Another Berkelying Miata (92 SBY)

Back to full-on yellow will be sweet. 

In reply to wheelsmithy (Joe-with-an-L) (Forum Supporter) :

Agreed! Some o-rings and other assorted junk is headed your way - sorry for the delay.

Here's my sweet bodywork setup

So why not just leave it on the car? A few reasons:

1. The garage is precisely 10'7" deep by 12' wide. No, I don't know why. 

2. While this kind of thing is probably acceptable, I think my neighbors prefer a fenderless car to an impromptu body shop in the driveway.

3. I mostly have time to work after my 2 kids are sleeping, and while there's a floodlight out there, the light situation in the driveway is not ideal. 

4. It seemed like this would be easier? I don't know what I'm doing. 

No worries. I'm moving slow, and in no hurry. There are tons of maintenance items I have to get to before I tag my car. 

You bought custom spray paint, yes?

In reply to wheelsmithy (Joe-with-an-L) (Forum Supporter) :

Yep, I bought custom color matched paint from automotivetouchup.com. It (understandably) took them a long time to ship, but the color match is dead on. 

Bondo for one spot, because we're going for good enough here, not perfect. 

While that's drying, started touching up a few spots on this

Which is in better shape than the one on the car, but unfortunately picked up some deep scratches on its way to me. 

My 3 year old wanted to come out and work on the car with me, so we took a break from dust-producing activities.

I got these end links about 2 years ago, and found that the boots are just disintegrating. Emailed Flyin Miata and they were nice enough to replace them at a discount. I got the NB version this time, which has a shorter body. Interesting. My car has one NA front lower control arm and one NB, so I need two different ends to accommodate the different mounts. FM got that sorted for me when I bought the first set, so I just had to reuse one of the mounting ends. It's nice that these are modular. The actual joints feel fine on the set that I took off, so I may try and find replacement boots somewhere.

Bumper and DS fender are (loosely) on. Gave the door a quick buff, the color match is close but the paint on the car is pretty faded. I think I'm going to redo the black section on the bottom of the car in dark green too, just to change it up. Getting there.

I scuffed the black strip on the rocker panel, and thought, hey, I should smooth out this rough spot. 

I regret poking it. Not sure what the plan for that is yet. 

I also pulled off the windshield wipers because it's apparently my mission to spray paint this entire car, one piece at a time. They were kinda rough. 

cmcgregor (Forum Supporter) said:

I regret poking it. 

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

In reply to wheelsmithy (Joe-with-an-L) (Forum Supporter) :

It's cool, I never wanted to drive this car again anyway .

Spot weld cutter is in the mail, I have the dented up original door in my shed from ages ago so I'll probably harvest some metal from that. It's always something.

These were kinda dull and rusty, so they got the scuff pad.

The latest Crate and Barrel catalog provided excellent masking material.

The bombed. I used Rustoleum Professional for this, which I've used a lot and had really good luck with. It dries super fast and hard. But, this time, I got a bunch of these tiny bubbles. Any ideas on why that could be? I imagine this means I'll have to sand them out and give it another shot.

Grease/oil from your hands, most likely. Did you wipe down with thinner after sanding?

In reply to wheelsmithy (Joe-with-an-L) (Forum Supporter) :

I thought so but maybe not. I've been using disposable prep wipes. Going to give it another shot in a bit, things dry fast in the sun out here.

I get solvent pop on rubbery/plastic trim if i dont do a few almost dry coats on the shade before a wet covering final coat. Has to be in the shade and cool to the touch. 

Take 2 went better. It was probably not prepped well enough, I just wiped that coat off and gave it another shot. 

I found a brand new prepainted mirror in the right color, so that's cool. It has been sitting in the garage for months, waiting. I had to do some grinding on the mounting base because these early doors have a smaller hole in them than the later ones, but failed to take a picture. Carbide burrs for the Dremel to the rescue!

Thanks for the tip Duster/Michael, these pieces are actually metal but I think I'm going to do the headlight surrounds too, so I'll try that on those. 

In reply to cmcgregor (Forum Supporter) :

I picked up SBY Miata earlier this summer that needs some paint (portion of DS fender, full rear bumper and under the master cylinder) and am hoping you can provide a little additional info on the paint you ordered.

