getoffmyinternet Posted October 6, 2009 Share Posted October 6, 2009 Not that this is by any means a starting point, but it's just the most recent mini project that I've completed, and I haven't organized any others into processed words. That is to say I haven't been very organized and everything I've done so far has just been slapped onto my engine swap thread, but nothing has been irrelevant enough to start a new thread about until now. So here we go! Hatch Louvers Total cost ended up being about 100 bucks with the paint and new weatherstripping etc. Painting was quite a pain in fact, getting it to be consistently flat, I had to do three of four coats until it was good enough, after bending the right shape back into each piece using my calibrated eyeball. Plus there was a lot of sanding involved, and a little body filler to cover the rivets. The old pop rivets just wouldn't cut it, and half of them were broken off anyway. Also the center rib was broken so I welded it up and added an extra support. New hardware for the stainless hinges I decided not to paint over, and the spring loaded gates that hold it down. I also had to cut grooves in the weatherstripping so the hinges would fit and then cut the inside of it to half the length so it wouldn't interfere with the louver ends. Then I had to glue on a strip around the top louver so it would be thick enough to hold the weatherstripping in place - I just reused the old one for that part. Very time consuming all together, but worth it I think. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
getoffmyinternet Posted October 9, 2009 Author Share Posted October 9, 2009 R200 3.7 clsd $300 AZcar r200 kit $538 MM companion flange $395 Z31 CVs $150 CV rebuild kit $25 280z stub axles $75 Driveshaft ujoint $100 I had to guess how much everything cost me (I think some of the prices were cheaper at the time) because when I bought everything I didn't want to know. Dang it sure adds up. When I had everything apart I also repainted it and of course put in new diff oil and new wheel bearings. To supplement this addon the plan is to eventually get much bigger tires, a 4.11 center, and update the suspension with the azcar roadrace assembly or something, plus I need a poly bushing kit and so on. On a side note, I was told that the cv's work fine with the longer one on the right side as long so the bearing races were reversed, but it actually seems like two short ones would do, or perhaps a short shaft could be put in a long end cv to make a hybrid of the two that would be the proper length. Some people have completely taken them apart and had custom shafts made. It seems fine once the wheels are down but it was a pain to put in. Fully extended the bearings bind, so when installing I had to jack up the corner from the wheel so that the spring would be compressed enough to get it in. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
getoffmyinternet Posted November 28, 2009 Author Share Posted November 28, 2009 I bought Ray's glass door panel skins because they were cheaper than buying the oem cardboard ones, which seemed cheaply made anyway. I figured I can have them covered down the line but they might look good enough just flat black. The only problem is they are easily scuffed and starting to show wear. They took quite a bit of prep after all because the surfaces were quite porous and not at all ready for paint, but it worked out okay. I just riveted them to the original top metal piece, and replaced the fuzzies while I was at it by riveting those on because I don't have a way to staple them on. Made the holes with a calibrated eyeball and pushed in a bunch of universal 3/8" plastic interior fasteners. I'm not sure how I could get these to work if and when I have them covered though. I would probably just cut slots so that the fasteners are removable from the back and could be replaced and have the fronts lightly padded and lined with vinyl to match the interior, which I think would look pretty nice. But for now these do just fine. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
getoffmyinternet Posted February 2, 2010 Author Share Posted February 2, 2010 For a great price I bought a pair of tail lights to replace my cracked, broken, fogged, hazed, blackened, weathered, baked, old ones. The new right side was already like new condition and without taking it apart I just rinsed the inside with soapy water. The left I had to take apart to clean and put on my old housing because the one it came with was warped. Needless to say it was real gross inside, but I can't find the before picture of the lens, only after cleaning it with a lot of soap and elbow grease. Some of the soot in the cracks were so baked on that I gave up but I don't think it's noticeable. Some plastic polisher did wonders, especially after they got all hazed from having to use some scotchbrite to get the worst of it clean. Light would go through but it looked darker and the fly eyes didn't reflect anything back. You'll see how my old driver side lens doesn't even seem to be translucent at all. I took a picture of the before and after of using the plastic polish as well between the top half and bottom half plus half the reflector pad. I glued it back together with some "Goop" and had to replace some hardware, epoxy on one of the chrome strip legs etc. but dang what a difference. I even reused my old gaskets because that's just how cheap I am. At least now everything I took off is slightly cleaner than before. I'm very happy. This concludes the budget tail end of the restoration... for now. I still want to make custom lenses in the future, but can always sell these now that they are tip top. Update: My theory about the soot being baked on was correct. I took apart my old light which was probably dirtier than the one I bought, and all the soot came right off in literally five minutes of scrubbing with simple green, as opposed to like two hours with the one that had been in the oven. Also, they come apart pretty easily so I don't see any reason they should go in the oven in the first place; now the bucket is all yellowed and somewhat distorted. On a side note, I learned that you can get the scratches out much easier if you sand the lens first and then use the plastic polish. On my old lens I was even able to polish it right up after sanding off the part numbers with 400 grit, although at that point you'd just be taking off more than necessary. 1000 grit should wipe out all the deep scratches, and following with the plastic polish should be a snap. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
