Bringing it back from SAD

[starbaby]

I just found this site and was amazed that there IS a forum for car detailing...wish I had known that a little over a year ago when I first started my project.

But I am nowhere near done and am thankful I found this wealth of information.

I bought, sight unseen, a 91 Eunos roadster, first generation Miata with right hand drive. It had been sitting outside for over 3years under poplars dripping sap, with a trickle charger on it, at the time I came to pick it up it was buried in a snow bank, all you could see of it was the underside of the back bumper and one wheel.

It took over three hours to dig it out, the wheels were encased in ice and shovels, picks, hair dryers and copious buckets of hot water were needed to get them loose.

I only realized that it was right hand drive when I had shovelled the "driver`s side" free so I could open the door... at that point I thought I was suffering from oxygen deprivation...WHA????

The interior was festooned with cobwebs....UGH! I HATE cobwebs and normally would not have even considered getting into the car until they were all GONE...but shovelling the car out had taken the best hours of daylight, it was getting dark and I had a two hour drive home in front of me

I didn`t know where the gas cap release control was, best setting for heater controls (the inside of the windshield immediately becamefoggy and stayed that way for quite some time until I figured it out), how to get the headlights to flip up and then there was the left handed shifting thing which I had neverdone either.

Oh...and the drifting into oncoming traffic thing because my brain kept reporting that "I" was not sitting properly in relationship to the road was fun TOO!

The next day was heart breaking, seeing this in daylight.





What you see here is NOT a dusty car, it is a baked on coating of sheer MUNG!
Three years of being parked directly under poplar trees had resulted in gobs of tree sap, some were two inches long, some had actually crystallized...the paint was FILTHY, oxidized, scratched up and certainly did not look like British RacingGreen anymore. What looks like dust on the paint wasn`t! It was a thick coat of STUFF with dust and tree sap embedded IN it.

I almost had a heart attack when I opened the hood, it was STUFFED with leaves, why it did not catch fire is beyond me and honestly I felt really stupid about not checking it before I started it. I took out three 8 gallon shop vac bags of leaves out of there and they were still floating out for weeks afterward.

Looking at this car I was sure a paint job was going to be in order, there was absolutely no rust on it anywhere that I could see but I figured that since I had no real idea of what needed to be done on this car,body OR engine, the best thing to do would be to CLEAN it first.

It`s a ZEN thing...just take things apart and clean them,notice details, figure things out, make notes of what you find, whether or not you understand what they are or what they do or how they come apart.

CLEANING...that`s the ticket.

Engine compartment first because I have found that if something starts to go you won`t notice the small details of it if your engine is dirty,if it is clean, oil leaking or water hoses about to let go are evident.

I first wrapped all the electricals in plastic and tinfoil,pre-scrubbed the engine compartment using degreaser and pressure washed the entire engine compartment, then it was scrubbed again with degreaser and a final pressure wash.

Everything that was bolted onto the firewall that didn`thave hoses that might be kinked were removed one by one.

All wiring harnesses, all relays and electrical connectors were wiped down, each connector was unplugged to clean the contacts as well as the cases and as I took each piece off, I washed the paint underneath and waxed it before bolting the piece back on. Any ground wire connector was removed, cleaned off, the firewall at those points were slightly sanded to allow better contact

Coolant overflow tank, windshield washer pump and tank, airfilter box, air intake hoses were all removed and cleaned inside and out.

If something looked wrong or was broken I went to the internet and figured out what (first of all) it WAS and then how to get it offand replace it. the first thing I noticed was the thermostat housing had abroken sensor, looked it up, ordered and replaced it.

The engine was scrubbed and the valve covers were also scrubbed and polished, not as nicely as i would have liked but hey...I wanted to DRIVE it.

At that point, I moved to the interior and scrubbed everything I could reach, washed the inside of the soft top and lubricated everything I could reach.

Then I started on the paint job...washed the entire car witha really good detergent and started on the tree sap.

Nothing I tried worked; I have a cabinet filled with the best tar removers I could find, but nothing worked...NOTHING!

There were over 283 gobs of tar on that car, (what can Isay? You need to know what you`re up against) some of them had dropped, gotten dust on them,then froze and then the next year, more gobs on top of the old ones with dust...well...three years of that

Finally I bought heavy duty nail polish remover to try, and it softened the sap! but then I saw that it had also etched the paint when itpooled around the gob of tree sap.

