Koji Project 1: Death to Smurfy

[Ku-sama]

Originally Posted by sabing

He said in his last post how he "wasn't going to spend 200 on an amp" he doesnt need something super expensive.. they arent great but at least they arent no name

MTX mind as well be no name. horrible signal to noise, terrible output consistency, clipping even at low frequency.

[sabing]

Originally Posted by Ku-sama

MTX mind as well be no name. horrible signal to noise, terrible output consistency, clipping even at low frequency.

Im not going to bother arguing about this, its his money, he doesn't need something top of the line, just a suggestion.

[koji]

nevermind

[koji]

I also picked up a MIG welder today. As soon as I'm done with this project, the side moldings and wing holes are toast.

[Ku-sama]

get on MSN

[Archidamus-R]

Yay! MIG welder!

[koji]

Non-timed update again tonight, I didn't get a ton of work time. I've got a lot of things organized though, so tomorrow should be more interesting.

First off, in my continual effort to move things from the left side of the room to the right, I did finish one piece today. I know it's just the straps that hold the t-tops, but oh well - it's what I could get done. Fortunately I had everything required to make these lying around so the cost was basically zero.



I've been looking around my house and various stores for something to make a mold for the shifter surround and came up with jack till tonight. I bought a couple of mirrors a looooong time ago that clip onto your sun visor. I never intalled them on any of my cars, the shape is right, and when I held it up to the OEM shifter piece it pretty much covered the entire thing.



I've got this thing (with the mirror remove obviously) taped up and I'm filling the back side with plastic adhesive body filler. I'm doing this so that I can then make a mold of the piece, build it up out of fiberglass, then cover it with carbon fiber.

In other news, I began taking apart the door skins. The lower plastic piece that that has the map/dip can/whatever pocket is actually a seperate piece held in by several screws - which I removed. I'm contemplating remaking this piece entirely, using fiberglass, and incorporating some cupholders. There's plent of room on the door for it, it's just that it'll require an inordinate amount of work to get completed. I'm probably going to save these for sometime later in the project.



I don't know what engine I'll ultimately end up running in this car. It won't be the 5SFE, but I don't know if it will be a 3SGTE, 3VZFE (I'm leaning towards this option) or a 1MZFE. Whatever I end up using, I needed to ask myself a simple question: "Do you intend to run more than three additional gauges?" - which is what will fit in the DIN slot I'm going to make in the stock center surround (above the deck).

The answer to that ended up being "oh hell yes" because I've got a wideband AFR gauge laying around and I normally like to run oil pressure/oil temp/several additional temp sensors in cars I drive. I've got six gauges in the WRX and I consider that a daily driver. As such, I decided to eliminate one of the vents in the upper surround bit.

I used some of this material (avaliable at your local hardware store) that's used to mount those glass blocks you sometimes see in bathrooms, to cut a piece to fill in the drivers side vent.



I then trimmed, chamfered, and glued in this piece, then added a liberal amount of plastic adhering body filler. I'll sand this bit down from here and then see about filling in any pinholes or other imperfections before I move on to painting.

[koji]

I also (again) organized things by placing all the stuff I'll end up putting up for sale (including a few Subaru bits) in one corner:



And stuff I can work on in the near term in another corner:



Other than that, I picked up a new (to me) MIG welder. I'm going to work on strapping this biznitch down to the cart and securing the bottle better tomorrow. Also - the guy who sold this to me said "the bottle's got a small leak" which after futher examination I understand as the tubing connecting it to the welder is sub standard. I've got a bunch of good stuff laying around so this will be easy to fix.

I've always wanted to learn how to weld.

There's only one way to really shave a car correctly, and that's to use a MIG welder and some sheet metal to fil in the recessed sections the clean up the area with body filler. The side moldings on the MR2 need to go, so this was a good opportunity to buy a welder, a couple of junkyard fenders, and teach myself yet another tool of the trade.



That's it for tonight. More to come!

[91_mr2_boi]

I can't wait to see this thing finished! Good job on the restoration!

[Medusa]

Oh my Jesus. This is quite a bit of work you're doing - Congratulations! This is excellent stuff, keep up the good work!

[Archidamus-R]

I almost hesitate to ask, but what're you planning to do with the ductwork? ^_^;;

Also, I've scoured through my fav junkyard and all the black seatbelts of this vintage have been taken. :/ The front ones, at least. There may be a few rear seatbelts, but they're usually a bit shorter than the fronts. There are also some later model belts, but you'd probably need the receiver bits too, and then mebbe mod them to fit the seat . . . So, lemme know, I guess.

[koji]

All the duct work stays. I'm just going to block off the part where the vent I covered the vent with some more spare plastic. Thanks for looking around. I have another option that I'm going with. You'll see

[mattdouken]

Welcome Koji, Glad to see another DIY member to help shed light on things i also seek to do.

Not meaning to rain on your parade, But I figured I would give you a heads up about a possible troublesome problem with your interior work. I also used the duplicolor vinyl and fabric paint on my interior, and after prep and a good cleaning plus three coats, my carpet starting showing blue in about a month, and my panels starting flaking even after I sanded, cleaned, primer, and clear coated.

If this happens try rust-olem fabric and vinyl just on your carpet, its thick and it acts like a dye to carpet while keeping it soft. I have had mine for about 5 months and the carpet is still bright black.

Best of luck to ya, And cant wait for more rite ups.

[koji]

I didn't use duplicolor on the rest of the interior bits.

The only things I used the duplicolor on were the carpet and the headliner. I'll watch out for fading and try your suggestion if it starts looking like crap.

For everything else in the interior I'm using mar-hyde satin exterior trim paint. It's meant for exterior plastics so it's tough as nails. It also looks good (to me) as I don't like shiny on most interior surfaces.

[Archidamus-R]

YW.

I just saw a piece of duct in the "stuff I can work on in the near term" pile, so I was curious. :P You have some interesting ideas. As lame as it sounds, I'd never thought of just restitching my black shiftknob red . . . But mine turned out awesome! So thanks for that.

[koji]

Another quick update tonight. The wife put in a request: "Can you clean up the garage enough so that I can park my car inside? It's getting cold."

Sure honey.

In between throwing things away and cleaning up the tools I had everywhere I did get a few things completed.

I wrapped the O-S* handle in pleather mang



I did a revision on the pad for the drivers side carpet. I didn't like the way a couple of things sat, so I added a piece and resewed a bit of it.



Once it was finished I glued it to the carpet. Hey look! I found yet another use for the stock deck!



I got all these bits painted:



Then started glassing one of the door bits:



Not a bad night considering I spent most of my play time putting away tools. That's it for now. More to come!

[Slade]

Impressive!

[Servin]

Looks like your trying to copy the oem 98 red accent interior.





The steering wheel, shift knob, shift boot, seats with red stitching are all OEM. That pic is missing is the matching door panels with perforated suede, that matches the suede on the leather seats.

Pic of what Im talking about:




As far as seat belts, you can easily get those from a partout, us MR2 guys are like the Native Americans and reuse everything from the carcass of a 2. The classifieds here move kinda slow so be patient or check out the other site.

[Archidamus-R]

I'M trying to copy that interior, lol. Except for the leather seats. I like leather steering wheels, leather shiftknobs, leather e-brake handles, pretty much everything but seats . . . I don't mind them, it's just not something I'm willing to chase with piles of cash . . .

Where'd that LHD '98 come from?

[koji]

I pretty much didn't know that existed till you posted it so I didn't really know I was "copying" anything. But thanks for playing.