getoffmyinternet Posted May 12, 2010 Author Share Posted May 12, 2010 (edited) I saw this threadon mounting the autometer gauges into the stock pods and was blown away by how easy it turned out to be so the next day I set out to do mine and I'm very pleased with the results. These gauges are a little different than the ones most of the people in that thread and ones linked from it, I don't know if it's a pro-comp thing or autometer changed the way they make them, but basically my gauges don't have a tin metal face but a plastic one, and the guts aren't even screwed down, the whole thing just snaps together! Needless to say I was overzealous when I first uncrimped and the metal bezel off the front of my tach so it pulled the inside trim with it and broke one of the feet off so I had to jb-weld it back on. Also, the needle pops right off with the face and it's impossible to tell how to put it back on because from what I could tell it's just a little hole in the rubbery plastic that grips the triangle peg and there aren't any marks. I had to take it back apart a few times and reset the needle, which was the only real annoyance here. If you can be careful enough to trim the lip off the housing without removing the needle it will surely save time. I assume it's on target because when the gauge first starts up it pegs at mid range and the needle is dead on 80, but I don't remember if it read exactly zero at a stop before or not. I want to say it was always a little off because the tach is exactly the same way at zero but is right on 1K at idle as it was before. I just used a box cutter and whittled away at it, the plastic is fairly soft. The interior trim is harder to cut down because it wants to move around on you and if it's any larger than the housing it will make installing the gauge a pain. Either way it stays in very tight and you don't even have to glue it or anything, so removing it in the future will be painless. I plan to do so to install led's for the turn signals on the tach and the hi-beam and park brake on the speedo, if not try to cut out the shapes for the stock gauge light bits without ruining the whole thing. The button on the speedo was a slight complication, I don't have any plexi drill bits, and the angle can make it want to slip and make a sexy scrape all over the glass. I assembled the pod and put it straight up to get the angle right, started with a tiny bit and got it lined up right, but again in my zeal I tried to final size it and it chipped a little. Not too bad though, the glass wasn't exactly perfect to begin with. In the future it's probably best to just ream it all the way out from the pilot with a file or, I suppose, a ream... For the button itself I drilled a tiny hole in the end and stuck a length of welding rod in it and jb-welded it on, then painted black. Yeah, I was in a bit of a hurry, but again it worked and blends in pretty well. After I put the whole thing together I just clipped it to length and put the rubber end on with a bit of Goop (that's literally what it's called). You can barely see the way the button tapers down inside the gauge from the angle the final shot was taken, but it occurs pretty much right where it comes through the face and the added rod is two inches or so. Aside from the aesthetics of using the stock pod as well as the gauges being more sunken in which is just plain cool, the added depth caused significantly less glare on my side window as seen bellow, or rather not seen, as opposed to the one not in a pod. In the first night pic you can see that the small tick marks don't show up all that well because the trim inside the pod has a little lip that hides the guts of the stock gauge, but that was easily remedied by taking a flap wheel to it and painting the whole thing flat black. Edited May 12, 2010 by getoffmyinternet Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
getoffmyinternet Posted May 31, 2011 Author Share Posted May 31, 2011 Hatch Louvers R200 Door Panels Tail Lights Autometer Gauges Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
getoffmyinternet Posted May 31, 2011 Author Share Posted May 31, 2011 Disc Brake Upgrade / Wheel Upgrade Brake kit: $1260 Rims: $825 Tires: $780 Flares: $400 It all started with a little squealing in the brakes. First the back, which I fixed, then the front. I got the rotors turned and a year later it came back more powerful than ever. New pads work for about a week, and so does the brake quite stuff. Finally I sprung for a whole disc brake package. I decided to save a few bucks and get the silvermine motors kit as opposed to the azc one. In retrospect I wish I had just paid more for the far superior kit (as I guessed I would anyway). Part of what sold me on the silvermine kit is that it has a mechanical parking brake function, but installing it was not as easy as it should have been and I'm still having trouble with the cable rubbing etc., just not as well put together all around IMO. The fronts went on fairly easily, I just had to put in a 1/4" spacer because the caliper hit my zx rims. On both the fronts and rears the brake line was made a little on the long side. The rears however needed some work. The instructions that came with it didn't make a whole lot of sense despite being very wordy (one picture probably could have done wonders). There seemed to be no way that the parking cable would reach the caliper as-is, nor was there a way to even mount it on, so I ended up cutting off the old bracket and welding it to the new one which I hacked away most of. I also had to grind off some of the new bracket because it hit the MM companion flanges. Then I realized like an idiot that my zx rims wouldn't fit because they taper