But it WORKED!

So off I went to buy a box of 500 Q-tips, and then got a bucket or really hot water and detergent and lots of rags.

I spent the next three days, dipping Q-tips into the acetone, twirling onto the sap and then rubbing with the Q-tip until I could see the tip of it was saturated with sap and washed the gob and immediate area right away with a MF cloth and hot soapy water. Although there was some etching still, they were certainly not as bad as my first attempt.

Meanwhile, our shop cat who weighs in around 18 pounds was curious as to what I was up to so he jumped up onto the hood, then slipped and fell off, not before leaving claw marks ALL the way down the front of the hood...I could have SHOT him!

Well it really WAS time to do something about the paint job!

I bought a Porter machine and McGuire`s 105 and 205 cutting compound, a double bucket system with grit guard and a pad washer system and went to work.

Rinsed car again, foamed it, used MF wash mitt, rinsed, checked the finish, foamed it again and used new MF wash mitt for spots missed.

Taped off all the trim and then started working on the paint, which took 5 days...mostly because I was apprehensive of doing something wrong,

It was truly an amazing experience watching the color come up and the scratches disappear, swirls and all, even the cat claw marks disappeared.

Sealed, waxed and polished again....ready to take my first cruise!!!



At this point, I have the entire interior gutted, dash, wiring, carpet all out (haven`t found any rust yet!!!)and am going to clean the interior metal and seal it before reassembling everything. The leather seats were torn so they came out; I found some used seats for sale and bought the covers from them to take apart and I am hand stitching them back together into my seat covers in my spare time.


And then one more go over the paint job before hitting the road sometime in July.

[Ronkh]

Welcome

Nice job

[House of Wax]

Please tell me you have more pics of the transformation. Sounds like a hell of a project. I am blown away there`s no rust. Welcome!

[starbaby]

ActuallyI DO have more pictures but this is the first time I have succeeded in actuallygetting pictures to post up...computer programs and I ...well...it isn`t pretty
I have taken so many that I put them on a Terabyte unit...but have these for now.
Not only to chronicle what I have done to the car but also because, not reallyknowing what I am doing and learning as I go it is handy to take photos in case(well, invariably ) I forget what goes where.
WhenI removed the dash it took about 5 hours because I taped and numbered eachconnection in relationship to each other and took pictures throughout, Idaresay that once I have finished wrapping the dash in leather and repaintingthe plastic parts it will only take an hour to re-install, all the parts andscrews are in Ziploc bags, numbered and the names of the parts written on themas well. At the moment I have 12 bins of parts at the shop, all cleaned as theyare taken out, including the screws and ready to go back in.


Ias well, am amazed that there is no rust. The l]ONLY rust has been some`staining` on the radio frame inside the front of the dash over the transmission, a bit on the ECU bracket in the passenger`s foot well and oddly enough on thewooly underlay under the carpet in the driver`s side which was saturated withrust dust.
Thatcame from the cracked rubber plug in the floor pan but there was no rustdamage...just some `staining"
Eventhough I used a large garbage bag to carefully stuff the carpet and underlayinto as I peeled it off the floor pan, I also wore a canister mask and thenwiped down the entire interior and then hosed the shop floor down afterward. Ireally have never seen anything like it. Absolute saturation of the woolymaterial but nothing but a stain on the metal....but CLOUDS of rust dust in theair.
Ido have a new floor plug and will do a rust remover treatment (POR 15) aroundthe plug on the inside and underneath around the plug as well before taping thearea off and doing a small patch of undercoating on it.
I madea few extra jobs for myself, not knowing what some things were for in theengine compartment, I removed a cable going into a small black box. It had aretainer that looked like the old 20 pin computer connectors but when it gotthe screws off some terminals came out with them. I gingerly shoved them backin, wiped the unit down and continued cleaning... I thought I had a near miss. AfterI had gotten the engine cleaned and removed the flip up headlight to install someOracle headlights that are inset (and give you a lot more aerodynamics than thebarn doors do when going into a headwind) I closed everything down and decidedto take it for a drive before starting on the paint.
Engine before and after (sorry about picture quality)



