anavrinIV builds an Exocet

[anavrinIV]

Some of you may have seen my thread in the NATOR NC section, I bought a miata, but for the majority that hasn't I'm starting a new thread here to really detail this project.

I'm building an Exocet. My donor is a 94 miata that has lived a pretty rough life so far, I bought it for myself as a birthday present and I've set a 1 year deadline to get this finished. This is all made trickier by the fact that I haven't ordered the new chassis yet, but that's coming soon. I've done plenty of research and have a general idea of where I'm going both short term and long term, and I want to keep this forum up to date as this place feels like home.

For those of you unfamiliar with the Exocet, the basic premise is the Lotus philosophy: simplify, and add lightness. For more information check out the Exomotive site, they're the US manufacturers of the chassis.

So to get it all up to speed, here's where we started:

9/29
TL;DR I bought a miater. Here's some pics.

The long story:

Been looking for a miata for a while now, finally found one that met my criteria. I drove 5 hours round trip Thursday after work to take a look and drive it and all seemed in order so I made an offer. Gave the seller a few ducats to hold it for me until Saturday when I was able to actually pick it up, paid the balance and was on my way.

About the car:
1994, Black with tan soft top.
1.8L 5 speed (the only way to have a miata)
168k miles
Came with a hard dog roll bar and jackson racing plug wires, otherwise stock as far as I can tell.
All electrics work (the ones left in the car anyway), power mirrors included.


On to the pics!

Just paid, here's where it sat waiting for me







Me in my new toy:



I couldn't drive the car away because the guy needed the plate off of it and I couldn't register the thing on a Saturday, so on the trailer it went for the trip.



Got it from Salisbury to Garner, unloaded, and snapped a few more pics before putting the car in the garage.







The engine bay is dirty, but clean. Engine has a bit of valve tick when cold but otherwise runs great



Interior:





Some wear on the driver's seat




I knew going in this wasn't going to be a perfect car. The radio is obviously missing, and the front passenger fender and front bumper were both repaired (pretty badly). Couple more little things shown here...rust on the rear rocker panels and a cracked/slightly melted rear bumper.





But no big deal, again, I wasn't expecting perfection. Only other issues are the driver's window won't roll up or down (broken cable) and a check engine light for IGL signal...I still need to research this one but supposedly the car sometimes won't start until you jiggle something under the hood. It started perfectly the half dozen or so times I tried so who knows.

We'll notice in the above pictures that there is a bit of a problem, namely that I don't exactly "fit" in the car. The roll bar is great if it's above your head. At 6'3 with a long torso, however, it doesn't quite make the cut. In a roll over situation my noggin would be the first thing on the ground. Not good. I'll also note that driving is interesting with a steering wheel lodged firmly in my femur, but that's just picking nits, isn't it?

Anyway, enough of that. With procurement complete the car went into the garage and work began.

First, the trunk was cleaned out. Original spare was still in the car as well as the jack and all accessories. Also in the trunk was the completely unsupported battery, some very dirty carpet and padding, and a lot of rust.

This looks safe enough...



Deck removed, carpet and padding removed and trashed, spare parts removed, fuel line cover removed:



Moving on to the interior the seats, soft top, roll bar, center console, seat belts, more nasty carpeting and padding, and (for safe measure) the ecu were taken out as well. One of the seat bolts decided to just snap instead of being removed, but admittedly snapping it was easier than removing the mirrored bolt on the other side. After performing all of this it's safe to say my biggest accomplishment so far is avoiding tetanus as we'll see in some of the pics. In case anyone is curious, the roll bar is a bitch to remove.

With the carpet and padding removed from behind the seats I found this nice pile of infection waiting for me



The rear bulkhead panel was pretty bad, but not nearly as bad as the access panel for the fuel pump. Yep, it's completely rusted through in a few spots.



Found the source of the old basement smell in this small pool that had congregated



And a good bit of deceased wildlife in the other side



And here it is all nekkid



With that completed (as well as the innards removed from the driver's door, no pics though) it was time to move onto the front of the car

Hood, fenders, bumper, fogs, and side markers removed:



This reavealed some damage I didn't know about, I guess this little guy kissed something at some point and had some damage to show for it.





No matter, the teardown must commence.

headlights, hood hinges, and wipers removed



And that's where it ended for the day. So far the car has been in my possession for just under 36 hours and this is where it's at.

9/30
Finally got around to installing a new light in the garage so I can work in the dark without bringing something out from the apartment. How convenient.

Only a little was accomplished on the car; tail lights, license plate lights, and rear side markers removed, license plate trim removed, trunk latch and key release removed, rear bumper cover removed (one corner cut off due to a stubborn screw), plastic bumper removed.

Also finally got a #3 phillips to remove the side mirrors and those are gone, passenger door being taken apart as well. I've successfully broken both manual window winders so I guess I have no idea how to properly remove those, but never mind that now.

Ass end removed:



Drivers door gutted, ready for removal:



Passenger door in progress:



That's really all for now, taking the back end bits out was a bit tedious but I'm trying to break as little as possible (that isn't already broken). Over the rest of the week I hope to have the rest of the interior cleaned out and some more hard bits removed.

10/3
Is it time for an update again? I think so.

TL;DR took more parts off

Tuesday night I began working more on the interior, step 1 of this is to remove the air bag. Unfortunately I started by trying to remove the gauge cluster hood and managed to break it. Damn. of the 2 screws and 3 clips that are designed to hold it in only 1 screw was even doing anything...all 3 clips were broken and one screw mount was broken. So in the trash that piece will go.

