Painting the Engine Bay: Or How I Figured Out How To Paint Stuff That Looks OK

Filthy car.

I understand the principles and theory behind a lot of stuff, including painting a car. However, when it comes to execution, I just can't get things to go smoothly. That was until I decided to paint the engine bay of the 7, and now I know exactly what it takes to get a good result: a shit load of prep-work and time.

Turned out pretty legit.

The first step I took in the redo of the front-end was to coat the wheel wells with trunk-bed liner. I got a can of it from Pep-Boys and just followed the instructions. I did two coats on each well and ended up with a pretty sweet result. I'm curious to see how it will hold up to the conditions and inevitable brake fluid exposure.

After I was happy with the wheel wells, I masked everything off and started to prep for paint. I degreased and washed the entire bay a few times to try to get all the caked up grime and gunk out. I then masked everything off and plugged all the holes in the firewall and wheel wells to prevent overspray. After it was masked I started the prep work by scuffing and cleaning the entire bay. In retrospect I should have done more sanding in addition to the scuffing.

Prime time.

My original plan was to get single-stage car paint and just spray the thing using the compressor. Unfortunately, we don't have a decent moisture trap on the system and it's humid as hell these days. I decided against using the compressor and air gun in favor of spray bombing the bay. At first it seemed like a terrible idea, but I looked at some people's bays on the net and they looked good. After all, it was going to be under a hood 99% of the time anyway!

I started off with a few coats of primer, and scuffed a bit between those coats. I think I should have done more sanding between the coats, but you live and learn, right? The primer actually turned out great, and it got me really pumped for the final result. At this stage, everything was looking good and I was feeling a bit better about using a spray can to paint the bay.

Primed and blah blah.

After I primed the bay, I scuffed it some more and cleaned it with some paint prep stuff. I had previously picked up a random red color Duplicolor paint from Pep Boys, so I busted the cans out and went to town. I learned very quickly how long a spray can lasts when painting large surfaces. The answer to how many cans I used is 4.

After laying down the red, I let it sit for a few days to set before I

First coat of red.

sprayed the clear on it. Once again I opted for spray can clear, since I didn't want to get a bunch of water in my spray with the compressor. I picked up a few cans of clear from the store and went to town.

This was the part that caused me the most grief in the whole process. When I cleaned the paint before I sprayed the clear, I used a regular shop towel to wipe it clean. The result wasn't pretty. The clear sprayed perfectly onto the fire wall, strut towers and front crossmember. Everywhere else, it didn't. A lot of the lint I had gotten on the surfaces showed up immediately after I laid down the clear, as they turned solid white.

All done!

I was discouraged at the result, but decided to try to salvage it by trial and error. Luckily the first thing I tried worked like a freakin' champ: wet sanding. I got some 2000 grit sand paper, a spray bottle and went to town on the engine bay. I went over everything to smooth out rough patches, and clean up the clear. A few sections needed to be respray, so I sanded quite a bit more and laid down some more paint and clear.

After doing this all day, I finally gave the last coats a quick wet sanding to clean it up and the result turned out great in my opinion. It's not a deep gloss by any means, but after I wax it and do a little polishing, it will look pretty killer for a fartin' around turbo-cruiser!

BLING

In between coats of paint and sanding sessions, I took the time to disassemble the suspension and clean it up. I had always planned on doing a bunch of suspension upgrades to the car, so now is the perfect time to do it. I ordered a bushing kit from Racing Beat to install as I put the car back together. If I can find it in the budget, I want to upgrade the shocks and struts now, but that is looking like something to go in at the end of the year.

Subframe painted up and ready to roll.

While the subframe was out, it was the perfect time to give it a coat of paint. I ground off the surface rust on both pieces and prepped the surfaces for paint. I ordered some Por-15 from Summit to coat it, which also gave me the opportunity to order a water temp gauge. I then coated both parts of the subframe with a foam brush and waited, for what seems like forever, to dry.

4 F4st 4 F4rio4s4444

Since red brakes are all the rage, I decided to do up my 4-pots with red paint. I want to paint the Mazda logo white, so I can totally act like they are Brembos or something. But still, these 4-pot Mazda brakes are the freakin' jam. While I was at it, I disassembled the spindles and gave it a coat of red too. Tryin to make it look snazzy under there, folks.

Turbo Swap: Take 2

NO IDEA HOW MUCH WORK I WAS IN FOR AT THIS POINT.

