ARCHmatux' Roadster Project (Large Image Warning)

This post isn't perfectly chronological as I didn't keep good track of all the things I did.

After some more digging and more parts orders the following happened....



New headlight brackets and surrounds were installed.
I have no idea who thought painting the headlight surrounds with no prep was a good idea but the old white paint was flaking off everywhere.

I decided the next logical thing to do was to tackle the wiring mess I had uncovered so I started by pulling some of the interior out.
I couldn't go too far as I needed to be able to get the car into a usable state to get to work.

Needed to clean this up badly:


Fake leather headliner had to go:


Pulled some of the interior out:


Gear boot was in great condition:



Stereo wiring was interesting:



Got rid of the cluster lighting and installed standard bulbs:


Pulled a bunch of stuff out and stripped the pealing fake wood trim off:

A few weeks passed with various small jobs being done on the car, most of which I either didn't take or have lost pictures of.

• I rebuild the wiper linkage
• Fixed more electrical issues
• Gave the car a good clean
• Got some new tools for future planned jobs

After a month or two of owning the car, I was quite happy with it.
I'd sorted most of the things that were causing me a problem day to day.

I even found that an MX5 could be practical:



Unfortunately that was when things started to go wrong.

On my way home the clutch started to slip and got progressively worse.
After some reading I was convinced that the clutch needed replacement.

I looked around but I really didn't have the money to throw at getting it done.

I watched Greg Peters (TheCarPassionChannel) video of clutch replacement on the driveway and after a ton of reading and watching videos built up the courage to do it myself.
I'd never really done any proper mechanical work before and hey, how hard can it be? Even if everyone said I was crazy to attempt it on my own.......
If everything went wrong I could simply get the car towed to a local garage.

I ordered more tools, parts and took a week off work.

First things first I went to pull the intake and exhaust manifold.

Things did not go well.

This was the problem:


The exhaust nuts had been impacted on and had rusted themselves on solid.

I won in the end:



Invest in a nutsplitter people!




Victory, or so I thought until I found the cracks in the manifold.
Not really a bit problem, I had a few days to bodge a fix for that until I could replace it.

The cat-back would not come off initially so I ended up cutting half of the rubber exhaust mounts and ordering replacements.

I carried on and unbolted/pivoted the PPF out of the way.
The driveshaft came off without too much of a struggle too and things were going well again.

I read that you shouldn't drain the gearbox without undoing the fill hole first in case it wouldn't come out.



Yeah, it wouldn't come out.

I tried everything from spanners to a pipe wrench but it made no difference.

I decided to drain it anyway and deal with the problem once it was out of the car.

Over the course of the evening I did what I could with the cracked manifold.


I used a ton of gumgum and what was left of what I assume was once a wideband o2 sensor to plug a hole.
Ideally I've have replaced the manifold then and there but I just didn't have the cash on hand.

Progress was slow.
I got the undertray off after destroying some of the screws/bolts and ordered a replacement fitting kit for it.


After unbolting the slave cylinder and undoing the speedo and sensors it was time to drop the gearbox.
This went surprisingly smoothly. I lay underneath it with my head facing the front of the car, used my knee to support the rear and separated and lowered it onto my chest.





I was finally able to get the fill plug off with the correct double 4 point socket and a breaker bar.
I then replaced the throw-out bearing and cleaned some of the gunk from the bellhousing:



After pulling the pressure plate I found that the old clutch was an Exedy stage 2 kit:


I'd already ordered a more budget Il motorsports 4 piece kit as a replacement and as this car isn't boosted I saw no reason to need a clutch like this one.



I didn't get many pictures of putting everything back together.
There was a lot of drizzle the next few days and it was down to crunch time.

At one point after 2 hours of trying I thought I would never get the gearbox back in.
After a night's sleep I tried again and despite getting my jean fly caught in the rear gearbox bracket at one point I got it in after 30 mins.

I bolted everything back up, got everything torqued to spec and got the old manifold and exhaust back in.



The test drive was a huge feeling of accomplishment.
The exhaust leaked but that didn't get me down, the car lived again!

I did what I could with the exhaust as the flanges were bent, likely from being impacted on when first installed so I made do with thick gaskets and exhaust paste.

Based on the state of things so far it's surprising that I hadn't encountered any engine issues.

However that was soon to change.

I started to get idling issues and the engine was running rich.

March and April were mainly spent tracking down what turned out to be multiple issues causing this.

The first was the plugs which were drenched in oil.




Fortunately this was just due to a bad cam cover gasket.

I also found that the 1-wire O2 sensor was not heating up correctly and was giving off bad readings.
After some reading I replaced it with a 4-wire O2 sensor which was very easy to wire up.

The clutch switch was also bad and I fixed this with the spring from a ball point pen:



I fixed various vacuum leaks (you may have noticed the dubious silicone joins earlier) and also found that the throttle was sticky and the ISCV wasn't operating correctly.

After some disassembly I found the issue was mostly due to build up of dirt and grime.



Some cleaning (hours and hours of it) and some new gaskets I fixed a lot of problems.





I replaced pretty much all the old bolts on the throttle body and did what I could with the rusty pipes.




After pulling the cam cover I found the cause of the leaks.
Sooo much sealant. FML.

This took hours to clean off with plastic razor blades being careful not to drop any in the engine.

It was at the end of May that disaster struck and everything went horribly wrong.

However, going back to April for some background.

When I bought the car I did an initial oil change.
However, I wasn't able to get the filter off and as it was cold, went and miserable I decided "meh, I'll get it on the next one".

I replaced the fuel filter and while I was on a roll with filters having changed the intake in the previous post I decided I'd do the oil filter and give the car another oil change.