1. Did automotivetouchup.com send you single stage and did you have to specifically request it?

2. How many aerosol cans did you order for your project? Did you use their recommendations per panel and if so, was it the right amount or too much/too little? 

Based on the pictures, it looks like it's a really good match considering how old the rest of the paint is.

Thanks

In reply to Scopecreep :

Hey congrats! I love these cars. Post some pictures, or better yet start a thread!

As for your questions:
1. No, this is base/clear. The driver's side of my car had been repainted in base/clear at some point anyway, so I didn't feel like it was a big deal. A while back I used just the base coat on a couple spots on the passenger side that still have single stage and those are indistinguishable from the factory paint, but I don't know how the long term longevity will be without clear.

2. I bought 3 cans of primer, 5 of base, and 5 of clear. I also had most of a can of primer and most of another can of base that I bought to paint a hood hinge a few years ago, so I used those as well. So far I have painted most of the front bumper, both fenders, and the spot under the master cylinder and have used ~2.5 cans of primer, 2.5 base and 2 clear. That includes redoing the first fender when I messed up a bunch of spots. Their estimates really seem sized for bigger cars, you could easily do a whole fender with a single can of primer, base, and clear. I'm going to have plenty to paint my headlight covers as well and still have 3 cans of base left over.

The match is really really good to unfaded factory paint, like the mirror that I bought. Unfortunately, most of the paint on my car is not in great shape, but I've been really happy with the quality of their paint.

Couldn't decide if I should post again today or wait for the "big reveal" (thrilling I know) but eh, I'm excited about it, so here's today's progress.

In reply to cmcgregor (Forum Supporter) :

Thanks for the additional information on the paint - it really helps a lot to help me decide on a paint plan.

I keep intending to start a Miata build/maintenance thread - I have 3  (92 SBY, 2001 BRG SE and a 08 Blue PRHT). That's why I chose the Scopecreep name.

I need to take some time and read up on hosting pictures, post one and probably use that as motivation to start a thread (found the site through Seth's R63 fiasco and have stuck around).

I've really enjoyed your thread and hated to see the picture of the rocker but based on the history documented in this thread, I'm sure you'll get it corrected.

Thanks again.

In reply to Scopecreep :

Glad I could help! I think there's a tutorial on posting pictures pinned on one of these pages, but I don't remember which. 

I decided that for now (like the next few weeks), I'm not doing anything to fix the rocker. I really don't think it's going to get worse, and I'd like to drive it. So, I did this

IT'S ALIVE! AND ONE COLOR (mostly)!

Today I got the fender liners back in, finished attaching the front bumper, bled the brakes, and took it for a spin. Finally!
The suspension is feeling great, and I think I'm going to get along with these tires just fine.

Next step is to take it in for an alignment, since the last time that happened was while I still lived in MA.

Got the car aligned today. It was further out of spec than I would have expected, so it made a pretty big difference.

Then I took the twisty way home. The car feels amazing.

The guy doing the alignment did point out that I have a pretty decent oil leak going on, probably from the rear main seal. I am not excited about the prospect of dropping the transmission to deal with that.

Doing some small stuff ahead of the "Performance Driving School" I signed up for at Sonoma in a few weeks. 

I replaced that pesky cursed water plug. The old one is on the left - I guess it really wasn't in very good shape. This really wasn't that hard once I had the CAS off so I could see what I was doing, although some long needle nose pliers made it a lot easier. Pro tip - buy a new clamp from Mazda, that way you only need to pull the little clip off once it's on there. Way easier than trying to squeeze it open and thread it in there without it going flying.

Part of the motivation for getting access to the reroute again was to run a wire for my coolant temp gauge - I installed the sender when I did the cooling system, but never got around to connecting it. When I was under the dash doing that, I found this little guy on the carpet. Any guesses where that came from?

No?

Anybody?

If you guessed "the brake pedal", you're a winner! What's our prize, Johnny?

Well, you know. Brakes that work. I'm strongly pro-brakes. Big fan. That got replaced with a cotter pin.

In reply to cmcgregor (Forum Supporter) :

I was alarmed until I saw the follow up picture - I can tell you exactly where that came from - lol.

In my little 1.6 I put brand new coolant spring clamps throughout and OEM coolant hoses. OEM is so much better than aftermarket especially for those coolant hoses.