I turned the key and all I got (until the battery wore down)was the engine attempting to catch, but it was like...as if...as though...itwasn`t getting fuel...what on EARTH would cause THAT??? I had done nothing butCLEAN the car and...and...and...
...oh yeah.....pulled out what looked like a computer connectorand saw terminals coming out of that...thing...whatever it was.
Having nothing to lose and not knowing what the black boxWAS, I went to the internet, two weeks later on one of the forums, found thatthe thing...was an Air Flow Meter which of course designates how much fuel isneeded and along with that information, a warning to NOT do exactly what I HADdone. BUT it also said that it WAS possible to repair...so what the heck, itevidently was broken anyway.
Downloaded a full set of directions...spent three hourssoldering tiny little wires back together...put it together, put it back intothe car...no go...took the top off, realized I had inadvertently soldered onetiny little lever on the wrong side of the control arm but instead of having totake it off and re-soldering it on the table, (which the right side of my brainwas SCREAMING at me was the RIGHT thing to do) I was really whipped and insteadattempted to maneuver the arm over in place...snap!
I didn`t break the solder this time, broke the tiny metalarm and even I know better than to think that soldering an arm together wasgoing to work.
Sigh...found a used one on the net that would work, twoweeks later (cleaned it THIS time on my work bench) plugged it in, the carstarted on the first crank and ran like a charm. I have the old unit on my deskat the shop with a sign on it
"Take your TIME!"
Which is why I taped everything off before working thepaint..live and learn with a salute to Murphy`s law.

[starbaby]

. The green hoses in the picture of the engine are high heat silicone and I put them in so that after cleaning the engine if anything started to leak I could see it and repairbefore something went really wrong.
Which worked out well as the PCV started to leak and Icaught it before damage could be done.
These next pictures are of the cleaning and detailing of thesoft plastic window in the soft top, it was horrible as was the interior of thesoft top itself.
I thought the soft top was brown until I opened it...insteadit was a sticky grungy coating on the original black. I threw a drop cloth intothe car and scrubbed for three days, using the shop vac to suck out the excessmoisture off the material every time I changed water.
I got it back into reasonable shape (still have to stretchand re-glue the material around the center stiffener) but the back window wasalso a horror as you can see.
The first thing I did was tape off the protective overhangingrim surrounding the window both inside and out and ran about 6 inches past thatso nothing would get on the soft top.
I used Maguire Plastx Cleaner Polish, it did not seem to want to remove anything reallyuntil I tried it along with a Mr Clean Eraser VERY gingerly, not scrubbing butrather slowly working the grunge off gradually until I could feel the surfacebecome somewhat more slick, then going to a rough MF cloth and then a fine one,carefully washing the old stuff off as I changed applicators; as you can see,it worked beautifully

[Don]

Way to make an entrance Starbaby, welcome and awesome work on a very interesting car.

[WaxAddict]

This is the most bizarre mixture of Arial, Times New Roman, and photographs from a Kodak 110 camera I`ve ever seen.

Why did they ever change the Miata? THAT model was perfection, and looks completely contemporary some 23 years later!

[starbaby]

This is the most bizarre mixture of Arial, Times New Roman, and photographs from a Kodak 110 camera I`ve ever seen.

Why did they ever change the Miata? THAT model was perfection, and looks completely contemporary some 23 years later!

I TOTALLY agree with you on the bizarre part, but internet here is spotty at times and goes down at which point I lose everything.

So I wrote the post in Word, in Calibri (body), font size 11, first, then pasted it and inserted the photos at the proper place...and that is what I got! Did you not notice the run together words as well??? I gave up at that point.

My Kodak 110 would have taken better pictures than this phone does, so that one is all on me!

I agree with your opinion of the Miata, I fell in love with it when they first introduced them but simply could not afford one. Which explains the knee jerk reaction I had towards buying it sight unseen, I guess; I have never EVER bought any vehicle without thoroughly checking it out first, let alone one that had been parked outside for 3 years.

The only change I made on it were removing the flip up headlights; this is a light nimble little vehicle but that first night I drove it home there was a headwind of about 40 miles an hour, lots of semi`s passing me and I prefer to drive on the road and not in the ditch. The flip up headlights are called barn doors for a reason!

[starbaby]

Way to make an entrance Starbaby, welcome and awesome work on a very interesting car.

I hope by entrance you mean the loads of pictures and not the mixed up font!

This car is my Zen place, I LOVE detailing but have never worked on anything in this shape before, it IS bring it back from sad!

