Trimmer is on hold for a bit.

Yesterday I thought I would take the steel wheels off the back and drop them off at the powdercoaters. I picked up some alloy wheels from storage, jacked up the car, took one wheel off, went to put the alloy wheel on. Didn't have the longer wheel studs that I needed. D'oh.
put the steel wheel back on, lowered car down, went to start it, it's gone from sounding fine to rough and unwilling to idle. I think the plugs have fouled up. Managed by swearing, pushing and giving it a few more goes to get it back inside. Packed up everything and called it a day.

Came out today with longer wheelstuds that I got from my storage spot, popped on some old hotwires on the back, dropped the steel wheels off at a tyre place, they pulled the tyres and the valves and weights off, then delivered them to the powdercoater. Took my headers to a coating place a few suburbs away as well to get coated since the white VHT paint didn't work.

This weekend I'm off to rallyschool to get edumacated in rally driving, next week I'll have some body panels, steel wheels and the headers all ready to pick up. Finally some progress!

Plan for next year:

-take out interior trim panels

-run stereo wiring and wiring for some accessories sockets in the back to run a small fridge/phone charger/trickle charger off a solar panel

-headlining

-tyres for steel wheels and my alloy wheels that I've chosen. I'm going to run some 13x6 alloy wheels and I want to stretch a tyre, just for giggles.

-front guard mirrors

-paint and fit the last few panels

-sump guard

x2

I think they look tits.

Sent these off to be plastic media blasted:







if you remember my parts wagon, it was really rusty. This scuttle panel is off that car, as is the visor.




Original marking on the back of the visor




I nee to get another washer jet nozzle as this one fouls on the car body when the scuttle panel is in place. I think the water feed nipple should be coming up from the bottom, not the side.

Originally I wanted a black rocker cover, cleaned up head and a red engine block, with white headers. I thought those colours would have gone well with the dark green of the body.

Aaron and a few others mentioned that if I painted the engine block red, any oil leaks would show up straight away and it would then be a lot harder to get a certificate for registration. So I only painted the rocker cover and headers. I followed the VHT instructions to the letter but the paint still flaked off. Not happy.

I was looking at a few different companies in Victoria that do exhaust coatings and Aaron told me to go to one nearby that seemed to have a good reputation. So while coughing and spluttering from a cold, I pulled off the headers.

Off the car:



I'm kinda disappointed about the exhaust. The brackets look pretty rough and they didn't do a rear flange like I asked them to, just a slip on joint.



Slip on joint just before the diff ^



Flange that I actually asked for. ^

They also didn't put in the flange before the rear muffler like I asked for.

If anything, it's convinced me that the only person you can trust to work on your own car is you. For the next project, I'll be buying my own pipe and bends and doing it myself I think.

I gave the exhaust shop all of the original brackets and bolts so they could use them if they wanted to, the brackets look a bit average.



They also said that they'd painted the whole system in a special paint that stops the mild steel from rusting, except they'ved missed huge patches. Yeah...

With the proper screw in wheel studs, I was also able to put on some spare alloy wheels that I had (they were originally on the car when Aaron bought it, now they've just got junk tyres on them), so that I could send off the Mazda steel wheels to get powder coated.



Unfortunately, they were slightly flat on the bottom. Oh well!

powdercoated, bead blasted and ceramic coated bits should all be ready by next week. *fingers crossed*

Early xmas present:





though I'm a bit about a dent that has appeared in the headers.



Also got my wheels back from the powdercoaters and the scuttle panel and sunvisor back from the bead blaster. If I have time this weekend and if it stops raining, I'll be doing some painting and fitting.

Well, jack up the car and spin them over. Duh...

Which wheels did you end up picking? Those ones that look like SSR MKIII's would look amazing

Damn! why didn't I think of that?



I pretty much knew from the start which ones are going on, the steel wheels will probably be kitted out with some good street tyres and a set of alloys will be there with competition tyres for circuits and gymkhanas. You'll see soon enough!

I did a rally school course last weekend and its gotten me more fired up than ever to do the big dirt rally, so I'll probably get another set of steel wheels or new alloy wheels with some rally tyres. Depends on what size tyre I can use or get from suppliers.

Sunny morning, off to fit the headers!

The new headers are sweet!

_________________
1971 1300 Wagon Deluxe
1973 1300 Wagon

yeah! they really do "lift" the engine bay now.

I smashed the side of my face into the pinched weld line under the sill while tightening up the two bolts on the exhaust flange, I now have a nice bruise right next to my right eye.

