Sweet man. Kinda reminds me of when I bought mine.. I've fixed so many flaws, but I've still got quite a few to fix.

Have Funzies! haha

 

How much did you pick it up for ?

 

Welcome back!
Love the color of that thing, and good luck!

..More Chicago-land members for me to bug! :3_bier:

 

Can't wait to see the restored product

 

Same here.:3_bier:

 

you got yourself a nice project...looking foward to seeing this evolve

 

this is gonna be awesome to see as you restore it please continue to update us over time

 

good luck with your restoration~

 

Thanks for the welcome. I'll try to keep pictures flowing as I progress. So far, a cleaning of the interior has made a big difference there. I cleaned the surfaces with P21S Total Auto Wash - my rag looked like I degreased an engine. I followed that up with some 303 Aerospace Protectant, and the plastics look a lot better. About an hour with the shop vac and a carpet brush helped clean that up, though I'm still thinking I need to replace the carpet - at least the area by the driver's feet. For now, I threw in the rubber Hyundai floormats from my Santa Fe - as I only use the rubber ones in the winter. Working on ordering a set of OE mats, metallic pedals, and the trunk area mat.

Doomsday Postcard has a line on some seats over in Indiana - he is checking on the price. I'll either do a seat swap or reupholster them with custom leather - depending on price difference. He's also supposed to pull some of the missing panels I need from a parts car too.

On my lunchbreak Fedex dropped off my exhaust clamp from Jegs. Some weather strip retaining clips showed up in the mail too, so I fixed the passenger door weather strip that was hanging down. I need to get the part numbers for the passenger window weather strip - it's beyond salvageable.

On the outside, a wash did nothing. I hit the whole car with a claybar and that was a huge pain. Some areas were so bad I had a hard time getting the clay to slide. You really should have to have a license to buy spray paint. Wet-sanding is the only option in a lot of areas.

After work, once the kids go to bed, I am planning on cutting off the exhaust flanges and butt-jointing the exhaust together with a band clamp. Won't be the prettiest fix, but it will make the car sound like it HAS an exhaust system until we get to the point of upgrading that. I couldn't even tell you how bad the window seals are, because I can't hear any wind noise over the lack-of-muffler. I'll try to take pictures.

 

Oh - 2 things I forgot to answer.

caconman424-
I picked the car up for $3,600. He was asking $4,100. I may have overpaid, but it got me a project that I knew I could handle now instead of later. Patience is not one of my virtues.

Octane-
It is nice to be in a group with some people around. That was one of the downsides to the Elantra community being small, back in my Elantra modding days - there was nobody near me. Everyone was on the east coast or southwest. Look forward to meeting some of the locals one day.

 

Oh - 2 things I forgot to answer.

caconman424-
I picked the car up for $3,600. He was asking $4,100. I may have overpaid, but it got me a project that I knew I could handle now instead of later. Patience is not one of my virtues.

Hey, if it is as mechanically sound as you say, sounds like a good deal

reliability > cosmetics anyday

 

Looks like you got your hands full, sir.

 

I can't wait to see this car get restored nicely. I wish you the best of luck with it!

 

Looks nice!!! Welcome back! Can't wait to see it come along. Keep us posted!!!

 

Question for a mod/admin: should I keep my updates on progress here, or is there another section that would be more appropriate for a new thread? I'm not too familiar with the ins-and-outs of NT yet.

So, last night my quick 1 hour exhaust fix turned into a 4 hour fight. The plan was to cut off the beat-up flanges from both sides of the connection here:

Why? Because the one stud was gone, and the other wouldn't tighten up. The [expletive deleted] previous owner wanted the car louder, but instead of putting on an exhaust or walmart muffler, he just unbolted the cat from the rest of the sytstem. But, the cat would drag across the ground if you unbolt it, so he left the nuts on, just backed off about 1.5 inches. So, the cat banged around loose on those studs, breaking one and chewing the threads on the other. I could have heat+beat out the studs to put new ones in, but I wasn't confident I'd get a good seal with these rusted flanges.

So off it came. I started with a cutting wheel and sliced through the tailpipe side first, bottom up. Finished off the top with a sawzall and Milwaukee ICE metal blade. That was easy. Couldn't get the grider to fit around the CAT side, so I had to sawzall it all. Chewed up 2 metal blades with no progress. Off to the hardware store for an Irwin "thick metal" blade. Came back and it went though like butter.

Hard part over... or so I thought.

I brought out the new stainless steel band clamp and got it wiggled into place. This thing was $15 from Jegs.

