New mirrors on!

Just a quick post, the other night my dad and I installed the fender mirrors that I have been sitting on for a while. It only took an hour or two, and after measuring, drilling, and fastening they turned out pretty well. They look great and really give the car a classic feel.

First bodywork ever

So before in one of my previous updates, I epoxied a metal plate behind the old mirror mounting holes. This weekend I took a chance and did some bodywork to fill the holes. I managed to lose most of the process pictures, but I have a before and after picture.

 Here are the holes after sanding down the paint around them. After this, I used body filler to fill the holes. I then leveled and sanded the surface using a sanding block to get it smooth and seamless with the rest of the car.

After that, I put a coat of primer over it to seal it from the weather, until I can paint the rest of the car. You can't even tell the holes were there when you run your fingers over it.

Coilovers!

So my Cosmo Racing coilovers came in the mail, and they are pretty awesome. It took me, Jessee, and Andrei a long weekend to finally get them installed. It was not easy. The car is probably about 2 to 2.5 inches lower than stock, which is pretty cool. It also rides smooth, besides bumping along because of the 36 year old struts.

 Here

 Here is the left rear right before starting to work on it.

 In order to not punch a hole through the fender with the un-compressed spring, we used spring compressors to keep it from exploding.

After much hassling and jumping on the rear suspension assembly, we managed to get it out.

Here is the suspension with the new spring and spring seat, ready to be popped back up in. I ended up having to grind some of the stock pieces to make them fit, but it worked out in the end.

Here is the suspension fully re-assembled, still on the jacks.

I also decided to replace the spark plugs while I was working, I had a bag of new ones I hadn't had the time to put in. They made a noticeable difference in the idle of the engine.

Here is how low the front is after lowering. I also got my fender mirrors on between when I put the coilovers on and when I took this picture.

Here is the back, which I actually raised up an inch and a half to even it out with the front. The ride was a bit too harsh with it this low, and I couldn't go over speed bumps....I love how it looked before, but it still looks great now.

Pictures

I was just looking back over the blog and I noticed there are no good pictures of the car itself. I have a few shots that are a week or two old taken by my friend Vlad (a photography god, who I thank greatly). I hope to get more in the next few weeks after my coilovers are installed and my mirrors are on. Until then, check these out.

Of course, mine is the one on the right, the monster truck.......

Love this one.....

Rolling shot from my car of Jessee.

And finally the 710.......awesome wagon.

More mirror work, new headlight harness

So I worked about 8 hours this weekend and managed to get quite a bit done. My main project was to put in a new headlight harness. This harness takes the strain off the factory wiring by drawing the power for the headlights directly from the battery instead of running it through the car's system. This is more reliable, and noticeably brighter. For 35 bucks off eBay, I think it was a good deal.

At this point I realized that the wiring was not long enough to work, so I extended it with some spare wire.

I had to disassemble everything I did last week with my headlight install, but at least I knew what I was doing. Here is the headlight hanging down before I chopped up the wiring and put in my new stuff.

This is where I put most of my wiring, I found a nice place to attach the relays up in the front. It is out of the way from the hood, and it is also protected from the weather.

Here you can see the wiring running across the front of the car to the other headlight. You can tell what is old and what is new by the color and the dust.

In order to remove my factory mirror I had to remove all the door hardware and the door panel. I was just barely able to snake a socket up inside the door to take off the mirror.

I got a thin sheet of metal from Lowe's and snipped it to the correct size to be a backing plate. It already had holes in it, so I got some twine and used it to hold the plate against the car from the inside as the epoxy dried.  This will give me a solid backing for my thin layer of body filler. I chopped the twine out after the epoxy had mostly hardened.

The last thing I did was grind down the rust on the front marker light with a dremel tool. I plan on fully dealing with it later, but I just wanted to stop it from spreading. After this picture, I gave it a thin coat of primer to protect the bare metal until I can deal with it.

Later on this week (probably Friday) I plan on installing the mirrors and installing my coilovers (which should be coming in the mail this week).

Headlights

I got new headlights for Christmas and I only just now got around to getting them installed. Unlike a normal car, where you either replace the headlights by pulling them out the front or from the engine bay, I had to pull them out of the wheel wells with the wheels off. Fairly straight forward, but very time consuming. There were a lot of seized up bolts and screws. 

Here is what the headlight housing looks like from the back in the fender well. I forgot to take pictures of my car, so I took pictures of my friend Jessee's car. He also had new headlights to put in his 240z, so we decided to tackle the project together. Working on cars is much more fun with friends.

This is a picture of the new headlights in his car, you can't tell the difference unless you look at the actual brightness. That's good, because we don't want to change the look of the lights too much, the cars still need to look authentic.

Here is a picture of the coilover suspension I have in the mail, Jessee already has the kit on his car and he has agreed to help me out when I finally get them. I am so excited to see how low my car will be, his is practically scraping on every speed bump. Not only will I get rid of those old rusty springs, I will also make the car look better and handle better. 

And finally, here is a picture of the ramps I need to buy. With a car that low, my jack won't fit underneath the car. You need ramps to get the car high enough to lift. They are only 35 bucks or so, so no big deal. You can also see his front wheels off.

Front bumper!

So just to catch up on my bumper situation, I got a front and back bumper that ended up not fitting, but it turns out I tried the rear one and assumed they both didn't fit. It turns out the front did fit fairly well, so I set out to get it attached.

Here is the car off the ground, where my dad and I were drilling out holes and old threads in the mounting points. Two spots on the front, and one on each side. You can also see the finished hood, albeit wet from the rain.

Here we have the bumper ready to go on. We were just adjusting brackets to make sure it would slide right on.

Here is the car with the bumper on. The sides weren't fully adjusted yet, but that is pretty much how it looks. If you look back at my first posts and compare it to the original bumper, you can see how much smaller and sleeker it is.

Hood painting

So I decided that I was going to paint my car with plasti-dip until I could afford a decent paint job, being that paint is fairly low on my car priorities list.

 Doing this will allow me to still practice painting prep work, which I was planning on doing regardless, and still get me a removable, good looking paint job. Because plasti-dip is only matte colors, I decided on black. I tested the painting on my hood with a gallon I got from a guy on craigslist, and I love the way it looks.

 Here it is when it was still wet, before it turns matte. I will post pictures later of the finished, dry product.

I plan on painting one panel at a time as I finish them (body work, trim removal, etc.).

I'm super excited because I got my garage back! My car was stuck out in the rain for the past month or two during the kitchen remodel, but it's finally back where it belongs. This means I can finally start working again! Good thing because I just got a ton of stuff for Christmas! I now have new mirrors, headlights, and hopefully some new suspension soon.