar. After waxing it, because I could. I think I covered refinishing it in an earlier update, as well as sandblasting the really rusty reinforcement plates. If I didn’t, use your imagination….
I THINK that gets us current. Maybe. Theres probably stuff I’m forgetting, as I get 20 minutes here and an hour there to work on the car. It wont be done for the September shindig in Pittsburg, but I really hope to get some shakedown in this season. It doesn’t look good though…
I chip away at this build almost daily. I really do. Sometimes its only 3 or 5 minutes, but SOMETHING gets done every day.
However, there’s a looong way to go from where we left off.
I guess as good a place to start as any is with the body, as that’s my never-ending empire of crap. We had the rear half of the body done, wet sanded, buffed, and assembled. And one door buffed. We still had one door in primer, a front fender needing reshot, mirrors and mudflaps to paint. Art and I did that one day in the driveway.
While I waited for that to cure to wetsand and buff, I assembled the drivers door. Which I took almost no pictures of, apparently. In the process, I cleaned all the old grease out of the regulator and tracks, regreased. Scrubbed the door weatherstripping, soaked in VRP to soften. Lubed all the latches and hinges. Wound up having to replace the window bushings, the window weatherstripping, and the door bushings because I just didn’t have any good ones anywhere in the pile.
There was a massive purge, selloff, ad organization of my miata parts horde. Its actually still ongong, as im getting rig of stuff as I complete parts of the car.
Anyway, during the door rebuild I parted out a focus SVT. In the SVT was a polk DB8 subwoofer. I love those subs. So, I had to see of it would fit, as they are rated for free air. The answer is yes, they will fit just find in an unmodified miata door if one is so inclined. I do not know how it will sound though.
The door was finished and hung and adjusted properly. Mirror mounted and all! You can also see I refinished my DIY frog arms and reinstalled them, as well as cleaned my fender liners.
Around this point I realized that the car was assembled around the wiring harnesses. And those were still in deathtrap, the drivetrain donor. If I wanted to keep consolidating the parts pile, I had to make the pile bigger and get the harnesses in. so I pushed the green car outside, in the daylight, started at it and got happy for a while.
Regardless, I pulled deathtrap in, and pulled it apart. I did my best to save every factory clip and fastener, to put the harness back exactly as the factory had done it. that was a job, but we got there. Dash harness was first. This, as we all know, routes up both sides of the engine bay. I re-wrapped most of it after a lot of scrubbing, as it just wasn’t looking nice. I also decided somewhere in here that I was taking all the gold plated under hood brackets and painting them black, as well as doing the weatherstripping restoration tricks to the hoses.
Transferred all the cleaned up wiring and components over to the green car, installed the rebuilt HVAC components, installed the HVAC lines and evap stuff and cruise bits
Now that the car was undrivable and a pain in the butt to move, it was time to make it go away. So we did so with extreme prejudice. Cut the front and rear 19 inches off to gain more working room. Cut the bent PPF in half because the chassis was too bent and rusty to get stuff to pull out. Had been soaking all the rusty hardware in free all for months, so there was a minimum of fuss there. Cut the brake lines and got my sport brakes off. Pulled the drivetrain out the front.
Pushed the car outside on the 5 dollar wheels held on with one lug nut each. Cut the rear control arms on each side to get the diff and chunk of PPF out, as well as the rear coil overs. Cut the fronts to get the front coilovers. Pulled the rack and fuel pump module. Called steve, my scrapper buddy to make the rest go away.
Broke the six speed and engine down to put on stands after draining whatever green gear oil was in the trans all over my floor. Twice.
Found that there was a lightweight flywheel that LOOKS like the flying miata piece, a SMOKED orange clutch, and not many other concerns. I’m going to weld a bung to the oil pan for the return and use AN line, and hardline the turbo coolant lines. Possibly the oil feed as well, but haven’t decided on that yet. Mostly for reliability’s sake, some for vanity. Because I like hard lines, and hate rubber. Hard lines done well make me happy, and are pretty.
I’ve gotten the passengers door and drivers fender wet sanded, buffed, ceramicoated and installed, the passengers door mostly reassembled, started cleaning and painting brake calipers.
I also managed to free up every piece of the ohlins coilovers, sandblast the scruffy *** springs, clean all the anodized aluminum, and reassemble the rears. I painted the steel eyelets black after blasting them and the springs got a fresh coat of yellow.
Dang man, good work. Deathtrap looks like it was a nicely sorted car at one point.
That's most likely a SuperMiata clutch given the orange pressure plate. I'd guess that trans fluid is RedLine lightweight shockproof given the blue color. Flyin Miata and Bofi recommend that IIRC.
Is that ground strap on the bellhousing plate as worn through as it looks?