It clamped down just fine on the CAT side, but I could not get it small enough to fit on the pipe side. Much swearing at this point. I guess the pipe is smaller than 2.25." If I would have got the 2" clamp though, I'm not sure it would have sealed around the CAT side. What to do? It took less than 15 seconds for me to come up with a plan. I grabbed a piece of sheet metal and bent it around the tailpipe - sort of a shim, then tightened down the clamp. Nope, still not tight enough. Repeat that process a few more times (4 exactly). Remove clamp, add sheetmetal, replace clamp. I could not feel my left arm by the time I was done. I'm getting too old to be laying under little cars - HA.

So, the car comes down off the jack stands and I start it up. Still loud. WTF?! I remain calm enough not to throw a wrench - but if I needed this car for work the next day, many things probably would have gone airborne in my garage. Back up the car goes on the jack stands. I look and one of my shims had shifted, leaving a crinkle/gap in the clamp. Take it all off, make 4 new shims and reassemble.

This time I left it on the stands and started it up. Still loud... but different. I look under the car to see what's up. This joint was not the only problem. Both flex pipes are shot. The braiding is unraveling around the ends, especially on the longer flexpipe. Probably from the weight of the CAT bouncing around on those studs and constantly over-exercizing the flex pipe. Or age.

So, that's where I sit. I drove it to work (I took the long way - about 2 miles) this morning and it did sound better, but still annoying. When sitting still it sounds like... well, like a car with an exhaust leak. Unfortunately, I do not have access to a welder, nor am I very good at welding. I can cut things and bolt them with the best, but welding is out of my repertoire. So it might end up going to a local muffler shop and having everything replaced, from the first flex pipe to the CAT - then reweld on flanges and bolt the CAT up properly.

----------------------------------
In other news, I accomplished a few things before work this morning. I paid $4.95 to download the full version of Torque so I could read the codes causing the CEL. I got 5 different ones, all for O2 sensors and one MAF. I wonder if he ever reset the ECU after installing the CAI? So I did a battery reset and so far no CEL. I've only gone through one drive cycle though, so I'm not sure the computer has had time to check everything over. I'll pay attention to this throughout the day, check the status to see if ECU checks are complete (it takes my truck like 15 seconds, dunno why the Tib takes so long) and see if we fixed everything with a simple reset.

Airbag light is still no though - he said it came on when he removed the passenger seat - I though it might have done this without disconnecting the battery and pissed-off the SRS system. I'll need to check all the connections again.

Finally, I pulled the stereo headunit (OEM Infinity) and tested all the leads in the harness. Wiring is fine, which is somewhat of a relief. That just means that the problem with this headunit is the headunit, not a faulty BCM signal, or wiring short, or anything else. I'll need to find a cheap headunit - not going to spend much on this until the car is worth driving around.

 

Heh, the good ol' rusty bolts - I remember when I put on my DC exhaust... "Time to take a few hours to install my new exhaust" ...3 days later "DAMN YOU BOLTS"!

Also, if you don't mind me asking, where around Chicago are you? You can PM it to me if you don't want it on the boards.

 

Heh, the good ol' rusty bolts - I remember when I put on my DC exhaust... "Time to take a few hours to install my new exhaust" ...3 days later "DAMN YOU BOLTS"!

Tell me about it. When i was installing the hot pipes of my turbo kit, the cat was so rust welded to my dc sports exhaust, i eventually had to cut it off. Real ***** to do. But my gf learned how to put an exhaust on after with which was kinda hot lol

To the original poster. You can keep updating this thread ao long as it doesnt go over a month without a post, or I or another mod can move it into the member profiles section as a project thread for you. You can update your project there whenever you want.

Edit: Octane beat me to it thanks buddy

 

No big deal - I'm in the Joliet area (near I-55 & I-80). I just put "near Chicago" in my profile so people outside of the Chicago area know where I am.

 

Gotcha!

I was hoping you were going to say NW burbs... haha

Oh, and I moved this thread to the 'Member Profiles' section of the forum, if you want the thread name changed to "Hyunelan2's Tiburon" or something along the lines of that PM me!

 

I think before I order all new parts for the blue interior pieces - I am going to try to salvage them. I'll use the aerosol stripper, like was recommended in this thread, but I'm not sure for finishing. I could either do the satin black trim paint, or use plastidip for that plasticy finish. Thoughts?

 

Well, as I suspected the CEL came back. This morning before reset, I had the following codes:

P0102
P0171
P0174
P1166
P1167

After the reset, on my way back from lunch the CEL came back with codes P1166 and P1167.

