My major project!

[logicalChimp]

i used to alway sand between each coat, too ages tho lol so i just do coats after 30 mins of eachother

Possibly daft question - but are you guys talking about sanding back between coats of paint, or rubbing back between coats of polish/wax ?

[leeroy_25]

Interloper,

it\'s funny you should mention your thread.. I only spotted it yesterday! First thing i thought was isn\'t that up for sale!! Did you just recently decide to do work on it after putting it up for sale a while back? It\'s a good post! keep up the good work!

chimpy.. rubbing down we were refering to was between coats of lacquer to add depth to the shine and get a nuts on finish!
Incidently I have a bit more rubbing to do afte my initial polish up as I can stil see a slight orange peel effect in some places that wasn\'t noticable when I first flatted it. So I suppose I will be flatting between polishing too!! pretty sure that\'s not standard practice though. although I have know paint to settle over time and sanding marks to come up from the filler/primer requiring flatting and polishing again assuming they are not real deep. occurs if someone has rubbed down the car with a half brick before priming it with heavy primer in my experience. That\'s when I decided to start trying to do my own paintwork!

[interloper393]

nah man been working on her for about 7 months. im hoping it dosnt come to selling it but there hard to sell at the mo so was putting the feelers out incase the worst happens, hoping my other car a sell so i cn keep the rex, need to change jobs cus its doing my head in lol..

[leeroy_25]

Evening all! I have a little more progress!! Sadly last week I didn\'t get anywhere enough time on the car and was dead from a long week of work! I also had a small accident with the polisher on the rear bumper which was possibly a result of my tiredness and meant I had to blow it back in with paint again! I was not impressed! This weekend I have also had to work so again not enough time but here are some more photo\'s and I am hoping to spend a bit more time on it tomorrow! I am happy though as I am starting to see it all come together and the hard work is having some visual reward at last!
There are a few little things I am not totally happy with but 99.9% of people wouldn\'t even notice them and I have only seen them as I am so close to the car all the time! As in my face is literally glued to the body work looking for imperfections constantly!

Anyway.. Here\'s a bit more finish polished bodywork to look at!

Here is the roof! or the sky?! depending on how your eyes adjust!


Rear pilar looking onto the tailgate.


Rear End fitted back out with the lights! Yay! Something completed!



The only problem here is when I got the lights back in I found another area where the bumper was a poor fit! Right under the central brake light bit is a lovely gap!

To late to blend it in so I will possibly do an infill strip in carbon which would infact look quite cool I think!? So no major distaster, just an added extra bit to do and very annoying when I have gone to so much trouble to enusre the rest of the bumper fitted snug!

The other small distaster I have had is when paint the doors, which I am very please with the end result of, was I masked the rest of the car out with a dust sheet. and masking paper. (normal!?) Anyway, when I came to take the dust sheet off yesterday after the paint had dried, the bass turd had stuck like the proverbial ****e to a blanket! I had to litterally rip it off which in some areas has pulled the paint off the side skirt! My lovely fresh polished paint! I had intended to go over the top edge of the side sills to cover up the rivets.. Now I definately have to! All being well I will flat it off and sort that tomorrow.. Other than that the main spraying is now finished.. just the wing to do when I decide which one I am using! Oh.. and not fogetting the finishing item.. the piece de la resitance.. My REA AD9 bonnet!

[leeroy_25]

Well It\'s been a hectic last few weeks and to be honest I have run out of energy come the weekend! So progress is slower than I was hoping for at this stage but still pretty good! I can see the finish in sight! I am off on hols next week so won\'t be doing anything for a week or two so thought I would try and give you all (and myself!) a little teaser to keep you interested till then!
I need to give the REA Low spoiler a repaint so did that in the hot sun this morning and left it out to dry. Still not sure if I iwll run that or the carbon GT wing I have!? Two different looks but both seem to work. Anyway while that was drying I changed over the rear suspension to get the ass end a bit lower!
Check out the mazdaspeed coilovers!

Not the best money can buy I am sure, but they\'ll do the job for now and they feel like a pretty sensible spring rate for once.. NOT brick hard!
Oh and yes the brake discs and pads do need doing!! It\'s gradually getting harder and harder to roll accross the garage!
Anyhow,
Once it was back together I thought I would drop on one of the rims to see how it fitted under the new body work...


Mmm

Yummy

Oh yeah!!

And seeing as the paint was touch dry I thought it would be rude not to sit the spolier on the boot and see how it shaped up!

Hmm???
That\'s the spot!

and I think I just did a wee!

Now I am truly excited to see the finished result and almost of the opinion that wing works well.. it\'s like the exact oposite of the rear bumper! It looks blooming big from above though!

Hope you all like!?

Lee

[S3TH]

That looks awesome Leeroy- so what\'s next? Are you going to do something crazy with the interior & under the hood too?

I\'m liking it a lot- if I were to criticise though I would pick up on the c-west sideskirts, I don\'t think they compliment either front or rear arches. also the line-flow looks a bit wierd if you know what I mean- I think some burnout sideskirts would set it off very well & be on the path to being a perf rex.

10/10 for skill and effort!

Seth.

[leeroy_25]

I would agree with you to a certain extent there S3th. They work from some angles and then others, like you say, you can see where the lines don\'t quite work together! I could probably blend them into the arches and bodyork and it would work perfect.. but a massive gamble if it doesn\'t! at least I can change if something else takes my fancy. I think the problem is the c-west skirts go to far up the bodywork. I like the rear vents and the general shape/width. Not too kean on the front vent . would have prefered to see the standard vent there. I did toy with trying to cut away the side skirts and blend in a new shape up to the edge of the vent but I wasn\'t convinced enough it would work! Anyway it does the job for now and I will keep my eyes out!

