Rexanne - Gold s2 restoration project

[spoddy]

so have you got her all put back together?
be interesting to see and hear her running, get some vids made

has the project been expensive, after seeing that elford turbo for under a grand and she is on the road etc you wonder how much you should invest in these little cars.

can you also tell me how wide your fb is in feet? i was measuring the width of the garage today with me feet, trying to plan out space for two cars if i can fit them in as my garage is aout 16 feet wide.

cheers

[Ian65]

that Elford was only so cheap because it was so far off the beaten track...
it would have made that money for a n/a car if it had been more accessible.

you can\'t really put a price on Steves car that would account for the amount of time and effort he\'s put into it but it isn\'t about money.... it\'s about Steve ending up with the car he wants and having seen it for myself and the work he\'s done to it, it\'s going to be a really special FB by the time it\'s finally finished....
Restoring cars is pricey... but the satisfaction of knowing it\'s done right is priceless

[spoddy]

Wouldn\'t say edinburgh is off the beaten track as where I am they are quite rare and would command more money and not be as good as that one. I doubt the location should affect prices. (looking forward to hearing more about this car\'s condition etc to get an idea of why that price.)

I know its not about the money for Steve\'s car, just asking him how much it would likely cost to restore one of these cars (depending on work needed of course) but there are areas where rust affects these cars, mostly underneath and the electrical and engine work etc. All the areas where you need to look and costs of repairing the areas.

I have been told a car for £2000 will be one to go for as it would cost alot to restore them, and lately I have seen MOT on the road examples going for around the £800-£1000 price. So I am wondering has the interest dropped in fb\'s lately for them to be dropping in price?

[myatt1972]

Wouldn\'t say edinburgh is off the beaten track as where I am they are quite rare and would command more money and not be as good as that one. I doubt the location should affect prices.
 
 So I am wondering has the interest dropped in fb\'s lately for them to be dropping in price?

Location does have an affect on the price.
 
Prices have been stable for ages, I got a rotten S1 with a rebuilt engine on e-bay 3 years ago for £200, it would probably do the same money today. Taxed and MOT\'d cars have been available for less than a grand for a good while. My car was £1600 4years ago, another e-bay moment.
Keith...

[Ian65]

I know a couple of guys who were interested in this car but wouldn\'t go all the way to Scotland... in the south this car would have made plenty more.
Same with that white Elford turbo I bought from Truro... that would have made double what I paid for it if it hadn\'t been at the end of the world. Loads wanted it and they all said.. Truro?... s*d that!
Prices haven\'t moved for a long time... Sub 1000 cars will need work although remember that silver s3 last month that made £2500 and was a bit rusty and the red Elford that he wanted £2500 and needed a new door...
Price isn\'t neccessarily a good indication of condition.

[Steve-A]

Restoring cars is pricey... but the satisfaction of knowing it\'s done right is priceless

This is the truth. There\'s nothing like knowing you\'d had every single nut and bolt off the car and accessed whether you\'re happy to put it back on, or if it needs replacing.

To put rough figures on it Spoddy, Rexanne was £280 from ebay this time last year when my friend Ross bought her. After he\'d bought a bunch of service items and put some time into her I paid £350 for her at the start of this project. I then set myself a budget of around £3,000 to get her on the road, restored with upgraded brakes and suspension.

I\'ve not added it up properly, just seen the dent in my savings account. I daren\'t work out how many hundreds I\'ve spent at places like Halfords on small things like how I\'ve been through quite a few rolls of masking tape, sand paper, wire brushes, grinding discs, cans of paint, cleaning products etc etc. Each item is only £5 or so, but I\'ve probably spent £30 a week on small items like that since I started in October.

So going over my initial budget will be all the costs incurred in body work and a new windscreen.

