Ummmmmmm.......response not required. That is just pure evil. The things we go through hey. Great balls of fire......

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Rockin' the 7 in a street near you.....

Being flash blinded by a young dickhead at the welding course or smashing my face into the bottom sill of the wagon sounds like nothing compared to having molten steel on your fun bits...

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occasional blog: http://ewokracing.tumblr.com

Brought to you by me as I browse Geocities webpages using Netscape Navigator while listening to Jam & Spoon.

"fun bits" ha ha, that's classic! Never heard that term used before. Love it.

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Rockin' the 7 in a street near you.....

Minor update, resprayed the underneath of the car with deadener and then sealed with satin black. Boot is fitted, with underside painted. First painted panel.......

Have done the B pillar and the tops of the doors in gloss black.

Now back on to rubbing the door jambs and the back of the doors and bonnet ready for some orange!! Weather is holding out pretty good so far, so I reckon that it will be painted within the next 2 weeks. That way I can let it sit for a few weeks before I wet rub it back and polish it.

Some pics....



The flash makes the textured finish look odd, but it doesn't actually look like this to the eye



and the boot fitted up....



More updates fo follow as we go!!

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Rockin' the 7 in a street near you.....

Looking good mate! Should be on this side of the country, weather is perfect.
Go the Rx2!

Awesome work!

I smell a conspiracy, it's just too co incidental that painted photos of your car were released on the same day that the forum updated it's colour scheme. The oranges are very similar, I'll be disappointed if the moderators dont change the forum colour for me when my car is finally painted. You must know people in high places Benn.

HA HA Yeah it was good timing.....Maybe it's a conspiracy that you should change your mind and paint the RX3 orange......Then we can both be pimpin 70's orange......

Didn't you know that this website was dedicated to me.....

Love the new JNC colour scheme, looks the part.

Hanging to get this thing painted, then I can finally start to reassemble the car after all these years. Had a mate look over the shell prior to paint and he feels it is pretty good to go. He is assembling my engine, so I an sending my plates along with his and his brothers to extreme rotaries to get the ports redone on the CNC. Both of them are going back from 13B turbos to ported NA 13b's in their RX3's, one coupe, one sedan....

We were saying how SA is going to get an influx of freshly built rotors back on the road in the next 12 or so months and how all the owners are mid to late 30's....the same bunch of guys who were rotor heads 15 odd years ago. Only thing different is most of us are going grey and our attitudes to driving on the street are very different!!

Should be good to get a whole bunch of old school mazda's together for a cruise or 2.

A shot of my mate's RX3 in the build

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Rockin' the 7 in a street near you.....

Sorry to gloat Gypsy, but we are having perfect painting weather here in SA at the minute....25 degrees, bugger all wind.....lovely....

So making hay while the sun shines (still on holidays) got the backs of all the panels done, painted the door jambs, touched up a couple of bits in the engine bay. 3 coats of colour, 4 coats of clear, thinned out to 80 / 20 on the last coat.

Bolting up all the panels and aligning them hopefully for the last time at the minute, then one last block down with 800 ready for paint on friday.....

Little bit of peel in the finish, but as I am old school and still persevering with acrylic I am not to worried as I will colour sand with 2000 and buff back up. Got to get a little bug out of the bonnet as well

Very happy so far with the result, quite confident it is going to come up killer after sanding and buffing. So while I am feeling that the hard work is almost over, I know I have many more hours of sanding and buffing to come.

If all goes to plan, will start bolting struts etc back in next week.

Hopefully I don't stratch the thing putting it back together......

Some pics.....bonnet with special clear coated bug.....

















SO with a bit of luck, the next update will have an orange RX2 in it.....might actually look like I've done something constructive

Need to go gran some more supplies tomorrow, up to my third drum of thinners (60 litres) and more masking tape. I have gone through 150 metres thus far.......grab another 100 tomorrow....Stay tuned

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Rockin' the 7 in a street near you.....

Lovely work Benn.

Question: How do you get a good coverage of paint under the bonnet support ribs?

ie here:



I can see that you got the orange colour right up into the underside of the bonnet.

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occasional blog: http://ewokracing.tumblr.com

Brought to you by me as I browse Geocities webpages using Netscape Navigator while listening to Jam & Spoon.

It is hard to get good coverage under bits like the ribs. What I did before actually spraying the proper first coat was to mix up some colour at about 3:1 and sprayed the hard to get bits and the edges first. This helps blow some colour into these bits without ruining the finish. Once it flashed off I then gave the bonnet a coat.

Redid this prior to second coat as well, the gave it the 2nd and 3rd coats as normal without trying to worry about getting colour into those bits.

I did this with the engine bay as well, as the plates that are on the firewall behind the master and on the passenger side are hard to get colour in.

This seems to work well and limits the risk of runs from trying to get colour in the hard to get bits when you should be watching your overlap.

I'm sure at certain angles you will see some primer in the bonnet, but it should be minimal.

Hanging to get some more colour down now.....

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Rockin' the 7 in a street near you.....

Hi

Hi Cobra, thanks for the sharing those pics. Must say, you have great taste in cars

That is one gorgeous coupe that you had, mine is going to be very similiar to that, even has the series 2 light conversion......oh and the rego plates are only one letter different!

I bet that your coupe handled well with that setup, looks like it had some serious front camber in the pics. Herschel is definately the colour for early RX coupes, it suits their lines so well.

I bet you would love to have that parked next to your immaculate RX3!!

