Small Update

With the weather in the UK being freezing for the past two weeks and some snow I haven't really been out into the garage much. But yesterday I was out there again, more tidying and generally cleaning up bits like the air intake, this generally involved using a Dremel with a cleaning metal attachment removing all the grim and dirt, they have come up nice and clean.

I'm not going for a polished look on the engine itself, just clean and tidy. Should have some bigger updates in the new week or so!

Little touches - update

Been a quiet for a couple of weeks regarding big steps forward. If I look back on what's prep'd and ready now, it is a lot.

* Steering rack
* Electrics
* All ECU's tidied up
* All Hubs powder coated
* New braided brake lines
* New discs + Calipers
* New Coilovers
* Drivetrain all cleaned and sprayed
(Interior will all be new)
(Exterior new)

The one area to mainly do now is the engine...still waiting on that back. But in the meantime I got the correct CV joint boot and installed that. It wasn't OEM and was a stretch type, you can feel how poor quality it is. If it wasnt for the fact its on a car that will do very few miles compared to a normal car, I'd of binned it and gone OEM. If you have an MR2, don't go cheap or you'll be taking it off again.

So I started to store things better and give them the final touches, first the 4 pot calipers.

I think they look complete now and good...even if I say so myself! Then the pedals and master cylinders came from the USA.Example Below;

So they have been added to the pile of new car bits as well. Finally at the moment my uncle has come up trumps and has all the suspension nuts and bolts and is currently either having them acid dipped or are in a tumbler and will then be plated so all the bolts look like new and hopefully fight the rust off for the next 20 yrs as well. Hopefully will have pics soon enough!

As for the engine I was told it may be done this week but guess it will be next week now, no rush and plenty to do on it and plenty of time to do it!

I went to see about getting my car painted at the weekend including hydro dipping parts for carbon fibre look. Headlight covers etc... Luckily the place is quite near me, their work that I looked at quickly seemed perfect and they seemed enthusiastic about working on the car. So always a good thing. their website is http://www.wickedcoatings.co.uk/ in case you wonder what hydro dipping is!

More parts being cleaned and refurbished

I've carried on cleaning the 2nd longer drive shaft  So I started by taking apart the CV joint. It was very tricky with it off the car. In the end I placed one Allen in key in one nut and then used this to push against the floor so the driveshaft wouldn't rotate. I then had an allen key bit which would fit my breaker bar and 1 by 1 they came lose.

leaving me with....and at this point I had already done some cleaning of the balls.

I continued to clean and remove all the grease, I was lucky the amount of actual grit in there was very minimal and it was clear the joint had not been run dry.After cleaning I was left with the below...

I then put the CV joint back together using the youtube video guide before, took me less than a minute. At this point I'm still waiting to put the CV joint back together fully as I ordered the wrong CV boot. 

So I set that aside and set about refurbishing the rest of the drive shaft including the drive shaft bearing bracket. So I always mask up any area I don't want painting on spray paint on. I then sand smooth and finally paint with rust converter which also works as a primer. I then spray the parts. the 2 parts of the drive shaft are now completed and waiting for the new boot to be put back together.

I've now started to clean up other parts I will need including the engine mounts. the amount of surface rust was high on this piece so I used a screw driver to get off the large flakes and then wire wool and meths to loosen and work off the rest as best I can. Again the part was then painted with rust converter and finally sprayed. I masked up the rubber as although it may not be black in colour paint will just flake off quickly. I'm not after a new finish but a protected and nice finish.

I need to tidy the garage and store parts I'm completing safer so they don't get damaged or chipped as well as my tools, so next stage is to find some cheap shelving nad have a good tidy first.