My major project!

[leeroy_25]

Well I have made little but some progress since last weekend.. Time is always against us.. I was away Saturday so had to squeeze a bit in on Sunday.
My main aim for this weekend was fitting myself into the car!! I have already attemtped modding the seat rails and thought better of it without a spare pair to practice on.. looked very involved and the rivets and lumps I did drill out gave no gains! So, the other week, during a :Snoring less night, I came up with a cunning plan to avoid heavy modding and dismantling of the seat runners... :Santa I thought it was completely bolt together till I took the seat rails off and checked a second time!! But nothing major.. It involved slight modification of the seatbelt mounting point. Well taking it off and putting it back somewhere different!

Anyway.. lets cut to the chase and see some pictures. Fortunately I work for an engineering company and spend a lot of time designing moulds for composites so I am handy in the area of CAD! I took a few measurements from the seat and then used a bit of knowlegde to give my self a safe sized piece of metal to work from.. then figured exactly where I could move the seat to so that the seat belt could be easily remounted without extra holes or welding and I came up with this!

Which after a trip to the machine shop came out like this:



Then it was onto fitting this to the seat! The outer rail is no problem. the rail comes off and the extension piece bolts on in it\'s place. then you remount the rail in the new holes created by the rail. A little like this.



The inner rail which has the seatbelt attached is not quite so straight forward but its not that bad.. took me a bit to get the little bracket off the top of the rail as it is welded on good a proper.. persistance with the angle grinder, a small die grinder and a drill to remove the spot welds won in the end to leave this.


Not entirely clear what\'s there unless you have had a seat to pieces! Main thing is the bracket needed to be in one piece as you need to use the hole that\'s in the middle to fix it back o in a sec! First I welded back up the sport weld holes and ground it all back to give a nice flat right angle section. I then opened up the centre hole to 8mm (same as the fixing bolts) so I could fix this back.. When I designed the extension I made sure that the new fixing position was inline with where the seatblet mount needed to be so basically when I bolt the runner to the extension I sandwich the belt bracket between the two job done!

The end result is I gained exactly 70mm..



In tall peoples terms that\'s.. \'Just enough\'!

Let me know what you think. I think I might market it and call it \'R-X7ension\'
with a play on the \'7\' as a \'t\'!

Next part to fit is the new steering wheel a special adapter I had made too! Hopefully this will add a little more leg room.

Lee

[Rixio]

Wow great work on those seat rails! Looking good buddy...keep up the hard work :Thumbs-up

[leeroy_25]

Thank you very much.. I was quite pleased myself!! :Laugh

Any takers for the rails and I can maybe look into getting a batch done.. and priced.. I was thinking of polishing them or anodising them eventually.

Lee

[Alex T]

pop a thread in the for sale section mate, seeing if you can drum up any interest there. I know loads of tall FD owners!

[leeroy_25]

Unfortunately I am not able to post in the forsale.. Not yet a full member!

Lee

[Alex T]

hit the \'new topic\' button in the \'submit parts for sale\' section.. type ur add according to the guideline template, then once submitted it will remain in there for up to 7 days, and only you, mods and full members can view it.
then it will get moved to main section by a mod, so everyone can see it.
Job done.

[leeroy_25]

ok. i\'ll give it a whirl!.. Might point them in the direction of this post and see what interest I get before getting to carried away!

Cheers
Lee

[leeroy_25]

Well Guy\'s here is the latest of my slow progress!! Please remember I am not a slack ass! Just very busy and only got to play with my toys on a Saturday!!
Well Depsite maye not looking like I achieved much Saturday was a good day in the progress department as far as I was concerned!

Finally my missing bit\'s of engine auxillaries are coming together so I am very close to dropping the lump back in!


On the other hand the car is coming... Well more apart!!
Well You have to start somewhere.. and I like things to look nice/right! So being that I am putting a body kit on anway and I thought the extra room around the car maybe helpful when fitting the engine back so I stripped off the front end.
Also in the progress I  have found more wires I cannot yet place! Will worry about that later. I would guess from position (Inside the bumper backing) they are spot lights possibly? The little bumper spot lights have got some extra aftermarket looking harness and seperate fuse box All marked FET tunning? I tought the little bumper spots were astandard type R fitting?
Anyway.. Back to the task in hand.. The engine bay was looking a little tired.. The engine removal had obviously taken it\'s toll on things and then on top of that I think it had been sat for a bit with no bonnet! So I Masked it all out and decided to give it a new lease of life!

Of course before that point I had throughly cleaned and degreased the bay with a stiff brush and steam cleaner detergent. then a flat back with 600 grade wet and dry and a wipe over with paint thinners. All ready for a coat of primer!

Frankly it looked better with just that! A nice even finish so clearly my cleaning efforts had been re-paid!
quick coat of mazda gloss black et voila!

Yummy!! Look at that shine!


I only used a single pak cellulose based paint for this as it dry\'s quick and I ad to hold some of the wiring out of the way by hand to get at everywhere! Wsan\'t too kean on hanging out in the garage till the wee hours waiting for the fast hardener to activate the two pack!