After that I got the column cover off, then went back and took out the air bag. Since I was on the right track I went ahead and unbolted the steering wheel and pounded on it until it broke free, then nearly hit myself in the face with it pulling it off. No noses were broken and a lesson was learned so I generally deem this a success.

From there I pulled the cluster and popped out random screws and bits until things started to move and when I couldn't get it all out I gave up and went inside.

How it finished tuesday:



Took last night off, went to dinner and watched a movie with the girl. Got back on it tonight though and put in a few good hours worth of work.

Read up on removing the dash so I wouldn't break anything just pulling and tearing until it all came free and was finally successful. I dropped the steering column (actually a requirement, who knew?), unplugged lots of things that are uselessly unlabeled, pulled and tugged some more and managed to break something small from I don't know where. Oh well, keep pushing.

Dash removed



Carpet removed next. This revealed some disturbing grossness...the padding was soaked. The car has been in the garage for 5 days and it hasn't rained in this state in a month so I'm not sure what went on here but it was moldy and nasty and smelly and I'm glad to be rid of it.

Nice shiny floors





Next went to work on that cluster of shit at the firewall. Heater core housing/vent block removed, blower housing removed, wiring harness dropped from the firewall.



Ecu to engine wiring harness removed, main cabin and trunk wiring harness removed. Lots of painters tape labels created so I hopefully won't lose anything in the mess.



Not sure that I'm going to able to do any work until Sunday from here, still lots to remove. The a/c box needs to come out (unhooked), harness needs to be dropped on the drivers side, battery cables need to be pulled out of the tub via the underside....lots to do. I think I mostly met my goal for the week but I'll be ready to get back on it this Sunday afternoon.

10/5
TL;DR More pictures

Didn't expect any time to work on the day but ended up with a few hours this evening and got to it.

First step was (for better or worse) to disconnect the a/c lines on the chiller box in the engine bay so I could remove it from the cabin. I wasn't sure if there was any charge in the system (a/c didn't work when I got the car) but figured I'd go for it anyway; got lucky and when I cracked the line nothing came out. Having avoided a misdemeanor charge I undid the second line and pulled the box.

Cabin cleaning up nicely here...



Pulled the hood latch as well. Ended up getting pissed at the cable and snipped it. Oh well, whatever.



Pulled the intake as well, figured I'd open up some room in the engine bay





In the interior I found something I didn't expect...not even sure how someone did this



Spent plenty of time slowly disconnecting electrical bits and carefully labeling them so I can put it all back later. Removed the airbag sensors in the front center and driver side, pulled the brackets holding the fuse boxes and relays, finished unclipping everything from the steering column, and pulled the engine harness from the driver's side. This is much less fun that I would have liked and it's going to be worse on the passenger side.

Wires all piled up



Firewall being cleaned up nicely



So that's that. I guess the next step is to finish pulling the wiring harness. Then start draining fluids...that heater core isn't going to drain itself.

10/6
Everything is moving along rather quickly, at the beginning I didn't know how fast this whole project would move along but so far there have really been no hurdles and it just keeps trucking.

kept going on the wiring harness but ran into the issue that I didn't exactly know what a few connections were. Some internet searching told me how to label a few and I just made shit up for the rest...how hard can it be? Took a bit but managed to get the engine harness out completely today.

Just the engine harness



Now if anyone can answer this for me I'd genuinely like to know how it takes so much wiring to control such a small car. I understand a luxury car with tons of speakers, seat heaters and controls, and other general tomfoolery but this is a miata and the only semblance of luxury is the power mirrors. Literally, the wiring fills the trunk and this doesn't include the charging system or the bits still attached to the dash



All those blue tags tell me where things go...or are supposed to go anyway. I'd like to not screw up when I have to put it back together but I'm sure that will be inevitable.

Anyway all looking pretty clean now. Other notable points window cowl removed, wiper motor and linkage removed, passenger door gutted minus latches.

[SpeedLife]

Hope everything goes smooth subbed to see more !

[mzr0818]

Bought a nice wrecked 99 myself last week. Gives me some front end work to tinker with and will become my daughters car @16. Its cool to see the differences from the first gen.

good luck with the project

[alphasaur]

Subadub.

gimme the roll bar

[anavrinIV]

I'm starting to lose track of the days now, I can't remember exactly when things happened but I know that they happened. For instance I lost my sharpie and can't find it, and I don't know when that happened. But it's inconvenient to say the least and I had to steal another one from work.

When last I posted pics the wiring harness had been removed, big step in the right direction.

Next up the coolant needed to be drained, that was fun. Big mess, but good progress. Rad drained, hoses disconnected, heater core removed. Steering column also removed.





Next was the fun bit, axle nuts. 20 years worth of rust and wear has made these things tight. Like seriously tight.

To remove them I had to get a 29mm socket, which is awesome because it's a completely uncommon size. The only one I could find was an impact socket for a 3/4 drive. So I bought it. And I also bought an adapter set (because I couldn't find a single adapter). Then I went home and tried to break the nut loose (after unpinning the nut, of course). This led to a revelation: damn these things are tight. With a 1/2 drive 18" bar I got nowhere. So back to the store to get my new favorite tool:



The bottom bar is that 1/2 drive. The top one is a 40" 3/4 drive breaker bar.



This got the job done with ease and the car was finally put up on jack stands.

With the car up I drained the PS fluid. I disconnected the bottom line from the reservoir and let the reservoir drain into a bottle (diet coke bottle FTMFW), then put the line in the bottle and turn the wheels back and forth a lot. I had to repeat this process for what felt like an hour until all of the fluid was out. With that done I undid the PS cooler line and removed the A/C condenser and lines.

Next up was a job I dreaded, draining the brakes.

