Tomble's 1983 Mitsubishi Starion GSR-X fumbling

[tomble]

Before doing anything, I did what I should have done last year: rolled the shell outside and applied a stupid amount of compressed air and vacuum cleaner to the nooks and crannies to try and excise as much sandblasting media as I could.  I've heard that you can never really get rid of it all, but I wanted to at least try and minimise it. 

This felt like a sisyphean task; I'd aim the air at one hole, and all the sand would either blow out and into the car interior or the ground, or internally towards the other nooks and crannies in the car.  So I'd aim at those and it'd just go back to the first hole.  Due to the hidden interior geometry of the car sometimes angling the air by 2 degrees would cause an absolute deluge of sand to pour out of some rando hole in the seam sealer somewhere.  I periodically vacuumed the interior just to minimise the chances of the air blowing it back in to crannies and just entered a diminishing returns loop of just shuffling as much sand around as I could until I was happy with what was left, took all day.

I estimate I removed probably 5kg or more of sand judging by how heavy the vac is now.

----

First thing to go on the car: the engine crossmember <3.  Note the sand that poured out of their invisible holes once the impact gun came into play.

I've quickly discovered that the hardest part about this is figuring out what bolts go where and in what configuration.  I was missing the nuts for the crossmember - tore up the garage and found them hiding (unplated) in a box somewhere on their own :(. 

I also discovered that one of the nuts is some rando non-OEM thing and that only one of the support bolts was present, so I stole the rear suspension subframe's nuts and bolts and pilfered replacements from red car for later plating.  I suspect this is going to become common.

The front stabiliser bar brackets only seem to have 7 of the 8 required bolts - if I have the right ones at least - so again, stole one from red for later plating .  They're also all lacking the big washers that are present on the red car's so I dug some new ones out.  I'll mount these and get the missing bolt on later.

The bars themselves are a little manky in the threads so I cleaned them up and left them in evaporust overnight before wire wheeling and greasing.

And with some wrangling, the brackets and stabiliser bars are in w\ some new rockauto bushings...

Either my torque wrench sucks or I keep screwing up, probably the latter, as sometimes it'll just seem to not want to click until it's too late.  It was happy to strip this little guy, fortunately red had a spare in good condition after a clean up.

I failed to notice that one of the tow points was bent prior to powdercoating so had to mess it up with my rudimentary hammer, torch and vise skills :(.  I gave it a simple etch prime afterwards because forging on!

Similarly one of the front sway bar brackets is all over the place, so I cleaned scuffed and painted one of red's.  Shame about the difference in shine but oh well.

Speaking of etch prime I wanted to make some more bench space so I finally got around to degreasing and painting the rear shafts.  I'm using a resene etch primer that the body shop swears on and sold to me at cost.

Sprayed on a bit heavy in places here but I love the flat look of this paint.  

Continuing with the sway bar, here's the old vs new mevotech stuff.  As with the rear bar I suspect that the extra nipply bit on the rubber might be a bit too pointy so I thought I may need to make another trip.  

However the second link made it obvious that I definitely need to do something.  There was clearly some kind of factory error and the bolt was all sorts of messed up - weird formed head, rust on the shaft and some really manky double-threaded bolt w/ stripped nut.  I'll have to source some new ones or maybe just the bushings and try clean up the old hardware.

Finally, it's about time to get the front hubs ready to go back on.

I drove the four new races in and only hit my hand once.  I'm hoping the swelling doesn't indicate a broken bone...

I also almost messed up installing this seal - I pushed unevenly somehow and got it below the lip of the hub, but fortunately was able to fish it back out unharmed just before giving up and grabbing the pliers.

Lots of high temp lube packed into the bearings and in the hub cavity; I'll add more when placing back on the spindles.

 

Hoping to tackle the steering link and all its associated bits and bobs tomorrow and try salvage enough front strut rubber to get the front complete (minus sway bar) tomorrow, which probably won't happen now that I've stated this.

[tomble]

Quote

Hoping to tackle the steering link and all its associated bits and bobs tomorrow and try salvage enough front strut rubber to get the front complete (minus sway bar) tomorrow

Yeah nah, every weekend has been jam-packed with activities so far.

Anyway

I threw some steering stuff together and loosely attached it all to the car, using up annoying nuts and bolts in the process.

Now it's blocked waiting on the steering gear box - have barely touched it and it's less important than the hard lines so... I guess I should stop putting that off...

They've got some manky brackets which at the least I want to refurb.  The lines themselves seem okay but could look less grotty I suppose.

I dragged the plating kit back out and flailed at it until it did what I wanted it to do, which includes some misplaced bolts scavenged from red car. I'm surprised how much I've forgotten already.  Not my best work but it'll do.

The zinc anodes had some weeeeiiiiird schmoo dribbling from the stainless hangers by the end of it... what the heck!

I separated the hard lines out and then threw a wire wheel at one of them.  Nothing much happened, so I decided whatever let's just smooth them up a little bit with some sandpaper.  At this point I'm assuming that they're stainless steel and they've just gotten a little discoloured so am not worried about exposing fresh material.  But as I scuffed away I noticed that it wasn't too labourious to expose nice shiny stuff... so I moved up a couple grits and went to town.

I mentioned what I was doing in passing to my mate and he asked "what are you doing about replacing the passivated coating?"... doh.  They're not stainless and I've polished one back to bare steel.

I thought about a few options - just trying clear coat, some combinations of different coatings, taking the plunge into making my own hardlines, getting someone else to do it.. and decided to just put some rust preventative on and then colour with the etch black.

First step, art installation.

Second step, POR-15 rust-preventative - two coats.

Third step, off camera, paint the plastic brackets black with etch.

Fourth step, wrestle these god damn things back into line and hold with plastic brackets. 

Fifth step, two coats of colorpak black etch primer, shifting the plastic brackets between coats. 

Et viola - ready to go back on.  

Started raiding boxes to see what other bits of hard line needs restoring - which I'll do later - and found a sneaky bag of missed hardware.  Doh.

Anyway I got the lines on, and what I'm now going to show you is the end result of a bunch of pain.

These things were an absolute bitch to get into place.

First, there's three different kinds of brackets.  And some of the plastic brackets don't anchor to anything.  

I had to go under the red car to figure out exactly what went where - also to salvage yet another misplaced bolt.

Second, the lines themselves have been jostled enough to be slightly bent out of shape in places.  However paradoxically they absolutely resist being bent intentionally.  They're also all slightly different and I had to go back and forth between photos endlessly to figure out the exact correct position of each little line such that they didn't cascade and suck on some other bracket.

Third, the bolts holding in the brackets usually resisted finding their threads... and every bracket that goes on makes subsequent ones harder to fit and the lines harder to wrangle.

But I got there in the end :).  Now I can tackle putting the rear subframe back in, which so far has had its own challenges.

I'm not super happy with the black etch so far, wrangling the lines scratched it back to the rust preventative in a few places just from things like sliding the plastic brackets along them.  I scuffed and degreased after rust preventativing so I don't think it's a me thing.  Eh, we'll see how it goes.

[tomble]

The rear brakes are more complicated due to the extra hand brake stuffs.  The handle pulls a lever which pushes a pin down through the caliper and into a little freely-rotating bracket on the underside of the piston, forcing it down.  No idea how common this method is.

Bleh.  Let's clean that up.

