Club Repairs on the "almost Stock 1.6"

[StanTheMan]

September 2006

Extra elbow grease.

The Co-Pilot just insisted he had to help.



the end result of todays work.
ran out of primer :roll:

but at least its a lot less patches.

But i have some issues with the front spoiler too. :?
I had to cut it off the old bumper as 1 of the screws just would not come undone. A 2nd has come out of the anchoring point from within the spoiler. Probably get it to hold back it with aryldite or something

[StanTheMan]

oct 21 2006
(Big Dogs Dodgy Day III)
BDDDIII

well what a day with a huge progress.

It was the front spoiler. An the thread or bullet of an anchor point had brocken out & i couln't get the screw out of another anchor point. So the old bumper got carved up to get the spoiler off.

Got to bigdogs place & he had it all fixed within about 10 minutes
He got the stuck screw out & glued in the thread for the loose anchor point. Sorry no pics. What a chapmion. It was the BDDDIII at bigdogs place.
bigdog then proceded to prep the nose of his clubman as i decided to watch the master at work. Soon enough i'd got soo exited i started sanding back the spoiler. Li7hium came to help. It was pure elbow grease. There must have been at least 3 coats of red with a few more undercotas on that spoiler LOL.


we then washed it & wiped it with degreaser . The plan was then to spray it with flexy primer. which we did. But we got issues. Some of the old paint started lifting off. There was a chemical reaction happening. The 2 paints don't like each other. So it was decided not to continue with grey primer Just get the spoiler fitted. I can unbolt it easy enough to continue with the painting at a later stage.

The fitting of the spiler was reasonalbly easy with all the advice & extra hands at hand.


in the end I trhink the spoiler is fitted tighter than it was originally.


the spoiler fitted.


Nice & dodgy

[felixR]

hahah good stuff..!!

love the commentary

[doofus]

woo
very nice

now for a respray!

[Philip Lee]

i love the camber lol

[Justin Fox]

Hardcore Stan lol DIY FTW!

[StanTheMan]

i love the camber lol

yea fully sick ......respect..... :roll:


That camber is about as usefull as the bling intake ROFLMHO

[StanTheMan]

next was the painting of the stess folds where the original damage had been repaired. Dont want to have rust undo all the hard work in a few years.

unfortunatly there is no before & after pic. :roll: i forgot to take it.
all the shit on the insde of the bonnet that you can see will also be cleaned up & primed before the big day.

This was also a good opportunety to line up the headlight covet & bonnet a little better.
here are the before & after pics. The pics don't give it real justice but the improvement is hudge. I tried to actually bend it a little more into place with a massive lever......& bang brocke some plasic bits you live & you learn. :roll: . Thats been fixed but I evetually used some panel washers to get it to allingn correctly.

before


and after

[Sp33dY]

Lookin good .... did u use a spraygun / compressor for all the primer ... or is it straight out of a spray can ?

[StanTheMan]

Its acrylic primer out of a can. I will use a proper gun on the day. Primer is very easie to get on without runns. But runs are very easily repaired if you get them with this stuff.
I was going to finish before Christmas.......might be christmas 2007 the way i'm going.

[StanTheMan]

Next was the spoiler which was prepped at bigdogs dodgy day. Originally the paint reacted with the plastic bonding primer. So this time I tried a different make. Sweet as pie. . I looked as hard as i could. I couldn't see any reacting this time. Covered it with some Acrylic primer. let it bake in yesterdays sun. Then.....bolted the spoiler back on.


same with the front mudflaps. But i only got the passenger side one sorted.



And today( thursday) I got some primer on the side panel. After prepping it wednesday




All in all I'll be in the dog house now until at least chrismas. The paln was to finish it by then......looks like it will be Christmas 2007.


Well the labour of love continued this morning.

it was the bonnets turn.
before


basically the bonnet had been prepped before but since then, a whole heap of crap has attached itself to the bonnet so.
it was washed down, De waxed & dryed. The Co-pilot wanted to help his Old man. So he will deserve all the credit if it all goes well.
then just cut it back with 800 grade paper. Also rather than taping it up. The bonnet got removed.


