1974 RX-4/929 hybrid-ish.

ewokracing · **Posted:** Wed Jan 12, 2011 5:06 am

Yes that sticker residue is really, really starting to annoy me. :evil:

Why on earth Ian used that black contact stuff is beyond me. Anyhoo.

For those not in the know, Australia has some rather bizarre weather right across our big, erm soggy land at the moment so that has held both myself and aaron up big time on our respective projects.

I would really like to get the headliner guy out asap and do a bunch of other stuff, but its no good if it is raining etc. Yes to nozzle and pbr brake thing. I had another look today (while it was raining and I was sinking into the mud in the backyard) for a vacuum leak, no joy. I may be the booster itself?

Hoges - I've got the factory thin sump guard doodah, I was going to get one of the blokes at work to knock me up and alloy one.

ewokracing · **Posted:** Sat Jan 15, 2011 8:40 pm

Righto, tried to put some stickers on the wheels today (red pinstripes). Combination of extremely hot weather and the stickers not quite sitting where I wanted them too etc made me crack it and go inside out of the sun.

I'm going to have a tinker during the week with the brakes and if I can't figure out the problem I'm going to have it trucked over to a brake place that knows their stuff. (Hoges Im going to grab that pbr book off you today).

ewokracing · **Posted:** Tue Jan 18, 2011 2:52 am

okadokies. I forgot to get the book off aaron but I have:

- given the scuttle panel and sunvisor each a coat of paint/primer
- fixed the high beam headlights
- "fixed" the low beam headlights - I need a drivers side offside light. Wiring is fine.

my dad and I had a looksie in the engine bay, we'll give the park lights a go on the weekend. I'm also ready to start taking the interior out in preparation for the headliner to be trimmed and to run a lead for a car fridge.

My Kawasaki has also been diagnosed with some broken bolts, so it looks like saturday will be a Mazda/Rover/Kawasaki working bee. :lol:

ewokracing · **Posted:** Wed Jan 19, 2011 3:23 pm

A quick visual update:

made sense of this:

to get the headlights working

And my extremely patient and ace girlfriend whipped this up:

The pom poms are an in joke. She's also making up a handbrake lever boot as well.

BlueRocket · **Posted:** Thu Jan 20, 2011 11:21 am

Where did you buy those exhaust header?

ewokracing · **Posted:** Sun Jan 23, 2011 4:23 pm

I got them from a performance shop here in Australia. They're ok in terms of quality. I had to argue with the supplier over whether I needed rectangular ports or round ports.

There are a few companies in Australia that still make them or may have an old set in stock.

ewokracing · **Posted:** Fri Jan 28, 2011 3:41 pm

I've been busy with another car lately and to be honest, I've been dragging my feet with the wagon. I am about to go and give the scuttle panel a sand back and lay some paint down on the sun visor.

The good news is that I put the copper washers on the brake lines, the bad news is that there is still a lack of pedal pressure - which I would assume is a leaking master cylinder. However, this is the same master cylinder that was on the car when Aaron bought it, and it had been used as a race car and driven a fair amount on public roads, so maybe there's something hidden going on that is tricking us.

I've started to remove the rear trim panels so that a trimmer can come in and do the headlining.

ewokracing · **Posted:** Sat Jan 29, 2011 4:48 am

I made a list of things to do today, I got through nearly all of it.

First up was to sand back and polish up the scuttle panel. Well I gave it a very light sand back, but when I polished it, it didn't shine. I think I have either sanded back the clear coat or I wasn't going fast enough. It still had a matt surface. I practiced on the back of the panel first, so instead I have put the panel back on until I figure out what to do next.

Second on my list was to pull the interior out in preparation for a trimmer to re do the headlining. I've decided to keep the roof vent - aaron thinks we should cut a patch panel and pop some of the dents out of the roof and I'm inclined to agree, but I was mulling it over last night and I think that will postpone the car even more and I really need to get this car on the road and going. I managed to get the big fragile rear cargo area panels out without breaking anything and I also bought some new carpet for the load area.

I've finished running the wiring for the rear stereo speakers and the cigarette lighter socket, I also spent about half an hour removing the broken aerial and cleaning out a huge amount of dirt, leaves and gunk that was hidden away in the bodywork.

I also laid some colour coats down on the sunvisor, but it has come out with tiny pin pricks where the paint has looked like it has circled around something. You can see the primer - there's no colour paint in these tiny spots. Benn and John I'll need your advice on this.

I'll load up some pictures on Monday, but I'm pretty happy what I got done today. I would have liked to have got the carpet finished but I had my neighbours kids popping in and about and playing cars from the drivers seat, so keeping an eye on them slowed me down a bit, but it was fun explaining stuff to them - ie they couldn't get over a key lock on the petrol cap flap. :lol:

ewokracing · **Posted:** Mon Jan 31, 2011 6:49 pm

washers that I missed installing between the brake line and front calipers:

They're now in, though the brakes are still out to lunch.