I was a work night and I needed the car to be operational in the morning but an oil change can't take that long..... right?

I had a replacement filter and set to work.

The first problem was access, I simply couldn't get my hands around the old filter.
After a few failed attempts I read that the intake support bracket could be removed.
This gave the needed access.



However, the filter still wouldn't budge.

After trying a filter chain and other methods I gave in and hammered a screwdriver through the filter and used it for leverage.
This is when I saw the problem I had.



Do these filters look the same to you?

I tried putting the new filter on but the threads didn't reach. WTF???



After googling the make/model of filter I'd pulled off I found that it was not even available in Europe.
The specific model code had not even been sold for 10 years and even then was only available in the Asian market meaning that the filter had not been changed since the car was in Japan, pre 2006.

After sticking my head up in the engine bay I saw the following:



Wonderful, some JDM oil cooler sandwich plate.

I took the old filter to Halfords and tried to find a match with no success.
After a lot of googling about the model of the old filter I found that it was mostly used on toyota engines.
Unfortunately most of these engines were specific to the Asian market and I couldn't find an equivalent in the UK, much less once I could get that evening so I could drive the car to work in the morning.

It was getting dark and then I had an idea. I could simply remove the oil cooler (not that it was needed anyway) and put a stock filter I already had on.

The sandwich plate came off easily enough and although it took a while to get the old rust bolts loose to remove the cooler radiator I got there in the end.
As it was getting quite late and I had work on the morning I quickly wiped oil around the seal on the filter and put it on, hand tight plus a bit.

Put the nice new 10w40 oil in and made sure it was at max on the dipstick and went to bed.

The next few days I checked under the car to make sure there were no drips and that nothing was amiss.
I also kept an eye on the oil level and all was good.

The car was running nicely and finally I'd fixed most of the glaring mechanical issues with the car.
I started looking at bodywork, trim and paint and compiled a shopping list.

The plan was to do all the bodywork myself as best I could then get it resprayed by the professionals.
I was also planning on replace the coilovers (I noticed they weren't in great shape) in August/September once I'd saved up a bit.
A nice KG Works ducktail and GV Style front lip were also in the cards.

Everything was great and nothing in the world could go wrong..... or so I thought.

Once I'd finished work I started googling.

How much does a replacement engine cost?
How much does a garage charge to replace an engine?

The whole thing was horribly depressing.
I could just about afford a replacement car but I'd put a lot of work into this one and really liked it.

I went to bed sad, broken and defeated.

In the morning I woke up to a nice sunny day. Everything was great, until I remembered.

I spent a lot more time googling and eventually decided...... how hard can an engine replacement be?


It took a few days to track down a replacement but I was able to find another 115hp 1.6 from a low mileage Eunos with a long nose crank for £150.
It wasn't close but after some looking around I was able to get it on a pallet and shipped for another £50.

I weighed up buying vs renting but ended up buying an engine crane, stand and load leveler from machine mart plus a few tools I thought I'd need.
After some reading I also bought all the seals, sensors and parts I'd want to fully refresh an engine.

For the next two weeks I did a ton of reading and got to work using public transport and lifts.
In the evenings I did what I could to prep for the engine swap.



The replacement engine showed up on a pallet:




I also got a couple of other bits done like the disks and pads.


First things first I pulled the intake, radiator and cam cover.




I carried on and pulled the alternator, coilpacks etc....



I'd been planning to delete the AC as I never used it so might as well do that at the same time.


I already had two weeks holiday booked off for a Family trip so instead of going on Holiday I decided to stay behind and sort the car.
The MOT was also due to expire so I booked it in giving myself 12 days to do the engine replacement.

I removed the drive shaft and exhaust system

With the front bumper off to give me enough reach with the crane I started on removing the engine.



Victory!

To be honest it came out surprisingly easily.
I'd taken care to make sure I'd disconnected everything and the power steering pump was bungee corded safely out of the way.





Sorry for the lack of pictures while taking the engine out.
I did the job solo and only have two hands.

So much space!



I separated the gearbox from the engine.



The ultralight flywheel wasn't in too bad condition considering the state of the previous clutch. I'll likely replace it with an equivalent in the future but just didn't have the money at the time.




I replaced the pilot bearing and started work on the new engine.

It wasn't pretty on the outside but after pulling the cam cover it looked healthy inside.

I replaced every sensor and the cursed drain plug.



I also painted the cam cover on the new engine in wrinkle black with red enamel lettering.
Got to do the important stuff right?





Got the flywheel on the new engine and swapped over all the hoses from the old engine.




I took a lot of time cleaning up the engine bay but can't find any non blurry pictures of this.
There was some surface rust on the subframe so I cleaned this up and gave it a coat of protective paint.

Some of the harnesses were a bit disgusting so I re-did them.




With some help from a friend I got the new engine in.



And got the accessories back on with new belts.



I had been planning to replace the old clutch line with a braided stainless one from HEL Performance so that got done:





I also fully rebuilt the slave cylinder.



After putting everything back together and adding fluids etc... I started it up.
It did idle straight away although roughly until I got it timed to the usual 14 degrees.

It sounded fantastic.

To be honest I think that first start was one of the most satisfying things I have ever done.

After sorting out some minor vacuum leaks and cleaning up, everything was back to normal again.
Except it wasn't.......

The car was running better than it ever did with the old engine!

removing previous owners 'Improvements' is part of the joy of owning an old car, sometimes its interesting & others are frightening


the 'cut' sensor looks like an 'EGT' thermocouple, add that to your 'spare' vac-pipe running from the inlet manifold through the bulkhead to the under-dashboard I'd wonder if the car may have been supercharged previously  (with egt & boost guages for tuning & plesure  )
Rich.