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97 GSX "Restoration"

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Redline165

20+ Year Contributor
82
95
Mar 3, 2004
Raeford, North_Carolina
I have been lurking tuners for a while but never really posted on here. Now seeing the local boards dying down and loosing traffic Tuners seems to be the best place to keep in the loop. The beginning part of this thread is cut and pasted from a different forum (too much photobucket linking for me!) If you dont want the novel skip to pictures for the fun stuff but the story is pretty interesting.

Background on the car is i bought and paid for it when i was 16 (first car and my money). Somehow I had enough respect for it to not wreck it or blow it up to badly. Over 2-3 years I built it up to a 600ish fwhp car. It was just stupid fun to drive on the street with a GT4088R, 2.4L, DSMlink yada yada. During this time a crazy ex-girlfriend somehow got upset with me (that part might have been justified, haha) and ruined my car (not justified). Spray paint, tires, mirrors gone, ect... So i had a "Buddy" that claimed to be a great painter and was starting a shop and wanted a "Shop Car" to show off his skills and would just charge materials. I pulled the motor and what not to do it right and after 6 months with the car and countless unanswered phone calls he claimed it was done.

I got it back and almost vomited but just decided to cut my losses and leave. The car had no clear coat, it appeared to be just a single coat of base and more orange peel then words can describe. The bodywork was awful. While there was no sheet metal damage from said crazy person, there was scratches from a key and the spray paint all over. Where he "repaired the key marks and spray paint you could see where he just sanded and primed those spots so the car looked like it had almost zebra stripes in it because of un-level paint. The door jams appeared to be rattle canned with a similar color, the front bumper had cracks in the paint (no flex additive i assume) and the paint appeared to have little halo looking things in it.

I just took what i had and wrote it off as a bad investment. I figured i would get it done properly but it was "painted" for now. A couple weeks later i took it to the car wash and was going to spray the dust off of it, turned the pressure washer down to the lowest setting and stood about 10 feet back and as i was rinsing sheets of paint started coming off. Upon closer inspection the paint underneath was un-skuffed and had zero primer. He just sprayed a new color directly on top off the factory paint. to make it even better, i noticed little pits all over the car and after consulting an actual painter friend of mine it turns out they were tiny rust spots from water in his paint. I was then told that the only way to fix it right was to strip the entire car and remove those little rust marks.

Shortly after this i said screw it and put the motor back in just to drive it. One day I got greedy and lifted the head running way to much boost on pump gas (i was against O-ringing it at the time) and burned a hole in the cylinder head. I got the head fixed but started getting busy at work and some girl showed up and you all know the rest of the story. I lost interest due to wanting to do a new turbo setup with the money involved and with the dying paint issue. I was offered a bunch of money for the motor and decided that it was time to get rid of the things collecting dust. Sold all the remainder of the $$$ parts. I ended up with the chassis and a few misc. parts sitting in storage.

I got out out of DSM's for 5-6 years, but I never got rid of my 2G, and after a career change from the automotive industry I actually got the itch to start working on the damn thing again.




And so it began

Car with the bad paint
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Day one after engine removal
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Lots of Stripper, sandpaper and elbow grease
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Decided to just get everything out of the way and dropped the fuel tank, brake lines, and sub frame making it a 100% bare shell and then brake out the sand blaster for the engine bay. That was a level 10 pain in the ass.
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Replacing the front frame rail and radiator support due to the swiss cheese effect from a few different FMIC's and Radiators.
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Decided that id clean up some things on the car and seeing that i'm going with a fuel cell i'm filling the fuel door. This was my first real welding project, teaching myself as i go. i quickly learned that with metal that thin you cant weld the whole thing at once. warped the piss out of it but luckily i had a spare and it turned out nice after some grinding and sanding.
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Primed up the body, (got tired of sanding surface rust) Still waiting to finish a few little things in the engine bay before priming there.
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I'm welding up and filling the Heat and A/C passages
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Completed first coat of primer
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Blocking discovering a few small imperfections (i expected the fuel door, but was happy with how close i got it to start with)
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Fill sand repeat.
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On to the Hatch and Spolier
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Anyone with body experience feel free to chime in with suggestions. I've never done any type of bodywork and have been teaching (and screwing up) myself as i go. The interior was skuffed and cleaned prior to primer. The body was sprayed with a 2K "direct to metal" building primer. 2 coats then sanded with 320 and body repairs done. The final primer coat is in the works (on the chassis) and has been sanded with 600. Everything is cleaned with a wax and grease remover prior to spraying primer and the garage is at 80 degrees and let dry over night bore any work is done. Im using a decent HVLP gun (with about 3 inline driers on the air supply) and spraying with a 1.4 tip @ 25psi per the tech. sheet on the primer.
 