New neighbour has two little kids running around the street so I used all of my inner strength to resist screaming out profanity at volume 11...

pics coming later.

It rained a bit too so I haven't painted either.

My theory is, if you make 1 thing shiny in the engine bay, then everything else looks like a turd on the sidewalk, so you get sucked into polishing and painting everything... then it gets dirty anyway! So apart from the painted rocker cover and headers, that's it for the engine bay. Now I just have to do some painting. I've run out of primer and it's either nice and sunny or bucketing down with rain and gale force winds at the moment so the painting might have to wait for a bit.

I might have a go at doing a rough carboard mockup of a sump guard in the next few days and check out some tyre places. I loath going to tyre fitters so I'm already pysching myself up for the wallet raping and piss poor service that I'm sure will happen...

Plus I'm off sailing again over Xmas.

Sailing trip on hold, full speed ahead on the wagon.

Sprayed the sunvisor and scuttle panel yesterday (managed to get a few hours in before it bucketed down again. WTF this is summer!). Went and checked on panels on my drying rack today after work and a little BASTARD of a bird has somehow gotten into the garage and shat right in the middle of the sunvisor on the top side. I've cracked the shits big time.

I wiped the bird crap off with some wet dunny paper, but it's left a small round stain on the primer surface, gypsy and Benn, what do I do? sand it back and paint again or just lay on another surface of primer and then paint away as normal?

OCD in me is flaring up... I hate little imperfections.

Stick too your day job, your jokes arent funny

Rub back to metal and do the area again. Take a look at this resto, well worth a look, even I picked up a couple of tricks. http://retrorides.proboards.com/index.c ... read=65793

Thanks for the person who posted it in the resto section.

As above!! I would definately go back to bare metal and reprime. You will be spittin if you just reprime and something in the shit reacts with the primer and or paint down the track....

Extractors look awesome. Gotta love shiny bits hey!!

_________________
Rockin' the 7 in a street near you.....

Wheel caps I mentioned in the other thread:

before


2 hours later one just one cap


Powdercoated wheels with everyday Falkens



Unsure if I should paint the rotor symbol red.

I had a bit of time off over the break, so I polished up the centre caps.



I ended up using some cutting agent and polish with a dremel buffing tool. It took a few hours but it was a nice way to pass boxing day.

929s and RX-4s either came with hubcaps or exposed wheels with the centre caps. The front hubs only needed the locating rubber bands fitted, whereas the back hubs needed the "cup" or hub changed over to one with a grooved slot for the rubber band.

The rubber bands in question:



Aaron had graciously given me two of the hubs that I needed with some more rubber bands. Here's an example of the hub with the groove in it and the band slipped on:



I dummied up the hub on a spare steel wheel to see if I could just unscrew the old hub and screw in the new one. No good, the lip on the hub is designed to sit behind the wheel, so off with the two back wheels:



Back wheel with the band-less hub on. If you see a hub like this on a 929 or RX-4 and it's an original car, then you know your car had hubcaps. Since this differential came out of the yellow 929 parts wagon, I'd say I'm 100% correct on this one as it had hubcaps on it before I bought it.



There are two big squat philips head screws that hold the hubs onto the axle. On the drivers side they screwed out without a worry. On the passenger side, one screw remained jammed on.



I broke out some penetrating spray, in particular one brand called Penetrene. Fantastic stuff but it is no longer stocked by a lot of stores. I used the nozzle tube on the can of CRC to get right into the back of the hub and worked the hub from side to side to try and loosen off the screw.





Now, in years gone by, I would have either broken out a cold chisel and a hammer and tried to smash the screw off or thrown bricks at something etc. This time I gave the spray a bit of time to really get into the screw thread, then gave my dad a call. He broke out his tools and pulled this out:



It's an impact driver. Basically you put a head attachment into it, so either a flat head screwdriver or a philips head, locate the attachment into the screw that you want to undo, then belt the end of it with a hammer. Depending on how you set it, it will either tigthen or untighten the fastener. We gave it a few taps to start off with, just to shake the screw loose (though I'd already tried a hammer on the end of a big screwdriver) and then progressively hit it harder as it became apparent that the screw was rusted in fast.

With dad giving the driver a big whack while I held it, then me wriggling the screw back and forth with a standard driverdriver and spraying more penetrene around, we eventually had our culprit out.



I checked the thread and it was fine, though I gave the thread hole a good flush out with cleaning solvent.

Test fitting the hub.



I then used anti seize "paste". It works really well in rust prone areas, so I thought I'd give it a try for next time. Bascailly you just dab it on the thread, screw the scew or bolt in, then wipe away the excess.



