As your about to see, started getting more and more involved with customising parts in carbon fibre.
As your about to see, started getting more and more involved with customising parts in carbon fibre.
James5 liked this post
More.
James5 liked this post
Resin layers build up.
Last edited by Goobie; 22-07-2017 at 14:26.
As my last posts has been body parts stuff, il quickly add a little more on that for the minute.
I've been nosing around for spare trim and managed to pick up a pair of complete front and rear bumpers for a reasonable price, and for future use.
Meanwhile, I've stripped them down and stuck what current trim is missing back on my R3 for now while I'm still playing around with the carbon fibre only to start messing with that too.
So basically for now, I've started rubbing down and de chroming bits of trim.
Here's a few picture for now.
De-Chromed.
Fitted, not a 100% colour match, but personally prefer it over the chrome.
I've also rubbed down and painted my spare bottom rear bumper trim that goes round the fog light area. Once it's on, should give it that little extra defuser look matching the rest of the kit trim.
Now, enough about bodywork for now and onto more mechanical things.
When I bought this car it had apparently just been serviced around 6/7 weeks ago. There was a can of oil in the boot, pretty sure the wrong stuff to, I forget what it was now, anyway no biggy as plan on changing it.
I've turn my attention more onto servicing and replacing and ordered the following.
Bosch Window wipers
Pollon filters
K&N Oil filter
Air con Belt
Crank / water pump Belt
Motul 90pa Rear Diff Oil (2 litre.)
Castro Syntrans 75w-90 GL-4 Gearbox Oil (2 litre.)
Fuchs Titan Syn Mc 10w-40 (Two lots of 5 litre.)
And a GReddy Magnic Sump plug that was a freebie from Essex Rotary, thanks.
That's it for now I think? I also got a s****y tool for the diff and gearbox oil, see picture below. (Only got one snap of my work list above.)
I got fairly stuck in draining etc, no real pictures to show, just oil dipping into a drain can.
I started with my rear diff as had that down as the hardest, but turn out to be very easy. Much to my suprise, it poured out looking like new! Was just as clean and fresh looking as what I was refilling with. Took some time using my syringe gun to refill, but was simple enough.
Next up I moved onto the gearbox, undone the filler bolt first and oil started dripping out, had clearly been over filled plus is was pretty much hand tight! I had the car up on four axle stands so was sitting level to. The oil that came out was really black, guessing same oil from new maybe? I actually managed to get my little one litre oil pack in enough to squeeze about 75% out straight into the gearbox which saved a lot of time, I then used my trusty syrine gun to fill the last of it.
Right, now onto part one of double engine oil change. That came out pretty much pure black! Then getting the oil filter off was another story in its self. Never had to much trouble removing a oil filter before, even with the right tools. In the end I had to go buy oil filter plier tool and even with that clamped round it I spent a good twenty minutes trying to get it off and completely destroyed it in the process.
After removing that, I left it for a good drain with plug off, no filter and the filler cap off and when onto fitting new wipers and pollen filters.
Back onto engine oil, put the oe plug back on, filled the oil filter and hand tighten on, loaded the engine back up. I'm thinking as it was so black, a double change won't be enough, so I'm going to run it up to temp then drop the oil again and repeat for a third time and change the oil filter again to.
Ref to black oil, I can only imagine where ever this place was that the previous owner took the car must be scammers, can't see why engine oil that's done few hundred miles would be pure black and an oil filter literally super glued on, I guess it would explain the rear brake pads being fitted back to front!
Lastly, swapped out my old belts for fresh new ones.
The "todo" list is slowly getting smaller.
I've gotten a little ahead of my self here and missed this part out, the exhaust saga!
Here goes.-
Well, after a lot of messing about with my stupid Toyosports exhaust, I.e. cutting and rewelding to get the tail pipes to sit in the right place, I just ended up scrapping it as without a proper ramp and jig tools it's just not going to sit how I want.