Here's what it looks like all disassembled... not pictured is an extra retaining ring and a forgotten seal which is still inside the bore. 

The pin bearings also haven't been pressed out in this picture - one side's bearings were all rusted up and they cost $$$ for some reason so I hacked apart red's brakes.  I fortunately was rewarded with another pair of good ones (and a pair of shit ones) for a total of four good bearings.  Phew.

As mentioned with the fronts, the rear pistons from the black car are fortunately in good condition and can be re-used

So once again I went through the motions - except spread out over a month~: derusting solution overnight, a good scrub, let dry in the sun...

... fix the sandblaster, sandblast it all, rust preventative, caliper paint.

We painted our house recently (still need to paint the garage) and I'm really over brushing things.

But it's done - for now.

Not pictured: I scrubbed all of the parts I was re-using in the parts cleaner, left in evaporust overnight, scrubbed again and they came out great.

The aforementioned starion angel who gave me a bunch of rebuild link and advice pointed at these washers to replace the old crappy ones.  They're slightly conical washers that provide resistance and springage for the brake lever.  They're cheap so I grabbed a set (14 required to do both sides).

Unfortunately they're a little chonkier than the originals

Five will fit. Angelman went down this road and says he has no problems.  However half of my original washers were perfect and after the evaporust the other half looked pretty good (red's ones were all trash), and should survive for a while covered in grease, so I decided to re-use them.  Here's after the evaporust and before wire wheeling and greasing.

Reassembly time!  You can see the post-brush washers front and centre.  Everything here has been slightly greased with brake grease.

First I put the bore seals and pistons in with their boots.  The rear boots have locking rings in place which I found extra scary.  After a bunch of fiddling I got them in place and I think they seem to be operating fine - I tested with some compressed air.  We'll see!

For the hand brake stuff I will be following this guide by kev from the star quest forums as the manual calls for a special tool and press to squish the washers down for re-assembly, so there's a knack to it if you don't have it.  The idea is to re-install the bearings in a particular order so that you have extra room to fiddle the arm into place.

First bearing in on one side...

The rebuild kit came with a new o-ring for the plunger so I put that on after greasing and placing all seven washers, then screwed it down into the piston and aligned it like thus:

The key and spring then go into place.

Now the bullshit starts.

Put the other bearing on the lever arm and push it through, and use a screwdriver to push the key back.  The problem we're overcoming is that the washers need to be pressed down to get the arm all the way through,.  The idea is that with only one bearing in play, there should be plenty of angle to feed the arm through to it.

In reality this is a massive pain in the arse; the arm still won't go in without pressing down somewhat on the washers and there's a lot of force required to do so.  I'm not sure how but I managed to get it started with the first side.  Then it's just a matter of pressing it home the rest of the way in the vise and locking it in place.

However, the other side did not want to co-operate... so I found a much easier alternative.

1. Place the caliper in the vise such that the hand brake assembly is pressed up against one end.

2. Use your favourite chonkdriver to lever down on the arm; this is supremely easy to do thanks to l e v e r a g e.

3. With the arm lined up, give it a few taps with a mallet to get it started.  Then pick up where you left off and press it home per above.

Now I find myself in a greasy situation.

A tiny sachet of brake grease is $20.  I'd need many many sachets to fill up each caliper assembly per factory standard.  

The manual states which types of grease to use, but in an unhelpful way.  "Orange" grease for much of the reassembly, and the hand brake area, and "pink" for some key spots.  I couldn't find a translation for these on the net* but I'm guessing it's a combo of brake grease and then some kind of generic high temperature grease.

(* something I'm picking up in the auto world is that everyone has an opinion on how something should be done right, and they get angry at the way other people do things and call them clueless muppets.  However all of these people have functioning working cars so clearly it doesn't matter as much as these commenters wish it did)

My compromise is to use a combo of a $20 sachet and the sachet the rebuild kit came with to fill the bearings and the cavity with the washers in it...

... and high temperature wheel bearing grease for the remainder of the space under the hat.

This feels okay to me.  The only mechanical action this area gets is when the hand brake lever is actuated.  The part of the pin going into the piston is on the brake fluid side, no grease in that equation.  And the wheel bearing grease is high temp so should be able to deal with the high brake caliper temps that make it to it.

Then the hats get filled with more grease and snugged into place with the old retaining rings.

I had some dramas with paint sneaking its way into the pin holes on the brackets but nothing a dremel couldn't clean out.

Boom, rebuilt rear brake calipers!

Nice to (a) tick these off, (b) clear my work bench and (c) delete this info from my brain ready for the next thing.

There might be some more paint cleaning to do to fit little brackets and what not but calling this done for now.

[tomble]

I'm still not 100% sure what's happening with the struts, probably going aftermarket at some point, but knowing that decision paralysis is one of my negative traits I just elected to pretend that the existing stuff is okay and give it the minimum amount of fussing to get back on the car with the understanding that it might be replaced fairly soon.

First I picked through the black and red car's stuff for the best set of 2x front 2x rear bits and bobs.

Some of the metal parts were proper rusty so they went into the blaster then followed up with the clean+prep+preventative+chassis black treatment.

The front mount bearings are okay, well one of them is, the other one's a bit... textured ... anyway I cleaned them out as best I could with degreaser and brake cleaning fluid before packing tons of grease back into them.

The manual states to glue these bits onto their hats so I used superglue. 

I used a glove for protection as I always seem to superglue myself, but the glove ended up being spotless.

Instead it all went on my ungloved hand.

Then it's reassembly time for Mr Struts

For the fronts I just put the inserts back in.  The red car's front struts arethe original sealed oil units and I found that out by spilling one's oil everywhere so that choice was made for me ...

For the rear, I just selected the best two / least crap two.  One was from the red car so I did a very quick bit of dirt mining and parts washing to clean it up a bit.  I didn't bother cleaning anything up beyond that here, there's no/little rust on them and I just don't want to put much effort into things that are probably going to be replaced pretty soon.  This is the same reason why I'm re-using hats and bellows etc.  

On that note you'll note that the bellows are pretty manky.  This is literally the best I could clean them up to.

Kind of fiddly getting them all together but I got there...

I also wire wheeled the bottom of the rear struts clean, ready to reassemble.

[tomble]

The rear subframe is no longer leaning up in the hallway in the house!

I moved it to next to the car and added new diff mounts and the mounting brackets I hadn't yet attached.

Then with difficulty attached the diff, making sure to line up the locating pins.

I should also note that I'm lubing bolts with grease and torquing wrenching as I go - coming back where I think something may have moved.

Attaching the torque tube raised an issue: the new rubber makes it a bit too tall for the bolts.

Wrangling a clamp fortunately compressed them enough to get one nut started which compresses it down for the other nut to go on after the clamp is removed.

Lots of wrangling by the way - struggled to get the correct placement of things that didn't block the bolt or nut, and I also had to start with the bolts in otherwise the holes wouldn't line up quite right.

The subframe was light enough for me to reasonably carry, and the diff was unwieldy but also OK.  But there's no chance I can carry their combined weight.  I shuffled the subframe into place on cardboard and tried a bunch of different things to try and lift it evenly into place on my own but nothing quite worked.  There's two big boi mounts at the front and some smaller pairs at the back that all have to line up. 

