My new RX3 and restoration

[steve garbutt]

After stripping them down i found they were better than first thought.

[steve garbutt]

Amazing what a bit of sandblasting can do
first pic is the back plate half done.

[steve garbutt]

Then priming and painting in black to finish them.

[steve garbutt]

All thats left for the light holders is for the rest to be cleaned and reassembled

[shaunwil]

Cracking work

Amazing how they can come up !

Shaun

[RobMatthews]

Some very nice work there, Its nice to see bits nice and clean after a sandblast! :-)

Mind me asking where you got the brake calliper rebuild kit?

[Grant Monkhouse]

Forgot to say Steve, got a quote for stripping polishing and rechroming my front and rear bumper.............£280 each!!!!!!!!!!!

If I polish them its half the price for stripping and rechroming, they will be the only bits getting redone on my car as those prices are disgusting

[steve garbutt]

Calliper rebuild kit was from eBay.com.au Australian eBay
I get most my bits for the rx3 there but make sure you check they deliver to the uk, most do

[steve garbutt]

Forgot to say Steve, got a quote for stripping polishing and rechroming my front and rear bumper.............£280 each!!!!!!!!!!!

If I polish them its half the price for stripping and rechroming, they will be the only bits getting redone on my car as those prices are disgusting

£280

[clive]

Forgot to say Steve, got a quote for stripping polishing and rechroming my front and rear bumper.............£280 each!!!!!!!!!!!

If I polish them its half the price for stripping and rechroming, they will be the only bits getting redone on my car as those prices are disgusting

I\'ve been using a company called Castle Chrome for a few things on the RX-4, as you know the RX-4 bumpers are 6 pieces and for re-chroming including de-denting them charged £400, which I thought was OK when you think of all the work involved

[steve garbutt]

Well the car is almost ready for paint, tomorrow we will be prepping for the  colour inside the door shuts and panels, then its rehang all the panels before the colour goes on the exterior of the car.

Iv been wanting to do something with the wheels for a while but i wanted to keep it period.
A friend of mine reminded me that in the 70\'s they used to widen the wheel by banding them.
After finding a set of donor wheels, banding commenced.
Unfortunately 3 pictures i took didnt work so i cant show you the very rusty condition they started off in.

We had 2 wide rears and 2 narrower but still a lot wider than the originals for the fronts.

Decided that the best coarse of action was to widen the narrowest of the  2 wheels.

This is one of the widest 2 after shot blasting.

[steve garbutt]

After banding the narrowest ones they came out much wider than the wide ones.
Banding involves cutting the rim of and welding a band of metal in-between the rim and center of the wheel.
In this picture you can see the 1.5 inch band we put in.

[steve garbutt]

here you can see the comparison between what used to be the wide rim and what used to be the narrow rim, as you can see with the band in the narrow rim is much wider giving it a nice lip for some wide tires
the Rim on the right used to be narrow, you can see the band welded in.

[steve garbutt]

After a bit of prep and primer they were close to being ready for paint.

[steve garbutt]

and after painting the centers PZ black and the rims a high power silver 2 layers of clear were laid over the top