So, basically now with the exhaust side of things being an R3, choice is limited some what and for a decent option I'm looking at £800 which isn't what I want to be spending right now when I've got a whole list of things with one of them being proper tyres thats around that price alone.
Short version, I've still got my old standard system, luckily not thrown it out yet. What I've done is polished the tail pipes up to bling effect again and got a full genuine gasket set and refitted it with my silenced de-cat and tubular manifold as a temporary solution and so I can finally start up the engine for the first time in seven and a half months!
Anyway, winter time and hours and hours of fitting parts, battery check/charge etc etc finally got round to the moment of turning the key and bring it back to life in the dark.
Now, being winter and the fact it's 5'c with old fuel in the tank, you could imagen how much I was prepared for a troublesome start!
But no, it fired up within two seconds and run fine as if I've just pit stop'd for fuel then got back in to head off again. To say I was very happy would be a understatement.
Also, much to my surprise, the exhaust note is awesome. Wasn't expecting it to sound like it does let alone shoot some flames with a standard massive rear box. Sounds stock on idle, but once the revs are up and over 3,500 point, it really does have a nice rasp sound.
I got a very short clip, not the best, as the neighbours wasn't as impressed as much as me.
Flame shooting sound clip!
Wheels back on and off the axle stands, woo...
More serviceable items and work done today. Decided to join everyone else with the Varta E23 battery, so I ordered a fresh new battery.
Made sense really, as no idea how old mine is plus as I've renew pretty much everything i.e. coil's, leads and plugs, this was now the only real weak link in the ignition system.
Also picked up two Mazda five litre FL22 Coolent and genuine correct R3 oil filters.
So today consisted of fitting new battery followed by Coolent drain from the engine block then the rad. It all come out as new looking, no funny bits or any corrosion looking parts floating about in my drainer, so caps back on and refill, run up to temp and bleed.
Action shot! Haha.
James5 liked this post
Lastly, whilst I had it running for so long bleeding, checking heaters and fans work, I then did another Oil and filter change swapping out the K&N filter for the genuine mazda filter. I'm looking todo a third Oil and filter change, but this time il be leaving that till I've done 100 miles.
Meanwhile, I got few more hours in yesterday on the car.
After putting it off for so long, some of you will be happy to know I finally got the heat wrap off the manifold.
Wasn't to bad of a job whilst still fitted to the car. Now that was out the way I got on with putting all the wheel arch lining back on followed by the under trays and air ducting, it's now starting to look like a complete car again.
Right, just thinking mechanical/service side of things what I've done.
So il use this post as a service list statement for future use.
Current Mileage at point of work carried out/completed. - 40,859.
Replaced.-
R Rev R969 Coil Packs.
Magnecor R-100 Leeds.
NGK Spark Plugs.
Oil & Filter (double change.).
Coolent.
Air filter.
Pollen Filters.
Gearbox Oil.
Rear Diff Oil.
Pulley Belts (water pump / air con.).
Steering UJ Regreesed.
Engine Mounts.
Front & Rear Brake Discs.
Front & Rear Brake Pads.
Brake Lines.
Brake Fluid.
Window Wipers.
Indicator Cree Bulbs.
Reverse & Fog Lights Cree Bulbs.
6000K Xenon Headlight Bulbs.
LED Side Lights.
I think that's it, il update this post with anything else I may of missed service wise.
Got some more body work progression, following on of my dechroming, I never really like the badges on the rear and annoyingly Mazda has put pin holes for the logo and branding purely to stop people like me from taking them off.
Well I'm not going to let that stop me, badges removed, holes welded up and smooth, bye bye badges!
Holes welded.
Filler and primed.
No more brake light or holes!
Matt Cole liked this post
I popped down to the body shop Saturday to drop off my parking sensor I bought last week for colour coding and whilst I was there I got couple snaps of my rear spats they made a start on, picture below is them in high build primer waiting on being flatten down before paint.