At one point I almost tipped over the car by temporarily lifting it onto a wonky piece of wood to brace it while I lowered the rear jacks (nfi what I was thinking) then realising that (a) I couldn't let it go and (b) couldn't knock the wood away from where I was standing, so I was just left there holding a car in my hands :|.  I got out of my predicament by rocking the car over to make the wood fall then bringing it back and blindly lowering it back onto the stands.  

I felt like I was 90% there so figured bringing in girlface would solve it easy... but I was actually more like 20% of the way there :P.  The pair of us managed to get it on with much wailing and gnashing of teeth.  In very brief summary:

- Bottomed out the rear stands to reduce the amount we needed to travel

- Angrily levered the subframe into place with our boots and steadily blocked it up further and further until the front mounts were located

- Jacked the rear up and jostled until the rear bolts located

- Finger tightened bolts on the rear

- Jacked the front up and finger tightened those

- Bring everything home now that it's all actually in place

The rear hubs were now itching to go on, but I wasn't sure what order to do them in.

Mount hub, then strut?

Attach strut to hub, then mount?

I tried the former first.  

Greased up the big boi bolt and aligned it such that the pin bolt can go in and keep it in place.  The powdercoating made the latter step a bit of a pain.

Then I got stumped.  It didn't seem like there was any easy way to get the strut on.

Rather than restart I just decided to try the other way on the other side.  I attached the strut to the right hub then girlface and I lifted it all into place and secured the strut (temporarily).  However the arm had to travel a fair ways so I decided to go back and play with the left side.

On the left, I instead attached the strut first.  I also detached the sway bar to give the arm more movement.  Then I was able to manipulate the hub and arm such that the strut was able to slide into place, assisted by a jack.

Going back to the other side, I undid the sway bar there and was able to just push down the arm and attach the hub.  Honestly easier, however there was a bit more fiddling with the pin bolt.

So to answer my own question, both methods are fine.

I reattached the sway bar, added the retaining bolt for the struts and torqued everything down.

The hub's bolts need torquing to spec so I haven't put the drive shafts in yet, as I need access to those bolts.  I'll try putting the wheels on but I suspect I'll need to buy some angle iron or something to create the leverage I need, it's something stupid like 190 foot pints.

 

[tomble]

Front struts time... I realised quickly that I couldn't possibly bend the control arms down without disconnecting the stabiliser rods so that was the first thing.  I remember them being a bitch to get on in the past but I just had to hope it'd be okay.

The manual says to use gasket maker to seal the upper control arm to the strut, so that's what I did.

It actually wasn't too bad to install.

I had to take a quick break to clean out the threads on the struts and the bolts but otherwise it all pretty chill.

Now I can do the front hubs

The front rotors attach to the back of the hub, which I hadn't seen before.  It surprised the brake parts guy which I guess means it's uncommon.  He was confused as to why the bolt pattern wasn't 4x114.3 like the rears.

I packed even more high temp wheel grease into the hub and smooshed it on to the spindle, all gross-like.  The torquing process is a bit different here, 20 leg pints, then back to 0, then up to 5.  I guess it's a seating process.

I also misplaced the washers but fortunately red's washers were perfect to re-use after a quick clean.

Then installed the nut cage and my first ever cotter pin.

The hubs have little caps, but I noticed that the black car's ones were a bit dented after cleaning them, so I went with red's.  They're still manky though so I gave them a blast and plate.  

Plating went well this time - I filtered the water with some coffee filters (takes FOREVER) as it had gotten skungy and messed around with the brightener.  I'm still 90% sure I'm doing something wrong to get such inconsistent results but whatever.  Shiny this time

 

I mentioned a few posts ago that one of my new sway bar links was ruined from the factory.  I popped down to BNT but they only had bushings so I decided eff it just buy from rock auto again.  My brain for some reason then went "better stay away from mevotech this time" and bought two new links from a different brand, instead of just buying another single mevotech one.  Now I have two white links and two blue links of different styles.  Ugh.

Whatever - they were easy to get on, then I put the stabiliser bars back on.  For some reason it was super easy this time so crisis averted there!

 

I figured I should put the brake calipers on so I can delete them from my brain.  I'd previously missed some rear bracketry and hose bracketry so blasted (see above) and painted them with POR stuff and attached them, then threw the rear calipers on the car.

For some reason when fitting the fronts the second bolt would just not line up... the caliper encountered the rotor well before aligning with the hole.  

I double checked I had the correct side and that they weren't upside down or anything, nope...

Eventually I pulled out one of red's brackets which fit perfectly and I realised I'd swapped the brackets when reassembling them 

No photo but I sorted that out pretty easily and got them hooked up easily after that.

 

Then of course it's time to put the wheels on <3.  I'm just waiting on some steering linkage stuff before I do the fronts.

Tell you what, it's amazing how transformative a simple wheel is.

 

Next up are the drive shafts.  My torque wrench only goes to 150 leg pints and the axle nuts want 200~, so I gave up on getting them to 150 as soon as the car started wanting to roll off the stands.  Instead I just level 3 dakka dakka'd for 7 seconds a side and called it good for now.  I'll probably get a mechanic (at WOF?) to torque it properly for me, there'll probably be other stuff to torque at the same time... if I don't get a chonkwrench myself before then.

And with the drive shafts in, that almost entirely exhausts my supply of Ready To Attach / Previously Restored stuff, clearing out my brain's memory cache for new sub-projects.

[tomble]

 

[tomble]

The starion uses a steering gear box, none of this new/old rack business.  This is mine. It's heavy.  

It was disgustin so I've made thorough use of degreaser by this point.  Unfortunately this nuked the graphic on the little riveted plate but oh well.  It also spills fluid everywhere, no matter how much I remove there's always more left.  

That said, it doesn't seem to leak despite the positions I've left it in since cleaning it months ago.

Here's red's box.  It seems okay too.  But let's make sure I don't have to switch to it.

I checked the runout backlash of my pitman arm and it was within spec.

I'd read a rebuild guide and it just seemed like a lot of faff.  I have a seal kit, but if this doesn't leak and is within spec, why spend effort and mental space rebuilding it?

That's what lazy Tom rationalised anyway.  So, and forgive me for the shortcut, but I decided to mask it up and just give it a quick coat of rattle paint.  If it needs rebuilding down the line I can just paint it properly then. Since everything else down there is shiny I decided against the flat black etch primer and instead used the remains of my CRC black zinc, which seems to do quite well on rusty surfaces (which this has a few patches of).

 

Buuuuut

 

After repositioning it for the final coat of paint I noticed

1. there isn't enough paint left in the can

2. some fluid was seeping from somewhere (not the open holes)

 

So...

FINE 

IT'S FINE I'M FINE

I'm using this wonderful guide to rebuild the box.  

First step, and hardest step, is to remove the pitman arm.

At first I tried with my gear puller but without fail it would just slip off.

The arms wouldn't go all the way in so I did some grinding and filing to slim them down a little to fit.  It's a cheap gear puller so I won't be mad if it breaks.

You can see the extra leverage this gives me - the arm in the back is unmodified in this pic:

However even with this glorious contact it'd still just slip off.

I tried everything including trimming the arms such that the very tips make sharp contact right up against the shaft but even that would let go.  I don't really know if this is a failing of the tool (or me I hope), I think it was just really well seated. In fact the threaded shaft of the puller was mangling its tip just from being pressed in so hard.