The headliner that needs replacing:

I have a replacement interior light from the parts car, but it has a cracked lense and the frame is cracked as well:

ewokracing · **Posted:** Mon Jan 31, 2011 7:59 pm

At this point I also should apologise for the increasingly average/fuzzy photos. I've been using a Nokia N95 for the last couple of years and the last few drops have seriously damaged it.

Here's a close up of the cracked interior light lense. It's not too bad. After this shot I also gave it a bit of a clean in some demineralised water as I didn't want the plastic fogging.

ewokracing · **Posted:** Mon Jan 31, 2011 10:31 pm

So I've also

- run the wiring for the rear speakers to the dashboard
- run the wiring for a cigarette lighter socket to the front of the car
- put the speakers in
- laid down some new insulation to replace the original insulation in the load area
- bought and nearly finished fitting some new hard wearing carpet for the load area
- started removing the fragile rear load area trim panels
- sprayed the sunvisor in white
- finished clear coating the scuttle panel
- pulled out the aerial

Firstly - some of these photos are really poor in terms of quality.

I had sprayed the scuttle panel in four stages. Metal ready paint, which is a lot like primer. Then primer, then 3-4 coats of colour, then clear. When I gave the back of the scuttle panel a very light sand back with 2000 paper, I then gave it a really good polish by hand as I don't have a buffing attachment for a drill etc. The results weren't that great, as you can see below:

And top side, not polished or buffed:

So I decided to leave the outside surface until I could borrow the proper equipment. Here's the scuttle panel on the car sans buffing or polishing:

Even with the "matt" look, just having another piece painted the same colour green as the rest of the car and not the yellow of the parts car is one step towards the finish line. Now I only have the bonnet to go.

I gave the sunvisor a coat of white, as I thought that this would be a good base for a design that I have in my head.
Unfortunately, after doing the same as the scuttle panel - bead blasting, metal ready, primer and colour coat, the colour coat looks like someone has stuck a pin through the colour coat in places exposing the primer underneath. I'm not sure what has caused it. You can't really see it in the shot below, but it's there:

I set that aside to dry a bit longer after touching up the ends that had been hanging. Benn, John, any thoughts on what has happened with the paint?

ewokracing · **Posted:** Tue Feb 01, 2011 2:28 am

so here's why the radio didn't work:

A bit of fiddling around under the scuttle area, looking underneath the front guard as well, and out comes the aerial assembly:

Remembering Kev's thread about his Skyline, I thought I'd give the inside area another look-see, even though I'd checked it out a few months earlier:

As you can see, it's solid, but lots of surface rust. The hole above is part of the trapdoor system to let water drain out of the plenum

This is where the water drains out of, that hole right up in the top corner of the wheel arch:

I thought, "I wonder how the trapdoor layout works".

So looking down where the aerial was, I noticed something:

hmmmm

uh oh

See all that crud right down at the bottom? I stuck a screwdriver down the aerial hole and due to the angles etc, I couldn't get all the crud out.

So I got down on my back and stuck a piece of angled coat hanger up the hole and mucked about for half an hour or so:

That's not good.

I pushed the car outside after sweeping all of that away and stuck a hose down in the plenum and spent another half an hour washing out all of the drain holes in the plenum and the engine bay. The amount of grot, leaves, dirt etc that came out would have weighed about half a kilo - and it was all inside the bodywork hidden away. No wonder these things rusted away so easily!

gypsy · **Posted:** Tue Feb 01, 2011 2:37 am

ewokracing wrote:

Benn, John, any thoughts on what has happened with the paint?

User error :lol:

Cant tell much from that photo... looks like it was sprayed uneven by the blotchiness. Also spraying over acid based phosphoric rust converter tends to cause problems with the primer ie lifts off or dries wrinkly due to poor adhesion. You'd want to leave it at least a good day if you were to spray over it so it wont react with the primer.

Unless you sprayed it like glass, hand buffing wont do much.... your primer has to much peel, either your air pressure is too low or your fluid knob is wound out to far. You should have knocked the peel down before spraying the colour with some 220 then 320...finish with 400 -> 600 dry sand if acrylic.

Cant tell you much about the clear coat... looks like it was sprayed dry.... to much pressure, gun too far from surface or fluid knob to far in restricting paint flow ?