Lee

[S3TH]

I agree Leeroy, love the c-west front and rear bumpers- sides look good from some angles too! I agree the sides should not be blended- So what\'s the next major element to the project? I can\'t wait to see what you\'re going to do with the interior...

Seth.

[JohnP]

wether someones mentioned already or not, cos i havent read every post.. but the point you\'v used for the boost gauge coming off the plenum is actually the point for you air-bypass valve or alternatively the vacuum hose for your BOV/dump valve.
 
the one next to it thats been blanked off is for a boost gauge.
 
http://www.autosportracetech.com/RX-7/vacuum.jpg
 
maybe helpful
 
again, sorry if someones already mentioned this!

[dandan]

Hi Leeroy, don\'t know if you remember me at all, but we emailed back and forth for a while when you first got this car, Me and my mate Rich have been rebuilding his engine and you were interested in coming over for a look... ring any bells?

Anyway, just wanted to let you know I have been following your thread and I\'m very impressed, your bodywork skills look top notch! We have got our project running, just waiting for the legal bits (MOT, insurance etc) before we can run it in on the road, so you are more than welcome to come and have a look now, and I also wouldn\'t mind coming to see yours too!
I\'m hoping maybe when the budget allows, we might be able to tap your reservoir of bodywork knowledge to help sort our project out, and we might be able to help you out in return if you decide to go a bit mad under the hood to match up to your mental exterior.
You can see our project here if you fancy a peek: http://www.sxoc.co.uk/vbb/showthread.php?t=244980&highlight=strip+rotary

Cheers!
Dandan

[leeroy_25]

Well Guy\'s for those that have asked.. the next stage in the project will certainly be to bling out the engine bay! I have some plans for the interior.. mainly and ICE build and sublte things.. No plans to go to crazy yet! Then of course finally I will need to get some more pony! So I will be looking out for  Power FC or similar to start with! Then we will see where we go from there!

Jonh P thank you for your advice there.. No one has mentioned it yet! Will affect the running of the car? are you saying I have got something not plumbed in that I should have?! Or is it maybe I have plumbed it in somewhere else instead? I will investigate that a bit more!

Dan, Of course I remember! Just sorry I never got around to taking up the offer of popping over before! as you can guess I have been a little bit busy! Glad to hear your build wnet okay! I have a pare lump sat in my garage to look at at some point! So undoubtidly we can swap skills and tips down the line I am sure! I am now o hols for a cope of weeks.. But would be happy for you to pop over once I am back.

Lee

[leeroy_25]

Arh John, I just thought, When I first got it all runnig I had one of the air bypass valves missing. Since then I have fitted one and attached the pipe to the inlet manifold. Possibly not in the same order as the diagram but I would assume that doesn\'t matter?!

Lee

[leeroy_25]

Well, I returned from holidays late this week so managed to squeeze in a day and a bit on the car!
Firstly I took all the exterior door handles apart as they were looking a bit sorry for themselves and colour matched them with the body. Now they look sweet! Then next I fitted the lights into the front bumper and put the covers and cowling back on the pop-up headlights. Fits pretty good. Just need to take a small piece out of the lip that returns down inside the bumper where the headlights go as the cover just catches it when it goes up and down. I also re-jig the front bumper and improved the fit there.




After that I thought I would get the front supsension in. and do the brakes. Well I was expecting a 5 min job after the rears being so easy! How I was fooled! Not sure if I went aout it the right wauy in the end but I released all the bolts on the strut to find that no matter ho I tried I ould not get it out. I then tried releasing the anti-rol bar which didn\'t help at all. In the end I figured I need to release the inside fixings on the top wishbone so I could swing it all out of the way to draw strut up and out.



Once I had figure that on the first side the next side wasn\'t so bad!

Then seeing as the brakes looked a bit grotty I thought a coat of paint would help brighten things up.. Although generally I thing painted calipers look tacky.. and especially red ones I decided if I was going to do I would have to use red! ONly down side with the painting was I had to wait an hour for the paint to go tacky to get a second coat on and then wait 2 hours before I could put it all back together! So that slowed progress much further.



Once that was done I fitted the arch shields back in which much to my surprise went back in a treat and all the fixings went where they were suposed to! all bax and extra bit I can to cut-out so it cleared around the front bumper fixing.



Just to have a little look I also hung a wheel on!



Once I lowered it all back down I found the car is just a tad low! Depsite the block of wood under the front wheels I still nearly got the jack wedged in! So I think maybe I will be adjusting it back up a touch next week!

[Dr-Rotor]

Great looking project buddy. Now with those coilovers you can realy get an agressive stance setup for the car. Stance is important to pull off the look of widebody kits. As in the pic posted earlier of the original burnout FD. Look closely at how the car is in relation to the ground.
 
Good job. Love it.

[karl_tate]

You can see our project here if you fancy a peek: http://www.sxoc.co.uk/vbb/showthread.php?t=244980&highlight=strip+rotary

Cheers!
Dandan

little hijack but where did you get that intercooler from as it sits very nicely in there.

btw leeroy, looks very smart now, get some pics up of how it sits, as long as you can still get a jack in there when on blocks its all good