I've been putting off working on the car because the garage turns into an oven in this upper hutt summer and this long weekend was scheduled to be a bit less hot, so I bit the bullet and bought an actual pitman arm puller for twice the price I could have gotten it online.

It took some trial and error - in the pic above, after a bunch of 17mm-in-a-box-section-leverage, the left arm of the puller slipped off... and kept slipping off.  I ended up fixing this by swapping arm sides.  This worked because the tool is poorly made - the bolt isn't exactly on centre and so pulls on a slight angle.

After a while of worrying if I was going to tear the vise of the bench my 17mm-in-a-box-section's crescent started slipping.  The puller's other flaw is that the head doesn't let me get the 12-pointy end onto it or a socket so I figured my next step was to grind it so I could.  However I tried my other 17mm and it had just enough of the right stuff - one more half turn and the pitman arm flew across the garage.

I then made a bunch of measurements and marks and set about continuing disassembly.  It's supposed to be easy from here.

No explicit pics of the marks themselves but you'll see them in some of the pics to follow.

First the top cover's jam nut comes off - making sure the adjustment screw doesn't move - just I can take a measurement once the first jam nut is off.

Same with the jam nut on the side cover.  I have no other tool here other than a pipe wrench but fortunately not much effort is required.

With the final measurement taken (side cover to body) I can take the top cover and main shaft out...

... and 33 roller bearing pins once the main shaft is out ... 

... and the side cover, piston and screw shaft out next ...

not pictured but I also slid off the piston (really satisfying motion) and removed the screwed-down pipe which hides a bunch of ball bearings.

Now I have to separate the side cover's, uh, cover.  I again have nothing for this so I made some out of angle iron and some nuts and bolts.

Each side of the piston has 2 shims and a thrust bearing.  Also there are seals EVERYWHERE

Fully disassembled.

 

So of course I have to paint it again.  I decided to strip all the CRC black to make sure I was Doing It Right.  However a night in evaporust (which isn't normally kind to paint) and even my heavy duty stripper struggled.  Hell even sandblasting was taking ages.  I ended up taking a full morning just slogging at these parts to get them bare, then put them in evaporust to get rid of what rust was there.  There were spots of black paint left but nothing worth bothering with.

Reassembly time.  Seals!  I used fresh power steering fluid to lube things but I guess I could have re-used the old stuff.

The big screw nut needed a seal driven and then the bearing pressed back in, using fresh bacon fat to lubricate everything, then the shims + thrust bearing on that side of the piston held in with dabs of grease.

Seals for days in the piston housing

Then the piston shaft can go back into its housing,

and the gland nut can go back on.

Reassemble to 20 leg pints.  

My jerry rigged method was to measure 10 finches (why not 12? shrug) from the torque point and install a small bolt there.  Then my 10 finches of leverage takes up of the 16.7 leg pints, so I set the torque wrench to the remaining 3.7 leg pints... I also had a spanner underneath because I drilled the hole too large and my tiny washered bolt kept slipping.

After twerking down I backed off and re-installed to spec... or at least, the state it was when I started, as verified by the markings and measurements I'd made at the start.

Next up is to fiddle with some balls.

The piston has 23 or 26 or something of the little guys that I guess have some hydraulic function as well as providing a moving bearing surface for the piston.  It's incredible engineering.

All but 7 of the balls are gingerly fed into the piston such that they slot into the groove of the shaft - well one side of it anyway, got to be careful they don't go the wrong way, and there's a bunch of wriggling the piston to massage everything and complicate the situation.

Once up to the final 7 balls, I greased them up to hold them in place in the tube. 

Then sandwiched the tube together and installed.

I think I did this right but holy crap do I hope I didn't put a ball down the wrong way.  :X

The other cover's inside gets more seals (of course) and also the 33 bearing pins get greased into place.

I then fed the screw in and restored it to its correct measured position and jammed nutted it into place.

Then I installed the piston shaft in and torqued it down.  Phew, glad that's done because one of the seals really wanted to pinch and doing that again would suuuuuck

Oh fuck the piston's upside down.

... that's better ... 

Also oh no, I forgot to attach the main shaft to the screw :\.  So I undid that as well and reinstalled with the shaft in place.  Was wondering where the hell that step went.

The main shaft slipped easily into place then I installed the pitman arm.  Tell you what, putting it back on is a lot easier than taking it off.

It works!

I decided to paint it all as one complete unit, we'll see how that decision turns out to be a pain in the arse tomorrow.

I'll also check the play just to make sure I didn't break anything.

[tomble]

I have no idea why I have been putting off using the spray gun, it's hardly more effort to clean than the brushes, and that difference is so made up by the fact that each coat goes on smooth and fast!  All done in a very cruisy day.

 

The only pain is that the chassis black wasn't coming out of the gun smoothly as-is (the rust preventative didn't need any additives) so I thinned it with a little added solvent and didn't give it enough time to run the un-runny stuff through so it started spraying heavier as I went.  This caught me off-guard and the first black coat went on thicker than I'd like.  

But it worked out in the end, here's the fresh second coat drying...

[tomble]

The next day.

Backlash was already in spec before and is now a little better

Buuuut in my impatience I didnt' let the paint dry to its full hardness.  'Tis what I get.

Anyway Girlface and I attached it to the car and started doing up all the steering link bolts.  The two in the rebuilt drag link are hole-less bolts w/ nylock nuts so I just trust they'll  stick around at torque spec, the other two were castle-and-pinned.

One of the nylock nuts just wanted to spin the joint, I fixed by jacking up the weight of the car onto the drag link.

I dug the steering column out of the pile and gave it all a quick clean and zhuzh.  Some of the boot was mangled so I just cut off the dangly bit, I don't think it's materially important but I may source a new boot down the line (or pilfer red's).  The column itself is 96% perfect and 4% random surface rust spots.  During proper reassembly I'll likely freshen up those spots but I don't think it's worthy of a full rebuild, there's zero play in anything and seriously that other 96% is perfect.

I'd lost the bolts for the steering column and spent hours looking for them.

I even went into Red and started disassembling the dash to find out what they looked like, and potentially use them as a fall-back.

Fortunately they turned up in the box of bolts in a bag with a cryptic label.

Then we snazzed all the wheels on and frolicked her outside... back on her wheels for the first time in... uh... not sure???

 

[tomble]

(almost) NSFW

[tomble]

All my recent efforts and funds have gone into a trip to Japan, a heat pump, and some other stuff.  And the stuff I'm working on is sort of midway. But I should update as it's been a while and to assert that I am still alive.

---

When I got back from Japan I had a chat to a cert guy about what I wanted to do with the car.  The first thing was my dramas with the crappy shocks.  Autolign had recommended just going with XYZs, so I was very happy to hear Certman say that XYZs are a LVVT approved brand.  He also pointed me at someone local to me who could modify my front struts but I found a kiwi business that sells the struts and modifies them as a service for about the same total price, so I just jumped on that.

Rather than remove and disassemble my refreshed and reassembled front struts from the car, I opted to drag the parts car's struts out of storage and fully disassemble them. These ones still had the original Starion oil shocks, as opposed to the others which were modified with aftermarket inserts. They're dirty and have inconsequential surface rust but the empty strut housing look to be completely serviceable to my noob eyes.  So I sent them off, we'll see what condition they come back in as to what extra clean up I need to do.