And to top that all off, this is only meant to be the first stage!

so have you got her all put back together?
be interesting to see and hear her running, get some vids made

She\'s no more together than in the last bunch of pics. I\'ll write up properly in the morning whats gone on with trying to start her, and I\'ll post videos when I\'m happy she\'s running right

[spoddy]

ok, so when you all say location does have an affect on price, is it down to the number of these cars per location? ie maybe not as big a interest in scotland, smaller number of cars and they sold them more england, larger number? you\'d think exculsive cars would make more though but maybe its the interest in them.

when you say you know guys who wouldn\'t travel to scotland to buy the car, was it the transport costs in getting it back to where they lived which put them off, as i am talking more about the value of the car itself.

this isn\'t the correct thread to talk about fb prices i suppose, as there is the one about fb\'s still running which lists fb\'s that are for sale, so i\'ll not continue in here and disrupt steve\'s posts, sorry steve

i am new to fb\'s and get various opinions on how much to spend on one, but your knowledge of fb\'s is great to have and a good guide as to how much you should pay and have in reserve to restore the car to the way you want it.

my grandfather said you\'ll never have money in your pocket when you have a car, that was a good 30 or more years ago and it hasn\'t changed today. the good thing is that you\'ll have put her back with new parts which will last you years and years, just like having a new car again.

can\'t wait for the vids to hear her and see you smoke up those rear tyres lol.

[Steve-A]

So to write up whats happened this weekend....

On friday I spent some time in the morning preparing to start the engine. I connected up the last sections of loom, I filled the gearbox with oil, I filled the engine with oil, I filled the cooling system with coolant and finally put some petrol in the tank!

Seeing as my ignition switch was broken, I knocked up a quick switch board just so I can test the engine and electrics in the garden. p.s. anyone got an s2 ignition switch? The key and lock are fine, just the actual electrical section that it turns is broken. Whilst my bodge-up works, its not great for security!



Turning the ignition on for the first time produced a few problems:

• Fuel gauge isn\'t working - its did before I took the car to bits
• Radios working but tape player isn\'t - again it worked before
• All the warning lights were on the dash and wouldn\'t go out when turning car over.
• The left headlight goes up and down, the right will only go up. If I manually wind it down, it will go up again, but not down, again it worked before!

All of which will be fixable and I guess are usual niggles. The warning lights did in fact seem to fix them selves, after I\'d turned it on and off a few times, maybe as David suggested, the relay was a bit sticky.  The handbrake switch isn\'t working still though.

I cranked it with the ignition off, till I saw oil pressure, all was looking good. A quick check under the bonnet showed I\'d forgotten to do up one of the oil cooler lines more than finger tight, so after a quick wipe up and oil top up we were looking good once more.

So ignition on, fuel pump on and fuel started pouring straight through the carb, as if both floats were stuck.

At this point John turned up with his Elford and my friend Dan and I went off for a ride in it and to chat cars for a couple of hours. Which was nice

When we got back we switched the fuel pump back on and all was well! No fuel pouring! I\'ve had that problem before with filling empty float bowls on my motorbike, I wonder if with the floats hanging down so low the valve is wide open and the fuel pours in so fast it overpowers them, and they can\'t close, but then switching off the pump allows them to close then they operate normally. Any ideas on this one?

So with the carb appearing to be working, Dan grabbed the camera and I hit the button!

It didn\'t wanna go, it really struggled to start then ran very poorly, but ran much better when revved up a bit. Dan and I spent a while messing with the carb, after the earlier float problem we guessed it was the root of the problem. As time was getting on a bit, and we felt it was time to stop revving a rotary engine with a straight through exhaust for the sake of the neighbours, we came to the conclusion that it wasn\'t the carb but the timing. Tweaking the dizzy on its adjustment towards being more retarded seemed to offer an improvement but still not right.

Saturday morning I had 1/2 an hour spare, so re-stabbed the dizzy a tooth more retarded and adjusted on its slider back to where the marks were from before.

She fired right up! :D See video!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W4lz3gecTew

I wasn\'t expecting it as such, so wasn\'t prepped with camera, so the first clip is on part choke and the 2nd when warmed up. She fired right up and ran pretty much normally, which is a really good sign.