The last time she had a motor. *TEAR*

I've owned my Rx-7 for almost 10 years, and of those 10 years I've driven it a total of 1 and a half years. The other almost 9 years, it has been slowly turning into the car I originally wanted when I started the process. For the nitty gritty, you can read my previous posts.

Werkin' hard. Hardly werkin.

Fast forward to this year, and the car is finally legal and 100% registered and insured. I wanted to work out a few bugs and get the car together to tool around in for the summer and take it back into the shop in the winter to mod it. When I finally got the first wrench on the engine, I decided to throw those plans out the window and 100% redo my entire turbo swap. This time I was gonna do it clean, and make sure the car stood the test of time.
This basically means stripping down the car and doing it all over again. A turbo swap into an FC is probably the most straight-forward thing you can do to the car and doing it all over again won't be that difficult. This go around, however, I plan to clean the car up substantially from the ground-up and make it a nice weekend cruiser and curve carver.

De-turbo-ified.

Almost everything out. GET OUT BRAKE BOOSTER!

The first step was to pull the engine out of the car. All of the effort I had previous put in was now being completely reversed. In the course of two hours, we had the motor out of the car and sitting on the floor. The process of stripping took me a few nights, but over the course of a week I managed to get everything pulled out and gutted. This included everything under the hood, except for the driver-side harness and throttle cable. The harness proved to be a royal bitch to remove, so I left it in and masked it off. The throttle cable could just be moved out of the way easily so it stayed in.

Missing some Zoom-Zoom.

The almost end result. I did pull out the brake booster and clutch master cylinder after these photos was snapped. You can see that the engine bay is just covered in funk from the oil cooler, which will need to be address when the engine goes back in. I still haven't figured out what I am going to do about it, but I can't have oil just flying around in the engine bay when it's nice and clean.

Well there's yer problem.

Another area I will be addressing in the build is the wheel wells. I always thought it would be sweet to have trunk-bed liner in my wheel wells, so I am gonna slam some on there and see how it works!

Change of Plans 2013

Let's do this.

This whole debacle started years ago, when I purchased this car in 2004. I was in love with the FC3S, and finally was able to have one of my own. I got a convertible and decided that the N/A set-up wasn't tight enough and decided I wanted it to be super tight, so I dropped a 13bt into it. I originally planned for the car to be out of commission for about two months, but it's been at my dad's shop for 7 years.

I've had the car "running" for a few weeks now, but there were a few problems. Primarily, the car was a royal bitch to start. I could pour gas into the intake manifold and it'd fire right up, however it'd still not want to start when it warmed up. I wanted to dig deep into the problem today, but my plans quickly did a 180 and at the end of the day, the engine was sitting on the ground in the shop with the engine bay bare.

When I started the build, I wanted it done as fast as possible since it was my daily driver. Luckily my family had a boat load of cars, so I just drove my sister's old car as she had just gotten a new one. Since I was in a rush to drive the thing, I skipped some steps that I now wish I hadn't. Namely I hadn't really done a super clean job of swapping the engine, and the engine bay was still dirty.

Removing thangs.

As I was taking the manifold off of the car today to chase down the gremlins, my dad was telling me that I should probably just yank the motor because it'd be easier to work on and I could clean up the engine bay. It struck me at the time as a good idea, but I contemplated it for a good bit. Finally I decided that this was the new course of attack and started the procedure. Three hours later the engine was on the floor, and we were done for the day.

I've already got my next stretch of the build set-up in my mind. I'm going to dismantle pretty much everything from the doors to the nose of the car. I'm going to pull everything out of the engine bay and drop the subframe to repaint it. Each bit of hardware in the bay will get cleaned up and reinstalled, or replaced with new hardware. I want to reduce the amount of clutter in the harnesses, because a good chunk of the car's emissions control equipment has been axed.

The engine bay will receive a new coat of (probably) black paint, and underneath the car will get a fresh paint of undercarriage coating. Since I'll be dismantling a good bit of the front suspension, I'm going to order a new set of bushings, along with some more durable motor mounts to lock down the engine. Also while I'm under there, every bit of metal I can cram into the sand blaster will get refinished to look practically new.

The engine will also be thoroughly cleaned and reconditioned. The internals in the engine should still be fine, as the rebuild has less than a mile on the engine. I've ran it for a few hours total at idle, but it's never seen much road time. I want to refinish as much of the components on the engine as I can, just to make the engine something to look at when I'm done with it. New gaskets and vacuum tubing will make sure the engine runs properly.