Also ref about my parking sensors, I've got myself a front and rear set of Cobra flush mounts. It made sense to get matching front set with low seating position and the shape of the front with the big hooped wings can make visiblity 50/50 to judge when pulling out of a tight spot, plus with them being flush mounts they should be fairly discreet.
Been a tad busy with this then! 😄
I've heard that the con rods on these engine are the weak point.
Goobie liked this post
Ordered up some more parts, I'm going to be swapping out the factory head unit and few other tweaks here and there, more to follow.
Got myself an adapter plate, bypass filter lead for the bose amp, standard connection lead and a matching steering wheel control link lead.
Also some of my interior trim is looking a bit scruffy, so starting stripping it out for a refresh.
Couldn't resist, so out came the carbon fibre.
Trimming.
More progress for the centre console area, got the top and bottom parts of the original trim out to work on.
The top part was very tricky, I knew it would be harder trying to only cover the vent area with all the mix shapes it got going on instead of coating the whole part, but I do like a challenge so away I went doing it that way.
Disclaimer, all these parts are only at the first main stages and nowhere near the final product.
I'm slowly getting through parts I want cover'd, then il move onto the next stages as then I can go through the next process one by one.
Anyway, here's few pictures.
Trimming.
Placed together for pattern match check, coming along well so far, more to follower later as just main stages done so far.
Now and then, I've bagged myself random bits of trim off eBay for pocket change.
So basically this happen, A pillars!
Looking really good, loving all this custom carbon :-). Fancy doing anything for a GTT
Goobie liked this post
What did you have in mind?Originally Posted by James5
Back from paint, colour match is spot on.
You may of noticed my steering wheel is missing in one of the picture. Can't say I was a fan of the skinny round wheel and had lost its visual appeal, so I removed it and sent it off for a professional refresh.
So here we have my freshly retrimed factory steering wheel done by,- Royal Steering Wheels.
My retrim spec I had done was.-
2mm Thicker.
Thumb Grips.
Squared Flat Bottom.
Black Alcantara Top.
Black Leather Perforated Sides.
Black Leather Nappa Bottom.
Red Stitching.
James5 liked this post
Finally got the boot lid back, no more holes etc.
Looking super smooth and declutter'd now.
Had some time today to get on with some jobs.
Now I got a few parts painted, time to go get fitting. As above, boot lid was first on, next I got on with removing my rear bumper to fit my parking sensors.
Also got a proper paintless hole puncher tool for the job.
Bumper off.
Bash bar not looking to pretty, will have to get that blasted and blown over.
Then onto working out where to pop my sensors, mark and drill my pilot holes.
Out come the hole puncher.
Lastly, rear sensors fitted!
Turned out fairly well, just got the fronts todo next.
This tool is awesome, so simple.
Drill a pilot hole, then used a cone cutting drill bit to enlarge it for the bolt thread, pop it through and tighten the nuts on each side which pulls it through cutting a perfect correct sized clean hole like so.
Hole punch tool in action.
James5 liked this post
Loving the tunage on the vid's
Goobie liked this post
Right, after nearly two months progress can start again now I have my R3 at my house. As it's still mostly in bits and not road legal I decided to just get my car trailered, so off to new home and then gave it a bloody good wash.
Today I finally had some time to get round to wiring up the rear parking sensors. I used the rear fog light loom gromit to feed them through.
Then got on with finally refitting properly my rear lights, fog light and all rear bumper trim screws from the rear inside followed by rear wheels arch trims to and at last my new rear number plate after a lot of measuring the centre point and getting it level, haha. Bumper nice and solid now with no flex, forgot just how many screws there was to fixing on completely.
Also gave my fog light and number plate light lenses a good clean, turned out rather well, good as new now. Then replaced the old bulbs for some fresh Osram 6000k LED.
Posting Permissions
Reply With Quote