Well, I got tied up getting married or something like that, so I haven't been able to do much until about a week ago. Started working more on the doors and getting some of the final sanding done on the body.


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New Lights in the Garage (Helped ALOT with shadows)

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Working on the hatch. Had a hell of a time getting the rear wiper hole level. I think I got it a little to hot when I was welding it up and it buckled a little, but after the 6-7th run I finally got it blocked to a point that I was happy with.

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Same general problem with the washer nozzle but this one had more ripples up and down. I switched to a harder sanding block and took care of it on the first try.

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Painful process of stripping the door.

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Hopefully the last coat of primer for the door and spoiler.
 
Back again, this time im going to keep rolling with it. I got settled at the new job and now have a decent amount of time off. Also got done with the shed so i got all the junk out of the garage and have space again. Basically the car sat for a year or so due to getting married, big job change that took up the last 1.5 years processing out the the old job and a while away from home studying/training.

I dusted the old girl off the other day, cleaned the piss out of garage, and took her outside and gave her a bath (what a royal pain in the rear that is... not having wheels sucks!)


Before: dust, dirt, random leaves, and a few 8 legged critters.
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Outside bath time. What a pain in the @#$! Wasnt that bad but i equated it to moving a lighthouse. Move 2 feet, check the front, check the back, move 2 more feet.
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Back in the house getting dried off.
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Plans are to re coat the underside for protection and just to make it look better. I did a test run with some napa aerosol rattle can. not happy with it. doesn't stick well and looks kinda brown, so im currently in the process of stripping that all back off.
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I did spot a few areas around some seams and in the corners of the wiper cowl that apparently had some sneaky surface rust. New air compressor is coming soon because the little 15 year old 20 gallon craftsman finally gave up. Once that arrives ill do a little more sand blasting to get rid of it and reseal the seams everywhere.

Also I finally got the rest of the factory sound deadening out and im glad I did. 3 days after spraying her off I pulled one piece off and it was soaking wet underneath. Apparently that stuff holds alot of water. took almost all day of chipping the stuff off but its all gone now. (saved some weight too... trashcan was heavy) plans for that are now to clean up the residual goo and prime over it. Ill address noise issues later.
 
Still trucking along. I finally got a proper air compressor which has helped tremendously. Most of my time recently has been going after smaller spots that needed tedious work done to make it look right. (fresh welds in random places that were not laying flat)

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Lots of little spots in here. Very tedious and painful on your finger tips

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More of the same. Its not in this picture but i blasted out most of the old seam sealer so i can put some fresh stuff in there prior to paint.

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I did a little bit of seam welding here just because i was not happy with the new front radiator support was sitting with just the spot welds. But due to my lack of welding skill it got a little sloppy in the corner so some grinding and filler was needed.

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Same as above

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More Sand Blasting in some spots i missed on the first go around

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The goal here was to get rid of the "goo" left by the factory sound deadening. This took quit a while to get it off the underside of the rear seat and out of the hatch area but it looks really clean and smooth now. I wasnt going to do this seeing it was the interior but i kept seeing it and it drove me nuts. Sand is cheap, it only required time.

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Same thing here. I left the spare tire well along just because its going away here soon.

