Ernest Harmon

These cars have a pretty thick undercoating on them. To see what you really have it has to be removed. I would scrape suspect areas before you spend money else where.Just my personal opinion.Without a good vessel to live in or on the rest is useless.

Post some pics. I am working on an 81 turbo car and getting ready to replace passenger side frame rail and part of the floor on both sides.It depends on what your capabilities are or how deep your pockets are.But without seeing the extent of the damage its hard to tell.

Do a rub test.Take a white cotton rag wet it real good with Acetone and rub in a back and forth motion about 10 or 15 times with moderate pressure.If the rag does not turn the color of the car it is a urethane of some sort.Just sand prep and paint.If it softens the paint go ask an automotive paint supplier for a suggestion for a primer or sealer that will properly adhere to the current paint and be suitable for what you want to put on top of it.

The floor panels are 18 gage or .0478.The rails are .062. The floors are flatter than stock for a ZX.The rails would have to be modified to work with a stock floor.You would need a shrinker and stretcher to make the flanges to fit a stock floor, plus you would have to add material to the sides as the stock ZX rails are almost 3" tall in places.As Sticky said tack them into place and then go back and stitch them in solid to help prevent serious warpage.If you have to replace all the way to the rocker panels cut and leave about an inch or so of the floor to form an L shape.Clean the area that attaches the original pan to the rocker.This will be a spot weld.Use a spot-weld cutter in a drill or use a hammer and chisel to separate this joint.Once separated clean all of this surface really good.Measure the distance between the factory spot welds and drill corresponding holes in the flange of your new pan that mates up to the rocker panel.These holes should be 5/16 dia.Apply 3M weldable primer to the mating surfaces before welding to give corrosion protection between the panels.Then plug weld the flange in place this will replicate a factory spot-weld nicely.If possible butt weld the remaining sides. This will give you an invisible repair once ground,painted and undercoated.You can just drill out the spot-welds that attach the seat risers if you have to go that far and prime with the weldable primer and plug weld these places also.Good luck with the project.I hope to be this deep in mine before long.I am probably going with the Zedd set myself.The fabricating part of this applies to the zx cars.The rest can be used as a guide for most any car.

That could pass for a twin to mine. I have some of the same problems you had.I hope mine turns out as nice.

I did a search and found stuff covering the Z's.Does anyone have experience with the ZX set?The battery pretty much killed the right frame rail and toe board area of the floor.I don't really need to replace the whole floor but as we know, NOS rails are all but nonexistent.Any suggestions? I can and will do the work myself Ive done it in Mustangs and early VW's not a problem with good fitting replacement parts.I know these are not an exact match to the floors contours.

Just to be extra safe.

I am simply restating what I have read in the book maximum boost pages 70,and 73-74.As for pre-turbo injection. Why would you want to compress and as a result add heat to a substance that the whole goal of using in the first place is to cool?When you can inject it post turbo and keep it cool from the start.No disrespect percieved nor do I wish to communicate any.I am researching all options.In an EFI engine I just don't see why you would want to induce any more drag into your turbo than the air that it moves.

Paint strippers are messy and can cause burns to your skin.Make sure you use good gloves.If you have an air compressor a DA sander and good ole roll of P 80 grit will be fast and not to aggressive.There is a product called extend that will kill rust and neutralize it.Once you are to the stage of priming you really should know what products you are going to use as far as the complete paint system goes to insure as few problems down the road as possible and maximum longevity of the finish.You want both the mechanical bond and the chemical bond of the system otherwise you may experience delamination of the products.Wear a respirator as much as possible these products are not good for you even in the sanding stages.

Well just got off the phone with Steele.At the moment they are not interested in foreign cars.They have a lot of projects going on for american cars,so much so that they can't start anymore new products for them till they get what they ere working on now done.They did point me towards someone that does do foreign cars.I will check these guys out too and report back.

I will definitely tie them together possibly to an overkill extent.

While this is somewhat off topic here but is in line with the above link.There is no since in cramming it in if you can't get it out.I have not started on my car as of yet other than collecting some parts and working on my blueprint as to what I want.The one thing that I do know is I will start the mods at the rear of the car and work forward to the engine.So exhaust will be first.2.5 or 3.0 downpipe to 3 inch pipe.No converter, muffler if noise level requires, if not straight out the back.Including a good general gasket match porting and polishing of the exhaust manifold.these are relatively cheap DIY projects.

Wife management!You shoulda just said hey,if I can get it for a hundred or less get this car done I can sell it for 2 or more.Want me to buy a new one?They're only bout 1K!Reasoning like that most always works with mine.But then again the garage is mine too.Seriously.Thanks for this thread as I am going to have to build one also and this is the route I am going,I am looking to widen the stance out a little bit for stability.

I am literally just around the corner from Steele Rubber Products.I wonder if they would be interested in doing the rubber for our cars?May just have to stop in and inquire.I even have a car that they can use to measure and or test fit.

Why not just make sure your air fuel ratios/tune is right and consider intercooling. This will resolve a potential problem instead of band-aiding it?

By the statement pre-turbo I am assuming you want the mist going through the turbo?This is not how to install a water/meth injection system.It goes in the intake air charge stream in order to cool the charge after compression takes place by the turbo this is done just before or just after the throttle body,making the install post turbo.You should read the book Maximum Boost by Corky Bell.If you are planning for the water mist to go through the turbo it will cause corrosion and fan blade erosion causing boost loss over time.

Here is a link to a similar process but using a dash pad filler.http://ezinearticles.com/?Dash-Repair---How-to-Fix-a-Cracked-Padded-Dash&id=1361270

I doubt you can sand The Right Stuff product based on what the product is for.It is also probably a more dense product also.This is based on it being a gasket maker.

I must say that the first Posts in this topic appear to have been well thought out and executed.From the durability standpoint I think you may have a very durable solution.These are my reasons for thinking this.The Great Stuff is a Urethane based product very similar if not exactly like the foam that makes the body of the dash.Great stuff once dry is still very flexible.The bumper repair has very similar properties as the vinyl covering of the original dash, when applied in this thin of a layer possibly more flexible than the original.The key to this repair being done successfully is how well you clean the area and prep the area to accept the repair.This is no different than welding or doing paint work.You must make sure that all armorall type products are gone from the surface completely.Next, sand the area well and bevel the vinyl and foam get all of the sun damaged underlying foam removed if possible to the back of the vinyl and scuff it up with 80 grit.This will give a better mechanical bond for the foam bridge or foundation as you may call it.I am not an upholstery guy by anymeans but the basic idea presented seems to be sound.I am however an Autobody school graduate and this is what I am basing my opinion on.Thankyou rigez for this post that may well save a lot of people a lot of money.

Can you purchase an all options included prebuilt board and use what you have and add fans etc as you go or does everything have to recieve a signal in order for the whole thing to work?

I have an 81 turbo.I am the second owner of the car.It is getting ready to be gone through and upgrades are coming, will post pics when I get some taken.She looks bad but its all superficial and not too difficult to repair.

Might be a little pricey but you could always go to a fuel cell set up.That way you can configure it to your needs.

I have an 81 Turbo and they are very vacuum sensitive.As stated above loosen or remove the oil filler cap to start and see if the idle changes.Black smoke would indicate a rich or "fat" fuel condition.Good luck with resolving your problem.