on the inside and the rear rotors are much larger. So it was the perfect excuse to upgrade the wheels too. I already had the BAMF zg flares from Z Force collecting dust. So I ordered the Rota RB 17x9.5 package from Kim for a pretty darn good price, and got them mounted with Nitto 555s: 245x45s and 315x30s. Cutting the front fenders was pretty easy, cutting the rear double wall was a bit more challenging. So far I have the gap filled with Great Stuff and am going to get a piece of steel rolled to be welded in. Once the flares were rivited on with some vw style bead to fill the little gaps (they aren't exactly a perfect fit and not quite symmetrical either but you can hardly tell), the wheels went on perfectly. I didn't need any spacers and there isn't any interference with steering. They also fill out the flares pretty nicely and evenly if I do say so myself. Now all I have to do is update the suspension because even though there's plenty of clearance (at least in the rear) they still bottom out. I'll be ordering the TTT coilover kit and illuminas to solve that problem. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
RB26powered74zcar Posted May 31, 2011 Share Posted May 31, 2011 Your car is looking tight I have a full set of those CF flares too, waiting on me to install them. They look sweet, but something about the rear flare don't look right.... Are you sure they aren't mixed up ( L & R ) ? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
rturbo 930 Posted May 31, 2011 Share Posted May 31, 2011 Your car is looking tight I have a full set of those CF flares too, waiting on me to install them. They look sweet, but something about the rear flare don't look right.... Are you sure they aren't mixed up ( L & R ) ? I saw that too. Looks like it goes in too far in the rear. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
getoffmyinternet Posted May 31, 2011 Author Share Posted May 31, 2011 I saw that too. Looks like it goes in too far in the rear. I was thinking they just trimmed off too much, one side even had a little corner left over that I had to remove. I think I tried both sides and this seemed to line up with the original contour better so if anything they probably aren't clocked right, but it was kind of a guess because the fronts were mislabeled anyway (that was pretty obvious). Here's a closeup, what do you guys think? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
rturbo 930 Posted May 31, 2011 Share Posted May 31, 2011 (edited) I think Joel has it right that you have them switched. The flare continues farther after the last bolt hole on one end of it than the other, so there is a "long end" and a "short end". Looks like you have the shorter end on the front side. In dsommer's mock up pic, he has the long end on the front side, as does Justin. Hope that makes sense. Edited May 31, 2011 by rturbo 930 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
getoffmyinternet Posted May 31, 2011 Author Share Posted May 31, 2011 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
getoffmyinternet Posted February 20, 2012 Author Share Posted February 20, 2012 (edited) Okay here's my version of a modified differential mount. It's been a long time coming because under hard acceleration the nose of the diff hops up enough for the driveshaft to graze the tunnel and kept getting worse and worse as the rubber in the diff mount started to shear. Only time will tell how well this works, but so far I'm happy with it. Basically I didn't want a solid mount because I've heard it would be unbearably noisy, and I didn't care for some of the other ideas out there in terms of how much they cost/how much effort goes into them. My design (I don't know if it's been done before or not but I haven't seen it) is pretty simple -- just bolt the diff directly to the crossmember, but isolate it with rubber spacers. The only complication is that the bolts don't line up with the center of the crossmember, so this has to be modified a little (easy enough to just hack away at it). I cut out parts of the crossmember that would interfere with where the bolts go through (very quick and dirty) and welded on some angle iron to make a wider mounting surface that the nose of the diff can actually sit on. Using the old rubber mount for reference, I drilled a locating hole in the angle iron and then measured out for the mounting holes and drilled those before welding it together. The entire process only took a few hours and I finished it all in one day. However, today I took it back off to cut off the excess of the angle iron that was hanging over because it's really close to the driveshaft (initially I just left it because I thought there would be plenty of clearance), so the end result isn't exactly like the picture, but you get the idea. Also, the bolts I ordered were a bit too long so I had to use some extra washers to keep the nuts on the threaded portion, but I've ordered shorter ones and intend to replace them next time around, as well has another set of the rubber spacers that are a little harder in case these don't last. I can hear a little more noise than before but it's completely bearable even with no music playing. All I'm really hearing is a little clunk when I shift (there's quite a bit of gear lash in this old diff) as well as the throwout bearing which I knew has been slowly going bad over the last year (I could head it before but now for whatever reason the noise is transmitting into the cabin a little more). The important thing is that now I can put the pedal to the metal no problem, and the whole thing only cost about $20 in hardware. If my design proves itself any anyone else is interested, I have extra hardware and could make more to sell at a reasonable rate (likely an improved design on this working prototype), I'd just have to get my hands on some crossmembers. Edited February 20, 2012 by getoffmyinternet Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
harlest Posted May 11, 2012 Share Posted May 11, 2012 Love the Z! Where did you get the rims from? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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