Rexanne - Gold s2 restoration project

[Steve-A]

Had a day with no work today, so thought I better get on with the car to get Cliff off my back :rollin Only playing mate!

Firstly I put the last couple of sections into the front sill. I\'ve been grabbing an hour or two here and there across the week to rebuild this corner.



Then I seam sealed and painted the inside.



For now the full interior will go back in as I\'ve got it taking up room in my bedroom right now, and it just means I can get it on the road faster while I think about seats etc for a stripped out interior at a later date. So now its painted the carpet can go back as soon as I\'ve cleaned the rest of the metal dust out.

About 1.30pm I broke out the metal ready and acid etched the front underbody and inner wings and by 4pm it was dry enough to start applying the POR15. Was such a big area it took 3.5 of the mini cans and 3.5 hours to do. It took so long, that the sections I painted first were ready for their second coat immediately I finished the first!

I\'m so pleased with the finish though





I should get some more time in over the coming long weekend. My first priority is to seam seal the inner wing areas. I\'m planning to run without the arch liners, as they would scrub lots with my intended wheel fitment and ride height, so I need to add a level of protection beyond what the factory put there. After the sealer I\'ll be stone guarding the inner arches and inner sills, then its time for engine bay paint!

[Ian65]

It\'s looking good now Steve....
When do you reckon it\'ll  be ready for the mot?

[Steve-A]

I\'m gonna say 6 weeks, but in reality who knows!

There\'s still so much to do. A rough to do list is:

• Stone gaurd chassis
• Paint engine bay
• Repair/replace front wing
• Clean + paint all engine bay covers (battery tray, rad gaurds etc)
• Clean/paint engine and gearbox.
• Clean/paint suspension arms and fit polly bushes
• Re-fit interior
• Wire in new gauges and re-position radio
• Sort out buying and fiting coilovers
• Sort out brake system
• A million other things I\'ve forgotten!

[Steve-A]

Tick two of those off the list!

Seam seal + stone guard the floor pan and inner arches, tick!



Rope in friend to help paint engine bay, tick!

We went over it with some wet and dry to smooth out any lumpy bits, then masked it up.



A couple of coats of high build primer later...



And finally 3 coats of satin black after that...





So give that 24 hours to harden off properly and I can start cleaning up and putting bits back in!

[David Nock (RIP)]

Looking down the body line to the back wheels.....It\'s nearly there Steve.....Rexanne\'s becoming a top class driving machine. That\'s spot on mate.

Now the fun.....worried about the lad with the jack handle though.
Is it......a)strapped round his waist to beat off any daylight pickeys?
b)......Concreted into the ground to tie him to the spot?
c) ......Dare not say.

[syebba]

Wow steve,good progress,fun part putting it back together is close.
 
David,this is a serious forum for fb enthusiasts,plz stick to the topic & stop messing about.!
Point C,i can think of a few scenario\'s there,but i\'ll refrain as this is a family forum,need i say anymore than that pole is in a precarious position!
 
Keep it up Steve.
ta stu..

[myatt1972]

Keep it up Steve.
ta stu..

After Davids post, probably the wrong choice of words :eek

[Steve-A]

I\'ll go for option B David Friends some times don\'t stick around long once they realise they\'ve actually gotta get their nice hands dirty and help out, not just drink coffee and chat :rollin

[Steve-A]

Time for an update.

Been starting to put things back into the front of the car step by step when I\'ve found time over the past few days.

Started with the basic loom, just gave it a once over with carb cleaner then silicone spray and it looks good as new.

Next up was to clean up and paint the brake and clutch master cylinders. I was a bit worried about the brake servo when I pulled it off the car, but having cleaned it up, it was just surface rust caused by a bit a brake fluid killing the paint.



Here you can see the loom, master cylinders and brake lines in place.



Today I found some time to take a bunch of parts round and to shot blast them. I wasn\'t worried about the finish, they will be POR15ed, I just wanted to get ride of any flakey paint and other debris.



I had a right fight with the wishbones, the bolts were well rusted into the crush tubes for the bushes. Resulted to cutting them out, so will need new bolts!

In the last of the light this evening, with some help from Tom, I stuck some paint on the subframe then retired to the garage.



