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Samwise

Bringing an 86 back from the dead

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Another update in what feels like such a long wait for the headlights to arrive!

 
Started working on tidying up the front bumper to get it ready to mount up.
Bought the bumper second hand for £180 which isn't too bad consdiering paint alone for something like this would be atleast £200 however its quite tricky when buying a 2nd hand bumper to get a perfect one and this one with just a small scuff on the side seemed like the best one on offer.
 
This is what I had to deal with, a bit of a nasty scratch and alot of sticky stuff left from the packaging.
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The sticky bits weren't too difficult to get off but along with it a fair bit of overspray was coming off, of course not sure if the car this bumper had been on had experienced any respray work at any point but it was quite surprising to see and left a bit of a hazed area where it was.
 
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Once all of this is said and done the whole bumper needs a good polish so that should remove any more light marks, overspring or faded parts so shouldn't be too much of an issue.
 
After this I cracked on with the scratch repair. I Didn't get to finish it today as it took a while for filler to harden and such but when i'm done I'm not looking for a showroom finish, just good enough that it's not obvious of from a few metres away.
 
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And that's where I left that for now, it's even less subtle than before I know LOL but after some more wet sanding and paint it should hopefully blend in nicely.
 
In between the above while I was waiting for filler and primer to dry I got on with some other bits.
One thing being to get the tow hook cover painted up, again the finish is pretty bad as I have to resort to painting outside but it should be okay for the time being.
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As well as this I also wanted to do a few pre-emptive steps to avoid the metal part of the bonnet seal from rusting. I know it's a fairly inexpensive piece to replace but I already had some underseal and cavity wax sitting about to use on the 2 surfaces.
 
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And finally I got the front indicator holders and trim pieces put in to the new front bumper. I don't plan to use these front indicators or fog lights but I don't really want to leave 2 massive holes in the bumper so for now they're staying and I may cut some acrylic or carbon fibre I have laying around to plug the fog light holes (or brake ducts Big smile)
 
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Got another update this weekend on the scratch repair but things didn't quite go as planned.


Got the primer sanded back easily with a 320 grit disc on my dual action polisher but forgot to take a picture of it!
Then I started laying down coats of colour which went alright, starting off thin and then building it up to get the right colour match and to hide the exposed primer/filler underneath.


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This is after the 2nd coat of colour, you can still slightly see the discolouration of the materials underneath but the finish is nice and smooth!

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And after a couple more coats the colour match was good. I'm working with quite a large area as the DA polisher took a bit too much off on some of the edges and the larger area helps blend it in to the original paint a bit easier. This is how it looked after 4 coats of colour:


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At this stage it was time to spray some clear coat which i've never had fantastic luck with in the past and is often the hardest step.
In this case I popped down to halfords to pick up some new clear coat as I didn't have enough as it was. When it comes to paint it does generally pay off to spend a bit more but I figured seeing as I wasn't after a fantastic finish I could make due with this seeing as this would likely come out the cleanest part of the whole bumper anyway, oh boy.. how wrong was I..



Either Halfords have recently changed their clearcoat recipes or I got a bad batch as it was insanely runny, after just the first thick coats I was getting massive runs. Runs in clear coat are less detrimental to colour as usually a bit of wet and dry and polishing will fix most things with clear coat however as this was in the first thick coat experience tells me that due to how thin paint sprays from a can this is not nearly enough to apply something like 2000 grit to without burning through the paint.
I spoke to a colleague from work who used to be in the smart repair industry and his advise was if i wanted a good finish to simply start again although I'm a bit too lazy to do this :D and so his next advise was to hit it with some 3000 grit and polish it back so I went ahead and applied to more thick coats adding fuel to the fire and getting more runs but hopefully now in a week's time once the paint is dry I can slowly tackle these runs with a but of elbow grease.


Photos of the carnage:


First thin coat of clear:
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First thick coat of clear, massive rus appear:


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This isn't a particularly major issue as i'm still waiting for the new headlights to arrive so I'm almost making a bit of work for myself at this point lol. Its been almost 4 weeks since I placed the order for them :unsure: and I won't have the car ready for Simply Jap but it would be a rush to get it ready at this point.

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Picked up the new wing on the weekend and i've already dropped it off for paint.
Finally got an update on the headlights and I should hopefully have them early next week!


Also decided to restart with the paint following those issues with the runs so come the weekend thats what i'll be doing (again)
Ordered a new battery and windscreen wipers and the parts originally suggest on ECP's website were all completely wrong so that's fun too!


