$2008 GRM Challenge – Turbo AWD Mercury Tracer LTS
- Thread starter kcbhiw
- Start date
I'm set (finally) in the control arm department. The reason I went with MX6/626 LCA's is the fact that they moved the knuckle forward which helped axle alignment with the tranny.
Whut!?
I thought that was a pretty good description. Nice work.I cut about two thirds of the way around the perimeter of the raised area on the P5's top hats. I then applied force to adjust the angle and re-welded the cut. I suck at descriptions tonight so just look at the pictures.
glad the top hats are working for you.
I'm glad I grabbed 'em. It would have made things a lot more difficult otherwise.
Wanna buy a 323 GTX shell?
haha...no.
Anything left on there? Badges? misc parts etc?
Um. sure?
Coming Together (or apart)
This weekend I've moved onto the interior of the car. This included removing anything from within that was bolted down, including the dashboard. The carpet was disgusting and I'm not at all unhappy to see that go. The dash will go back in, but it came out to remove sound deadening and prep for paint. I'll likely replace the dashboard as this one is quite cooked from years of sun beating down on it. It was already cracked and just the lightest pressure fractures the surface. Doh.
I removed all unneeded wiring from the cabin harness pertaining to the interior lighting, sound system, and automatic seat belts. This left a nifty pile of wire behind. I also got a jump on removing the tar-based sound deadening from the floors. Fortunately, it's coming up fairly easy, but still takes more time than I'm willing to devote to it. Lastly, the fuel pump within the fuel cell is now wired into a pluggable harness.
I have a 12x12x12 inch box that I have been throwing small items such as screws, brackets, clips, seat belts, trim, etc into. It's amazing how the small stuff adds up as the box now weighs in excess of 20 pounds.
In the middle of the tear down, I threw a battery in the car to make sure all of the aft lighting still worked after tearing into the cabin harness. For fun, I cranked the car (without fuel and ECU). It was rather nice hearing a bit of life come to the car after sitting for so long. The front wheels did turn as I had the tranny in gear. Cool.
The second image shows how bad the hail damage is on this car. Who knows when it happened, but it had to be a pretty good storm. Furthermore, when I removed the head liner, I found cardboard shoved in between the roof and center support. It's pretty funny the things one finds when dismantling a car (I.E. Empty condom wrappers in the GTX).
This weekend I've moved onto the interior of the car. This included removing anything from within that was bolted down, including the dashboard. The carpet was disgusting and I'm not at all unhappy to see that go. The dash will go back in, but it came out to remove sound deadening and prep for paint. I'll likely replace the dashboard as this one is quite cooked from years of sun beating down on it. It was already cracked and just the lightest pressure fractures the surface. Doh.
I removed all unneeded wiring from the cabin harness pertaining to the interior lighting, sound system, and automatic seat belts. This left a nifty pile of wire behind. I also got a jump on removing the tar-based sound deadening from the floors. Fortunately, it's coming up fairly easy, but still takes more time than I'm willing to devote to it. Lastly, the fuel pump within the fuel cell is now wired into a pluggable harness.
I have a 12x12x12 inch box that I have been throwing small items such as screws, brackets, clips, seat belts, trim, etc into. It's amazing how the small stuff adds up as the box now weighs in excess of 20 pounds.
In the middle of the tear down, I threw a battery in the car to make sure all of the aft lighting still worked after tearing into the cabin harness. For fun, I cranked the car (without fuel and ECU). It was rather nice hearing a bit of life come to the car after sitting for so long. The front wheels did turn as I had the tranny in gear. Cool.
The second image shows how bad the hail damage is on this car. Who knows when it happened, but it had to be a pretty good storm. Furthermore, when I removed the head liner, I found cardboard shoved in between the roof and center support. It's pretty funny the things one finds when dismantling a car (I.E. Empty condom wrappers in the GTX).
Attachments
So I have to make it look pretty too?
