Even more....lol
November 20th, 2007
Ok so after a long weekend of working on s-chassis, (TR's mainly) Sunday morning I was able to get the engine bay sanded and prepped for paint. Today, I finished retaping the car off and installed some new overhead shop lights to make visibility better. The car was final prepped and then ready to go. My friend Matt (M3 Matt) came over around 8 and started painting the engine bay. Matt Wheatley helped along the way, while Aaron and I stood outside to breath fresh air....lol.... The final layer of clear was put on, and it turned out way better then anything I had expected. Matt really did a incredible job for the not so body shop friendly condition my garage is. Here are some pics of the bay, some are kinda cloudy cause the garage looked like Steven Kings "The Myst" after it was done....lol... Youll have to see it for yourself though, because these pics really dont give it the justice it deserves.
Thanks again to M3 Matt for helping me out by painting the bay, it looks 100 times better then what I could do, and thanks to Matt. W and Aaron A, for coming out and helping as well.
Saturday I went over to Jays house and pulled apart my stock open differential to have my super cool JDM diff welded up.
Jdm = Jay Did Mine
After it was pulled from the pumpkin.
During the welding process.
After. (After it cooled down when I got home, I cleaned it up to remove the burrs.
After that was done, I started putting stuff back into the engine bay.
Subframe is back in, Suspension is on, Brakes were a quick mock up, still have to buy the SS lines.
Clutch MC and hardlines were installed. Brake Booster and MC should be here today from UPS, so I can finish up with the hardlines.
Circuit Sports Radiator Overflow Can Installed.
The progress so far.
Hopefully Ill get more done tonight once my parts get here from UPS. Not having the Brake Booster and Master Cylinder kinda put me into a bind, but I was lucky enough to find a guy online who had one and we worked out a parts trade deal. More updates in the next day or so I would think.
Ive got some more updates.
December 11th, 2007
Time for some updates.
Little things this weekend and starting of the week have been my p.i.t.a. Sucks when you go to put something together and you cant because you forgot something else you needed. Or something else that has to be done first, but Ive grown somewhat immune to the cars little quirks I often expect them so they no longer come as a suprise.
So friday, I went to M3 Matts shop to pick up the Brake Booster I had sand blasted the night before over at his shop. Thanks to Rob for painting it on such short notice looks great!
So saturday morning I went out and put it on, and to my surprise the fed ex man showed at my door bringing me and early xmas gift the wife bought me. A Mishimoto radiator from none other then Alex from Turbogoods.com (thanks again alex for the hook up)
So today I started putting all the pieces together. The master cylinder is bolted down, all the brake lines are ran, the circuit sports MC heat shield was put on, and the radiator was test fit. (have to make some brackets for the radiator top supports.)
Next thing that Jay and I worked on was this.
This is a Nismo Powerbrace. $175+ship from mynismo.com
Well after looking at my factory parts and this said brace, Jay knew he could make me a carbon copy for alot less. So weve started the process. This is just the tacked piece at the moment, he took it home with him to make the support braces on the bar, and the lower reinforcement plates and I should have it back midweek.
So after Jay left I started putting my welded diff back together, but then realized Id forgotten to buy RTV sealant. So I worked on bolting up the exhaust after installing all new rubber hangers. (thanks TR)
Now all I have to do is get the brace back, put all the front end parts back together and the motor is ready to go in. Still have to do some custom fab work on the downpipe but really wont know to what extreme yet until I get the motor in, but its getting alot closer. I had my parents and the wifey get me nothing but car parts for xmas so stuff should be arriving this week and next to help further this process along.
More Updates......
January 2nd, 2008
Sorry for the delay in the updates, the month of December is craziness for the wife and I. Not to mention being down to 1 car at the moment, hasnt helped. Anyways onto whats been going down.
Long story short, wife bought me some stuff for the RB for xmas....as I was getting the motor prepped for the waterpump and other things that were on there way. I discovered I had 5 broken exhaust manifold studs. I was beyond pissed, but I did manage to get them all out with reverse drill bits without fucking up the threads so that was the good news out of that ordeal.
So this is what I managed to get done while waiting on new exhaust studs and manifold gasket to arrive...
Ok so I managed to get all of the remaining studs out of the head. Im going to have to tap and rethread only one of the 12 so I did pretty well in that aspect. Im doing some research tonight to see if these exhaust studs are the same as the VG30, if they are they can be had a lot cheaper then what people ask for them as RB kits. A lot of the drivetrain is interchangeable with the VG30, I just hope this is one of them.
My timing belt should be here in a few days, so once its here. Its going on, and the motor is going in. As for the motor, due to my downtime I decided to start stripping various things off the motor to clean up, paint, polish, or simply 86 if I wasnt going to use them.
Christmas actually came early for me as of last week, when all of the things that Jes bought me started arriving. First was the Exedy Clutch Kit, then the OEM Water Pump, followed by the HKS Super Flow Intake Kit with MAF adapter. She also bought me a new red filter for the Intake.
She also bought me new shop lights for the garage. Yes the woman loves me, and Im grateful....lol
So as mentioned before, I started tearing things apart...........
Aircraft stripper only worked on the spark plug cover. The valve covers were not fazed bu multiple attempts with it.
So I talked to M3 Matt over at the shop, and he told me I could bring them over and sandblast them. After sandblasting them, I started to polish them, all I can is fuck a whole lot of that....lol....that shit takes way too long. So we came up with another idea, which is in the pictures below.
Thanks to M3 Matt for the use of the shop and his painting skills, and to all of the guys there helping me out with everything I needed. Also thanks to Matt W. and Aaron for helping me out last week as well.
Let me know what ya think. I think its fucking awesomesauce!