I have got 2K for the body work which I intend to flat the whole car off ater and go over with clear coat to give a a superior shine!

Next I will be removing all the brackets from the engine bay, sand blasting them and either getting them plated or painting them. I also went to the vast expensive of new nuts and bolts!
Also need to test fit the body kit of which I am still waiting on a front bumper to arrive then I can look at paiting or at least priming it ready.

Last week I mentioned about a Modified steering hub and adaptor I was sorting out to aid my seating position.. Well here it is finished!


The centre part was the adaptor I had machined up to convert the 100mm PCD holes down to the conventional 70mm PCD. I really like the style of the wheel.. And I couldn\'t find a small dished one anywhere else! Hence I went this route.
I had to modify the horn wiring plug to actually fit it!? Don\'t know if this is normal. The actual hub jammed up on the plug sticking out of the rotating terminal ring that runs the horn. Basically I had to cut the plastic off the end of the plug to expose the terminals, Bend them out of the way and then take the 1 terminal that operates the horn and run into the hub. Hope it works!! Let me know if this is standard practice or if I have missed a trick somewhere!

Cheers for looking

Lee

[leeroy_25]

Sorry about the bad grammar and spelling erros!! I ran out of edit time!

Intentional mistake above!

Lee

[leeroy_25]

Well, ths weekend I had hoped to test fit all the front end bodykit.. But it would appear some punk on ebay has tried to stitch me up over a front bumper.. It hasn\'t arrived in two weeks and he hasn\'t responded to my numerous e-mails for tracing info.. Anyway.. I did manage to drill off the front wings and get them fitted up to the car!





Not bad.. Had a little bit of a fiddle to get them lined up nice and one side for some reason all the mounting flanges where twice as thick as they should be! Had to do a bit of tickling but got there in the end.. Now they are ready for priming.

Spent the rest of the day putting bits back on the engine and also had to give my GTR some TLC as it\'s been feeling neglected!

Well I am making progress which is the main thing!!

Lee

[Martiny]

Those small blank pipes are normal. Some of them are used for Auto version.

On the manifold, one is for the boost gauge, the bigger one is for the brake servo pipe.

[leeroy_25]

Cheers Martin...


Lee

[darknight7777777]

Hi,
I am interested in the seat adaptors you made how much are you looking for them?

[leeroy_25]

Hi There Mate,

I have got a few people interested in these!

I am waiting to get a price back from the machinist on a batch to get the best price. Mine were done as a favour through my work! I intend to get them priced with different finishes and in stainless..  And also supply all the fixings. The only thing required of you would be removing the seatbelt bracket to reuse.. I may look at supplying a bracket too as a complete kit if I really do get some serious interest.. Anyway.. Price wise off the top of my head I am guessing/hoping between £75-100 for a pair. It\'s a nicely thought out piece and easy to fit. As a kit with bracket it would take mins. Will see what feedback I get and go from there.

Lee

[leeroy_25]

Firstly.. I have got a price for the seat rail adaptors for anyone interested.. Please see the for sale section.

Now.. This weekend I made some good progress!! I got the whole front end fully test fitted up.. Drilled off and trimmed and then back off ready for paint! Check it out.. Looks a bit odd as the front is so high up where the engine is out.
I started the day thinking it was going to be a nightmare! The wings were not too bad a fit as I had discovered last week.. But the bumper! Oh my! I got this cheap on ebay.. Now I know why! None of the fitting holes were drilled. Two of the mould brackets to hold on the top edge were completely at the wrong angle! (these I now no longer!!). The general moulding is pretty good but things like the edges were too rounded which resulted in large gaps where the bumper met the wing. After a lot of tickling and a bit of glass filler it certainly doesn\'t look bad.. So all in all a good purchase I would say!




The very slight gap looks worse with the white on black.. But I plan to final fit the kit and blend the joints right in perfect.. Will probably still leave the bumper and wing as two pieces as it will only crack.. So I will PTFE tape the wing and fill up to it.




As you can see below the wide burnout kit means that the wing rolls back in as it comes back to meet the standard body line width and bumper.. I hadn\'t really thought too much about that. Guess it would look better if they had done a wide nose cone and left the arch wide at tip.. Anyway.. Looks worse here again because of the fact the engine is out and the wheel is positive cambered! So I keep telling myself anyway.. Can\'t really judge fairly till it is back on the deck with the wide wheels on. I do have a backup plan in mind that I could blend in a big section between the wing tip and bumper to level them out some what..  I am also considering softening the sharp edges on the burnout kit so they are more in keeping with the curves of the FD3. Thus giving me kind of a bespoke bodykit too!



I thought I should drop the bonnet on and see how bad the gaps were.. Much to my surprise they were all **** on!! Love it!!



Next week I think it is engine back in time! On that note I repaired the plug that was damaged on the gearbox (see last weeks post!) although I would prefer a new one properly in tact as I have no way of knowing how good the contact is!

Anyone got one of these kicking about?


Cheers
Lee