Dr Hoo\'s TurboII restoration

[Dr Hoo]

Hi all
 
After weeks of lurking I thought I\'d drop in and say hello. I hope you don\'t mind if I use this space to document the trials and tribulations of restoring my 1990 TII.
 
Here it is:

 
I actually bought the car back in 1996, however things didn\'t get of to a very good start. After 2 months it blew a tip, a bit of which came out and also wrecked the turbo. It\'s a long story but here\'s the short version:
The car went back to T.W. Whites ( the UK\'s largest Mazda dealer - and a bunch of B......s) for repair. After 3 months of crap from them, I woke at 5:30 one morning to see it being pushed of the back of trailer outside my house. Of course the driver was ofsky before I made it downstairs. Not only did it run like a bag of sh.t, but they broke the front bumper, resprayed or swapped the bonnet and put a few other dents and dings in it.
 
And so started the 4 year legal battle......which I won
 
The car was brought back to a mechanically perfect condition back then, but I never got round to sorting up the bodywork because I\'d completely lost interest and other things in life got in the way. It\'s actually been SORNed for the last 5 years and only done 2000 mile in the 5 before that. It gets a run up and down the drive every month just to keep things moving. I don\'t think (famous last words!) the chassis will be in as bad a nick as some of the photo\'s I\'ve seen on here because the garage is heated and de-humidified, and this is where it\'s been for the last decade.
 
So here I am 16 years after I bought it with the time to finally return it to it\'s former glory.
 
20 years ago I used to be a bit of a rotorhead and know my way round an FC (N/A and Turbo) pretty well, but alas time has taken it\'s toll. I\'ve spent the last month pouring over the FSM and reading web page after page trying to regain some of the knowlege I once had. ( Talking of web pages, what happened to the TeamFC3S site? )
 
So any way, the plan is to restore to as near standard as possible... however there are exceptions.
 
I\'m going to remove the interior then start underneath, remove everything, clean/sandblast, repair rusty bits. Replace all bushes/hoses/pipes. The same for the engine bay. Then finally the body work. There is a small patch of rust at the top of the windscreen, so it means it will have to be removed.....which I\'m really not looking forward to.
(Anybody got a new spare one lying around)
 

 
 
May 2011:
 
Everything on the car appears to be working with no error codes on the ECU. I was half expecting something like the lambda code up because it doesn\'t half stink on startup. It\'s done this ever since I got it de-cated and a custom built exhaust fitted many many moons ago. It doesn\'t seem to effect performance in any way though. Obviously something I\'ll have to look at at some point.
 
I\'ve started to strip out the interior:
 

 
and I found that the car has had a small rear end shunt at some point which I didn\'t know about:
 

 
It\'s not bad, but you can see where the rear bumper has bent in the metal about 1/2 an inch.
 
The dash was a bit of a pain to come out, but out it came!
 

 
Hopefully get the carpets out soon and give the floorpan a once over. I had to weld a small hole on the drivers side years ago so I know it\'s not too clever, but I\'ve no idea what the passenger side is like.
 
To be contrinued.......

[Mir]

Welcome aboard mate! Hope u have a great time here!!

Syed

[Brett]

Looks perfectly serviceable to me!

Welcome to MRC :wave

[Lacey]

Welcome and good luck with the project

[B.Martin]

Welcome to the club. Great news on another TII being restored, glad your finding the time to do it and not sell up. Best of luck and I hope you find all you need here on mrc, everyone is nice and friendly!

[Prof]

Welcome to the club.
 
I think the teamfc3s site lost it\'s webserver and the guy didn\'t have a lot of it saved.  There\'s some bits of it still around.
 
Much the same has happened to 1300cc.com - another good site.

[dthebuk]

FC3spro is also a good one. Particularly for modifications.

If you\'re looking for a workshop manual look here http://foxed.ca/foxed/index.php?page=rx7manual

The car doesn\'t look too bad, i can imagine that rust on the roof will be a pain. Good luck, just a shame you made the school boy error of going to a mazda dealer

[Dr Hoo]

Thanks for the welcome everybody, and don\'t go too far because I\'ll probably have to pick your brains at some point.
 
Thanks for the links as well, much appreciated.
 
:cheers

[TiddlesRX7]

Welcome to the club. Nice looking TII you\'ve got there and in the fastest colour too! I\'ll be keeping an eye on this thread as it gets updated.

Ade

[papercutout]

Wow, surely you have to be a contender for \'longest owned FC\'?

Nice looking car, should be easy to sort IMO! Except the windscreen, but there\'re a few fabricators who could do so to a high level... It\'s definitely a job I\'d pay someone to do!

[grinder]

Welcome aboard

I cant see the pics due to the firewall at work

[richrx]

Cracking first post definitely can\'t wait to see how it progresses!! Hopfully oneday my fc can get the same pampering too


Richard

[Dr Hoo]

Afternoon all.
 

Wow, surely you have to be a contender for \'longest owned FC\'?

Hmmmm.....I wonder what the record is? Anybody Know?
 
I\'ve had another session on the car this afternoon so I\'ll post more pics later on.
 
Cheers
 
Doc

[Dr Hoo]

Just a quick question.
 
Do you think I\'d be better updating my original post as thing progress, or just stick in a new post every time?

[B.Martin]

I don\'t think you can update the original post matey.