Rexanne - Gold s2 restoration project

[Steve-A]

Haha, don\'t worry Cliff, I\'ll not be pairing it green. I was still thinking of painting it that gun metal grey that I tested on the inside of the rear arches. It\'s tempting to paint some green on there and take a photo before I paint it grey, just to see your reaction. :p

 The watts link thing is something they talk about on the American forums lots. The upper radius arms are much shorter than the lowers. This means the pinion angle of the axel changes considerably through it\'s travel. The bushes on the watts link, especially when Pollybushed, only move freely in a vertical plane, so as the pinion angle changes the watts links motion twists away from vertical. This twisting causes the bushes to bind, which basically causes the whole rear suspension unit to bind.

This is only normally a problem at the very extremes of travel, so not noticeable, but when you lower the car like I have then effectively the rear suspension is constantly at one extreme of travel and the binding became quite noticeable. By adjusting the lower link length I was able to adjust the pinion angle of the diff till it\'s neutral point was at my desired ride height, hopefully freeing the suspension.

Hopefully I made at laest some sense there!

I\'m getting a rather pleasant 27-25 Mpg right now thats with a mix of Eco driving and foot to the floor fun. It\'s much better than I expected, which is nice!

The A pillar rot didt extend under the screen itself, so I was able to cut out a small section and weld a new piece in without damaging the window or it\'s seal. . I think there are some pictures a few pages back.

Cheers Rico. Only just noticed you\'re in worcestershire, where abouts? If it\'s malvern, Worcester, droitwich or bromsgrove keep any eye out for me as I\'m always driving around there.

Spoddy, I know I know. There\'s still some cosmetic bits to deal with, I\'m just bored of cosmetics for now :p I\'ll get them sorted one day. A few rust spots never hurt anyone :p haha.

[Steve-A]

Another week goes by and I had a little time to toy with Rexanne today.Having found a suitable bucket seat for myself, which I\'m picking up in a few days, I decided the interior would be stage 2 of this project and power would have to wait till stage 3.

I made the first steps today by removing the rear seats and some of the interior.



I\'m gonna run around like this for a few days and see what I think of the change in volume, while I try to decide if I can live with a stripped out daily driver! The first impressions are that it\'s really not much different, there\'s a little more whine from the diff, but also without the rear seats in the way the rear speakers are louder, so it\'s more than cancelling itself out.

Money is tight so I\'m in no rush but I\'m quietly on the look out for a suitable passengers seat and I\'m investigating harness mounting options.

I also decided it was time to flat and polish the panel I repainted now the lacquer was fully dry.  Here\'s the front wing flatted.



Unfortunately an accident with a petrol pump and the fact that I forgot to use petrol resistant lacquer round the filler cap has caused this:



I was hoping to sand the lacquer back and just re-coat, but it looks like I\'d need to go back to primer to get rid of the marking so that can wait for another day. I\'m stupid as I buoght petrol resistant lacquer especially, but forgot about it!

With the wing and rear quarter flatted I went wild with the cutting compound, then waxed it and even got out the back to black, the end result was a very shiny car.




Far too shiny for me so I decided to got for a drive up some lanes! It\'s now suitably dusty.

[spoddy]

looking good, pity about the petrol cap etc, can\'t t-cut it out?
i\'ve been looking at locking tyre valve caps as came out to my rx8 from work, stopped at burger king on the way home and on returning to the car noticed my silver dust caps were all gone

they were the cheap plastic 99p ones, but done the job. not sure if kids kicking about the work car park had been snooping round the 8. thank god thats all that happened as have a car show coming up on the 15th.

i have seen some nice rotor shaped caps in the states, going to get some mazda badge ones for about a fiver with an allen key lock on them. i hadn\'t tightened the hex shaped 99p ones up super tight as had trouble getting one off one day.

some people have no respect or thought for peoples safety, if they\'d had damaged the valve the tyre could have deflated while i was on the motor way and god only knows what would have happened.

so invest in some nice caps for those wheels and locking nuts!

[Steve-A]

I\'ve tried sanding back the lacquer, so way more aggressive than T-cut, but it\'s gone right through. Ah well, I don\'t care really

I\'ve got some nice SSR dustcaps on my SSR wheels, though again I\'d not loose sleep if they went missing. I am considering getting some locking wheel nuts though....

[spoddy]

yeah it bugs you at first a little, like cheeky wee, so and so\'s but then you kinda get a bit concerned about if they come back and key the car or something you know.

but some cool dust caps out there and il caps all rotor shaped, from the USA and the uk pound/us dollar exchange rate quite good.

i would use that petrol resistant lacquer over the other areas you repainted, incase any petrolium products get onto the paint? polishes and cleaners etc.