I think I'll start my investigation with the MAF. There is an AEM cold air intake on the car. Might investigate removing that for an OEM intake if I can find one. Not because I hate it, but because until I get this car back in shape, the fewer variables the better.

Also, with the P0171 and P0174 they are listed as lean codes for intake/exhaust leak. It will be interesting to see if those come back now that I plugged up that gap in the pipe.

 

I was gone all weekend, but was still able to make a little bit of progress. Last night I decided to undo the awful nightshade on one of the tailights (one was normal, one was like this). I used acetone to remove it, then polished by hand using Meguires 205.

I also attacked the headlights, but got a little too crazy with the wet-sand paper, and have made some more work for myself on the driver's light. Need to pickup some more super-fine wet sandpaper to fix that. It's clear, just slightly foggy. I just used the PC polisher on the passenger light and it cleared right up. I should have used that first on the driver's light instead of going full-out wetsanding.


This morning I replaced the not-good weather seal for the passenger door.

I've also changed the shift knob to an OEM 5spd knob and I have a new OEM Infinity headunit on the way -hopefully today.

 

Looking very good. Whats next on the list? I love threads like these where just the small things make such a huge difference in fixing up a car

 

Changing out the headunit is next. When the little push-connectors come in, I'll mount the engine bay plastics. Paint is due to show up tomorrow, but the forecast is now calling for +100 degrees and humid from now until forever - so I don't know when temperatures and humidity are going to come back down into the realm of "good for painting." Thinking about ordering some vinyl to wrap the hood, maybe hood/roof/hatch-deck. Not sure. Carbon fiber look is common, but I'm considering something else/different. Don't want to spend a fortune either, since it'll eventually get peeled when the permanent paint job happens.

A user here is parting out a car in a junkyard in Indiana, he's supposed to be making me a trip this week for some interior plastics that I'm missing, and possibly new seats. Depends on what the yard wants for the seats or seat leather. I'm not going to pay custom leather prices just to put in another OEM seat. So we'll see.

Mechanically, I need to get it to a shop for a check on the front driver wheel bearing, or something else up there that might be making noise (brake, CV joint, half-shaft, dunno) and get new exhaust flex pipes welded in. My old neighbor's kid is now a union pipefitter, so he can weld. I might go see if he's interested in making a few dollars on the side.

 

When the little push-connectors come in, I'll mount the engine bay plastics.

Where do you get those at? I'm missing about 6

 

wow, nice too see i tib getting refurbished... looks like that one wasn't far from being a gonner....

 

looks like that one wasn't far from being a gonner....

Yeah, every-time I look at it I hope that I made the right choice saving this one.

 

Headlights good enough for now. The passenger side was just done with the DA and some compound. For the driver's side I did wetsand with 320, 600, 1500. It was bad. Then I compounded it with a yellow pad, and polished it up with a green pad. It could use a little more love, but it is good enough until I get to the point of compounding the rest of the car. Currently trying to figure out how bright of LED city lights I should order.

 

Started getting rid of the blue. I used Duplicolor Trim Paint to turn them back to black, after some graffiti remover, scrubbing, and wet-sanding with 320/600/1500 grit. I still want to replace all of it with the metal pieces, but this at least buys me some time to get around to that without shuddering every time I see the inside of the car. Only got the passenger side last night, but hope to get the driver's side done today/tomorrow.

Here's a comparison picture of the two right now.

I'm waiting on a few things that should be showing up today and tomorrow - so hopefully I get time this weekend to put some on:
New OEM Infinity Headunit
New Wipers
New OEM Floor Mats
OEM Metal Pedals
Front seat leather replacement
Misc. interior plastics.


There's also a chance my wife and kids are going to go see her parents. If they do, I might paint at least one of the bad fenders, spoiler, and mirrors.

 

Wow that's looking much better!

 

Thanks. Hopefully after this weekend I'll have some more pictures to take of the interior progress. I'm not sure if I'll be able to get the seat leather removed and put back on though - that job is going to be a PITA.

Here is my cost breakdown to date:


$19.98 Exhaust Band Clamp
$4.50 Push on retainers
$15.00 shift knob
$66.28 paint + clear coat
$8.55 Weather Strip Retainers
$34.98 Replacement weatherstrip (Pass door)
$35.00 New OEM Infinity headunit
$14.00 3x New Wiper Blades
$70.00 Floor Mats and metal pedals
$27.00 Interior paint/primer/sanding supplies
$215.00 seat leathers and misc. interior pieces

$510.29 Total parts (incl. shipping)

$244.00 Tax, Title, Plates

$3,600.00 Car

$4,354.29 Total to date.