JDM55

hectic masking

decided to repaint the xmember and the sway bar and parts just cause they were all scratched up from the engine going in and out over a billion times , lol well maybe not that extreme but at least 10 lost count after 10.after they were painted , it was into the oven!!!!!! gave every thing a good clean and got rid of all the dust and started the masking process, lots of holes to mask and had to mask up all the black painted bits etc

finished sanding ...

so i wasnt going to do this untill i got the engineers sorted out incase i had to cut weld grind etc in here ,but chanced my mind and real wanted this sorted out so called in a few favours and got a few mates to help sand the engine bay , so much work was done in there previously,hours and hours of welding and grinding and reshaping,filling holes and generaly trying to get it as clean looking as possible ,i think there may be a few pics back thru the pages some where of some of the work. so more sanding!! i added it all up and between me and my mate to sand it all properly going from 320# on the sander then 320# by hand then red scotch brite, then 800# wet then grey scotch brite, 12 hours !!! spanned over several days of coarse but still 12 hours sanding is a fair amount , i could sand a whole respray in that time ,haha but it was sanded very well and all the groves and hard fiddley areas were taken care of ,

started to put a few bits and pieces back on the car,its great to see stuff coming out of boxes instead of boxes pilling up every where, heres the door trims that i made, its sort of a black/dark grey fabric, and the speaker pods were also covered in the same stuff, fitted the trims back on , it looks pretty tidy i think. as the rear speakers are a component set the tweeters wernt put in the doors this time , i stuck them in the rear pillar trims ...

made up a bracket to hold the window washer bottle ,that i moved from the engine bay to the boot,2 reasons for putting it in the boot,1. it didnt fitt where it used to live due to the strenghting braces, and 2. i want to keep the engine bay as empty as possible due to all the crazy pipes and stuff for the engine that will fill it up any way .

fitted a 10" pioneer sub , not going for a big boomy sound system,just clean clear sound for cruising :)

more on the boot, i wanted to tidy the boot up a bit ,just give it a more cleaner look, so i designed a floor panel,that i cut out of mdf,this panel bolts to the car with the aid of nuts that i welded to the boot floor , so there isnt just a bunch of holes in the boot,the nuts are welded to the car the wood sits on the nuts and are clamped down by the bolts,works very well and is very firm and stable. the next thing i did to the panel was put a resesse in the shape of a circle to take another piece that was also resses but the opposite way ,this is for the spare tyre cover ,both the cover and the floor panel were covered with the same material and a small s/s wire drawer type handle was fitted as the tyre cover sits flush to the floor ,needed a way to get it out. and then the sub box which i had done earlier also got covered in the same material , this fits the same way the boot floor does,except i used very large nuts ,and the bolts ,do up from inside the box,again it works great with out having to drill a bunch of holes every where.

so straight back into it,as usual i loose my mind and control and go nuts out ,this time how ever ,I'm realy pushing to get closer to a finish point !! 2.5 years and still building is way past my first expected time frame,but things take time and being sick has lost me about 6 months, so thought id share some of the pics ,ive got over the last few weeks,theres a bit of a section of missing pics where i didnt take any shots,but more the end result of alot of stuffing around, first up ,i stole this idea from one of you guys on here can't remember who it was ,but thought it was a neat idea, made up a small panel ,retrimed it with material that i managed to score for free! so that was awesum, and added 2 led down lights,the panel fitts under the boot lid and the wiring runs down the hinge,only down side i found to doing this was the springs on my boot wernt realy strong enuff to take the wieght of the boot and the new panel , no biggy ,just doged up a little hook set up to hold the boot open

cheers ninja, things are getting better just a slow road to recovery ,but I'm getting back to the car now :)

thanks man ,great to see your machine came together ,must be a buzz driving it! ill certainly give you a yell if i need ,i got alot of it worked out but maybe a few small engine things i may need advice on , ill keep that in mind tho, cheers ,its good to be back and able to work in this thing, ill have a small update tomorrow nite :)

thanks mate ,yeah I'm getting stuck into it again the best i can,thanks for the kind words,i should have a small update soon managed to get something happening :)