All wheels removed, all brake pads removed and rear rotors as well (fronts didn't want to come off and it was too late to use the BFH). I used vinyl tubing from Lowes and popped it over the bleeder valves on each caliper then ran the lines to a single bottle. This way I could sit in the shell and pump the brake pedal while watching the fluid from each line. 3 of the bleeders opened easily, 1 did not. The 1 that did no also did not drain much, not sure what went on.

Line on the bleeder



Lines run to a single catch point (more diet coke FTMFW)



SUCCESS!



That all went seemingly well so I figured I'd pull the lines from the master and remove them from the car.

Labeled and capped. Not a drop spilled, I guess this worked.



Other end



One line fully removed, this felt like victory.



Clutch was done much the same way but with a much bigger mess and more faffing about. Win some lose some I guess, no different pictures to show for this.

After this master cylinders and pedals were removed. Interior is now completely gutted except for the e-brake handle.





While I was working up front I went ahead and disconnected the sway bar from the frame rails and the front subframe rear braces. Rear subframe braces also disconnected. Rear brake line removed from the splitting block, e-brake cables removed from their respective calipers, battery cable dropped through the chassis, gas tank drained.

The last one was fun. I read that there is a drain bolt on the left side of the tank. There is, as I found out, but mine was covered in underbody coating. The rubbery kind. See it in this pic? Neither did I.



A pair of channel locks found it though, and it didn't put up much of a fight. Little dribble started up...



Following that was another few gallons that came out at various velocities making a varying amount of mess. Only about half of it ended up on me, most of that congregating in a small open wound on my hand. Not pleasant.

With that all buttoned up the filler neck was removed



The gas tank is ready to be pulled as soon as I can get it out of the shell.

The run of lines under the chassis was all unbolted from its clips. Exhaust was dropped from the hangers and an interesting discovery was found.



See it? Lets look closer.



That's a rusted tin can held on with worm clamps. "Held on" is used lightly because this piece actually fell off as soon as I dropped the hangers. There are times I'm disappointed by this purchase, and this is one of them.

This is where things left off last night.

So far I'm 28.5 hours into the project with a total cost of $750. I bought the car for $1400 and have sold a number of parts (mostly to @Rokusek; who I got to meet this weekend).

The next step is a big milestone, I get to pull the shell. Hopefully that will be tonight as there are only a few bolts currently holding it on. After that the fun really begins.

Originally Posted by alphasaur Subadub. gimme the roll bar

You can go fight paul for it, we installed it in his little miater this weekend.

[alphasaur]

I'm taking you out @Rokusek;

lol at all the rust. Fuck that noise, after working on newish north east cars with rust I've decided I'll only buy new or garaged/southwest cars.

[WTMukluk]

Nice work! Subbed!

[CorkSport]

You sir are brave!

I will enjoy watching this come together.

-Derrick

[mzr0818]

This will be my new favorite build thread and when its done and you have learned from your issues you can come to my house and help me build one.

[BigRedSpecial]

Awesome project! This is the first time I've heard of the Exocet... very Ariel Atom-like at a fraction of the price. Love it!

[Rokusek]

Originally Posted by alphasaur I'm taking you out Rokusek; lol at all the rust. Fuck that noise, after working on newish north east cars with rust I've decided I'll only buy new or garaged/southwest cars.

You sir are out of your mind... That beast will not be coming out any time soon

[anavrinIV]

TL;DR: a little fail, a little win. pictars.

Fail seems to follow miatas around this fourm (or miatas follow fail in some cases), and it looks like I'm no exception to this. Rough night last night.

I got to the garage all excited to get this split this bitch wide open, thinking all I had to do was undo a few nuts and bolts then jack 'er up. Kinda worked that way.

Working ass backwards I went gung-ho on the suspension bolts. Miata suspensions are stupidly easy to remove and I quickly had that all apart. Next I jumped to the rear subframe and started unbolting the 6 nuts and bolts that hold it to the shell. This went stupendously, if not a bit slowly. I then moved to the front subframe and removed the bolts behind the front shocks; again this all went smoothly.

Before pulling the shell off I figured i should finish up the shell destruction and remove the doors, e-brake handle, and attempt to remove the windshield. The first 2 went great



The third, not so much. Disclaimer: I have no idea how to remove windshields. I do know, however, that you don't do it by just pulling on the molding around it. I learned this last night. After getting exactly 1/4" out I heard a pop and saw a nice line in the bottom corner. After another 1/2" or so I had a decent spider web forming and decided not to continue this endeavor. Live and learn.



With that all out of the way it was time to lift! Unfortunately I didn't have any straps to lift with. Also the hoist was missing a bolt. Darn. Off to Lowes!

Straps acquired and hoist fully bolted, time to get to it.

Another Disclaimer: I have no idea what I'm actually doing here. I don't advise anyone to follow my example. I am not liable for any injury sustained (and there will be many) if you follow my lead in any of these processes.

Time to strap it up.

I used 4 ratchet straps to do this, each rated at 1,000 lbs. This shell weighs less than that giving me a safety factor of >4. In engineering this is known as a calculation.

I essentially went to each corner of the shell and put a hook in the frame rail then ran the strap through a hole in the body to a central point. I ratcheted the straps relatively tight and hooked them all to the hoist. See the following...

Rear hook, this was done on each side



Front hook, these wrapped in and under the front frame rails





All tidied up...



Note the off-centered position of the big knot of straps. This will come into play.

Liftoff!

Almost. Apparently I missed 2 bolts on the front subframe. Dropped the shell, removed those bolts.

Liftoff!



Dat lean doe...

Gas tank removed, e-brake cables mostly dropped from underneath. All good progress.