A friend of mine once left his 1970 Corvette with me that he had bought new when he was 19 doing road construction, he had never allowed anyone to drive it but he needed to get to the airport quickly, didn`t want to leave it there so I came along and drove it home and kept it for a month while he was away.

The car was about 14 years old at that point and really needed a good cleaning inside so I thought I would just touch it up, but there were coffee stains around the console and the shifter and Ebrake housing was full of mung also, so I ended up taking the console and all the vents eyeballs and so on out and doing a deep clean.

When I was finished it looked beautiful but the silver paint trim on the console had been totally worn off and it looked...well...not perfect.

So I toddled off found some silver paint and a good camel hair brush at an art store and some clear paint sealant but had to cut the brush down to about 5 hairs as there was nothing thin enough to do the job available. Spent a couple of days repainting the trim line because your hands get shaky after a bit, sealed it so it would not rub off...it was thing of beauty when I was done and he was gobsmacked!

He gave me a set of keys so I could drive it when I wanted to but driving that thing felt like riding a rocket...I enjoyed working on it more than I did driving it.

[Don]

I hope by entrance you mean the loads of pictures and not the mixed up font!

Yeah, I meant the job you did on the car, I was so blown away by the pics, that I didn`t even notice the fonts

[mjlinane]

Welcome!!

[4u2nvinmtl]

That`s a very impressive transformation. I don`t think many of us take it to a mechanic level when detailing (other than wheels off or a seat`s out detail). I`ll definitely be removing items from my engine bay next time I detail it! Thanks for the great post and welcome to the Autopia forums.

[starbaby]

That`s a very impressive transformation. I don`t think many of us take it to a mechanic level when detailing (other than wheels off or a seat`s out detail). I`ll definitely be removing items from my engine bay next time I detail it! Thanks for the great post and welcome to the Autopia forums.

No, taking it to that level is NOT a `profitable approach` for anyone!

Given the differences between various automotive fastening clips and how they attach, lack of knowledge could be costly as well!

To be honest, I arrived on this forum due to an email invitation after I placed an order with Autopia while believing it was a site for other detailing obsessed amateurs like myself (not unlike the DIY car forums I joined to figure out how this car was put together) read a few posts in the newbie section and just waded in with my posting.

I was a tad embarrassed when I started reading the rest of forum and saw all the information posted by professionals here.

I now understand that I could have done extreme damage to my clear coat while compounding it and will be far more careful when it comes to that aspect of the work I still have to do.

In my opinion, as far as detailing a personal engine bay? Dust is attracted to oil, oil is very good at seeping in around fittings when the engine compartment has been neglected for some time so pressure washing it certainly gets rid of 98% of the dirt and oil mung that is there but the two percent left is going to vigorously attract more dirt and dust.

The first time I washed it after a long trip, it came up cleaner than the times I had done it before I had waxed the painted metal. One of my projects next winter is to do the engine compartment again, this time sealing it as well.. I may get really anal about it and take the valve cover off to polish properly as it look wonderful compared to what it was but it is very difficult to get into the nooks and crannies properly.

IF I had known this forum existed when I started this project, it certainly would have taken a great deal less time to accomplish what I have so far and I probably would have chosen different products to do the job, based on what I have been reading here.

I have taken my WRX to be `detailed` with the `Premium Package" in this area twice; both times I redid it myself! And yes, I did talk to them about it but the feelings generated by my question were pretty much along the line of "Whaddya EXPECT?"

If I had instead used the money spent on the `detailing` for product to do the job myself, I would have been far happier. To be fair, this is not a densely populated area; I don`t think many would want to spend the money involved to get the job done properly and given what I see on this forum they should have advertised `Car wash with a really GOOD wipe down`

[Don]

starbaby I think everyone here is expressing respect for a job well done, especially considering that you are new at this AND you were completing a restoration at the same time. I think a lot of us here wouldn`t take the time or have the inclination to go as far as you did and are expressing admiration for what you did.

[starbaby]

starbaby I think everyone here is expressing respect for a job well done, especially considering that you are new at this AND you were completing a restoration at the same time. I think a lot of us here wouldn`t take the time or have the inclination to go as far as you did and are expressing admiration for what you did.

Thank you for that, I guess I was feeling as if I had suddenly been found talking about my crayons to a group who had just gotten their Bachelor of Arts
If I had stumbled on this group in real time at detailing meet (do you have those?) I would be following everyone around going....WOW!