Thank you,i appreciate the comments , has been a ruff last 6 months, how ever on the up side , ive managed to finally find a decent doctor and hes been helping me get back on track with my health issues, sooooo this means ive been up and about and actualy able to do a bit of work ,and i have just started back working on the car :) tho i have to take it a bit slow ,but just the fact that I'm able to do something on the car makes me happy, i realy don't want to sell this car, ive had it a very long time and the amount of hard work and very long hours apon hours of designing things learning about the engine and wiring ,thousands of dollars spent ,and countless hours of surfing the net for infomation and pictures and ideas ,heart break over the countless problems and issues that i had to get thru, all this makes me realy want to see it finished, so i can at least say "hey this is what i built by myself with very little help. tho the fact that now my finances are pretty much zero, so in order for me to get this on the road is still looking a bit doubtful, if you look at the very first post i made about this project i said the budget was pretty much I'm broke,back then i had a tiny bit of money that was all used up ,and now i can realy say that i am broke,but i will still try my best to piece this thing together with what ive got and probably callin a few favours for help here and there ,cause I'm still not fully able to crouch and roll around under a car ,so a bit of help will probably be needed. just wanta say thanks to everyone who has read my thread and commented ,and giving support and encouraging comments , these words definatly give me extra motivation to carry on ,so thanks guys ,i hope out of all this some one has got some ideas or learnt to do some thing maybe they didnt know about , or even just a of enjoyment looking at the pics and seeing the car start to take shape,we all love reading a good build thread and seeing heaps of detailed pics ,ive tryed to take as many pictures as i can and share the good ones . ill try pic up where i left off and shortly will try get some pictures up :)

cheers mate, i wish there was more to show ,but unfortunately my health has taken a turn for the worst,so all work is being put off indefinatley , i may also be considering selling up as my medical bills are getting out of hand ,if I'm not any better in the next 2 months i may as well move it on to someone who can finish it ,as i pyshicaly can not :(

thanks man , well un unforseen brick wall has been hit again , and my health is not too good again ,been in hospital the last fwe weeks and , starting to come to the conclusion that this car wont be getting finished or at the least wont bee getting anythig done to it in the next 3-6 months , has been a rel struggle to get to this point and even tho we nearly there ,theres still alot to go ,and at this point I'm not pyshicaly up to it ,so sorry guys wont be any posts for a fair while and I'm considering selling up at this point , to help with medical bills and try get my health back on track ,which after allis the most important thing .

sweet mate go hard ! an cheers :)

cheers, the tweeters are going in the 1/4 panel interior trims too east just drilled a hole and clip them in , get those pics up a bit later on ...

bit of tape for my extra hands cheers to evan for the deal on the speakers! , they were perfect for what i needed the down side to having the speaker rite inside the door i found was the window runner comes down and hits the speaker, not really the best thing , so come up with a solution for that one too, just a simple stopper , a piece of alloy haning off the bottom of the window ,works perfect

also starting to putt more parts back on the car ,which is great instead of taking parts off for once, , here i just painted the window frame thingos so could get some windows back in the doors.... one of the rear door window frames had a tiny little piece of plastic on the top of it , that piece fills the gap between the window frame and the door frame, while i was preping it ,it broke into little pieces, the joys of 30 year old parts lol, any way i managed to reconstruct it out of bog hahahaha ,you couldnt even tell once it was painted :P finally was able to get rid of some boxes too, the amount of boxes ive used to store parts from the car has been rediculous, there frigen every where!!!! any way great to get some parts back on the car as well as some new bits, rear 1/4 glass going in , has a light tint on the windows ,still in ok condition so gona leave them like that , replaced the old central lock with fresh ones ... started to do a little wiring as with everything takes a bit of time, running wires from door into the pillars also wanted to fit some speakers , but since they were mounted rite inside the doors ,didnt realy want them getting wet , came up with a dodgey solution that id seen before in some other cars , sort of like a cover , not exactly the sort of thing you can just go buy and it would fitt perfectly so have to do a bit of custom, again. its time for arts and crafts!!!!! gluing the 2 pieces of the cover together, they were cut from a piece of art folder... ta da lololol well thats the general idea anyway

just a few small up dates today, first one , i had my brake lines made up by maltech ,a guy comes out with a van and makes the new lines on the spot,which was handy as the car couldnt exactly drive anywhere, down side this ended up costing me a hell of a lot of cash that i hadnt except to have to forkout for, prior to that i had tryed several times to make lines up , but the guy who i had doing the flairing was not exactly good at doing them and i constantly was getting leaks everywhere,very frustrating stuff when you spend a whole day cutting and bending lines then only to find they leak and have to be done again !! any way had to bite the bullet and let some one else take it on, the guy came one moring about 10 spent the whole day till about 6 at night making the new lines, its very slow process but here done a nice tidy job, also had some custom hand brake cables made up ,havnt had a chance to bleed them out yet , but should be no problems this time ,apparently ........ the set up is a ke35 brake booster and a pajero master cyclinder, also have a proportional valve fitted into the rear line , hoist is a life saver

thats awesum !! nice power rating too gota be happy with a 12 second pass!

engine bay looks awesum man well done!! can see a hell of alot of time spent in there, but shows in the finished product, looks fantastic ,:)