The result of not carefully centering the straps is a very tilted chassis with it in the air. The steering column didn't help this as it didn't want to come out. No matter how much I moved everything around I couldn't get the column to drop through the firewall. This should have been my first clue that I was doing it wrong, but no. I kept at it until a mighty crash occurred. Luckily my girlfriend, who has no interest in cars or what I do for fun, was there to witness the entire running gear tank off the jack stands. She showed minimal concern for the situation and promptly turned around to go back inside.

Unfortunately I had a mess to clean up.



At this point a real jack would have been convenient. Or an extra set of hands. Or someone who even gave 2 shits about the situation. But I had none of those so i soldiered on with the spare tire jack and just enough concern for my donor car to get the rotors and wheels back on it. This took a good hour with my limited tools and space and I was quite tired of it all at this point. I then lowered the shell onto the jack stands for safe storage for the night. Well, 2 jack stands anyway. Because of the crash the ppf was quite a bit further toward the back of the garage than originally intended and the engine was a good bit into the transmission tunnel. This kept the jack stands from reaching the pinch welds in the front. The solution? More disclaimer-worthy nonsense.

Stack-o-jacks.



I know this is not safe but I won't be under the car with it like this. I needed enough room to pull the ppf forward. And I did. Then I went to bed. This will be waiting for me today...if I can figure out how to remove it from the garage.



32.5 hours into this project and it's all falling apart.

[captain slow]

I'm so glad this isn't just a boring build thread with pictures. The story along with it is so riveting. I feel like I'm really connecting with the character through the highs and lows, the funny moments and the sad. When this novel is finished, I think it could be a New York Times Best Seller.

Keep up the good work.

[CorkSport]

I am waiting to see when you knock down the wall to get the shell out.

-Derrick

[anavrinIV]

Originally Posted by CorkSport I am waiting to see when you knock down the wall to get the shell out. -Derrick

I wish. This is in a row of garages at an apartment complex, knocking out a wall would be frowned upon and the guy next to me would probably be a little miffed as well. I put the shell on craigslist this morning and got an email about it already, hoping that it sells today and is out of there tonight. I'll need to pull some hardware off but I'm ready for it to be gone.

[TiGraySpeed6]

What an excellent read! You, sir, are taking the gay out of owning a miata!

[CorkSport]

If I was your neighbor I would let you knock the wall down if I got firsties driving.

-Derrick

[anavrinIV]

Last night was going to be a big night for this little guy, the shell was supposed to be going to a new home. Most likely the crusher, but I didn't tell it that.

So we pick up in the precarious position that I left it last and start fresh. The sole objective for the night: get this out of the garage. That's easier said than done for a number of reasons:

1. This is a single bay garage.

2. The shell must be moved on an engine hoist with legs that are about 5' long.

3. At full sag the rolling chassis sits low enough to rest on the legs of said engine hoist.

4. I have no way to prop up the shell to clear the roller, or raise the static height of the roller so that it can be moved.

I did come up with something that we engineers call a solution. Brute force.

But first I had to square something away, namely the shell. No more of this lopsided mess.

So we center the big bunch of knots



And lift! Success! Well, better than the previous attempt anyway.



Now came the tricky part of actually getting this thing out of the garage. Remember that brute force we talked about? Well here it comes.

First, lets take a look at the layout of the garage.



Cluttered is a bit of an understatement to describe it, but I'm not to the hoarder stage yet since I'm trying to sell all the stuff I don't need. But that general mess section really hampers progress sometimes. We notice tools and spare parts are taking up a fair bit of real estate where the car kinda needs to go, and from the pictures we can see the general configuration of the car.

The solution, then? More MS paint sketchups.



First we must reduce the size of section 3. Most of this ended up back in the general mess section but other bits ended up outside the garage. Not creative but vastly more space available.

The brute force moved the running gear to the side of the garage. I also used a little trick I found a couple nights ago of jacking it up then tipping it over. This is actually quite effective but I wouldn't suggest doing it with anything heavier than the running gear of a miata.

Scratch that, I just wouldn't suggest doing it at all. I will reiterate:

Originally Posted by anavrinIV Another Disclaimer: I have no idea what I'm actually doing here. I don't advise anyone to follow my example. I am not liable for any injury sustained (and there will be many) if you follow my lead in any of these processes.

The blue and purple lines show the general path that their respective legs of the hoist took to get out of the garage. Not terrible but I'm doing this alone and it weighs ~1200lbs. Oh, and it can't just smash into the walls so that all needs to be controlled. Bummer.

In the end though it all worked. I even got it over the little lip without issue.





I cut the VIN plate out, emptied my wiring harness from the trunk and cleared all my tools and spare parts out of the shell. I even found my sharpie! Now I have 2 of them!

Then I waited. This was about 8:30 and I talked to Jerome (he's buying the shell) at 8 or so, he should be here a little after 9. During the wait I started to remove the last few bits. Interior windshield trim was removed, trunk hinges were attempted but failed majorly. Then I removed random bits of hardware that I had replaced for safe keeping.

9:15, no Jerome. No biggie, it's only been a few minutes.

9:30, place a call. No answer.

9:45, another call. An answer! The tail lights aren't working on his truck, he can't come out tonight.

Son of a....

God damnit.

See, the problem is that the space the hoist was occupying is now filled with a pile of hardware and wires. Also this wasn't easy to get out. And I can't just leave it, that would be...well, not good.

So back in the garage is must go.

Lots of swearing and 15 minutes later it was in, I learned from the "getting it out" process what needed to be done so it was just a matter of doing it in reverse. Of course, the 3/4" lip back into the garage presents a problem, but no matter, more brute force.