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Rockin' the 7 in a street near you.....

The weather has picked up the last week Benn, dont know how much longer it will hold out. I would have sprayed the jambs and door shells this week if I had time to do it. I'll be going a similar sequence to you spraying with the doors mounted so I dont need to worry about adjusting them and scratching the paint. Adjusting them does my head in.

Looks like its progressing nice. I cant tell if you back masked along the sill and quarter panel areas, do you need to sand a hard edge prior to spraying the shell ?

What are you doing to get the black matt finish around the around the door frame ? Im undecided, I bought some single stage black 2pack paint which I was going to mix with a matting tinter to get the matt effect. Next time I picked up some supplies I bought a spray can of rally black just to save me the spraygun cleanup hassle. Now I dont know which product to use !

Rally black link http://www.sikkenscr.com.au/sikkenscr/a ... rosol.aspx My main concern was durability when compared to the 2pack mix. You shouldnt polish and buff matt finishes so its probably not an issue. Polishing matt finishes can make them glossy and inconsistent for those that dont know.


They both look like nice cars, Im in the minority but I dont mind the square headlight front ends. The square grills can be dressed up with the optional chrome bits.

Your mates Rx3 looks like the custom garage one, I was looking at buying coil overs from there ages ago. I want to lower the front a little to sit nice but Im never convinced by the guys selling standard coil springs. "Yeah there lowered 2 inches mate !" I go and fit them and find the back sits lower than the front or they sit higher than the ones that I had previously ! It seems like a guessing game that I can do without for this car. How will you go about buying the right springs ?

Look forward to the end result

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Mazda Rx3 / 808 inner weather strips for sale here.
viewtopic.php?f=10&t=17421

Hey Gypsy, yeah I have back masked along the edges, but have probably gone a bit too close to the edge, so will have to rub the slightly built up spot down level. Didn't mask at all on the guards, so the tops have a fairly good coverage which I will simply just rub back.

I always loved the square light fronts on these, but for some reason the twin light setup has grown on me, and you don't see as many coupes with twin lights in AUS, the square seems to be more prominent.

Well spotted, that RX3 is Darren's from Custom Garage. He has had it for longer than I have had my coupe. He doesn't get much time to work on his own cars, as he is always flat out on customer's cars and developing new products. My coupe was used to setup his rear coilover setup for RX2's.

Darren's coilovers are awesome, would have put a full set in mine if I wasn't going the old school theme.

I have gone gloss black around the door frames and the B pillar, as I don't like the flat satin finish. It always looks a bit faded to me. (bit like the dash that has been painted 3 times)

As for springs, I have simply gone for Kings Springs "lows" with KYB shocks. Steve at Kings was pretty confident that it will sit nice and level. I use to deal with him a lot in my previous job and he knows his stuff. Guess we will soon see!!

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Rockin' the 7 in a street near you.....

(I bet that your coupe handled well with that setup, looks like it had some serious front camber in the pics.)

The RX2 ran caster blocks and had a lot of negative camber, the guards were modified to suit. It handled very well! A lot better than the RX3, why Mazda went back to rear leafs springs for the RX3 is just plain dumb!!!

Spent today fitting all the hanging panels and aligning gaps.....bordering on needing mental help......my friend Heineken saved the day once all was done.....

Damn frustrating job. This is where it comes in handy to have a 13 year old son that knows how to use tools.....and can fit under the dash a whole lot better than me.....

Trying to get all the body lines to line up and all the gaps to be consistent is a freakin nightmare.....but all done now.

Spending tomorrow rubbing back the body for what should hopefully be the last time pre paint....

Some snaps of todays progress.....









The closest that this thing has looked like a car for a LONG time.....



Maybe one more update before colour time......

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Rockin' the 7 in a street near you.....

Good work Benn. Glad someone has got some motivation.

Picking up a new project in afew weeks but wont start it til after the r1 is finished. Maybe i could just deliver it too you for paint and panel since yours is nearly done

Ha Ha....motivation....I have been working like a dog....going to be a late night in the shed tonight and an early morning tomorrow.....

Have 800 wet rubbed the entire shell back today, feels smooth as a baby's butt......Surprisingly haven't found any cockups either......sure there will be one or two, will probably show up as soon as I hit the clear

Just cleaning the shell again now, getting in all the gaps where the slurry runs and hides...painful job but super crucial at this point, as I dont wont any blowing around tomorrow or any clear coated in!!!

Going to start masking tonight so that I can get cracking tomorrow

By this time tomorrow night the car should be shiny ass orange, cannot wait to see it.

Definately not in a hurry to take on paint and panekl like this again in a hurry, but I am sure I would be bored shitless if I didn't have this car, or would be sitting playing GT5, perfecting the art of drifting an L10B Cosmo....

What is the new project....(PM me of you like) Hoes the R1 coming along? Any major changes to the plan lately?

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Rockin' the 7 in a street near you.....

Well I may have spoken too soon.....Woke up today ready to paint the car.......Weather has turned to crap and it is way too humid.....had a look at the forcast, rain and 16-18 for the next 10 days.......also woke up very crook.....

SO it look like the old girl is maybe going to have to wait till spring for her outside paint.....bugger, all masked up ready to go and now will have to be unmasked and sit patiently for the next few months.

Will keep an eye on the weather in case I get an opportunity next week, otherwise it's another 3 or so months with no paint.......

Will have to spend winter assembling bits and pieces and trimming the dash etc....

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Rockin' the 7 in a street near you.....