Onwards with progress... although I will admit not as much as I'd like. The last few weekends have been full of everything but working on the car - birthday parties, bucks nights, gardening and helping people move amongst other things. A fair bit of time has also been spent on acquiring parts as well... an expensive but necessary endeavor that has made motivation dry up a tad - having nothing shiny and new to play with really does put a bit of a dampener on things!!
Anyways, as I said before, onwards. You might remember in the last post I bought a bunch of genuine Nissan bits and pieces. This meant I was able finally get around to updating the dreary rocker cover in the form of a new coat of paint. I had an anodized coat on Edna's which I was quite fond of, so I decided to do the same thing again only in a different colour.
An anodized paint (at least out of a rattle can) contains what appears to be a really fine glitter to give you a faux-chrome finish. For the effect to be as effective as possible, you apply a base coat followed by a top coat - both of which are full of sparkles and glitter and ponies and lollipops. The base coat provides a nice and shiny foundation, so by the time you put on the nice and shiny top coat, the 2 paints work together to give you a finish you don't get out of a standard enamel paint. Watching this stuff go on whilst the sun hits it is quite mesmerising I must say!
Here you have the end result, complete with the obligatory sanding of the letters to give you some great contrast. I'm sure that you'd agree that it immediately makes the engine look 100% better. Before I put the rocker cover back on though, I took the time to inspect the spark plugs, cams, timing chain etc. which were all in good nick, although I found out the engine had rocker-arm stoppers installed - a fact the previous owner forgot to tell me about. Not that I'm complaining mind you, they help extend the engines life, especially when it's regularly getting up to the red-line. Winner winner, chicken dinner :)
I also decided to give the strut brace a bit of a freshen up while I was at it. The original finish was cracking and showing signs of surface rust, so the same paint was used for the sake of consistency. I also painted the centre section black as opposed to tarnished metal. Can't wait to see it all back together!
From here I moved onto the turbo to try and find the source of the oil leak that has been plaguing this car ever since she came into my possession. The diagnosis was pretty simple - smoke comes out of the back of the turbo as well as the exhaust when the engine is up to temperature... but to throw a spanner in the works you can turn the engine off and back on and the smoke disappears... try diagnosing that.
Anyhow I got into pulling the turbo off the engine (first time doing that as well), and upon inspecting the back of the turbo I couldn't find any traces of oil. The surface above looks quite shiny, but running my finger along it showed no oily residue... it needs to be noted though that the turbo can exceed 1025'C in temperature so any oil could have simply burned off. I decided to go deeper...
...and I'm glad that I did. Once I separated the back of the turbo housing from the turbo itself, I found quite a lot of oil around the outlet turbine. Further inspection shows that one of the seals is either loose or has dirt in there which is preventing it from sealing properly. Now that I know where I stand, I'll look into repairing it first to see if I've fixed the problem, and replace it further down the track if necessary. I'd simply like to avoid spending more money than I have to, which any decent person would certainly agree with.
I still can't figure out what to do with this damn sunroof!!! I tried looking into body soldering, and had very limited success with this i.e. not enough that I want to keep going with it... back to the drawing board once again (sigh).
Thankfully I was able to source another stud for the coilover to replace the incredibly stripped one I pulled out. Not easy to track down I must say, but thanks to the boys at Nizzpro for sourcing a stud out of a wrecked pair of coilovers. At least I can drive with a bit more peace of mind now :)
The engine bay was the next thing on my list... the sooner I get it sorted, the sooner the engine can go back in and the sooner I can re-claim some room in the garage to get ready for painting. I started off with the wires for the pop-up headlights... while they're a popular modification to drastically change the look of the car, they do require re-wiring the entire headlight loom to suit the new setup, as well as adding controls/power for the motors so you can raise/lower them.
While the existing configuration wasn't terrible, I did want to re-route the wires and also add some plugs so I could disconnect / reconnect them at will. Trimming, soldering, terminating, insulating and cabletie-ing... all in a days work!
Working on an engine bay is so much easier when there's not an engine in there!!! I know I'm pointing out the obvious here, but I haven't really had the luxury of doing this before, so it was a very pleasant surprise being able to do what I wanted to without having to jam my hand down the smallest hole possible to reach a bolt that I can only turn 1/4 turn at a time. Not only that, the radiator support provided a pretty effective seat, and the K-frame a good foot rest... Awwwwwww yeah!!!
While I've still got a few more things I want to pull out, it's certainly a great start, and gives you a very good idea of what I have to work with / improve. I've removed all of the factory identification plates, disconnected all wires where possible, marked the holes I want to keep (the others are being welded) and tried to give me as much room as possible to start cleaning her guts.
So that's the work that's been done in the last 2.5 weeks... Have a list of what's currently in the works :)
- Over-fenders currently on their way from Japan
- All new air vents and surrounds ordered for the dash, as the existing ones are cracked and broken beyond belief
- Preparing to grind back the rear fenders to sort out the abomination of body work there
- Fix turbo and put it back together (inc. to engine)
- Start prepping engine bay for painting
- Paint said engine bay
Still a lot of work ahead of me, as this is only a list of the short term goals I want to accomplish in the next month or so... but with each week I get closer to getting to where I want to be.
Onwards :)
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