Wheel arches sandblasting

As promised in the previous post, I wanted to show You what I've done to the wheel arches.

First everything was sandblasted. You can get the idea in the next pictures.

Then, all overlapings where there were welding points were sealed of with Terroson 53 with a brush.

After a 2-day healing period, I decided to put a special black coat of Alkyton color to it. This color is usually used to paint the engines and to seal and protect them from rust. If it is good for engines then it's probably good for the arches as well. The paint is very viscous and usually put on with a brush which I did. Nearly one week later I had a look at the arches and I was really stunned by the outcome. A very nice and even coat of black paint which should give me a very long protection from rust. As it seems it will protect from stone chips and hits as well. We'll see.

In the meantime, while I was painting the arches, my girlfriend was busy painting the front crash bar with the same color. I'm not very satisfied with the outcome of this as the sand blasted surface was not very optimal but for a part which is not visible from outside, it should work. Unfortunately no pictures of it yet.

Anyway, during the sandblasting process, I have finally managed to remove all the Brunox stuff from the car as I was not satisfied with how slow it is hardening and that after 3 or 3.5 months it was still not paintable.

After the removal, I have cleaned all these sandblasted areas with the silicone cleaner used by professional painting workshops and covered those areas with the 2k-Epoxy ground in order to avoid any possible rust generation. Pictures will follow...

And I am very proud that with a little help from a friend I have finally managed to get the gold reflective foil for this car. It will cover a part of the firewall on the exhaust side, probably my new carbon separating device (separation of the engine bay from the air inlet) and the area over the gearbox. Was not very cheap but it was worth it and I think it will look amazing. :)

Long time no hear part 2

One of the next big steps was to have the doors put back on the car. 

So after the prime painting the parts with the 2k-Epoxy ground I have covered all the important welding joints with a kind of silicone sealing which is used especially in the car industry. It was Terroson 9100. There is also Terroson 9200 which is the same product but it is black.

 After this, the hinges were also treated with Terroson and the doors were put back onto the car.

Just a word of advice here: You need 1-2 additional pairs of hands to put the doors back into the place. My girlfriend helped me, but even with her extraordinary help we needed to use the car jack to put everything 100% together.

To align everything properly, You need to close the door and make the first alignment so that the clearance between the door and everything else on the back is correct. After that i have tightened the bolts and put the fenders on the car to see if the clearance to the front is correct. After this, remove the fenders, open the door carefully, unscrew the two lower bolts going into the body of the car and lift the door slightly higher than they will be after closing them. I found out that this step is needed as the door is very heavy and after opening it it has no more support at the back and due to the weight lowers itself between 0.5 and 1cm. You can clearly see it by closing the door.

After this tighten all bolts and everything should be in perfect order.

 

The final part was to paint the hinges in the color of the car after a healing period of 2-3 days for the Terroson. I wanted to have it in the outside color as the hinges will be slightly visible from inside of the car after opening of the doors. After two coats of KH0, i have applied another 2 coats of clear coat. The outcome is not the best one but it doesn't have to be perfect.

Finally, after I found some small rust bits in the wheel arch I decided to remove the front suspension and the suspension frame. Nearly 30 minutes of work alone, but moving everything around is PITA if You're alone.

The reason behind removing everything was that since I want to do everything properly i also wanted to remove the found surface rust! At first I wanted to do this with the angular grinder, but after two minutes of overhead work which caused severe pain in the shoulders and hands and the disability to access all corners i decided to switch to centrifugal grinder which, I found out after few Minutes of work, was a bad idea as well because the grinding paper was ripped off by the sharp edges.

So, since I still had the sand blasting material and tools in the garage I decided to give the wheel arches a proper sandblasting! The good thing about this was that on the same day I will get to sandblast the rust treatment in the engine bay as after 3 months of waiting this treatment still wasn't dry and ready to be painted. More on this in the next post :)

CYA

Long time no hear

Hey ho!

I'm back again with alot of job done in the meantime.

Firstly, I finally mounted the TOMEI sump baffle into the oil sump. Unfortunately, the oil seal that I ordered nearly 2 months ago (and offcourse allready paid), still hasn't arrived. I also don't have any status on the part so it might take some more time.

Finally, after a long wait as I wanted all parts send together, they arrived few weeks back. It was actually two packages that looked the same. It was like Christmas. Seats, Clutch, Oilpump, Waterpump, all sealings and so on and so on.

Put the clutch on the scales to have a comparison to the old one. However, I just need to weight the old one :)

A few weeks later the Tomei pistons and conrods arrived. Shouldn't have been necessary in first place, but since the car was not in a promised state, I need to make the first oversize on my cylinders and rebuild the whole engine! At least now I don't need to worry about my power level and threshold and about opening the engine again next year as this time everything will be done properly.

Since I have changed my mind and decided not to go on with the R35 GT-R brake setup, I have traded it in for  a Stoptech brake setup. However, this setup doesn't have the M12 bolts in the front but M14 as it comes from an R34 GT-R. Therefore I needed to enlarge the mounting holes on the wheelmount. This was done on a milling machine. The hardest part was to properly fix the wheelmount so it wouldn't move as I want the holes to be as straight as possible.

And then finally, I was able to mount the front brake system to the car and take some pictures from the side. I think it looks great and exactly as I wanted to have it - black.

 

And one with the wheel on it :) I really can't wait to see the car finally put back together completely and drive it for the first time after everything is finished.

 

Futher on I risked and bought two CUSCO Bride Vios Seats for the car. I'm not really sure if those are street legal in Austria, but apparently I will find out some day. However, even with the seats I have noticed that the distributor I bought them from doesn't have a clue about the stuff and only want's to sell stuff without really listening to the customers.

In the beginning I told him how tall I am and that I don't want to sit very low as I want to see over the steering wheel. However, he assured that the seats are high enough and would be perfect for me. Now, guess what... Correct, they weren't. They were about 5cm to low (in the highest position on the rail) so I couldn't even really see over the steering wheel. After some time consuming measurements and calculations, I have found the perfect side wall for this seat and rail so I will be ordering it very shortly. Another investment which could have been avoided! Thanks!

Anyway, I have noticed one other thing about the combination of the Bride seat rail and Bride seat, which really left me stunned.

If You mount this seat to the lowest hole in the front and the highest hole in the back, then the seat cannot be adjusted in his front to back position because it is not possible to actuate the handle to unlock the positioning mechanics. Brilliant. At least I would have suspected that with two products which were "manufactured by the same company" the compability would be given.

Also, the quality of the rail welding is as if a 7 year old kid with no experience would have done it. So much for a high quality product.

In the future I will probably rely on European products.

 

More news in part 2...