I plan on doing all of my gauges while the motor is sitting on the floor, because it will just be easy to do. Drill and tap oil temp and water temp senders, replace the oil pressure sender with an aftermarket unit. I want to reroute my boost controller lines, and just generally clean up it's install. I will probably fab up some brackets to hold the solenoids, as well as the blow-off valve.

I'm not entirely sure if I will go full stand-alone YET, but it is in the works. I plan on doing a Megasquirt kit and building my own harness from their harness kit. Along with that Megasquirt I am looking to up the injector size along with a new fuel pump, so I can up the boost. Having the motor out of the car makes it tempting to start that project, but I would probably be easier to do with the engine already installed, so I can properly route wires.

My overall goal for the car is to have a very clean swap with moderate power. I wouldn't want anything over 300 horse, because that is just ridiculous. The car already weighs hardly anything, so 250ish would probably do fine. I want to eventually get the car re-painted red and maintain the stock convertible look, but maybe add some aggressive touches to it. I plan on running a conservative mesh wheel at 16", but I may look into a wider 17" if the mood strikes me.

I can already picture the final result in my head, and the only thing left between me and that vision is just me taking my time and doing it right. Luckily I have the means and the time (sorta) to do it right, I just have to be patient and realize that I'll be much happier with the car done properly in a few months rather than a dirty one now. I've already waited several years for this moment, and I can wait a few more weeks.

I plan on updating this page frequently with updates of the build, so check back regularly for some pics and words.

Turbo Woes.

Doesn't this look like a mountain of fun? It actually was pretty fun. Today I took off the turbo, which required a lot of shit to be taken off. It took me around 2 hours to actually get the thing off, and about 45 minutes to figure out how to take it apart. After some minor disassembly I knew that things had gone awry. The shaft didn't spin freely, and required a bit of force to spin. There was also a considerable amount of oil in the turbine housing. This is the turbine housing, and it should be completely dry. Notice that it's not. Yeah, something isn't right.

This is the rear oil seal. It sits on the rear of the center section, between the turbine wheel and the main body. Notice that there is a bunch of gunk in there. Yeah, it's not supposed to be in there.
Here is the center section, where the seal mates up with the body. Notice the gunk, once AGAIN. This is where all of the oil is leaking from. I believe there may have been some sort of seal in there which is no longer functioning.
Here is the turbine wheel, which is completely covered in oil. This thing was leaking REAL bad. I don't know if the whole thing is junk yet, but I kinda hope it's not. Another used turbo is only about $150-$200, but I could run the risk of this happening again. But then again, I know I could have it out and back in within the span of a day, so it wouldn't be that bad if it failed again. But I wouldn't want pieces of the compressor wheel breaking off and flying into my engine.
Here is a photo of my car as it sits right now. Yes, that is our lift. We've had it for about two months now. It makes life REALLY easy when it comes to working on things. If I didn't have the lift, the turbo job would have taken AGES. Luckily, it only took me two hours.


I'm going to Mazmart on Tuesday to see how much a used turbo is. If it's not too much, then I'll just get another one. If it's too much, a seal kit is only $110. A used turbo could be in the car within the day, whereas a seal kit would take about a week to arrive. I first need to find out if the turbo is salvageable.

The never ending project from HELL.

I'll start this blog with some information about the car itself, which I purchased for the measly sum of $2100 on April 4th, 2004.

As I said above, I bought the car in 2004. I was looking for a 7 for a few years, but our insurance company wouldn't cover Rx-7's because they were sports cars. Instead, I bought a 1991 Integra LS Special Edition (I loved it, a lot) in 2001. I drove that car for 3 years when we finally changed insurance companies. I sold the Integra for $3500 and decided to look around for a 7, since the company would cover it. I knew that I wanted a car that would eventually undergo a turbo swap and whatnot, I didn't really care what I got. The verts were pretty cool, of course, but I really wanted a 10th Anniversary. I found one for sale while my Integra was on the market, and the second I sold the Integra, I called about the 10th...they had sold it that morning. DAMN. The only thing I could really afford was a vert or a coupe N/A. That was fine. I went and looked at this vert I have here and decided to pick it up. The engine ran strong and the car was clean for the most part. Like any other vert, it needed a new top. It also had bad paint, but I didn't really care, I'd paint it later.

I bought the car, and promptly drove to Mazmart and picked up two seats out of a GXL, since the vert seats had bit the dust. The following week, I ordered a convertible top and decided to do it myself. BAD IDEA. Definitely something you want someone who knows what they are doing to do the job.