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The Driveway doesnt look nearly as bad as last time!


Next step is a few small welding projects to make life simpler later on and fix some "buggers" from some earlier mods.
 
impressive, thats alot of work. i hate bodywork personally, but have to hand it to you for your tenacity and teaching yourself along the way.

looks good, keep plugging away at it, itll be one for the books for sure.
 
Patience and attention to detail. The cure to patience is to walk away when you run out of it. (or get a beer) Attention to detail is just discipline. That, is my hardest part. I see an area like the rear hatch on the wheel wells where no one will EVER see it and its got all the sound deadening goo on there... I will be like "its good enough" and then I will see those little spots every time i walk by and it drives me nuts. To counter this I have a list written in sharpie on my work bench of little things like that and I am slowly marking them off. The act of primer and sanding isn't that bad, its the little stuff.

Biggest issue that I've seen with paint and body work is that most of us are instant gratification people. (I know I am) we buy a new turbo or exhaust and install it... we see it right away. With this project after spraying primer... the dang car looks the same until you spray base coat on it even tho I have put several hundreds of hours into it.

Thanks okay tho... The motivation to see it when its painted and know it looks good because of detail is what keeps me going. Luckily im almost to the point of something that doesn't involve friggen sand paper so that is a plus. The light at the end of the tunnel is slowly starting to shine

Thanks for following it! ill try and keep pictures rolling in once a week or so.

-K
 
wow man this is awesome! Great job, looks like it is coming along very well! I wish I had the space, time, and patience to do everything you've done. Will be following your progress :thumb:
 
Thanks Guys,

I cant wait to get to the parts I enjoy like wiring, fab work and building everything back, but it will come soon enough.
 
After a long few days of work some good progress was finally made. Primarily due to the help of a good friend to keep me on task. He did bring over his welder/plasma cutter setup which while the plasma cutter is a great tool for what we were after, it drastically delayed progress because of us "playing" with it. The welder worked great but the gas system was acting up so we had to go without. It made a mess in spots but it got the job done just fine.

First we got the spare tire well cut out, got the frame rails for the future fuel cell and potential battery box fabricated and welded in place, (Rear frame rails on these car are not straight and what a pain in the ass it was getting those things jigged up)

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You can see where the wife played with the Plasma Cutter as well on this one. haha
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Next project was to repair the modifications from a previous dual in-tank fuel pump setup that had 2 -8 lines coming out that simply would not fit without notching/cutting the sheet metal. That metal was not THAT bad to weld on because i used an 18 gauge backing plate but the contours made it hard to keep flat, still, and to honestly just get comfortable inside the car long enough to throw down a steady bead.

You can sort of see the cuts where the fuel pump sending unit was, I don't know why i didn't take a good before picture of this.
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Goal 3 for the day was to repair damage from a previous drag strip repair of the front drive shaft carrier stud. probably 10 years ago I hit a piece of debris and it bent/broke the carrier stud somehow and the drive shaft was making an awful noise. After a quick diagnosis and being 2 hours from home with no trailer I pulled the seat and had to cut the interior metal out of the way and drop a random 12x1.25 bolt in there. It worked fine but it looked like crap so I decided now was the time to do it. The bolt part was easy. took 2 minutes, haha. My buddy made the cover for it and it came out nice, it was just a 22 gauge metal cover to make it a little more pleasing to the eye but it worked. Again... no gas on the welder so it still looks messy but it will do the job just fine and look nice once I get it cleaned up.

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And finally the bear of a task that for some reason I decided to save until last, the new corner pockets. These things tested every bit of patience I have. The hardest part actually was fabricating them from sheet metal. I started with paper templates, then moved to cardboard, then went to the final sheet metal pieces. I did the mock up pieces with tin snips to get the idea and then after I changed my mind 4 times about how i wanted to do it, i made use of the aircraft maintenance hangar from my previous job to make the bends and cuts perfect. It actually turned out pretty well.