Final result:



and one more:



That's the first time I've washed the car since Aaron gave it to me roughly two years ago!

I also had a rummage around through some junk I had and pulled out a keyring:



I've also changed the sparkplugs so they no longer look like this.



Along with the dizzy cap, leads, rotor button - I have a set of points to go on but I couldn't get my head around how to set them.

I'm waiting on the paint supply shop to reopen so that I can give a few final coats to the scuttle panel, I have to sand and paint the sunvisor, along with some other bits and peices. I had a go at fixing a small leak at the bottom of the drivers door - which hasn't worked , so that also needs fixing and I need someone to have a look at the brakes as they have too much travel in them.

Getting pretty close now though!

Geez, never knew hubcaps were so complicated! Mine all just pop onto the ridiculously long hubs. Do the rims locate on the hub there or are they just on the lug nuts?

Are you going to use chrome rings on the wheels?

Hi Timmy

the hub bolts to the end of the axle and fits snugly inside the brake drum (you don't have to take the drum off though). The hub is also a locator for the wheel, especially when you are bolting it on with those retarded screw in wheel studs.
I'd say that it doesn't actually "carry" or support much weight as the two phillips head screws that locate the hub onto the end of the axle are quiet short and smallish, it's more to make sure that you have the wheel square and centered on the axle.

yours are different as 323's use that big plastic centre cap that covers the centre of the wheel like a mini hubcap. That's a whole other kettle of fish!

No to trim rings, I like the centre cap/chrome wheelstuds black wheel thing.

Those wheels are mostly to get the car through a road worthy check and then for the first couple of months while I iron out any bugs, then some alloy wheels and decent rubber is going on. (budget permitting!)

For somebody i have seen a lot of lately, there were a couple of things in this thread that you didn't mention that i could have helped out with, but also some things I can add for others' benefit.

Sump-guard: I have one suitable for your car, although i'd probably call it more of a splash-guard than a sump guard because its quite flimsy pressed tin. Its from a '74 929 coupe (Deeba's) and has a straight section across the front where it acts as a dam to the bottom of the radiator (and differs in this respect from a Genuine RX4 splash guard). Usually these are either missing, rusted or mangled. By the grace of good luck this one is *pretty good*, meaning 15 mins spent with a hammer and dolly will have it about as good as you will ever get it. I have a theory that you can pull 80% of damage out in 20% of the time, but the remaining 20% takes 80% of the time to get 100%. (lies, damn lies and out of my ass percentages). If blasted and POR15 painted it will last a long time. It may also just be useful for the construction of a proper sump guard made out of steel plate.

side story: Years ago my parents hit a rock in the middle of the road in the middle of a corner which was either deliberately placed there or carelessly left there after the road edge was graded by council. That car (ZF Fairlane) had a 1/4" plate guard underneath (as per XA GT) and the rock still punched the guard into the sump. If you want a proper guard you're going to have to make it from scratch.

Points: I will teach you how to install/set them. But the much better idea is the electonic dizzy on one of those motors at the farm.

Screws: Those things are often factory tight with added corrosion. More often than not the two holding the drums are over-tightened. These interfere with most aftermarket alloy wheels so as a consequence i almost always remove them. They are there to locate the drum in relation to the holes for the wheel bolts (worst invention ever).

If these are stuck and you don't have access to an impact driver or the correct size phillips head screw driver then i suggest driving them out with a cold chisel. Just glance the chisel off the edge in the direction of counter-clockwise. Usually it just needs a little persuasion to break the tension.

As for those two holding the hub locator to the axle flange, if you got one out but not the other I would have recommended removing the drum entirely and then turning the entire locator around (little love tap from the hammer helps). This little trick made it easy to remove the exact one you have in the pic there!

And to carry on a little from the wheel bolts, there is a useful way of converting these to studs that is really easy but not well known. I learnt this one from looking at a hub on a brake conversion. They had fitted four 12x1.25 threaded high tensile bolts put in from the back of the hub. Then the thread protruded about 30mm beyond the hub which is plenty for most wheels. So that the stud won't turn and unwind if a rattle gun is being used they had drilled a hole and tapped a roll-pin hard up against the flat edge of the bolt head. I can assume they also used a thread compound such as locktite. Its possible to do the same thing on the rear axle.

I still forgot your washer squirter nozzle was sitting on the hall table in a ziplock bag. And I absolutely have to get you that stuff to remove the sticker residue on the doors. The PBR brake manual too. Remind me!