The idle is slightly loopy, which whilst sounding quite nice shouldn\'t be the case on a stock port! My task when I get to work on her next is to get the timing light out and dial the timing in properly, adjust the throttle pump (you can hear it stumble away from idle a bit in the video), and adjust the idle. I tried playing with the idle air and mixture a little on saturday but it didn\'t seem todo much. Possibly the primary throttle stop needs adjusting, so its idling on the main circuit or maybe there\'s an air leak somewhere.

Finally I have a bit of a confession to make. When I was cleaning up the intake manifold I went over it with a grinding bit on my drill, just taking off casting marks, lumps, etc. It seemed to do my s4 6 port intake quite a lot of good, so I figured it would make sense. I also port matched the secondaries and figured it couldn\'t hurt to open up the primaries a bit……:o:o:Hammer:Hammer

I\'ve since read people saying that if you port match the primaries, which are about 1/2 the size of the ports on the block standard, then you\'ll kill the idle and cruise performance. I didn\'t fully match them, but I did pretty much split the difference between their stock size and the block. I thought it would allow them to flow better up top and by not going wild it hopefully wouldn\'t hurt the low end too much.

So that could well be the root of my idle issue, time will tell!

[bdarepat]

Fantastic news mate. First start-up is always a milestone and a big incentive for project completion. Keep up the great work!

[TiddlesRX7]

Well done Steve. Nice to see the old girl running again even if it is with a few little niggles. Im sure you\'ll have them sorted soon enough anyway.

Ade

[spoddy]

great stuff steve, she looks fantastic without the wings
love the black against the gold in the engine bay, that was a good shout to keep it black.

this car is gonna be the dogs allright. you\'ll get your reward for all your hard work you have put in.

makes you think what you can do if you put your mind to it and how great these wee cars are to work on. why can\'t mazda bring the fb back as the new rx7 with a modern version of the lines. they look so beautiful, i\'d be happy keeping that original shape.

[Steve-A]

Cheers guys

This afternoon/evening I got a fair few on those niggles from yesterday worked out.

First up, I checked out the fuel gauge, earthing the connector at the tank, it seems the gauge works, so either my senders stopped working in the 9 months since it last had a decent amount of petrol in it, or the 10L I put in isn\'t enough to register! Time will tell.

Next up I fiddled with the handbrake and radio, the handbrake just had a dirty switch and the cassette player must have got a bit confused! I wound the tape back and forwards a bit and it jumped into life!

The headlight problem turned out to be a fractured wire somewhere in the loom, so I just split off the feed for the left hand light and hey presto, working lights! Was a bit fiddly but nice to get sorted.



Next up I put the air box on, I decided the grey and glitter wasn\'t working how I\'d like so just gave it a quick coat of black, which actually sits in the engine bay quite nicely.



In this photo you can also see the timing light in the foreground, that was my next move. My by ear timing adjustment yesterday was about 5 degrees retarded from where the manual suggests it should be. At some stage I will take a little time to mark up the pully so I can accurately check out the timing at 4k when the mechanical advance has maxed out, but for now this timing adjustment has made quite a difference to how she\'s running.

With the timing set right and the air box on the idle mixture and speed screws seemed to respond more how I expected them to, and I got a nice settled 750rpm idle sorted.

Here\'s a quick clip of how it\'s sounding now. Much smoother idle and revving from idle more cleanly. There\'s a little steam in the video, which is water i\'d split on the rad while topping up the expansion tank just boiling away. The stat, which is new, had only just opened so engine temps were fine.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Mpvy8TDxUYs

With pretty much all of yesterdays niggles fixed, I got round to finally fitting the good wing.



I think I might need some arch work!!!!



I\'m gonna push on and get the other wing welded up asap, I\'ll be interested to see how that wheel sits, as my temporary strut on the drivers side is an s1 and it looks like the stub axel might be slightly different to the s2 as I appear to have more positive camber on the drivers side right now.

I may end up holding off on the arch work till I\'ve got my proper struts back from GAZ.

[spoddy]

yeah dirty switches and old wiring, typical.
but you could get your fb to wink at people when they give it admiring glances lol.

she looks like she rolled off the production line, think you need more gold in the engine though

[re japi]

Good  job

[rossonza]

Pop pop pop pop :-) always puts a smile on my face