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Found this poor old girl in one of the posh suburbs of Perth. She was owned by a middle aged lady who evidently parked by touch and NEVER washed her car!

She has obviously been neglected, there is some corrosion in the engine bay

and the paint is in serious need of resuscitation
The wheels and tyres have obviously been used as parking aides
and the interior was DIRTY
with random sticky stuff

I am hoping this is surfboard wax and not boogers!
And the SAND!
There is also some interior wear
and did I mention the bloody SAND?
And she seems to have nudged or brushed just about every car or nearby object in WA!
There are some lovely sheepskin seat covers that make the windscreen sill directly in my eyeline…..
but other than all that stuff she is a great old car!
And the best bit….?
and she drives like a dream albeit with some pinging at high revs under load (could be cheap fuel I am hoping).
So a restoration project is underway to get this faded belle back to her former glory! and then bring our her bad side with some power and handling mods
can't wait!

PS any detailing gurus in Perth I might need your advice on getting this paint back to life

Looking forward to the restoration on this neglected lady, lucky she's now with someone who cares.

The WA Crew should be able to see you right with the detailing tips, but there are a couple of areas there that will definitely require a respray unfortunately.

Welcome to the obsession, and I tip my hat to you for taking this on!

Well so far so good. I have put about 5 hours into cleaning the interior and clay blocking the exterior. The good news is that most of the scratches and specks of crap in the paint were just superficial and came out with some elbow grease. She is looking better already!

Crapweasel wrote:Looking forward to the restoration on this neglected lady, lucky she's now with someone who cares.

The WA Crew should be able to see you right with the detailing tips, but there are a couple of areas there that will definitely require a respray unfortunately.

Welcome to the obsession, and I tip my hat to you for taking this on!

Thanks CW! Hopefully its not all that bad… I was looking for a project anyway

After quite a few hours work I am confident that the paint can be saved and its actually starting to look half decent! The sand in the carpets however is proving to be more difficult to remove than i thought, it may have to be replaced at some point. It has to be said that I am not preparing a show car but I am quite particular about having things "right".
Took her out for a quick strop this morning - its intro to Mundaring Weir Road and really the first drive that it has had since I got it. Stopped at the Gull to check tyre pressures, and what do you know, all around 20psi!! Could have gone beach driving like that! No wonder the tyres are knackered. After tyre pressures were normalised (went for 30psi all round) the drive went really well, the car is barely run in and mechanically I can't fault it. The previous owners had her from new and the service history was pretty good (8 services in 35 000 ks). It is an interesting paradox that they serviced the car quite well but didn't clean it properly.
There was obvious minor issues with the car when I bought it but they were of little concern to me.
The wheels have been abused and the tyres are knackered (sidewalls damaged but serviceable and the tread wearing on the outsides of the tyres - classic under inflation). I don't really care about this because I had no intention of keeping or running the standard wheels and tyres anyway. I will be looking for some light weight 16 inch rims, something J spec and awesome… work/ssr/rays etc. I am more interested in the performance factor but something cool looking would be good too. I am definitely in the function>form camp but I have a certain aesthetic that I want to achieve.
Some coil overs are also on the shopping list (recommendations welcome). I want sprint/track performance but also to get rid of that high rider look that I currently have, particularly on the rear.
The biggest thing I want to modify is the sounds that I am not getting from the car! She left me feeling a bit limp this morning. The actual performance of the car was satisfactory for road use IMO but there wasn't the grin factor that I have had with other cars. I think that is mostly down to the lack of noise from the stock pipe and intake. I intend to remedy this post haste!

Probably time to say something about the colour too. I have never liked silver cars and would have preferred a Ti or black SE but the Silver is growing on me. It has a sort of understated elegance/stealth that I am starting to like

Shame about the sand, thought about using a carpet shampooer? Also, Much better to have maintained it well and neglected to clean it than vice versa. Glad that the paintwork seems to be rescuable too


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Well today would have to rate as an "all-time fail".

What happened? Let me tell you.....

I went down the hill to the Auto 1 in Midland to get some cleaning stuff with the intention of cleaning up the engine bay of the SE. Talked to the guy there and he recommended two products to be sprayed one after the other onto the engine and surrounds, then sprayed off with the hose. Easy enough, I thought. I had my doubts about the first product but as i was there for some guidance as well as the gear I took it on board and headed off.

Got home and was halfway through spraying the first product and noticed that all my black plastic areas and rubber bits were turning white! Holy sh*t I thought, this doesn't look good. After quickly washing down the area I took stock of the damage. The top of the radiator is all white and every piece of black plastic in the engine bay is streaked with white!! It looks totally crap.

I tried all manner of things to remove the "white" including degreaser, cut and polish, armorall, WD40 and even sandpaper and it was a total bust. I called Auto 1 and talked to the manager. He called back after talking to the sales guys who denied advising me to spray the product on but instead supposedly told me to wipe it only on the metallic areas. Of course this is total BS as I even bought a spray bottle for the product. The managers solution was to give me a piece of sandpaper and a spray can to restore it. Needless to say I am not happy with that.

After a couple of hours I Have noticed some paint damage int he engine bay too!!

Moral of the story is; don't trust the advice of guys at auto shops and buy online instead!

Tesco and sticky nicky both work as car detailers so might be able to offer some advice or MX-5 rates.

Great to see you're giving the car a new lease of life, very low kms too.

If you're close you're welcome to take my SE for a quick drive, it has everything that you seem to want to upgrade so far (intake, coilovers, exhaust)

MadMikey wrote:If you're close you're welcome to take my SE for a quick drive, it has everything that you seem to want to upgrade so far (intake, coilovers, exhaust)

Thanks mate, I have been watching your build thread and am looking to go some similar ways myself. Are you still liking those HSD coil overs? Where did you get them? What about the new Works that you got? Any pics?

I bought the coilovers here http://www.otomoto.com.au/p/5574315/hsd ... d-nb8.html
I find them to be really great, firm but not hard and corner really well. Would recommend. Sorry no pictures of the wheels yet I'm quite hopeless at taking snaps, definitely will have some soon though.

Sand is a pain to get out of the carpet. You can try a few things such as brushing the carpet to lift it to the surface and then hoover it up, repeat for hours and hours...Sand will still keep coming to the surface

Strip the car down and pull the carpets out and shake it out and take it to a mate with a compressor and air blower and try blasting it out.

I would probably just hoover out what you can and get some nice floor mats made.

As for the fading of the plastics, sounds like the plastic has reacted to spray you were advised to use. You could try using bumper blackener to cover it but you will need to keep reapplying it. I have a stock NB airbox and cross over pipe if that is of any use, not sure if the airbox was different for your car. You could always get an alloy radiator and an induction kit to reduce the amount of cruddy plastic.

deviant wrote: You could always get an alloy radiator and an induction kit to reduce the amount of cruddy plastic.

Its terrible but I might be forced to upgrade my car Only to get rid of the damaged plastics tho!!

MadMikey wrote:I bought the coilovers here http://www.otomoto.com.au/p/5574315/hsd ... d-nb8.html
I find them to be really great, firm but not hard and corner really well. Would recommend. Sorry no pictures of the wheels yet I'm quite hopeless at taking snaps, definitely will have some soon though.

Thanks mate, will look into those

Some of the carnage!!