In the end (we shall achieve in time the thing we call nirvana) it's back where it started...kinda.



Oh, and all that stuff I took out of the garage managed to stay out there all night. Even my tools. No one took them, but maybe I'm the only person out at 10pm then back out at 6:30 to go to work, who knows. There will probably be a bunch of dead feral cats today from leaving the coolant bucket out though. Oops.

Hey, at least I found my sharpie.

Also excuse the spacehog reference.

[anavrinIV]

The garage pretty much looks exactly the same but slightly emptier. This evening I sold the driver's side door, trunk lid, driver's fender and carpets. The same guy also plans to come get the dash, center console, seats, and power mirrors in the next few days. Schwing.

Still waiting for this shell to go, if it isn't sold and gone tomorrow I'm calling a recycling company to come take 'er away. I'm ready to keep putting in work but I have nowhere to do it.

Total cost down to $450 with plenty left to sell.

[Rokusek]

Holy fuck Chaz...

I wish to god i lived closer and could help out with all this.

Looking good brother, I seriously am super fucking excited to see this thing come together.

-PJ

[anavrinIV]

Guys be like....

Hey man I'mma getcha car but my truck don't work. It's the lights. I'll be there tomorrow.

Then I get the same shit for 3 or 4 more days. Shell is still in the garage. The fact that the guy keeps calling me with updates is all that gives me hope he'll actually get the damn thing. New ETA is tomorrow morning, 8 am. He won't need lights, nature will take care of that.

Tomorrow afternoon another guy should be coming to look at the hood and soft top. Then monday or tuesday the other stuff mentioned should be gone as well. Then I need to figure out where all my tools are, it looks like a hurricane threw them all over the garage. I should get rid of the tank of gas/oil/various fluids too. At some point I'll have a direction for all of this, but for the time being I'm just going to keep turning wrenches willy nilly until something hits me. Bushings will need to be replaced...maybe that's a good place to start.

[anavrinIV]

I almost gave up on Jerome. I talked to him for 5 days straight about this shell and was tired of him not showing up to come get it after we worked out details at least 3 times.

Today he came though. With 2/3 of the money we agreed to. God damnit Jerome....

But I took it anyway because it was what I considered at "reasonable offer". And the local scrap yard wouldn't have matched it anyway.

Aaaaaaaand away it goes



Yesterday I decided I needed to finish taking the parts I need to use off of the parts I'm about to sell so I don't lose parts I need. Unfortunately all this amounted to was...more wiring.

The dash had wiring. Why does the dash need this many wires? Who knows. But I needed it. I think.



And here it is all gone...



More wires. Lots of little blue tags




After getting the shell sold today I was still left with a complete mess in the garage, albeit a little more maneuvering room. That's always nice. So I decided that I needed to clean up. See those flattened boxes in the corner? I'm very glad I kept them at this point.



I picked up all my tools, bagged and labeled the hardware, sorted bits into various boxes, spilled more power steering fluid (I'm pretty sure this stuff is self regenerating, it keeps making a mess no matter how much I drain), and moved some stuff to the front of the garage. More parts will be going soon and I don't want to trip over everything while moving them later.

After:



Feels good to have that done, it's been needed for a while.

That's really it, I wish there was more. I want all of the spare parts gone. @Rokusek; your door is still here if you want it. At this point I'll settle for having all the large panels and parts gone actually, the small stuff doesn't bother me.

I've come to the realization that it's time to get a real tool box now. I saw one at northern tool last week that I really liked, not huge but plenty of room for my stuff. I think I'm going to go take a look again this week, I can't do this random mess of tool storage anymore. I'd also like a second shelf for parts, but that requires more sorting and moving into space I don't really have. We'll see how it all goes.

[Easter Bunny]

It looks like you might have space to bolt some storage to the ceiling in there. I know it's not your garage but some boards and lag bolts won't be that expensive.

[anavrinIV]

In the contract for the garage is specifically prohibits drilling into the walls. Luckily it didn't mention anything about not gouging the walls with an engine hoist because I did that pretty well earlier.

[Rokusek]

I'll get with you after this weekend. I have loads to do with my car and wasnt able to this weekend again go figure. so this weekend im hoping to get the rest of my shit done.

If you still have it by then, than I'll take it from you for sure. I may have a friend who can bring it up for me but not 100% sure yet.

I'll keep you posted.

-PJ

[anavrinIV]

@Rokusek; I can't make a trip up this weekend as I'll be headed for a decent trip in the middle of next week unfortunately. Just let me know about it, it should be here

[Sploozel]

Wow, just wow.

I wanna come seee.....

[anavrinIV]

Originally Posted by Sploozel Wow, just wow. I wanna come seee.....

come on over, you know where I'm at. You should probably wait until I'm home though

[Sploozel]

Originally Posted by anavrinIV come on over, you know where I'm at. You should probably wait until I'm home though

Makes sense, haha.. lemme know.. I am free wednesday to saturday. You gonna be at the upcoming C&C?

[anavrinIV]

Originally Posted by Sploozel Makes sense, haha.. lemme know.. I am free wednesday to saturday. You gonna be at the upcoming C&C?

I should be picking up Brandon's engine stand today so I can pull the ppf apart, I need to drain the fluids and get everything together to start doing more work. Also looks like I may be getting a tool chest/cart soon, looking forward to that.