I'm very excited to see what I get

---

At the same time I asked about what was needed for a manual swap, especially around what I was allowed to do with the transmission mount and tunnel, and the answer is: nothing! As long as I smash the tunnel in a tradesman-like manner, I can DIY to my hearts content without needing anything.  Kind of surprised me.

So maybe I need to rewind a bit.

I got the red parts car for the rails, but also for ...the parts.  This included its full manual setup, for a potential future manual swap. 

But oh no!  I got shafted here, I guess by nobody's fault but my own.  The parts car was converted to a NA 4g63 engine, and a kind oldschool user informed me that this likely meant that the manual transmission attached to it was a narrowblock whilst my turbo engine was a wideblock.  Uh oh.  

So I pulled the auto transmission off my turbo engine and had a look.

Yup. Wider than the manual trans.

 

But yay!  Aforementioned user offered his wideblock transmission for free; he wanted my smol flywheel for his Cordia so we did a swap.  The extension housing is from a different car so I'll just need to swap that over, no worries.  KM132 on the right.

 

But oh no!  The KM132 uses a hydraulic clutch and the red car's unknown transmission (possibly D50? if anyone knows how to conclusively tell let me know) uses a pull cable style on the other side of the transmission!  

And that there's no sign of any hydraulic clutch setup on the parts car!

And in fact a closer look at the parts car reveals that some rando clutch pedal setup has been artfully installed, with a rag welded into the old clutch firewall hole!

Zzzzzz.  I've put feelers out on FB but I dunno.  I'd rather have some OG equipment here - or at least the OG brackets and lines to make it easier for myself.  

More on the manual swap as it unfolds.  It involves some cutting, welding and hammering, so it's simultaneously easier to do while the car is apart, and adds to the complexity of an already complex (for me) project.

---

The other thing in motion is slowly picking up momentum, and that's preparing the interior for paint.  I've got a huge roll of sandpaper wire wool stuff (this stuff is great!) to scuff it all down and I'll be putting on some tunes and getting into that in the coming weeks as I wean myself back out of holiday mode.

In the mean time I got rid of the fluffy glue remnants of the headliner using a paint stripping wheel and patience, making sure not to heat the panel up too much in any one area.  

Then I went around and removed all of the vivid marks with a dremel as apparently they like to show through paint jobs ... :D...

I'll just show one because they're much the same.

There's a few spots of of unprotected metal that hasn't started to go off yet from the shop repairs so I'm not fussed about priming them just yet; I have some leftover durapox which I'll whip out when it is time.

Using the sand-wool is quite therapeutic. It's not exactly an exciting thing to do, but it creates a little bit of a connection between me and the car. I'm reducing focus to a small section of the car at a time using my hands and really does make it feel special in a way?  I dunno.

Left: an untouched section.  Right: after.

However there are two classes of sanding.  The paint that doesn't have blasting sand stuck in it, and the paint that does. 

Sandy paint absolutely tears the sandwool up and is super unsatisfying to try and prep.  Even normal sandpaper with a block doesn't really affect it.  I guess durepox+sand created a... sandcar?  I know it'll be fine to receive paint, but ugh, my not-real OCD really gets bothered by the knowledge that it's not smooth in those places.

I don't know what I could do beyond completely paint stripping those areas, and that just sounds like too much bother for something that is going to be covered in trim.  So I don't think I'll end up doing anything beyond this.

 

Anyway that's where I'm up to.

Japan was cool, but we won't talk about what went on there.

[tomble]

It took a while - toll was happy to accept 30kg, then tried to foist it off on to NZPost who wasn't, and then they kind of just gave up - but the vendors wrangled on my behalf and 2 weeks later I have some aluminium.

The spindles came up real perdy-like, I'm very impressed, like they're from factory. No brake line welded on though :\

The rears are the part and have the brake line tabs welded in the correct place.

I can't really measure the existing strut heights while they're in the car, especially the rear, so let's start there.

Out with the old rear right...

Strangely the XYZ's are labelled back to front.  I had to go back to archived photos to double-check and yep for whatever reason the sides are labelled wrong.  Doesn't matter though, their mounts are symmetrical top and bottom.  The only difference is the position of the brake tabs.

I also took a front off.

I fully de-threaded the fronts as an attachment had been threaded on for a link which doesn't exist on the staz, but also so I could measure the maximum ride height.

The OG front struts were 660mm from the bolts on the hat to mating surface for the upper control arm.

The XYZ fronts are a little shy of 650mm fully unthreaded.

The manual says at least 50mm must be threaded on, but the vendor said "that's just for dummies who only thread 10mm" and that 30mm is plenty.

So my max unladen ride height is 620mm, or 3cm lower than stock.  This surprised me as a noob; I assumed that adjustable struts meant the ability to go lower or higher than stock.  It's not a problem because I wanted to go lower, and there's a ton of space available above the fenders, so... task failed successfully.  It did cause me a bit of concern because if it rubs at full height with everything back on the car there's nothing I can do about it, but my mate assures me I'm just being a dick, and that the stiffer springs will cause stuff to compress less.  It'll be fine.  

I went with 600mm on the fronts and the corresponding drop on the rear (513mm).  I also used the provided tools to remove the slack in the springs and make sure the preload was consistent amongst all four struts.  I tightened up the nut against the housings using the same tools - I'm aware that you should use a hammer and screwdriver to torque them down but I'm just test fitting for now.

Catly approves.

Since the tab didn't get welded to the fronts, i'll have to use the provided brackets.  But they're designed to go around the threaded portion, so I'll need to modify them.  They also are a different style of holder than the stock ones (which are two hoses that are clipped into place) so I'll need to brain-wrangle that.  In the meantime I just marked the vertical location of the tab.

 

I test fit the rear first because it was the most likely to go wrong.  I still am a little surprised that these were even available from the factory with Starion mounts.  But, they fit great!

Buuut the fronts were also labelled back to front and the hats are not symmetrical.

I offered up the left strut to the right side and yep, it fits and is aligned correctly.  Oops.

Fortunately the hats can be easily swapped over just by undoing the four camber bolts.

Finally I had to swap the rotors, hubs and calipers and dust shields over to the new spindles.

Yup, goop is still there.

Post-gross bits.

 

Finally it's time for the pay off shots.  How close are we at almost-max ride settings and no weight?

Turns out... not that close!  Which is honestly a relief, imagine if it was slammed already?

The hope is that the engine, bonnet, hatch, doors, interior, fenders, bumpers, glass etc don't take up all that space.  I have plenty of room to close that gap but can only go up maybe 25mm.  Still, I'm sure it's fine.  I'll come back to adjusting and torquing these to the final ride height once everything heavy is back on.

[gregory]

Salut l'ami ! 

Ta page est vraiment intéressante ! 

Le travail est fantastique.  Je vais pouvoir utiliser ce savoir pour travailler sur la mienne. J'aurais quelques questions à te poser , notamment sur la barre de direction que tu as fait reconstruire. Si tu es d'accord. 

Voici la mienne actuellement 

https://www.japancar.fr/forum/Sujet-Mitsubishi-Starion-turbo-de-82

[tomble]

^-- don't worry I didn't ignore the lost frenchman. We're exchanging love letters privately.

