cobby's na6

[Beelzeboss]

You can get an Aussie made product very similar to por-15 here: http://www.kbs-coatings.com.au/
no affilliation, I used the chassis coater pro pack on my off-road dune buggy. No rust whatsoever but there was quite a bit of prep work required to get it to bond perfectly.

[cobby]

ctrl +c/v'd from JDMST:

Update time I guess.

Negative:

Nothing much has been happening with the car lately other than paying off the diff and driving it. It's killing me though because there's what sounds like a bearing noise somewhere in the gearbox so I haven't been driving anywhere fun. Just sticking to main roads in case it does actually break.

The throw-out bearing needs replacing, so does the spigot bearing. They're squeaking their heads off.
But this other noise sounds like bearing chatter or something, hard to describe but that's the best I can think of. It's there from just over 3500rpm, right through to limiter, and it's worse on overrun (engine braking). The noise itself hasn't gotten worse though which is lucky, one day it was there and it's never gone away.

I've got my money on input/output shaft bearing but that will have to wait till either I can afford to drop the gearbox (clutch, lightweight flywheel, rear main seal, input shaft seal) or when it lets go completely. It's made it to Brisbane and back a fair few times without fail so I don't think it will break down on me any time soon, but it's a car after all so who knows.

I started to play the elimination game, starting off with the most obvious: the crank shaft pulley bolt. Sure enough, it was finger tight lol. Took that out, cleaned it up on the wire wheel, lathered it in loctite and torqued it to spec. No dice.

Next, still trying to stick to the easily accessible I began suspecting tensioner pulleys. Cut the a/c belt off, still no good. I ran out of motivation at that point so that's where I'm at with diagnosis. Yeah, I know. I'm lazy. What of it?



Positive:

I went down to Brisbane yesterday to help Charlie work on his mx5 yesterday, and in return he gave me his old GV lip, a shifter extender and a couple of Garage Star stickers he had laying around. Stoked! The shifter extender felt way better than I thought it would too. Awesome bit of gear. Oh yeah! Made my key fit into a genuine flip key that I got from work.

Pics! Everybody likes pics!

I'd spend a few minutes with some 800 grit on it, I only had one sheet though so I used that up and washed it. I'm gonna fix the damage and fill the scratches and paint it before I put it on.

What colour do YOU think I should paint it? White or Semi-gloss Black?




The damage, with what used to be a Roadster Garage (now Run-It-Hard) sticker:

[cobby]

Merry Christmas everyone!

Front lip progress.

I bought myself a little fibreglassing kit that Selley's make, perfect for the job at hand. Not enough matting but heaps of resin.

First layer:




Second:


Trimmed back after it dried:


That's where I ran out of the matting they supplied in the kit, went down to Autobahn and got a decent sized sheet (1m x 0.5m).

Decided to reinforce it with a bigger sheet of fibreglass, should be plenty strong now:


Another layer on the top:


That's where it's at right now. It still needs a fair bit of filling in the middle but I'm gonna sand it back after work so I can see where I need to focus on raising. I'm hoping to avoid using bog as much as possible so it's gonna be a slow process bringing it back. Well worth it though I think.

As for Christmas, Mum and Dad gave me a couple of hundred cash so I went and got me my own tripod finally! (been using Mum's until now)
Not a bad tripod, wicked value if nothing else; $173. Fully extended it stands taller than me and I'm 6ft. It has a 10kg load capacity, super smooth head, and it weighs 3.4kg. Feels solid enough, quality is good enough for what I need at least. I've been spoilt this year!





'Til next time!

[cobby]

Got some more done on the lip this arvo, and cleaned up the cooling panel Charlie gave me:

Got home and sanded all the resin that had run down on the lip. 60/80/100g sand paper and it still took a couple of hours :\ Check the pics from the last update to see what it was like before:


The MX5+ cooling panel Charlie gave me, what it looked like before:


After:


I'm pretty happy with how it came up, should look schmick in the bay:




That was after about 10 minutes with 320g sand paper, a rubber sanding block and a wipe with some of my purple drank (metho).

[Okibi]

Looks good, thanks for sharing.