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Then came the installation. it was a bit of a jigsaw puzzle because I was primarily spot welding due to the thin nature of the metal and my lack of ability to weld very thin metal. (especially without gas) It worked out in the end, but i did have to get creative taking measurements to make sure that the headlight bracket was square before I welded everything together. Little messy but it should not be a problem after a little elbow grease.

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All in all it went pretty well. The welding was challenging due to no gas and basically after working for 10 hours in a row you get tired. haha. Thanks for following guys!


PS: I want a plasma cutter. That tool is fun!
 
I did get a little work done on my corner pieces in the engine bay but decided that I need to make room in the garage so I started focusing on getting the external stuff prepped and ready for color so I can store them in the shed out back and then I will finish the body. Nothing too exciting here, just lots of sanding work. The side skirts are used so they took alot of patience and elbow grease to get the skuff's out of the bottom side. The hood is also a problem child. Its got alot of little dings that are just taking time. I'm about to say screw it and just go ahead and do CF but im trying to stay on track for my "initial goal" with the car.

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I have said it before but im really glad that I did not go into the auto body field. It is very tedious and very little instant gratification so the only way I see progress as the project sits now is by parts being finished and moved to the shed. In other news I have finally gotten my fingers in shape enough to sand continuously without having to take breaks due to cramping.
 
I was successful at creating a giant mess this past week. Got a fair amount of work done to all the external panels and got the engine bay 90% ready. One thing I will say is im going to kick the engineer at mitsu in the #$% that decided to put that goo on the door panels for the vapor barrier. What a pain in the rear end that stuff is to get off. Not to mention the fact that it makes a big ole mess.

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I finally about have the hood whipped. Lots of block sanding on the hump to get it perfect but im happy with it now. It would have been just an easy wet sand and be ready for color if hadnt stepped on the air hose twice and putting 2 runs right in the middle. It made me pretty mad. The flattest easiest thing to spray on the car and I put 2 runs in it from getting in a hurry. Owell, nothing some more wet sanding cant fix

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The rear hatch was about the same as the doors but the glue was alot easier to get off once I cut the rear glass out. (and 2,342,343lbs lighter) I did make the mistake of thinking that stripper would have made it easier and then got paranoid that some of the residual stripper had gotten on the primer so I ended up cleaning up any spot that looked like it was in question.

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Did round 2 of wet sanding on the skirts, fenders, door caps, and mirrors. Were almost home with all of that stuff just a few little spots that i need to hit with the detail gun. I will say that the hardest thing to prime pretty on the car is the stinking mirrors. haha. They are hard to get situated and spray even coverage on without getting runs.

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The engine bay is what it always has been. SLOW. Lots of nooks and crannies to get after. I built the filler up on the new pockets because I wasn't sure if I was going to like the way it settled on the seams and its easy enough to sand down. After I worked on that for a while I started cleaning things up to get ready for primer and seam sealer. I was going to spray some etching primer on the bare metal spots then apply seam sealer but my harder for the primer had a funny look to it and the paint store is not open on the weekends. Instead I vacuumed and blew out every nook and cranny that I could think of (stupid sand blasting) and applied the seam sealer. That also is a giant mess. Imagine caulking your bathtub but with your eyes closed and in the dark. It worked out but I will have a little clean up work to do.

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Stay tuned for more progress next week! Thanks for the support!

-K
 
Very impressed. This is exactly what my project needs.

Keep up the good work.
 
Got busy last week with a wedding to attend and chores around the house now that it's getting warm again. My main goal was to finish up the little stuff to get them out of the way in the garage. For the most part they are all ready to go minus a little touch up here and there where there was a little dirt or I burned through an edge while wet sanding.

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Moving along from the sanding I spotted some oopies when I was welding in the new from radiator support. I accidentally welded up the front bolt holes on both side for the fenders. I also remembered a broken bolt from a test fit that I got carried away on, so I decided now was the time to get those straightened out.