As I keep saying hopefully I should have the car on the road but we're also in the middle of an extremely short notice house move so it's all a bit crazy currently eek.gif

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Few more updates, etc :D


First of all here's the new wing which is currently being painted, I just wanted to see how it looked on the car.


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As well as that I finally got the correct new battery and wipers from Euro car parts so went ahead and fitted them.
I also wanted to sort something out to fill in the void left by the lack of fog lights as I decided I didn't really want to shell out to replace them when they're so rarely used and not an MOT requirement. As well as that the harness that powers them is damaged/missing on the driver's side so I went ahead and used some spare carbon fibre sheets i've had knocking around for years to make of these little blanking plates. One of them had a nasty scratch by a slip with the sand paper but it still looks pretty good so I'll roll with it for now.



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And over this weekend I had another crack at sorting the paint and it came out alot better this time after using better quality clear coat.
It just needs a good polish as does the rest of the surrounding area due to overspray but here's some pictures with the new fog light surrounds fitted as well :)


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So a small update today but quite an exciting one.
Got the new wing back from paint, it had litterally come out from baking just an hour before I picked it up so the paint is still extremely soft but it looks great already.


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I gave it a little test fit and it fits okay for the most part but the front closest to the headlight seems to dive down a bit, this is likely to be the wing support bracket as I know for a fact i've rested on it when working on the car these last few months and bent it atleast once rolleyes.gif so the bonnet alignment is a little out but once the paint has had a bit more time to bed in i'll see if i can persuide it in to place. Over the weekend i'll get the arch liner in and the wing garnish/indicator. tango_face_grin.png



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With the wing done thats 1 big step towards completion however I hit a small snag again...

I checked the Check Engine Light that the car has had since I bought it, expecting it to be a lingering code from either the 2 broken cam solenoids or the O2 Sensor I had to replace and unfortunately it appears to be both O2 Sensors are throwing codes:


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This appears to be both o2 sensors from my research but considering one has been replaced already I imagine either either damage to their harnesses or a fuse has gone if there is one for them, i say this because the relay for the wipers was damaged too.


If there is a fuse for the o2 sensors or "heater control unit" and someone could point me to it please do!


Here's a link to a biiiig picture of the fuse box cover https://i.imgur.com/wGOaWQp.jpg

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On 10/08/2018 at 9:52 AM, Rich said:

Do you have a service manuals? They have full specs and wiring diagrams for everything, so you should be able to trace the O2 sensor wiring schematic.

Available here if not: http://www.ft86club.com/forums/showthread.php?t=8374

Cheers!

I'm sure a fuse is blown somewhere for it so hopefully with this I can track it down after fixing the initial cause.

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So got another small update from this weekend which means getting the new front wing fitted and having a quick look at the o2 Sensors!


Starting off on a good note the wing came out great! I got it fitted along with the intec wing trim/indicator and arch liner which completes the look. Theres a funny gap with the bonnet where on one side its a uniformally large gap all the way down the wing but on the other side it's normal at the bottom and really tight at the top. The bonnet still closes and doesn't foul the wing and it might be possible that the bonnet brackets are slightly bent but i'll worry about that once the car is on the road as isn't massive problem.


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After that I had a brief look at the o2 sensors and think I may have found the issue. Considering I have already replaced the secondary o2 sensor and there isn't any visible problems with the wiring of the first it seems strange that both are flagging on the ECU however having checked the harness side of the secondary o2 sensor's wiring I found this...


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As you can see some of the wires have been stripped, they're still intact it appears however what may have happened is one of the lives has come in contact with the ground or the engine block which would have shorted out and blown a fuse, this is the only explaination that I can think of which would tell me why both of the o2 sensors are logging the same fault. I didn't have time to start pulling fuses and checking them so I'll have to do some more research in the wiring diagrams and hopefully I can replace the fuse, fix the insulation on the wires with some shrink wrap, tape or something else and clear the codes for good!

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You may be better off checking everything with an OEM bonnet. Those Seibon bonnets never seem to fit very well. Just about every one I've seen has a poor fit on one side. 

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About £200. Usually the paint shop charges me £150 a panel if i'm having multiple panels painted but i think as it was a one off and they had to sort out prep & materials they charged me a bit extra, at this stage i'm not too fussed and it's not actually a bad price when you start looking in to getting paintwork done.