I should be there, no reason not to be. Also turns out a guy I work with is friends with the guy that owns that awesome 80s porsche we saw last time

[Sploozel]

Originally Posted by anavrinIV I should be picking up Brandon's engine stand today so I can pull the ppf apart, I need to drain the fluids and get everything together to start doing more work. Also looks like I may be getting a tool chest/cart soon, looking forward to that. I should be there, no reason not to be. Also turns out a guy I work with is friends with the guy that owns that awesome 80s porsche we saw last time

Wait really? That's nuts. Chic fil a then walk around sounds gooood. Clean the 3 and park with me this time you turd.


Sent from iBrick.

[anavrinIV]

It's been a few days since the last real update (well, almost a week since the last REAL update) and there's a very good reason for that...I haven't done anything. After the cleanup on Sunday I was waiting to move some more parts before digging in more and last night a guy came and picked up the dash, center console, and power mirrors with door harnesses. Total cost down to $100 for the car and dropping (OK, $102 but I'll round it out).

With the dash out of the way my path was clear(er) to semi-relocate the running gear and get crackin'.

The problem is that the crackin' started to get done somewhere around 4 am today. Why? Because I couldn't sleep. And instead of waste time wishing I could sleep I got busy. Nice and chilly out, very quiet.



With no more pesky dash in the way there's almost more room to work.

Step one, of course, is to remove the remains of the exhaust. Why? Because I'm an idiot, that's why.

Lets back up a second. We'll recall a couple weeks ago I managed to kick the engine and frames off the jack stands. While this was a complete accident it was also a huge hinderance to progress going forward. With the wheels on but no support above or below the suspension collapses even lower on an already low car. This is low enough that I couldn't get the spare tire jack under any part except the mid frame (which I wasn't going to jack on) or the outer portion of the LCAs. So that wasn't going to work.

I tried for about 30 minutes to jack the thing up under the back of the trans which is thick and flat, but all I managed was to bend the middle of the car up. The plan was to jack it just high enough to get the hoist under the trans, hook the engine, and move it all at once. The exhaust was the lowest point and there was no way I was going to clear it, so off it came.

This was fun. I tried to take the portion off from the back of the mani. After completely shearing one bolt and rounding the head of the second (with no way to even get to the third) I changed tactics and went for the whole shebang.

I undid the heat shield bolts, also fun. Again, one sheared completely and all but the top 3 were so corroded that I couldn't use the 10mm socket to get them off but had to step to a 3/8. One was being a little...well, it was being a complete bitch so I just left it and bent the shields apart to get to the mani nuts.

Using a breaker bar these came off easily...some came off the stud, some studs came out, but in the end there were no issues.

EGR tube wouldn't come free from the exhaust mani so I pulled it from the intake mani instead, a bit of fidgeting and it all came apart.



All nice and...rusty. Maybe not so nice.



My little jack gave up the ghost and now has a very bad lean, which sent my roller toppling for a third time (twice accidentally) when I tried to jack the car up. I figured it was time to go get a real jack and almost packed it in for the morning when I realized...I have a hoist. And ratchet straps. So what to do?

This.



Wrap the strap around the mounting points for the UCA, loop back, hook to the hoist, and off we go.

Using some more of my brute force that I found a week ago I slid the back end by hand and used the hoist to pull the front, centering the car in the garage. This should prove useful for working on both sides.

I got it high enough to throw a jack stand under the subframe.



With a good bit of height now I could clear the under side of the trans with the hoist and strap up the engine. Learning from my chassis lifting fiasco I centered the straps as best I could, lifted, and set it hiiiiiigh up on some stands.



For any of my eagle-eyed viewers, yes that is 2 straps going through 1 ratchet. See previous disclaimer before trying this. It worked, and I'd do it again. But you shouldn't. And don't blame me when you do and it all goes wrong.

For safe measure I have a set of these, they're about $5 at harbor freight, they fold away to almost no space, and they're keeping this thing from rolling backward.



Some good height to work with here



This is getting irritating...I don't know where it's coming from but I keep finding oil spots. For future reference, goo gone does a damn fine job of removing the oil.



Next step was to drain more fluids. I got the oil drain bucket and let out the engine oil and trans fluid. I made sure the trans fill plug came out before removing the drain, just to be safe.

I was scared to see how the trans fluid would look, I'm not sure that it's ever been changed in 170k miles. It smelled terrible, but didn't look as bad as I expected. I was also fearful of what surprises the drain magnet might hold but the biggest surprise was that all looks good!



Very, very fine metal shavings. More like dust than anything. Very normal wear, no chunks of anything.

That's where I finished up for the morning, took a couple hours to get there due to all my faffing about. I'm hoping to go at it more this evening when I get home from work, there's plenty to be done.

37 hours total time so far, only $100 spent on the car.

[anavrinIV]

With the fluids drained and the front supported I continued to remove/disconnect things. Unlike many builders I haven't had the heart to just abolish all the hard lines completely and have done my best to keep them all in tact; this has been more time consuming than just cutting them but, IMO, a better overall plan because it's mine.

In a couple of the previous pics you can see a group of lines running from the gas tank to the engine; these are 2 fuel lines, an evap line, and a brake line. The brake line had been disconnected for some time, the fuel lines not so much. Step one last night was to label the fuel lines and detach. Unfortunately I had to cut the rubber hose to get the hard lines out...hose can be replaced though. Hoes? Getting off topic....

Instead of undoing them individually I pulled the whole bundle at once; not sure if it will be reused as-is or not but it can't hurt to have options

Sitting next to the exhaust. I really have nowhere to store these longer objects. I can probably just trash the exhaust though



With that done I could remove the fuel tank from the rear subframe where it's been sitting.





Next up I finished disconnecting the wiring from the engine. All of the "packaged" stuff stayed (coils, for example) but anything that ran a harness out had to be taken off. Starter, alternator, and some other random thing disconnected. I also pulled 2 sensors from the tranny, no idea what they're for but off they came.