 

Back to the paint.  Where I last left off, I was struggling with sand nibs being shit to sand because they're already sand.  I found a solution: a metal scraper dragged lightly across the surface lifts all the bits up perfectly, and the durepox endures the scraper very well.  It also did quite well to flatten out areas hit by the undercoating overspray that had come up through many un-blocked-off-holes.  Before and after a scrape and sand:

Once i'd scraped and sanded the whole interior (why am I doing this?) I sprayed some brunox converter + primer on any bare metal and spots of surface rust I noticed. I also sprayed it liberally in some of the various crevices around the vehicle because anal.

I found it quite interesting how it's a clear epoxy but it turns black where it reacts with steel and rust.  Science bitches!

It also had some kind of reaction in places where it seemed to create rust - and by that I mean it made some already-well-epoxied bits a bit brown - but I have to assume that's just some harmless reaction created by overspray.

I gave that a few coats and scuffed it back.

Then I did my first ever bit of seam sealing on the back of the floor panels that I'd dug the seam sealer out of when I was removing the sound deadening.  The factory sealer is an absolute mess so I'm glad mine blends in.

 

Now it's time for more durepox to make it uniform.  Possible anal.  Probably actually.  But hey!

First step is to mask it all up... every little screw hole.  I followed every possible point of egress from the interior to make sure it wouldn't find its way out into some dumb place, especially the already-painted engine bay, but also the undercarriage and undersealed areas.  I had no idea how long this could take.  

Then I whipped out my 2 year old mostly empty durepox tin... which had a couple cm of jelly at the top because it hadn't been sealed properly by blasty man :'(

Like an absolute idiot I didn't bother to try a test patch and come back another day, I just went all in and hope for the best. I picked out the jelly (it had just enough rigidity to allow me to pinch it out) and went through many strainers to get a full cup, fiddling with thinners to try and separate jelly and paint, etc... The hardener looked okay fortunately, though the cap took some effort to get open.  Overall the mixed paint looked the part so I just went for it.

I laid a couple of coats on areas that I'd either brunoxed, had significant underseal overspray, had mismatching primer from shop repairs, my underseal, and areas that just generally looked a bit sad.  I cleaned my gun, exited the shed, and only then thought about how much of an absolute idiot I was laying that much questionable paint down.

There's a better than good chance that jelly was formed from separated chemicals and that I'd either sprayed something that wouldn't harden or otherwise would just be shit primer with shit qualities.  Probably the "wouldn't harden" part.  I anticipated having to come back and sand it all back off.

 

But, I came back in a couple of hours and breathed (through my isocyanate protection) a sigh of relief: the paint had set.  A couple days later I scuffed the areas back and everything seemed as it was.  I had dodged a bullet.

 

A couple days, scuff, vacuum and degrease later and it's time to just Get It Done.  I set up my gun with 450ml of mixed and strained top coat.

Things went wrong immediately.

Screw up #1. I guess I didn't clean my gun correctly because it was spraying fine while testing on some cardboard but as soon as I aimed it at the bodywork it sharted blobs.  I tried a few things to try and clear it without emptying the paint container but it just kept sharting.  Some fragment of durepox must have been lingering somewhere and jammed up the works.

I'd recently bought a new paint gun on clearance because the price was right and it's good to have a spare, but I hadn't set it up yet.  With paint sitting in the pot I said fuck it and switched the fittings and filter over to the new gun, ran some gun wash through it, transferred the paint to the new pot, fiddled with the dials to get the finger-to-thumb span thing right and got a wriggle on.

Screw up #2. I didn't realise how much metallic paint settles in the can.  I only realised this when I went back to refill the pot and noticed huge blobs of at the bottom of the tin, which I thought I'd mixed properly!  I added some thinner to the tin and shook the absolute shit out of it and it still didn't get it all incorporated.  So, the first 1/3 of the car is noticabely less metallic than the last 2/3, lol.  At least it's just the interior right?

Screw up #3. The big one. I laid it on like it was durepox. I probably should also have spent a little more time dialling the gun in to prevent so much coming out at once, but I was super heavy and thicc on laying the paint to the point where I could see previously-laid paint move just from the air flow .  Drips and runs galore.  I ran through 1/2 of a pot just on 1/4 of the car and this was meant to be for two coats.  FUCK.

I changed my approach and started laying thinner coats.  Then even thinner coats.  Even this was too much - the paint wrinkled in many areas, especially areas where I had to spray from multiple angles to get around obstructions.  I'm just too used to making the first coat completely obscure the underlying surface I guess. 

I finally got the coat thickness "acceptable", which still felt way too light to me as the immediate effect was that I could still see the primer - only to have it spread and self-level to cover it within moments.

I managed a full coat before running out at least!

 

So yeah lessons learnt

1. Top coat goes on t h i n
2. Better to let a too-thin coat dry for the 5-10 mins and come back for a second pass
3. Where multiple angles of attack are required, let it dry between angles
4. Adequately agitate all the corners of the can :\
5. Clean my god damn guns properly especially when switching from primer!

I'm not actually that upset because my screw ups are reasonable for my skill level and there are clear corrections to be made.  The worst things are screw ups where you don't know what you did wrong so you don't know what to fix imo.

This is not visible paint in the finished build, however I have ordered more paint and will sand the problem areas back to try feather in a respray and scuff+spray a proper second coat in.  For my learning and because I want to do a proper job.

[tomble]

The paint only wrinkled in places that I'd sprayed with brunox.  But not all brunoxed areas.

It only wrinkled in places that I'd sprayed the old durepox.  But not all the oldpoxed areas.

It only wrinkled in places that have been both brunoxed and oldpoxed.  But not all of them.

After dissecting the wrinkled paint, it's definitely wrinkle in the new paint, and not just pre-existing wrinkle being coated.  But the paint under the wrinkles is usually brunox, as if the old durepox was compromised on those areas.

 

Experiment: do a quick shallow sand, brunox and top coat on a test patch.

I dialled in the gun properly this time, probably thinner than it needed to be but I'd rather err on that, and gave it a spray.

Wrinkles? Maybe, but the surface wasn't perfectly flat - I just did a quick scrape and 240 grit scuff without aiming for maximum smoothness.  So I suspect it's mostly just the (extremely thin) top coat

Verdict: I don't know in the slightest what caused this.  I know they weren't there before the original brunox, and I believe I cleaned and degreased well.  My absolute best guess is that I didn't actually dodge the durepox bullet and maybe some wrinkling occurred that was trickier to spot, or it left things open for the top coat to interact with it poorly, or something like that. 

So I guess I dodged a bullet and hit my head on the ground?

 

I don't want to sand all the wrinkles all the way back, I think that's too much fussing even for me.  I'll just live with it and call these areas The Pox.

But it's suspicious enough that I didn't want to spray directly back onto those areas.  I needed to buy some durepox anyway for some other bits so I nabbed a couple litres and recoated The Pox in 100% fresh durepox.

 

I know it's not filler primer but I laid it a little bit more thick in my test patch corner just to see what it can do.  It vaguely filled some of the wrinkles I guess, but mostly no change.

 

As expected, the top coat conformed 100% to the wrinkles on the surface - and highlighted them extra well thanks to its sexy metallic shininess - but the silver lining is that this coat didn't add any additional wrinkles.  

 

The plan now is to just top coat it all, 2 coats, and just live with the fact that the underlying surface in areas with The Pox has some imperfections that will be visible.  I estimated I only needed like 250ml to finish it off but could only get it 0.5L minimum.  Glad I did because I ended up going through 375ml to re-coat the freshly durepoxed areas in two complete coats and get the second coat on the rest.