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another update today and a big very exciting one!


I'll start off with the small news today - I confirmed my suspicions and found the EFI HTR fuse (Thanks to Furnate for that one) was blown as you can see below. I plan to patch up the wires of the O2 sensor before replacing this fuse but i'm really glad its a nice easy fix!



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Next up the brand new headlights from Valenti finally turned up at work today so I rushed back to get them fitted after work.
They weren't too tricky just a case of utilising what was left of the original broken units but it doesn't help that the instructions are entirely in Japanese! Either way I got one fitted after a short while and conffirmed it was all working, spot on!



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I got the other one fitted as well as their surrounds and the headlight washers, easy busy and they look fantastic. I'm really pleased with this small bit of progress today as it means i'm basically finished.


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I have a small video of them working but can't link that so you'll just have to see it in person tango_face_grin.png
My only tiny issues with them is that the passenger's side HID balast hums quite loudly, I still got 2 spare old ones so at some point I can swap this out and also currently the LED "Eyebrow" doesn't work as a DRL and only comes on with the sidelights it seems, this might be an easy fix if i fit some of the extra wiring that came with them but thats not a big issue for now so i'm just keen to drive it


This weekend I'll be fitting the bumper and giving it a polish and fixing that o2 Sensor fault. Then on the 25th I have the MOT booked at 11am and after that.. well I think its time for another club meet if anyone's up for one on that weekend?

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Well here it is, after 5 months and 1 day of GT86 Ownership I can say that my car is finally in 1 Piece!


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Popped around today with a few jobs on the agenda:


Fix O2 Sensor error

Fit bumper
Polish bumper
Re-fit clutch pedal cover


It all went fairly easily which gives a nice end to this part of the project and I can't imagine anything going wrong for the MOT so hopefully I can spend most of next weekend and the bank holiday getting used to it and having some fun.


I'll start off with the messy and boring image, got those wires on the O2 Sensor loom patched up. The liquid electrical tape is messy stuff but hopefully if it does the trick in keeping those wires safe in the long term i'm more than happy. Once I applied a few coats of it I replaced the Fuse, cleared the ECU faults and the check engine light never came back! the car runs much better too.


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Then I went ahead to fit the bumper which is another thing i've never actually done before on any of my cars. It wasn't too bad but its clear the bumper is a bit knackered around some of fits clips and other areas, theres a few previous shoddy paint repairs on it and some of the clips under the headlights are broken so it does sag a little bit but its good enough for me at this point and isn't particularly noticeable but im sure some of you out there will be quick to spot it tango_face_smile.png


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It was already looking great but I wanted to give it a quick wash as well as claying and polishing it to remove any overspray of which there was a fair amount from the bumper. As I said getting so intimate with the bumper today really made me realise that it's quite rough around the edges but hopefully these last steps will make it's bad parts less eye catching. Once I got that done I fit the number place with some 3m Double sided tape, not my preferred method but I forgot to order some heavy duty velcro which I normally use.




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And thats it! but there was one last little job I had to do as I can't stand these stickers personally!
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Swapped the wheels over from my Subaru last night and took the car to its MOT today, passed without any issues!
 
Drives well too, exhaust is a bit loud I admit but it's not too bad in 6th with the windows up. Drives nice and straight to without a single rattle or strange noise.
 

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One of my deadlines for the 86 was to get it ready for JAE 2018 so I could bring it along with my local jap car club. A 300 mile round trip to the east of england showground and back over the weekend was proof to me that there are no underlying issues with the car or that I forgot to bolt anything down!
 
Being the only 86 in our club It got some good attention from people at the show especially with my little "Before" pictures printed out for people to see where it has come from and also thanks to being parked next to a lovely Mk3 supra belonging to one of the other Justjap Members.
 
I met and had a brief chat with Kesler and a few of the other 86 driver's club members which was good and strangely enough managed to meet the guy that sold me the 86 in the first place as he recognised it from the pictures he took of it just over 5 months ago, he had some good things to say about how i've done so considering he has repaired a few himself and is able to get parts much cheaper from other breakers or suppliers that was a big compliment which really made my Day! tango_face_grin.png
 
Got a few pictures of the car parked up on the Friday evening and Saturday.
 

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Cheers guys :)

Never driven one before but i'm quite enjoying it. I've not had a car that loves to be revved right out through the range before so the driving home from work through the twisty roads of the sussex dyke is always fun

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