[David Nock (RIP)]

Bottom Pic for the 2011 calendar Steve......Yeh.....Spot on mate!

[12at]

really like the motor you have mate - awesome work!!

[CHC (RIP)]

Thought the interior colour you trialled was quite nice actually and harmonised well with the exterior gold and as for a GREEN primer layer :Grrr:Grrr:Grrr:Grrrbut as long as it goes that\'ll be cool.

Your explanation of the suspension and Watts Link movement is spot on mate - now I understand, never to old to learn something new I say.

Isn\'t it simply amazing how the entire car is enriched by a dam good \'T cut\' wax & polish - I bought a circular polisher from **di when I was working on JAZ, so much simplier and fast too.
Rexanne looks mega mate and as Dave says is a very worthy contender for the portfolio & calendar.
:cheers

[Steve-A]

Cheers Cliff

The only problem is I cleaned her a couple of weeks early, and I\'m gonna have to do it all again before rotorstock!

As for interior painting, after 2-300 miles of daily driver use with no interior I decided it was just too loud. Around town it was fine and on b roads but when sat on the motorway it was so loud and in traffic so much heat came through from the exhaust, its just a step too far for me.

I\'m getting a bucket seat for me from Brian on Tuesday, and I\'ll be constructing a harness bar, but aside from that the interior will stay untouched for as long as she\'s a daily drive I think. I even had 4 adults in the car the other day, I\'m not gonna pretend it was comfy but we all got to our destination without having to resort to public transport

In other news the clutch is slipping worse now Can feel it slip in 3rd if really thrashed, so I\'m gonna go easy on her for this week and change it after rotorstock.

[kiwimazda]

Good to see you yesterday Steve. The car looks fab and sits very well. You\'ve got me thinking now:driving

[Steve-A]

Cheers Brian

This is what I picked up from Brian, after I\'d given it a quick hoover and once over with upholstery cleaner.



I dropped it roughly into the car at lunchtime and it sort of fits In terms of general width and size it fits fine, which is good. I know these don\'t fit in mx5s due to the shoulder \'wings\' so was pleased to see it drop cleanly into the rx7.

That said I am going to have a bit of an interesting time making up some mounts for it. The drivers floor in Rexanne is far from flat, and extra lump on the side of the transmission tunnel to make room for the exhaust is a right pain. To get the seat in the correct position front to back and side to side for me, it\'s currently got to sit quite high, far too high for my taste. So I think its time to go back to the drawing board and do some research into how I can get the seat nice and low.

[johnnyboy]

Come on Steve, I need a new Work In Progress fix....
 
How are things going?

[Steve-A]

Sorry mate, I have rather neglected the internet for a few weeks.

I\'m still daily driver her, put about 5,000 miles on it now. About time for an oil change I guess. Problems have been few and far between aside from the clutch.

After the rotorstock abuse the clutch had started to slip more, so I purchased a secondhand silly paddle clutch and light weight flywheel.



Fitting it meant engine out.



And some monstrous tools to get the flywheel off!



It\'s so nice to have a clutch that locks up right like it should. Has taken a few weeks to get used to it though, especially with the light flywheel.

Aside from that I\'ve just driven her lots and enjoyed it I\'ve played with my suspension settings a bit, as the \'sticktion\' in the dampers seemed to reduce some over the past 1,000miles, so it feels better than ever.

I need to change the bulb behind the heater controls. lol. Thats about it!

I\'ve got no further towards any more power for fitting my bucket seat. TBH I\'ve been having second thoughts about fitting the bucket seat. I\'m gonna hold fire and think a while.

I have to admit I\'ve been mostly distracted by hunting down and buying a new motorbike. It\'s rather fun and does 60 mpg which I\'m hoping will take some of the pressure off Rexanne and I can therefore go for a wilder engine set-up in the future!

[David Nock (RIP)]

My God Steve, I\'d have taken a couple of years to rest up, but not you.....

Flywheel tools are awesome....last one I took off a spare engine I was given, I just drilled & split the nut. Would have meant getting a new one but then I just left the engine in bits.....rear rotor housing had chattered itself to death.

[johnnyboy]

Only time I have done this we ended up putting rawlbolds into the garage floor and using spare engine moutings to bolt the engine downn Then we used a 4 foot length of scaffolding pipe as an extension bar and still had to put a trolley jack under the end of it....
 
Good fun isn\'t it...