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I've owned it for about 14 years and it's a the car I drive every day. I've done a lot of servicing and maintenance on it over the years and it's the first car I ever did any work on. A few years ago I re-did most of the underside because several of the wishbones had rotten through.
Unfortunately this time round it needs a lot more. Both rear arches are totally shot, there's no inner wing anymore
Near side:
- ns_rear_arch.jpg (323.8 KiB) Viewed 6757 times
Off side is the worst of the two but they're both kaput:
- os_rear_arch.jpg (393.12 KiB) Viewed 6757 times
Both rear lowers are gone, there's a hole in the near side and i reckon i could poke one in the other pretty easy:
- ns_lower_rear.jpg (387.04 KiB) Viewed 6757 times
- os_lower_rear.jpg (420.36 KiB) Viewed 6757 times
Bubbling comes and goes along both sills, so they're shot too
Engine bay suggests the chassis rails are gone or near to gone:
- bay1.jpg (479.92 KiB) Viewed 6757 times
- bay2.jpg (425.2 KiB) Viewed 6757 times
Remarkably both sill end plates look alright, so i haven't bought any of them (yet..) but i've bought some genuine Mazda sills and aftermarket rear arch repair panels. Not massively happy with the repair panels biggest objection is the crease and fold where the panels tuck under the sill pieces
- Mazda_sills.jpg (432.63 KiB) Viewed 6757 times
- rear_arches.jpg (360.8 KiB) Viewed 6757 times
Learned a few things from the blue car - mostly that I'm never painting a car with rattle cans again!
Spent a bit of time making a nice air setupI got this big compressor for £50 second hand, it's 14cfm with a 150 litre tank. Needed a new head gasket and a new soft start / pressure cutout switch but it works great now
- big_comp.jpg (425.2 KiB) Viewed 6757 times
And a small 8cfm compressor during the first lock down for £20 that just needed a new rubber washer cutting for the blow off valve
- small_comp.jpg (465.54 KiB) Viewed 6757 times
I read that water can be a big problem with compressed air in a garage so I made a water separator out of 15mm and 22mm copper
- water_sep.jpg (426.69 KiB) Viewed 6757 times
The two lower legs are drained with these two ball valves
- water_drain.jpg (443.15 KiB) Viewed 6757 times
The big compressor is noisy as hell so put in an external hookup for it so it can run outside. Used a PCL Euro XF connector to get good flow and put in an external socket on a 16A radial back to the CU
- PCL_Euro_XF.jpg (566.45 KiB) Viewed 6757 times
- outside_hookup.jpg (554.8 KiB) Viewed 6757 times
Both compressors feed into the water trap so I can use the big one, small one or both if I want to do something like shot blasting.
Most of the time i'll be using the smaller compressor inside. At the angry end is a filter regulator then another filter and it splits off with one part going to an oiler for tools and another for clean dry air for paint
- filter_reg.jpg (412.92 KiB) Viewed 6757 times
I'll need to fabricate several pieces including an inner arch as there's nothing left where it should be, so got some basic benders and a shrinker stretcher
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- shrinker_stretcher.jpg (462.13 KiB) Viewed 6757 times
I've had a go with the shrinker stretcher and i think it'll do a good job at making a new inner wing
Also got a couple of air tools - punch / flange setter for the large number of plug welds i'll need to do and a nibbler for trimming panels etc. Then just loads of cheap mole grips and a basic pannel beaters hammer set
- tools.jpg (535.49 KiB) Viewed 6757 times
Was going to start this weekend but I'm laid up with a cold. First thing will be to get it up on axle stands on the drive, remove bumpers / front wings and pressure wash everything to within an inch of it's life. Don't want to be bathed in road dirt dust when wire mopping like last time
Then get it inside and see how far down the rabbit hole i'll end up going. Appreciate there's no economic point in doing this but I like this car so it's getting done properly regardless of how much cost and misery it entails