What a PITA. I hate bodywork. Today I moved on to making the car work for the concourse segment of the challenge. This meant wrangling a few of my beer drinking Hong Norr buddies and tackling the prep work for paint. Since the car will have no interior, this means painting just about every inch of metal exposed....we finished prep on about half of the exterior today, if that. Furthermore, it took all of about 8 hours to get there. I'm not liking where this is going, but I hope the end result will yield the fruit of the labor. I've said it during all three build segments of the Miata, and I'll say it here: I'd rather make a car fast than pretty (and I'm more skilled at the fast part than the pretty part). Enough bitching.
For the first time since I started this build, I sat the car on all 4 wheels. This pretty much gunned me up. Rolling it out into the driveway to minimize sanding dust in the garage, we sanded most of the exterior. The car is riddled with dents from various sources including hail, door dings, and general carelessness from the PO. This required body filling, in which none of us are skilled in that art. Fortunately, though, most of the larger holes were filled and sanded well. Of the 4 panels that were filled and sanded completely, a filling primer was applied. It's sorta cool to see parts of the car in another color (white). In the end, the car will be primarily metalic silver with blue accents.
Maybe I'm being ambitious, but I hope to have removable body panels in final paint next weekend, and the rest of the car painted the weekend after. If that pans out, that'll be a HUGE hurdle behind me.
Anyway, pictards:
What a PITA. I hate bodywork. Today I moved on to making the car work for the concourse segment of the challenge. This meant wrangling a few of my beer drinking Hong Norr buddies and tackling the prep work for paint. Since the car will have no interior, this means painting just about every inch of metal exposed....we finished prep on about half of the exterior today, if that. Furthermore, it took all of about 8 hours to get there. I'm not liking where this is going, but I hope the end result will yield the fruit of the labor. I've said it during all three build segments of the Miata, and I'll say it here: I'd rather make a car fast than pretty (and I'm more skilled at the fast part than the pretty part). Enough bitching.
For the first time since I started this build, I sat the car on all 4 wheels. This pretty much gunned me up. Rolling it out into the driveway to minimize sanding dust in the garage, we sanded most of the exterior. The car is riddled with dents from various sources including hail, door dings, and general carelessness from the PO. This required body filling, in which none of us are skilled in that art. Fortunately, though, most of the larger holes were filled and sanded well. Of the 4 panels that were filled and sanded completely, a filling primer was applied. It's sorta cool to see parts of the car in another color (white). In the end, the car will be primarily metalic silver with blue accents.
Maybe I'm being ambitious, but I hope to have removable body panels in final paint next weekend, and the rest of the car painted the weekend after. If that pans out, that'll be a HUGE hurdle behind me.
Anyway, pictards:
Attachments
Last edited:
Not yet. I will be pulling the engine and transmission again to paint the engine bay.
this is really cool, alot of pro a scort guys always talk about doing awd swaps and only a few have attempted it.
i own 2 boosted escort gt's and bf 88 323 2wd with a bp swap and boost, i just scored the rare 90 AWD pro. enough of my builds, if your looking to get rid of some parts off the bf awd 323 , im looking for a set of door panels,center counsel and gauge cluster for the gtx.
i just happen to stumble on this, im not on this forum ever( i will be know tho a little more)
but im on clubprotege and feoa(escort forum)most of my time.
if you are looking to get rid of those parts email me brillow@charter.net as that im not on here every day.
thanks great build.
i own 2 boosted escort gt's and bf 88 323 2wd with a bp swap and boost, i just scored the rare 90 AWD pro. enough of my builds, if your looking to get rid of some parts off the bf awd 323 , im looking for a set of door panels,center counsel and gauge cluster for the gtx.
i just happen to stumble on this, im not on this forum ever( i will be know tho a little more)
but im on clubprotege and feoa(escort forum)most of my time.
if you are looking to get rid of those parts email me brillow@charter.net as that im not on here every day.
thanks great build.