I drove the car around for a year, and finally the bug's bite hit me hard. I wanted that turbo! I had saved up money over the holidays to buy an S5 Turbo, but I had school bills which needed addressing. $5000 quickly turned into $1500. I kept saving a little more and looking around for a donor motor to do a swap on my vert. I figured the fun of a vert mixed with the whine of a turbo is all good. On the last day of school for the quarter, I drove by Mazmart to see what they had. Turns out they had an entire 87 Turbo II sitting in the yard, COMPLETE (well minus CV axles I find out later). It runs, but is totaled in the rear. Everything on the car is perfect except for where someone sideswiped the crap out of the car.


I buy the donor car for $1700, which is actually a good deal. It had a usable core, transmission, rear end and several other goodies, including a FULL Racing Beat exhaust. We stripped the TII completely and sent the shell to a scrap yard and got $24. After the tear down, I find out that the CV axles were stripped at the yard. I waited about two months to start the swap, figuring the car would be out of commission for a month or two. My sister bought a new car, and we had an extra car at the house, so I decided it was a good time to strip the vert.

It took me and a friend two weekends to strip the motor out of the vert. After stripping, I decided that I needed a rebuild. School also got more intense, so work on the car had to wait. Fast forward to the following spring, and I changed jobs. This new job paid more money, and I once again started to save money. In July of 2006, I was finally able to send off my motor to get rebuild. After a month wait, I get the motor back. School and work practically dominated my time, so the work on the 7 kept getting pushed back further and further. When the holidays hit, it was impossible for me to work on the car.

In February of 2007, I was only taking one class in school. Utilizing my free time, I finally got the motor into the car. I had to get a few odds and ends the previous summer, like a TII hood (the donor's was taken at the yard), CV axles, a new clutch, etc. I bought some goodies for it, such as a turbo timer and boost controller (package deal on eBay!). After getting the motor in the car, there was still a lot of work. We didn't have a lift then, so I wasn't very motivated to jack up the car and crawl around under it.

Over the summer, I finally hooked everything up and got it started. One night I was trying for two hours to get it to work before finally going to sleep. The next morning, after some research, I get the car started. Turns out that the solenoid resistor pack wasn't plugged in, so the injectors weren't firing! DAMN! The car cranks right up, and revs to 5k! DAMN! Loosened the throttle cable and try again. 1500 rpm idle. Smooth as butter. I was pumped...until coolant started to spray out of the overflow tank! FUCK! Well, turns out the thermostat cap I put on there was just the cap and the mechanism inside of it wasn't even there. I basically put the wrong part on it.

The car runs, but still needs some work, like a battery relocation and other odds and ends. A few weeks later, my friend Zach comes over and it like "dude, we need to get this thing running." So we spent the afternoon hooking up the battery and doing some odds and ends. At the end of the night, the car runs and I drove it around the driveway. We then find out there is a hot start problem. Double damn.

Anyway, months pass and I tinker with the car here and there. Just a month or two ago, I pulled the car out and fired it up. I noticed smoke coming from the turbo. I then notice something seeping out of the turbo. I really don't know what to do, so I pull it in the shop and leave it. School had gotten intense once again as the holidays rolled up. The Rx-7 was shelved for a few months while I got shit under control. Well, just last month, I rolled the car out on a Sunday to tinker with some stuff, and I turn it on. I see the smoke, I knew it was a problem, but ran it anyway. I then notice a puddle of coolant under the passenger side. DAMN! The turbo is leaking coolant. Damn.

Well, I pull the car into the shop for a quick trouble shoot. Turns out that a coolant hose had a small tear in it near the clamp and was leaking coolant INSIDE of the car and down through the footwell, where it puddled up under the passenger side. Phew, no turbo coolant problem. The turbo still smokes, I assume it's some sort of internal failure.

This brings us to Saturday, the 16th of March, 2008. I decide to tear the turbo off to see what's up. I was determined to get the car on the road asap. I pull off the turbo charger to find that the whole thing is practically toasted. The shaft doesn't spin freely, and all sorts of gunk inside of the rear seal. There is oil in the hotside and the whole assembly is black in the rear. Something is not right, so a rebuild or another turbo is where I'm headed now.

I have several pictures of the progress of the car, but I dunno where half of them are. I have some from my original site I made for it back in 2005, which I'll post here. I took some photos today of my turbo teardown, so I'll throw those up too!