Everything getting nice and separated now, nothing running the length of the car anymore



For safety's sake (I decided that I needed to start trying this concept out) I put some more supports under the trans and mid frame. These are strategically placed.



Having a support fore and aft of these 2 bolts made removing them a bit safer. These are the 2 bolts that hold the mid frame to the trans.



Bolts removed, attempted disconnect, nothing.

Turns out there are 3 bolts.

Undid third bolt, bingo!





Front and rear ends are now separated. More victory.

Add an hour and a half to the build time for this thing, up to 38.5 hours. Then I went in and watched my panthers beat up on the lowly bucs.

Over the coming weeks I will be doing more disassembly, followed eventually by some reassembly and a build. I'm just about a month into my 12 month plan and I don't forsee any issues meeting that goal, finances withstanding. I'm more hyped on this build the more I get into it and can't wait to get back in the garage again.

[TiGraySpeed6]

And Next time on Overhaulin.....

It's remarkably cool to live vicariously through your garage & wallet. Thanks for sharing!

[anavrinIV]

It's all starting to go down hill, very long update to come when I have the energy

[Easter Bunny]

Originally Posted by anavrinIV It's all starting to go down hill, very long update to come when I have the energy

Every big project has its downfalls. You can muscle through it.

[anavrinIV]

Originally Posted by Easter Bunny Every big project has its downfalls. You can muscle through it.

I can, and will. It was bound to get difficult at some point, it just all hit pretty much at once. I broke a couple of pretty vital tools and lots of things decided not to move anymore.

[anavrinIV]

It's a bit hard to believe that less than a week ago this was a complete running gear. This past weekend was full of a lot of work and even more phail, as will be documented here.

TL;DR What once was one is now many, and what once was whole is now in bits scattered about a room.

As last we left off the ppf was in 2 pieces, these officially designated "front" and "rear" for what should be very obvious reasons. For the slow ones among us I will explain; the "front" section have everything as far back as the trans, the "rear" is the drive shaft to diff. And so on.

Having no logical next point I just started turning bolts until something came loose; the first something was the front suspension. I pulled the shocks first to make some room in there to work. Wait, back up, I removed the wheels and (once again) seized rotors first. Luckily I know exactly which bolt I need to use to remove the rotors so those were off in a jiffy. Then I did the shocks. Then the UCA to sub frame bolt was loosened, front sway end links removed.

Then it got fun.

Each side has 3 ball joints with cotter pins. these pins are 20 years old and very well rusted in place like everything else on this car. I couldn't get to the ends to pull them free so I made a tool for the job.

This is a very old stanley screw driver that has now been repurposed to cotter pin remover. I used a dremel to narrow the end and sharpen it to fit in the castle nut slots to get the pin to a grabbable position. Normally this would be NCE but this is officially my first tool creation and I'm a proud papa.



It worked beautifully and all 6 pins were removed, castle nuts came free with a bit of persuasion (read: hammer) and tie rods were dropped from the spindles.

Then it all looked like this



In the process I moved the steering rack back and forth a couple times to get at pins and wouldn't you know it...more god forsaken power steering fluid. I have a feeling this will be the bane of this project, I'm so sick and god damn tired of it.



Yadda yadda eccentric bolts yadda yadda hammer yadda yadda done



With that done I loosened all the bolts on the engine mounts at the engine.

After all this victory I decided to modify my hoist for more clearance. Since ratchet straps are now my thing I pulled the chain that was dangling from the end in favor of a more direct mounting method



Remember when I put 2 straps through 1 ratchet and told you all not to do it but that I'd do it again? Well I did, and it worked again. But you still shouldn't do it.

Got it all up in the air, pulled one last PS line from the PS pump, and removed all the engine mount bolts to drop the sub frame.

Engine and trans dismounted and hanging, very good balance in this overall.



Front sub temporary storage on the rear sub



Next up was trans removal.

I loosened every bolt I could find that mounted the trans to the engine. Removed the starter and slave cylinder (neither strictly necessary as I found out), and set it down to balance it. I played around with this for some time trying to figure out a way to set the trans down so the engine could be removed. This was my best solution.

using a pair of jack stands and my monster bar to make a tripod mount (the rear was supported with that huge leveling scissor jack).





All trans bolts were then removed and a pry bar was carefully worked around the mating surfaces to separate it. My mount kept getting squarely in the way of the pry bar and no matter how little things moved (remember this is dangling still) the jack stands kept wobbling around. So i ditched the third mount idea, raised it all up, and, with more of my brute force, took the trans off by hand and set it out of the way.

I'm glad this only weighs about 80 pounds, easy enough to move.



Engine free to be purely an engine



The stand I have wouldn't clear the clutch so I couldn't mount it. And besides I didn't have any of the right bolts to thread into the block or enough nuts to put the stand together fully so I carefully lowered the engine to the floor and let it sleep for the night.

Then I took the liberty to get some sleep as well.

Saturday was a fun day.

Started off by removing the clutch so I could get the engine on the stand. Using a pry bar to hold the flywheel from turning it was easy enough to take off the pressure plate and clutch disc.



All mating surfaces looking pretty good...









I was feeling good but it was all short lived. By the look of things the stand could be attached without removing the flywheel, but I still didn't have the bolts. I also didn't have anymore room to store precious parts...like the clutch. So a store trip was in order.

Headed to Lowes hoping they would have the correct bolts, M12x1.5 with at least 80mm length. Got to the store and...nope. M12x1.75 and M12x1.25. Sonofa...