But it all came up well this time.  No runs, no additional wrinkles.  Anywhere that didn't have The Pox came up perfectly.  I needed to come back and revisit some spots for a third coat so could probably lay it on thicker but I was quite happy to err on the side of caution. 

Calling that a win.  Interior paint complete   (these emojis suck )

[tomble]

Not much updates over winter sorry, but it's really hard to motivate myself to get into an 8C shed late at night!

 

When we first got this car, the idea was to DIY as much of it as we could.  After spending a bunch (too much imo) money getting the frame fixed up, a little switch flicked in our heads.  Like we were okay with the idea of just handing off the harder stuff to experts, even if it cost us.  So to then get a rough emailed estimate for $25,000 to complete the rest of the bodywork and paint... well, let's just say the switch got flicked back to its original position.

Bodywork is a massive job with a lot of skill involved, I'm super new to all of this but I know that much.  I really wish I just had $25k to throw around willy-nilly.  Surprisingly, Girlface is okay with dropping that, but it doesn't sit right, but it'd look awesome, and I'd save a bunch of time, but really $25k is an entire new registered Starion in good condition, etc etc etc...

The shop I got the estimate from has been well and truly disposed of the notion that they can get anywhere near $25k from me, and I believe that they didn't correctly realise what condition the car was in (fully stripped, no rust, half of the shell already prepped, multiple spare panels to choose from).  So I'll be getting them out for an in-person inspection after I've fully stripped the paint and bog from some doors and bonnets.  I'll also get another couple estimates because customer loyalty is nice and all but not when it can be measured in ounces of gold.

So, to ease into the bullshit of potentially doing all this ourselves I've just kind of tracing around it by first sizing up what we have and what panels to strip first.

Bonnet!

The black car has some substantial rust around the edges.  A while ago I gave it a quick paint strip + CRC zinc to get it to cut that shit out.  Apparently I didn't get photos, so here's a before.

oh nm found a pic!

I know that there's at least one bog monster hidden underneath so I phoned up Wolverine to check for them for me.

Only one bog monster, but it's a biggie, in the middle of the bonnet.

The red car arrived with a huge plate of bog peeling off of its crappily-prepared substrate.  

It's basically the only bog monster on the red bonnet but it's also quite large and is all along a front corner.  The rear side of it is mostly understructure, so I can't really hammer+dolly it (assuming I want to).  The black one at least has access at the back and the overall shape is okay, but will the pitted edges count against me?  Things to ponder.

 

Fenders and front bumper

I fully bolted two of the front fenders on, with much fettling of bracketry.  The original right fender is good as far as I can tell, but the original left had been in a collision.  The red's left has a better shape but the lower portion is a little worse for wear.

Then I offered up the bumpers.

The black bumper fits the sides well but the frame attachment brackets are mangled.  They're also for the old destroyed frame so they don't line up anyway.

My noob-beaten left fender clearly has some beating left to do to straighten out the attachment point.

 

Being that the red bumper matches the new front cut, they line up well....

... but now the skin doesn't fit.  It's seen some repairs in the past so I guess it has been fettled.

The driver side of the red bumper actually physically can't make it around the fender properly.

Not only that, it doesn't even line up with the body lines.

 

I got a bit down but then realised, why don't I just swap the skins and frames over?

The black one's screws all whizzed out np.  Skin off in a couple minutes.

Only one red screw whizzed off.

The remainders required a cut off tool, hammer driver, drill in Arm Twister 2000 mode, swearing, grunting and a chisel.

And the underside is.. really bad.

I think it might be salvageable since it's just an internal bumper frame and most of the meat is still there.

 

I didn't bother attaching it to the skin just yet so there's still a chance I'll be extra sad, but the skin has slots to mount in the fenders so I at least just test fit that.

Pics make it hard to judge but it does line up a lot better.  It needs some positioning and holding but I think that's what the frame will achieve once it is installed.

Even though the black frame isn't rusty I'd still rather not use it as the attachment points are truly messed up.  

But maybe it'll be better to bribe a friend with a welder for an afternoon than try and salvage the red ones..

 

[tomble]

I've been stripping

But enough about money,

I got sick of being in the doldrums about body work so decided to take a quick breather and get this fuel situation sorted.

My relined tank has been sitting under the bench for a while so I dragged it out and went hunting for all the bits and pieces.

 

Found the electroplated pickup/return pipe and my NOS filter.

 

And my MKS-sourced fillter pipe replacement - the goal is to try avoiding old rubber.  But the new neck was too long.  I used a variety of tools to get it down to size, strangely a dremel with cut off disk (and ventilation) worked the best without any proper pipe-cutting tools at hand.

We wanted to check out the level sender from the red starion - and use it as a visual guide as well - so we drained its tank and dropped it.

The sender was no better.  But both senders look like they'd be totally functional - all the electrical bits and contacts haven't corroded, it's just the mild steel structures, and even then they still hold their shape.

I've been wondering about how to best tackle this problem.  I know someone in the states is making new ones but last I checked they were quite spenny.  I know that there are some cheap aliexpress pickups for the mighty max which apparently have all the right bits, just the wrong cap - I could get something fashioned from that.  

But for now what I've done is just wire wheel the heck out of the original black starion's sender and put that in, if only to plug the hole.

 

There's a little inline fuel filter that sits at the mouth of the pump which is extinct, so I either need to re-use it or fashion a new solution.  I opted to try the former. The mesh is intact and it just had a bunch of funk at the end that I was able to extract with isoprope, gentle compressed air and some copper wire. 

 

The pump was working fine when we last used it.  We have an aftermarket spare but it means hacking up the wires and why do that if it works okay?  It's also very accessible on the car if I need to replace it in the future so decided to just keep it.  

It was sitting on rubber vibration-isolating feet that had absolutely disintegrated on both cars.  Fortunately the part number is the exact same as the vibration isolators for mounting the pump bracket to the tank, and these had all survived just fine on both cars, so I stole some from red.  I also wrapped the pump in some closed cell foam to further help dampen it as whatever was previously there had disintegrated.  I might come back and trim it a bit though to avoid overheating.

Finally, because this is a high-vibration area and I can't torque the bolts that have nothing but rubber on the other side, I used the evil loctite to make sure nothing wiggles free.

 

This time around I used new nuts and bolts instead of restoring the old ones as I had returned the loaner sandblaster I was using to my mate.  And after finding out how easy it is to get new ones and how cheap they are, fuck, I really should have just been doing this from the start.  The electroplating kit is great (when it works) and will continue to be great for unique parts that need restoring, but hardware is fiddly and frustrating/repetitive to prep.  

And there we go...

The fuel ventilation/breather lines were doing well for their age but there was evidence of perishing in a couple of them.  Not to mention that we already know that two of the high pressure lines had already become sieves by the time we got the car.  So, new hose.

I intended to use the old clips as I was able to salvage enough reasonable ones from both cars, however the new hose is thicker, so I had to source some new ones.  I think the red looks nice.

The only hose I reused is the pickup hose going into the pump.  It's a unique shape and the last time I looked it seemed like it was going to be a PITA to find the correct diameter as well.  It seems to be in good shape on both cars.

 

And now,

[tomble]

Okay maybe not entirely done.