Did you check the tech sheet for the primer, colour and clear coat for nozzle sizes ? Primer will typically use 1.8 - 2.0mm.... colour/ clear coat 1.3 -> 1.4 depending on gun as well. If your spraying acrylic I think you need an even bigger nozzle than 2 pak for colour 1.7 ?? Benn would know as Im using 2 pak through out. Check the tech sheet, most of your problems will be caused by you not doing the basics...

works 510 · **Posted:** Tue Feb 01, 2011 4:02 am

can we do some jumps in it yet, geoff?

ewokracing · **Posted:** Tue Feb 01, 2011 3:55 pm

John - it's all been done with rattle cans, I'll post up a close up of how the white paint has reacted.

Dan - not yet. :lol:

It was a blistering hot day on Saturday last week, so I got up early and bought some new rear carpet and some wire for the speakers and accessories socket.

Ever seen 2 metres of carpet crammed into a Mazda3?

I started with all the junk piled up in the back of the wagon

Cleared out everything.

Now you can see why I wanted to replace the carpet - it's shrunk from the intense heat of the last few summers.

Pulling out the trim panel at the rear load gate, the carpet and the underlay, you can see the big gap between the metal floor and the bottom of the trim panels

Before I put the carpet in though, I finally installed the rear speakers that I've had sitting around for over a year. I also used some grommets to route the speaker wiring through the bodywork

I'd show you the soldering and heatshrunk wrapping that I put over the terminals but the pictures are lousy, so skip a few steps forward:

The speaker hole area had been butchered at some stage, so I centered the speaker as best as I could, drilled some mounting holes and used some self tapping screws to hold the speaker in place.

Back to the carpet!

lay out the underlay

measure

Now, "why not use the old underlay as a template?" you might be thinking? Because the old underlay was actually undersized. By measuring and laying my own, I'm ensuring that the insulation goes right across the load area and extends from the rear seat back to the trim panel at the rear of the car (it'll make sense, trust me)

Marking two holes needed for the bolts that hold down the jack container

Notch for wiring x 2

Some cutting with sharp scissors and voila!

Measuring up the rear carpet

I've almost got it fitted, I cut it slightly oversize so that I could trim a small amount off all around for a snug fit. However I was knackered by this stage so I called it a day.

Not before test fitting something else though...

ewokracing · **Posted:** Tue Feb 01, 2011 5:13 pm

cigarette lighter socket install.

powered socket, cord extension so that I can put a fridge anywhere in the back load area, some fuse holders and a circuit diagram.

I was holding my breath on drilling a hole in the side trim plastic as they are big and fragile.

I used a hole saw at a very low speed, supported underneath by a block of wood.

Once the carpet is finished and I organise a trimmer, I just have to connect the wiring and sort out a fuse box and a switch on the dashboard.

timmy201 · **Posted:** Wed Feb 02, 2011 4:43 am

Boot space twister could be interesting, an advantage of the big 929 I guess! My mate suggested recarpeting my boot with one of our old car rug things

You are lucky though it came with speakers standard.. the speakers in mine were screwed into the side panels in the boot, and holes were cut in the front door cards to fit them in

And your boot looks alot like mine does most of the time i.e. filled with crap.

ewokracing · **Posted:** Wed Feb 02, 2011 5:21 am

Actually, I was standing in a carpet supplier looking at shag pile rugs going "should I?", then I remembered that in the future, this car is going to be going on some very loooooong dirt roads, so I went the easy to clean option instead.

Plus our mascot will be crawling around on the seats and in the back and he leaves a bit of hair behind, so this carpet will be easy to clean.

With the speakers, actually the best car was the yellow parts car that I cut up! It had virgin uncut holes in the bodywork, the speaker holes in this green car look like some unco bastard has cut them with a sledgehammer tied to a pair of scissors.

Have a look behind the trim panels, mazda may have put some wiring for some rear speakers or marked the trim panels, I know my 1300 had speaker locations mounted on the underside of the rear parcel shelf and they - as far as I know - never came with rear speakers from the factory.

In the 929, I actually found factory wiring for rear speakers, but I ran my own wiring since I know that this car had a few butchered wiring looms. Plus I get to run the wires where I want (to the glovebox).

ewokracing · **Posted:** Mon Feb 14, 2011 4:40 am

Carpet is in and trimmed to shape

sorted out some of the wiring for the accessories socket in the back

found two old late 90's era speakers in a box that I had packed away that are quite small, I'll be putting them up the front somewhere under the dashboard

Also decided after chatting with one of the guys at work to make my own headliner, still umming and ahhing what to use, I wanted to use the twister mat, my girlfriend has sensibly pointed out that it will probably melt in the heat that the wagon generates with all of it's glass (remember how the solar panel melted?)

Still thinking about it, I'll probably pull the headlining out one evening this week.

works 510 · **Posted:** Sun Feb 27, 2011 2:20 am

progress goff?
can we do jumps with ewok strapped in as a passenger?

1974 RX-4/929 hybrid-ish.

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