Dang man, good work. Deathtrap looks like it was a nicely sorted car at one point.
That's most likely a SuperMiata clutch given the orange pressure plate. I'd guess that trans fluid is RedLine lightweight shockproof given the blue color. Flyin Miata and Bofi recommend that IIRC.
Is that ground strap on the bellhousing plate as worn through as it looks?
yes it is. Appears it was cca wire, and just failed spectacularly.
And deathtrap WAS a really nice car at one time. Well built. I think it had the intercooler setup you had. Woth the red steel tubing running from an upward pointed discharge on the turbo, etc. Can't be sure since none of that came with, but its the only thing that fits the clues. The megasquirt and cop conversion throw me, but boyh are pretty old school at this point. So....
I'm grateful you appreciate what im doing here. Thank you!!
What COP conversion are you referring to? The coils/wires from the recent photos look stock to me.
Hopefully it's an MS2 at least. MS1 is pretty rudimentary at this point. Honestly a Speeduino should be more capable than MS1 (don't quote me on that as I haven't looked into it) and I've picked up 2 different Speeduino's for around $200 each used.
I've gotten pretty bad about just throwing money at the car. Keeping it to a nice budget is something I can really appreciate. The attention to detail is great as well, it's easy to slap parts on a car but taking the time to clean/fine tune takes some passion.
Yeah, you have to go back a ways to where I first bought deathtrap for cop and the megasquirt. We're pretty sure it's an ms2 diy pop kit, and a fab9 cop kit.
A restoration is just a series of 5 minute jobs.
clean, paint, etc.
the six speed worked fine before being removed from deathtrap. So. Scrubbed with zep decreased and a wire brush till clean. Then a coat of cast coat aluminum. It'll look nice under the car, and be easier to keep an eye on for leaks. Probably 25 minutes in total to get it here over the course of a week. It doesn't take long, just takes a willingness.
Love the trans on the engine stand, I’m going to have to use that. Don’t even have to move the arms!
Feel free to steal it, it's not an original idea. Forgot where I found it. Mopar 4 speeds maybe? Been doing it for years, regardless. Beats the hell out of working in the floor.
Fwd transmission work doesn't go as well on the engine stand however. They just don't seem to fit right most of the time.
Removed the turbo and manifold tonight. Who, in their right mind, puts never size on the head end of the stud and deformed lock nuts on the other end??? The studs in many cases are now trapped in the manifold.
also, the threads in the head are NOT healthy. Time to get the timeserts out....
also, the exhaust ports are black and sticky.Wtf? Thats a new one on me. I'm used to footy or carbon, but not sticky.
Flyin miata silicone boost hoses and radiator hoses: 400
Arp head studs: 146.99
Head gasket: 48.78
Harmonic balancer: 35.99
Water pump pulley: 10
Turbo actuator: 89
Machine shop bill: 570
An clutch adapters: 23.98
Header wrap: 28.99
Slave cylinder: 16.99
36” 4an oil feed: 16.99
Vdo oil sender: 48.18
Nord locks for manifold: 19.88
Manifold hardware from Troutman hardware: 25
Fuel filter: 29.99
Overflow tank: 54.56
Sunvisor deletes: 25.89
Intake t: 18.73
1 inch silicone hose: 29.95
Intercooler: 116.63
Fans: 110.58
Starter: 20
New totals: 3794.77 with 2000 recoup
I left off months ago almost out of challenge budget, with an engine and transmission on a stand after being pressure washed, one miata on the property, and optimism.
I have been trudging the road to happy destiny. Uphill. In the snow. Both ways.
I’m going to do this update based on the chronology of my pictures, and ad what pictures I have. There’ve been some significant setbacks, and I am out of the GRM challenge at this point. It will still go to the party, but not be able to compete in under budget.
So, lets start the update. When we left off, I had hung harnesses on the firewall. Next was a dash. I built the dash I needed from the three I had. Took all three apart, using the cruise control harness, green switches, nicest impact bar, cleaning everything thoroughly, etc. I had to do a bosectomy in the process, as well as install my aftermarket kenwood head unit. I had an alpine power pack that I planned to install as well, and it may or may not have been bad. I initially used some bad data on the bosectomy, do I may have scrapped a good amp as bad. Don’t know. Regardless, the kenwood cd player, kicker 5x7 in the rear deck, parts express 8 inch door woofers, no name door crossovers, and bose tweeters came out pretty ok after a few days of fighting. We will revisit this later. Unfortunately.