In the garage we set about giving the engine an initial inspection.



When Ross bought the car off eBay the owner claimed it was a runner, but it was only barely. It had no storage preparation, just one day he put it in the garage and didn\'t take it out for 10 years. The carb was very gummed up and the floats were well stuck, pouring fuel down constantly.

Last summer I gave the carb a once over for Ross. Once we\'d cleaned out the carb, emptied a pint of petrol of out the exhaust (!!!), put from fresh oil and fresh plugs in her she fired right up. Ross stored the car on a farm and had a 1/4 mile or so of farm track, so ran it up to temp plenty of times and took it through the rev range. It seemed to start fine hot and cold and pulled fine.

After I took the fuel system to bits last november I\'ve been periodically dripping a little 2 stroke oil in an turning the engine over by hand, to try and keep it all free and moving.

Stripping the intake off tonight revealed a rougher story.

Firstly the manifold appeared to have been sealed with bathroom sealer or similar, rather than proper RTV. The secondaries had a good 5mm deep layre of dirt, grit and coke in them, but the primaries looked like new. I presume the previous owner rarely opened it up!

There was also a large mismatch on the intake port size between the primaries on the intake manifold and the block. There are the port on the side of the block:



Here\'s the primaries on the intake manifold. The gasket matches the size and shape of the ports on the block.



Have I got the wrong intake manifold here? Or a non s2 block?

The secondary ports match very closely through the intake manifold, gasket and onto block.

The 2 stroke oil seemed to be doing it work though as lots of black gunk was working its way out of the plug holes and exhaust ports. Using a small torch all the apex seals looked good, they all sprung freely too when i pushed them. From what I can see of the housings via the exhaust ports they look good too.

Cranking it over by hand produced seemingly equal amounts of air to be blown out of the plug holes, an a similar amount of force needed to overcome the compression if the plugs were in.

So a mixed bag, but should clean up ok and do me a turn for a couple of months.

[Ian65]

All the RX7 12a factory inlet manifolds I\'ve seen look the same as yours whether on a tall port engine or whatever.
Anyone else?

[CHC (RIP)]

Same for me Ian.

Steve - what a fantastic job you have done to date, it\'s a credit to you!
Sorry to have kept on your back on this one but hasn\'t it been worth it :Giggle
Cliff

[Steve-A]

Haha, yes thanks for helpnig me keep focused Cliff :Giggle And thanks to you both for the info on the intake manifold. I\'ll match up the secondaries as best I can then, and maybe pull the primaries out just a fraction and call it a day.

Managed to grab an hour or two yesterday evening and some time today between the rains to make some progress.

Got a few more bits painted up in POR15, though have run out now and Frost are out of stock of black for 3 weeks! Might have to look at other suppliers.

 

Cleaned up, painted, adjusted and re-fitted my steering box. I did this friday, mostly because putting the rack back in filled a large hole in the firewall back up, and meant less chance of the car filling with water when the rain came!



I\'m not really attacking any of this with real order at the moment, I\'m just kinda doing whatever takes my fancy. So next up I disassembled, cleaned, painted, re-greased and assembled the wiper mechanism. They seemed to work fine, but after reading Ian\'s blog I thought it was worth an investigate and they were indeed rather stiff. Should wipe at warp speed now!



Finally this afternoon I started to re-fit the interior. The only things left to do which require possibly interior out is to fit the new rear dampers, and thats easy enough to pull the plastic off, and I\'ll have to do something about this A pillar at some point. For now I could really do with the bedroom space back, so it\'s all going to go back in.

This is as far as I got before the rain stopped play.

[A7RXY]

looking good Steve, you must have the patience of a saint.

   Dibs

[Steve-A]

Haha Dibs, by the time I get to posting on MRC I\'ve usually had a couple of hours space from the car. I usually come inside swearing at it and just thinking \'I could just give up and buy one that\'s got an MOT\' :rollin

Hopefully it\'ll all be worth it in the end.

[A7RXY]

It will be more than worth it, when I put mine back on the road after 11 years, luckily I had no rust to deal with, just brakes and carb it felt great when it sailed through the MOT and driving it again.So keep it up it will not be long before you can do the same.
 
    dibs