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oops
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Now we come to one of my biggest blunders. (so far) When I primed the interior I remember it being pretty cold out, I dont recall cleaning as well as I should have, and on top of that I used a 2K on the entire thing instead of using an etching primer on the bare sports. Basically what this means is I started second guessing myself on whether or not the primer adhered well enough to the interior. The end result is that while a pressure washer wouldn't take it off I knew I was going to loose sleep over it and id hate to come this far and let a lazy mistake screw things up so I started over. The floor and forward area of the back seat were the only real area I was concerned with and the rear hatch is still bare metal from removing sound deadening and misc. sand blasting. strip scrape sand repeat. This process took the better part of 2 days to get back to square one.

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Now that the interior is back ready for some DTM primer I started focusing on the little things I have been putting off. The windshield glue still had lingering peices, the sheet metal around the removed spare tire well needed to be cleaned up, some larger holes on the firewall that required plates to be welded in needed some grinding work, and just little spots on the car that had blemishes that required attention needed to be marked.

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More to follow soon! The next phase will include DTM/2K the interior and engine bay and the under body! (wait until you see the back yard jig I am making to put this thing at 90 degrees... I refuse to weld on my back)
 
In the last few weeks I got the etching primer down in the interior/engine bay and then got all of that that re-coated with some 2K to fix a few blemishes. I dont have a whole lot to type about this phase so ill just post pictures!

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Now for the fun part. I decided that a $1500 rotisserie wasn't really an option and decided to just build a "simple" jig myself. I had an idea in my head of what I wanted to build, it was just difficult to draw out. After thinking way too hard I just headed off to Lowes and started fiddling with it.

This is round one. (why I thought 2x4's would work i will never be able to tell you.)

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Next comes the issue with attempt #1. I planned on using the subframe studs seeing that they are pretty much the sturdiest part on the car. The rear was a no brainer. The frame is nice and flat and easy to attach too.

IMG_20160327_133051407_zpsmvyikeai.jpg


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But the front had some hick ups that i was not comfortable with. there is the pinch weld "seam" that runs underneath (or above depend on perspective) that does not allow the support that the studs are bolted too sit flush like the rear. I couldn't just notch it because i was (again... not sure why) using 2x4's as the main supports and cutting an inch deep groove would leave the support way to thin.

IMG_20160327_133035657_zpssmzqxbfs.jpg


One other issue that's hard to see... my geometry skills are still okay, but when lifting as i originally designed im about an inch short of clearing the lower body when going from flat to 90 degrees.

IMG_20160326_152048735_zpsnf0cchnh.jpg



Problem solved. Just use 4x4's! For the main supports I simply made a 1 inch deep groove for the pinch weld and counter sunk the holes for the subframe studs which now allows the frame to rest flush on the main supports. It was kinda a pita but not too bad.

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All mocked up
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Attached and ready to lift...
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And (nervous moment)

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Over all the underside is a royal pain in the ***. You find little bits of surface rust hiding EVERYWHERE. Its simple enough to clean up but just takes a while. I also straightened out the pinch weld and some dents in the floor the best I could. I wanted to cut a few sections out and replace them but decided against it. Its the bottom of the car and its structural. I would rather have a slightly dented frame than a replaced welded section.

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It has that "liquid asphalt" style undercoating goo on there that never dries and that nothing will ever stick too. I tried stripper to get it off... nope. I tried thinner... nope. I tried MEK... nothing. So... the only choice I had was to leave it alone or get to scraping all of the undercoating off because it just infects whatever its laid on top of. What a friggin pain and it makes a big ole mess in the garage. This is about a 3 day process. I started doing it by hand and remembered that harbor freight has an air scraper for like 19 bux. That helped the fatigue factor but still the job is tedious. After 4 days of this I finally got all of this "goo" off the bottom of the car.

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The only good news is that the "goo" isn't in the wheel wells so that should make those guys a little easier to deal with. Next week I will be scuffing and putting down some etching primer on the bare metal followed by fresh undercoating.

Thanks!
 
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