Oh man, I knew I was behind on updating build progress here but checking it now... oops. Trust me I've been meaning to upload photos and post since months ago but I've been occupied with a lot - work (which is a startup), friends, church, planting a new church which is also like a startup, oh and working on the car lol. It does take several hours to post these updates so it's kind of a commitment lol, but especially with the recent interest from people I am now more motivated for this one. The work I have shown you so far is what took place from March through June 2019. I'll commit some extra time to get everyone up to speed now on what I have done up to the rest of 2019. 2020 so far has been mostly just the hood - when I post it, you'll see why that's taking my 20x longer than I thought it would.
Now, from where we left off, the subframe. Not much to it, just finished it up and painted it black.
It's cut the way it is on the sides because of driveshafts, steering rack and sway bar passing through, so those upper sections will be part of the frame, not subrame. Also if you noticed the one rather large section cut out on the driver's side that's because the fuse box is going there:
Why black? As you know my engine bay is a dark grey metallic, so why the change? Well my thought here was that I wanted to create a stronger contrast, or perhaps a stronger visual hierarchy for the engine, which will be painted silver. We can call the textured grey like "75% black" and the subframe "100%" black - let's not forget the bottom of the engine bay will be closed as well, which will be black as well, but will also have a shadow case onto it so let's call that "110% black" lmao. So this has somewhat of a gradient effect so that the attention is more on the engine, and not on parts that are not as interesting such as the subframe lol. You will see throughout the painting process I made a lot of little decisions like this: some items I want attention drawn to, some I do not - and that has to all work visually in balance. I don't seem to have a photo of it black on its own so here it is installed:
Also have the carbon wall finished here in these pictures. I will say it's not great, and for next time thought of a way to make this wall cleaner, lighter, as well faster to produce. At some point I will redo it but it'll do for this year.
I ordered various profile rubber strips. So the rear-top of the subframe has one, as does the perimeter of the carbon wall:
I hate to be so all over the place, but that was kind of the nature of this project. So while doing body-type of work on that subframe I've also been working with the engine. First, I had to clean it. Then, it was time for the timing belt change. Which seemingly was a close call, you'll see. Have I ever mentioned how gross this engine bay was?
Gross. ^fun fact: you can see in the little spot that the transmission was actually painted silver (did so in 2012 when I had to replace it and have it rebuilt).
Cleaning it with brake cleaner took several nights lol. There probably was a better product to use, but oh well. Went over it with sandpaper eventually.
You can see the difference here:
Cleaned up, ready for sanding & paint:
Back to that in a minute.
Now the timing belt:
You can see in the picture that it's barely on (but I did poke around with it, so it probably wasn't quite as severe on shown here - still, shouldn't be able to do that). Additionally the timing mark was off, but granted not by that much - seems to be within line of the guide of being off by a tooth is ok for these engines. There was
a lot of play in the belt. I think I dodged a bullet here, granted it was overdue for a change since years. That belt was installed way back in early 2010. I have put 140000KM on it. 40k, 4 years overdue, I know. At least it wasn't cracked or frayed, but seemingly stretched. I have never changed a timing belt before, it wasn't so bad. I was of course being careful, read the threads here on NT, and followed the DIY.
INTERMISSION:
Ok so at this point we've been seeing the engine head towards paint - a big deal, something I've dreamed of this whole time I've owned my car, which is now over ten years. So, to build on the never-ending issue affecting millions of car enthusiasts worldwide:
In the process of cleaning my engine I GOT MY 10MM SOCKET BACK!!! And bonus: the extension. I dropped that in the "V" of my engine in
2012. It's been there for seven years. Was lost for seven years and got it back :')
Now back to regular scheduled programming:
Aww yeah.
I'm gonna leave it there for now - will hopefully make a another post or two today. I've only brought you up to about July/August 2019 anyway.