Next, according to pictures, I took the engine down to the longblock in preparation for head gasket and such. Those pictures aren’t interesting at this time, except this one showing how grody this thig still looked after cleaning
Then, apparently, my rear shock adjuster parts came in. see, the ohlins have little ***** for changing valving. In the rear, these ***** are blocked off by trunk carpets and fuel hoses, making changes very inconvenient, nigh impossible. And they wand **** you money for their remote adjusters, because ohlins. So, I had eastside tim 3d print some ¼ drive socket handles in male and female. I used a dab of shoe goo to glue these to the *****, then a universal joint, 6 inch extension through a hole in the package tray and carpet to another ****, and WHAMMO! Remote adjusters!
Next, I worked on cleaning and painting parts. I like doing that. It feels like progress, and pretty things make me happy. Aluminum stuff gets cast coat aluminum. Black parts went through the sandblaster, and got sprayed gloss black. Water pump puller noted to be bent as well as the harmonic balancer. I was going to run them for the challenge and change them after….
Then, I had a brainstorm. I read somewhere that most interior noise in a Miata comes through the tunnels to the trunk. So a suitable piece of foam packaging was sourced from work, and cut/stuffed to block off the tunnels. Don’t know if it’ll help or not, but it was free!
Came home, and tore the head off to replace the head gasket. When looking, I could find no obviously blown segment. So I started checking for flat. And it wasn’t. nor were the valve stem seals in good shape. Etc. so this is where things went to hell. I was at the point that I could do it wrong and MAYBE make the challenge, however unlikely it was looking. Or do it right, and have the car I want to own at the end of the day. I chose to forgo my challenge goal for long term happiness with the car. I sent the head to the machine shop. Had it decked the valves done, new mazda stem seals installed, etc. instead of reusing the factory head bolts, bought ARP studs. The short block has h beam rods, and the bores looked okish, so I decided to leave it alone for now. I cleaned all the oil passages and coolant passages with brake clean and brass brushes.
I was pretty discouraged at this point, not gonna lie. I busted *** and made sacrifices to get one more run at the podium with this car, and it was crushing to lose that goal. So not a lot of pictures….
Oil pan got an AN bung tig welded in by my welder at work
Turbo got scrubbed and the cast iron parts were painted with POR15 cast iron manifold paint, new hardware holding the aluminum housing on, and an incorrect actuator hung on it for the newly recloaked position
My best friend came over, and we put the engine and trans together, then slipped it into the car on the competition Mazda motor mounts. Hardly any paint chips or scratches. It went VERY well. PPF fell into place, etc. couldn’t ask for a better time, really. Then we had burritos. Because burritos are awesome. And I’m fat. For some reason the pictures we have of that day wont upload to flickr, so I’m sorry. Here is the only one that did. I think its because Dustin has iPhone, and some weird file format.
I then spent a while fiddling and farting with different things, getting stuff hooked up. Learned that I had no fuel pump, or running lights. Seemed like I had everything else working. Found I missed a ground under the dash near the ECU. While I had the dash out, I looked at drilling the broken clutch line mounting stud out of the firewall to replace it. That was going to become a very big project, and I decided to go with a full black4an clutch line instead. So a pair of adapter fittings were ordered, I used the AN line I had on the shelf, and solved my problem. Bought a new slave too.
While I had the dash out, you can see the kenwood marine amp I was given. It’s bridged to a supposed 8-w rms a channel up front. I think that’s quite optimistic, but its pretty damn loud. And it fits nice and tucked away.
Ultimately it turned out that my taillights had two bad bulbs, and I forgot to plug in the fuel pump module. I still had to fix the ground, though I’m not sure what all was grounded there.
Filled the trans with two quarts of the motorcraft unicorn **** fluid that’s like 30 bucks a quart
Until it wasn’t. starter wasn’t getting voltage. Or something.
Nope. Starter died. I apparently pressure washed it to death. So I bought a used “known good” mazda starter. It just clunked. So definitely electrical, right?
What are the odds of two bad starters back-to-back? Not zero. I wound up using the solenoid off the seized $20 starter on my unresponsive original starter and was back in business. I did add a ground cable to the chassis from the starter body though, because I like to have a belt AND suspenders when it comes to grounds.
It was then time for charge piping. On black Friday, I ordered the flyin miata silicone charge hoses, as well as their radiator hoses. They seemed to be an elegant solution to everything, and since I was out of challenge budget and had just made some money doing a lot of service work to a jeep, I spent some of it.
However, they didn’t line up with the intercooler I had, which didn’t plat nice with my pumper or AC stuff.
So a different intercooler was ordered. While I waited, I worked on interior. Figured id get some stuff off the floor and shelves. I pulled the rest of my tan parts, and my $100 swap meet seats out and scrubbed. And scrubbed. And scrubbed.
I need a better steering wheel. Mines pretty bad, and so is my other one. But it doesn’t keep me from driving. The seats could use recovering, but good enough for now.