Toot, Toot, Chugga, Chugga, 'Big' Red Car.

[RinkyWinkleton]

Hello, Hello.

So as it goes, I bought myself a little bundle of raw vehicular awesomeness a few weeks back. Here she is, meet Dorothy.
Born in 95, she's an NA8, practically stock with 104,000ish K's on the clock. Previous owner changed the wheels and added the front splitter and i must admit they have grown on me some what so likely to stay for a while anyway.



Modification plans aren't major. mainly cosmetic and basic mechanical upkeep. This is my first 'project' car and i must admit ive always liked the idea of tinkering with cars but never really done so before. So here i am diving in deep.

[The American]

Don't I know that song!

[RinkyWinkleton]

First things first. For the most part the paint is pretty well near immaculate. Couldn't be happier considering she's a 20+ year old car. When you open the doors however, particularly on the drivers side, there is a decent section of the paint scuffed off on the sills. This simply will not do! TO THE INTERNETS!

So after a few days of searching i found myself a set of used sill plates on eBay. Promptly snapped em up for around $80 AUD, had them shipped from the UK and now they are in my possession. They're a little scratched up but meh. I cleaned them up as best i could and began installation within hours of their arrival.




Out with the old..... In with the new. you can still see some of the scuffed paint protruding out the back there. A job for another day perhaps.

[bruce]

Your plates say 'see prison'. Are you parked outside a prison in your first shot?

[RinkyWinkleton]

haha never noticed. nah this this the old control tower at Sydney airport.

[RinkyWinkleton]

Figured i may as well bring this whole post up to date. The day after I picked up the new car, i went for a bit of a drive around the suburb with my mates to show them the new toy. Long story short i was leaking coolant. bugger. Fearing the worst and praying i hadn't bought a lemon, the torch was out in a flash (Pardon the pun) to find the source. Turns out it was the radiator cap. Pheww...

well maybe not... took her round the block with a newly installed cap. Still leaking... less so, but still leaking. Noticed the overflow reservoir was both filthy and empty though. So i pulled it out gave it a scrub in the mean time. Turns out the hose connecting the cap and overflow was full of some brown gunky mess causing an overpressure in the system resulting in a bright green, sweet smelling engine bay.

just for context, this is the hose im talking about.




Cleaned out, re-installed with no leaks. Huzzar! Now that that's solved, time to solve another issue...... Now as it turns out i'm a wee bit tall. around 6'1" and a bit. It also turns out that sun visors are the sworn enemy of those who are vertically prosperous. So out they had to come. In their place a nice set of thingamabobs from Moss UK.

[taminga16]

Welcome to the obsession, the screw tops etc can be easily tidied up with an OSMER PAINT MARKER, your local office supplies are your friend.
Nice car.
Greg.

[SuperMazdaKart]

At that kilometre check if there's records of a timing belt service being done. Great car otherwise, I'd love to someday have another NA series.

[StanTheMan]

wow 104K kilometers.
What a gem!

[RinkyWinkleton]

Thanks guys. Yeah, stoked with the mileage. Previous owner had the waterpump and timing belt changed with a 100,000k service.

[RinkyWinkleton]

The crossover between the end of one year and the start of the next is usually a real busy time for me. This unfortunately means i haven't had the time to work on the car as much as id like. I did manage to find spare a few minutes here and there though, so here's what's been done.

The famous shifter boot and bushing replacement. Plenty of heat was coming up though the centre console even after only short drives so i knew at least one of the boots was a bit tatty. turns out they were both well overdue for an overhaul.

This first boot you can see was torn in two separate rings at the folds of the boot. As for the actual attachment, i would estimate that there was less than a tenth of the boot's circumference still remained attached to the shift lever.


this second one you can see is not much better


mmmm look at this lovely swampy fluid i pulled out of the turret.




Even after a full shifter rebuild I must admit she can still feel quite notchy, particularly into second gear. Thinking i might replace the fluid in the tranny and diff at some point to see if that helps. I hear its quite normal but if an improvement can be made i may as well give it a go.

[RinkyWinkleton]

Around the same time as the shifter rebuild i replaced the stock aerial with a short raked one. Looks much better, i think.

[RinkyWinkleton]

Got a rare spare moment last night to finish installing the turn signal intakes id been working on for a while. They're in now and they look great! Must admit, they're a bit rough when they first turn up, needed a good sanding to get some large scratches smoothed over. A few layers of primer, paint and clear coat later and now they look the part.