Since the previous hoses leaked everywhere I really wanted to get the high pressure EFI ones redone professionally, so I took them to the same place I went to last time for the ruptured hose in the engine bay. They presented me with two lovely EFI rated hoses <3

The one on the right is the one I care about for now, it goes from the fuel pump to the hard line. The banjo fitting needs copper crush washers and I decided to re-use the ones from the red starion.

I gave them a quick go on some sandpaper on each side, heated them up to a stupid degree with a propane torch and quenched in water to anneal them.

There's a chance I melted one of them a bit and used the black car's washer. A chance.

Then, with difficulty, jammed everything together as hard as I could. The manual I have explains every detail of the fuel system EXCEPT for the fuel pump, which is quite both surprising and annoying.

 

I thought for a lil bit over the next day about testing this. The last time I did this up, it leaked everywhere - mind you I was told bad info on how tight to make it, but still. It was also super easy to access at the time, thanks to it sitting in its L&P bracket instead of sandwiched between a fuel tank and a car. I could have hooked up the loom to a 12v battery and fed the hose into some isopropyl or something, but I don't have anything handy on me to block the other end of the line and create pressure, so in the end I just sent it.

The tank's bolts were all underbody coated so I chased them,

Then began the arduous task of lifting this asshole into place.

It's not that heavy, but "not that heavy" is still too heavy when trying to connect the hard lines up to it without actually bolting the tank in. There's a lot of space for activities when the tank is dropped and I wanted to try and make things easier on myself. However, I couldn't quite get the right angle. The jack was in the way, boxes I used for additional support were in the way, and the EFI line had decent flex but didn't exactly meet perfectly so was a biatch to try and wrangle whilst also wrangling a large unbalanced tank on a jack.

In the end I just jacked it all the way up, put some nuts on and dealt with the shitty access.

This image does not adequately convey the amount of bullshit it took to get those lines on.

Then I used new nylock nuts and washers to get the tank into its new forever home.

I really hope I don't have any leaks or I get to do all this in reverse, then forwards again.

 

I'll leave the rubber boot etc for the fuel filler until the body is properly zhuzhed.

 

[tomble]

So it turns out when...

• your daily/operational fun car breaks down and you decide to take on a huge DIY job to fix it that you know eff all about
  
  
• you specifically lay out your mortgage repayment strategy in front of you and truly understand the ramifications of paying off even tiny amounts of principle early in the loan and decide to restructure to get every little spare cent going into it that you can scrounge up
  
• you pick up a second job
  
• the remaining work on your project car kind of hinges on either a stupid amount of unappealing and tricky skilled labour, or collar-tuggingly large amounts of money to pay for said tricky skilled labour
  

...things on your project car tend to slow down.

But I figured I should post something because otherwise I'll totally forget everything that I've done and I don't want this project to fade away.

Before I put all the fuel tank stuff back, I was messing with panels. One of the pre-reqs for the panel work is obviously that it needs to be all stripped back, and I decided (with panelboi's blessing) to do it myself rather than mess around with the local acid dipper or with transport to a more reputable one hours away. The idea is to just pick some reasonable panels, strip them, fit them, and then I've got a clean no-surprises job I can show around and get some better quotes and info on.

I test-fit the rear bumper from the original black car and it didn't quite sit right - the panel gap was inconsistent no matter how I fudged the fastenings - no pix unfortunately, so I went with the red's bumper. It fits a whole lot better!

 

Next up is all the front panellage. The two bonnets have their issues so it's really a toss-up, but I opted for the red one as it seemed to be a bit more contained in its damage. Both nose panels are totally fucked so... not sure what I'm doing there just yet.

But fitting the nose panel reveals some fun.

Uh-oh.

 

Fitting the bonnet and popups makes the problem a bit more obvious.

The black ones are just as bad - no pix soz - so it's not just a "different donor car" thing. The frame repairs were done with the fenders and bonnet available, though not the other panels. I need to get in contact with the panelbois to sort out a warranty claim, but the last couple times I tried they didn't pick up or reply. Hopefully this doesn't become a struggle :\

 

Anyway, forging on. 

Key and clean.

Apply stripper and keep wet with plastic.

Create murder scene.

Scrape.

I probably should have applied more stripper here but newb.

 

The fenders are all pretty crap. The one I've already lightly beaten into shape and stripped and durepox'd is the one that had a minor collision, so you'd think it'd be the worst, but it's actually probably the best one. There's no rust and it's otherwise totally straight. 

All other fenders... well...

So I decided to just keep the fender I've already epoxied, because it's probably easier to bang it into shape than any of the others.

The red driver's side fender seemed marginally better than the black one so I went forward with stripping that.

I busted out the paint stripping wheel for the grinder to finish it up. I'm not really sure this was a good move - it's nice and shiny, but possibly a bit tricky to spot the imperfections in the panel now?

Then the nose panel and popups..

Everything back on.

You can see here what I mean about the swirlies making it hard to gauge if things are okay. 

I'd already taken a sanding block to the driver's side fender in this pic to try and make the flat bits even. As you might be able to tell, there's a fair bit of damage to it... there was quite a bit of bog at the front and the rear of the fender.

I think it worked, so I did the rest as well.

As you can see, there's a few low spots and dents, but I think they'll hammer flatter without any major headaches, and even if they weren't, they could probably just be straight filler'd without failing.

The chunky spot is the part I already knew about - the front corner which had a giant slab of filler applied and has subsequently received a lot of pitting. There's also a spot on the front edge of the bonnet that has numerous rust holes, hidden under a small but deep patch of bog.

Honestly, it seems saveable - though I'm also far from an expert here!

The pop-ups are fine, no dents.

As expected, the nose panel is worse than the surface of the moon. It's probably not worth trying to save and I should just find another one. It's also super easy to dent these to begin with; they're the most natural place to push the car from, and there's almost no structure to them. If I do get a new one I'll try mod some gussets into the back of it.

 

Side quest to put the very first thing I restored on this car back onto it: the fuel pump access panel, which a few years ago was extremely rusty. The CRC black zinc has held up strong . 

Spot the fasteners and grommets stolen from the red car...

 

Speaking of the red car. It's door time.

On both cars, passenger sides have a couple of dings but nothing crazy. 

Also on both cars, the driver's side is absolute dent and bog city. I have pix but they suck so just hold on till the strippy bit to see what I mean.

All the doors also fucking suck at the bottom.

 

So I just went with the black doors since they're both right there, already half-stripped, and the red car is currently sealed from the elements.

There's a few holes at the top as well.

Annoying, but the rust seems fixable.

I completely stripped the doors - which was a massive PITA when it came to the door latch, only removable via black magic / the completely wrong method.

 

The mirror blanking was just gooped in place to fix a broken bracket.

Also there was a little protective metal edging strip along the open edge of... just one of the doors? The red doesn't have these. Japanese mod + replaced door?

 

Anyway, it's strippytime.

This time I put it on thicker, and did several passes. It made the job a bit easier.

The starion makes for a decent workbench... <.<

 

I haven't finished these yet, there's still some bog to remove and then get it all nice and flat.

 

And that's where I'm at.

 

If the panelbois are kind with their warrantying, and the lack of surprises makes the price right, then I might be able to eek something out in this space before we pay off the mortgage :P.  

If not, I'm buying a welder and the scope of the project shrinks from "like new" to "guy in a garage job but the engine bay looks sweet"...