Also fixed some nicks which i put in the side of the bonnet while allingning it the other day. :roll:

so it was then sprayed and allowed to bake in the hot sun before it was replaced & reallingned.




so the next step will be the doors & morrors. but i'm tossing up with the idear of doing the mirrors last on the day of the paint job as they are very fiddley & probably only want to do them once.
same with the window not sure whats involved with the removal of the window so thinking of doing this on the weekend of the respray.

oh well, time to ponder....

[Sp33dY]

Looks soo much better so far! Eagerly await the next update

[StanTheMan]

Man how could i forget about the spoiler & sidepanel .
which was done though the week as well . :roll:


very happy with the progress. just edited the post above as not to get it out of order.

[StanTheMan]

So there i was At MX5 Mania to get some Mazda emblem for my 2002 NB8B Wheels & somone offers me a softop on the frame. Mine should have been replace about 2-3 years ago
its kind of ......getting very wet everytime it rains. Its at a stage stage where it is nececary to fix it up.

It was a tough decsicion but one i would have been mad to refuse. Even if it was the money for the paint.


Some more progress over the weekend.

The new softop is on. I thought i'd have it knocked over in 2 Hrs......
ROFLMHO......maybe not 2 hrs....LOL
I'd hate to imagine how long it would have taken me had i just replaced the softop & used the old frame. Quite halarious
On friday I must have worked on it from 10:30 AM until 2pm. Thats when it was waterlight but all the inside trims, seat & Rolls bar were missing.
Rest was done this afternoon.....had to go camping & rally driving

First was the bling bling roll bar. It had to come out. I think it must have taken all of 15-20 min to get it out. Nice & easy

So next were the rails which hole the soft top in place. No 10mm socket.....Great .... so I attack it with a ring spanner.
Ohhh man the pain......I was soo hard trying to avoid going down to the hardware but after about 10min I realised. Its no use I need a 10mm socket. It had disapperad to somewhere. At the same time I thought i'd get some paint to repaint the Rails. In 17 years......they had corroded to a somewhat disgusting state. Can't have a nice new softop & crappy rails. So that made the trip a lot more worthwhile. Although that socket by itself would have made so much easier.

Unfortunatly the pic I took of the softop rails is blurry , but it should give you an idear how corroded these rails were.
blurry before shot

so rails were prepped & painted .....sweeet It will give the new softop some justice.

The rails were sanded back. Painted with Etching primer & then painted matt black. hopefully that will last a while.

[StanTheMan]

So after reoving the softop completely I also realisd my drain holes on the parcel shelf were completely clogged. Also some of the bolts of the rails were only handtight. which means it was prolly leaking a lot more that it should have been. I also completely butchered my rainrail. Momentarily i lost patience & ripped it in a place. I had the luxury of having a spare Rainrail so after that. it was basicaly ripped out.
I do suggest before attemting to remove the rainrail....go & have a beer, cigarette, drink, the dunny....whatever it takes to just get yourself together as my rainrail was very fragile. Rainrails are not cheap so go easy especially if you know its fragile.

So then I unplugged the drain holes on the parcelshelf laughing at myself thinking......now i wonder why i was getting a wet carpet every time it rained It wasn't just the holes in the roof. The drain hole was seriously clogged. I did take a phopto.....but its disapeard. Anyway while it was all open some serious cleaning was done.
nice one.....very happy.

so then it was time to put the top back on & get the roof watertight as I was off doing other things on the weekend. So only the basic things were put in but this is the final product before all the trims & things were replaced. Before we left on Fri afternoon.



So today i must have spent another 2-3 hrs getting everything back in. once i got most of the trims & seats back in i realised i'd forgotten to tighten the 3 softop bolts which hold it in. :roll: . can't do anything else but laugh at myself.
So it all came off again & the 3 bolts which are located behind a trim on the inside of the seatbelt tower got tightened. In the process I also noticed the bolts which hold in the hardtop clamp were also a bit shabby. so they got painted as well.

also a lot of crap which acumilated got cleaned up. & roll bar was polished especially in all thos hard to reach places.

I drove it. It Feels like a new car. There is no flapping or wind noises it feels soooo snug. Its Great.

Love the New Roof