Picked up a big shelf (same as the one I already have) and some nuts for the stand and was on my way. Luckily there's a big hardware store that I always forget about only a couple miles from where I live and they had the bolts. No drama ensued and I was out of there in a flash to keep working.

Got back to the garage and tried to mount up the plate for the stand. After a hopeless 20 minutes I came to a conclusion...the flywheel has to come off.

I obviously was too quick with my previous assessment, but I had tried to remove this already to no avail. So what to do? Break out the big bar. Using my pry bar method, but this time having a monster lever on the other end, all 6 bolts eventually freed themselves and the big chunk-o-mechanical grip came right off.



Stand plate bolted right up and centered nicely, everything tightened down with ease



...and there was no way this thing was getting to the stand.

I thought I'd be smart and not extend the boom of the hoist very far. This seemed logical, shorter arm=less bending AND more stability, but no, no this wasn't going to work. There was no way to get the engine far enough out to reach the stand as the stand and hoist were playing footsie instead of working together to securely hold an engine.

So I had to extend the boom, but I had nowhere to put the engine. So I dropped it to the floor once again, undid the bolt and slid it forward. Not a fun task, but necessary.



Canoodling done the stand and hoist played nice and the engine went to its new home.



Then I took a break.

Ok, back to it. Still Saturday just a couple hours later.

Front sub frame needed to be disassembled.



That was quick. I'm surprised the motor was mounted at all.



Both motor mounts looked like that. I guess I'll add that to the list of new parts to buy.

Rear shocks removed, rear sway bar removed. One of the bolts for the rear sway was seized so I cut the end link. That'll show it.

Next step, I decided, was to remove the midframe completely. To do this I unbolted the drive shaft then flipped the entire assembly over.



This is held on by (I think) 2 long bolts. These are tight. Very tight. Like, I thought the axle nuts were tight but holy hell these are tight.

my mondo bar only managed to round one of the bolts. Bugger. the other didn't want to come free either but rather than hulk it I decided to use the 1/2 bar and an adapter to the deep well 3/8 socket. I don't know why this was the decision, but there it was. Pull pull pull pull pull pop.



So much for that adapter. Impact-ready my ass.

I decided that the mid frame looked really good where it was and went on to the rear suspension. Put the sub frame on jack stands, removed rear wheels and discs, removed sub frame brace (while carefully shearing one bolt), undid the 8 bolts that hold the control arms on. Some tough spots but overall an easy job, albeit time consuming.



Removed the 6 bolts that hold the diff mounts and bingo





This hardly looks like a car anymore.



Sunday funday.

Remember that shelf I bought? Yeah, me too. It needed to be assembled.



....aaaaaaaand there we go. Now it needs to be filled with parts.



Done.

That only took 3 hours or so to organize, and I've displaced a lot of things that need to go on shelves. Hopefully some parts sell soon so I can clear some real estate, but no time to worry about that now.

the BP motor is a fantastic design because it uses 2 belts, one to drive the water pump and alternator, another to drive the power steering and A/C. Since I need neither of the latter I removed that belt and both pumps completely.

(Insert picture of engine here)*

Next I wanted to disassemble the suspension corners because when I removed them I left the uprights attached to both control arms at each corner. Fronts just pushed (well, hammered) out of place by removing the ball joint from the upright. Easy. One lower ball joint was removed from its control arm cleanly. While "persuading" the second (with a breaker bar and a hammer) it started to pop around the bolt. I thought I rounded the head but it looked okay. Nope, not rounded. Socket snapped. I guess I'll be replacing this as well.

(Insert picture of snapped socket)*

That ball joint is still in the control arm. lets move onto the rear. Both UCAs came free easily. The nut on both LCA to upright joints came off, but the bolt is seized. Seized into the upright. Hammers and deep creep and breaker bars (the big kind) and more hammers had exactly no effect. This is apparently a pretty common issue but it's annoying. I guess I'll do more cutting or something, I don't even know.

Dismayed at this I started in on the midframe bolts. My idea was to cut them nearly flush then drill them out. My horrible cordless drill ran through all of the charge that the 4 batteries had and I'm not halfway done with this. 2 of the batteries will be fully charged by the next time I get around to this so there's that.

(Insert pictures of carnage)*

After all this I packed it in. I'd like to finish organizing at least, but we'll see what tonight holds as I'm pretty beat for this whole project right now.

I lost track of time but I'm going to say 10 hours put in this weekend on actual work. I was at 7.5 until Sunday and had to do at least a couple hours yesterday evening.

48.5 hours into this project. $100 spent.

A side note, Exomotive says the average build is about 100 hours. I can fully believe this if the donor is spotless and doesn't need to be taken down to nuts and bolts. In fact with an extra set of hands, all the parts, the right tools, and enough beer I bet this could be built in a weekend. It would be fun to try but I'm way past that and can't afford to start a second one.

*I didn't take pictures of this stuff yet, I was too busy cussing at everything and listening to football on my camera to think much about it.

[Sploozel]

So when will you be ordering the Exocet, or have you already?

I assume we will talk more about this saturday but why the hell did you have to completely dissasemble the entire car? Atleast from the pictures on exomotives website, they have much more car left than you do lol....

[anavrinIV]

It may not look like it in the pictures but the parts I need are filthy. I'm taking it down to individual components to clean, strip, and paint just about everything to get it looking and functioning as perfectly as possible before putting it in a brand new chassis. Yes, I could have left it whole but this way I can inspect every bit of it and replace what is necessary the first time around.

This is a lot of work that isn't strictly necessary but it's rewarding and will lend to an overall better outcome.

Also no, I haven't ordered the chassis yet. Given the price it's not lining up with my bank account quite yet. All in due time, all in due time.