Ozone machine cheap from AliEX?
Spac’s adventures in Magna
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Got up earlyish this morning and started pulling it apart to see what had happened with the clutch.
It was early enough that I didn’t want to annoy the neighbours with the rattle gun, so was a bit slower than normal, but it all went well except for two dramas:
breaking one of the 10mm bolts that hold the longitudinal gearbox support to the aluminium front subframe.
releasing the bloody pull clutch. There’s a knack to releasing them, but the shredded clutch fibre material was in the way. What’s supposed to be a five minute task took half an hour and needed The Boy’s help.
Finding the clutch plate had ejected the fibre material was not a surprise (looked exactly the same as the shredded 2.4 Lancer clutch in the blue Mirage).
What was a surprise was that the flywheel had a huge crack in it - ran from the centre to the outside edge, and was about 2mm wide!
Not sure how it happened, but it’s pretty wild.
Then I spent ages degreasing the box, the engine bay and the back of the engine.
Into my pile of old Magna/380 clutches and flywheels.
I eventually concluded that the flywheels are all the same (3.0 vs 3.5 vs 3.8) and the Magna pressure plates are the same despite the difference in plate diameter.
I also concluded that only one of my used clutches is still serviceable…
I started pricing a new clutch and quickly found that the nearest Repco in Canberra had one in stock and it was also a good price.
It was still only 11:20am at this point, so I went and bought it.
It all went back together fine, although drilling out the broken bolt was a turd of a job. The helicoil went in fine, so that was good.
Yeah, it was a solid day’s work but I took it for a drive before dinner. Initial thoughts are that it is more pleasant to be in than the blue sedan.
The gearing suits the 3.0 engine better than the 3.5 - the 3.0 has less torque and is happier to rev, so where the gearing is low for the 3.5 and it constantly feels like it is a dog pulling on the leash.
The front struts rattle, so they will be replaced soon.
Good old Towgna
7 days later
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Took it to the coast to visit mum/attend a high school reunion. Went great, used a bit less than 8.5l/100km.
It doesn’t rev any less than the blue sedan, but the 3.0 with the standard exhaust doesn’t feel like it would hugely benefit from another gear.
Put a little bit of time into cleaning up the replacement LHR door that came with it. It has been resprayed and isn’t quite the right colour, but it did polish up well.
I am now being indecisive about whether the damaged original door or the NQR replacement will annoy me more…
Because I got sick of sanding and polishing the paint on the Mirage, I decided to spend some time file-finishing and sanding one of the wheels I bought for the red wagon. 
Of course, I began with the most rashed one, so it looks like I did bugger all… 
These are 17x8 ET40 (or 41?) which should tuck them into the guards just that bit more nicely than the other sets of 17x8s that I own.
I bought some metallic grey paint that is almost exactly the colour I want, but I didn’t realise that it is hammer-tone until I got it home… so the search goes on.
Wheel progress.
Turns out that stock BMW centre caps fit, so that’s nice.
Colour onto the wheels. 
Clear coat. I doubt that the single pack clear will hold up well, but it is worth a try. 
Looking pretty good… just need to do it all three more times.
What's the PCD and bore size of these Magna wheels?
5x114.3. Standard centre bore is 67.1mm, not sure about these ones.
4 days later
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Not really sure where today went… seemed like a lot of work for minimal output, but whatever.
Finished sanding the second of the 17” wheels.
Did have a moment of inspiration where I realised that the flapper wheel in the hand drill was a quick and effective way to sand out the recesses for the wheel nuts.
Untouched, half done, finished…
And then there were two finished:
If you look closely, you can see that I did a bit of messing around with centre caps. Specifically, I cut out some circles of black vinyl.
I have ordered some small triple diamond stickers that (hopefully) will look ok on the black. If they don’t, then it’s easy to undo.
It did occur to me that maybe some Advan or Ralliart stickers might have been a better choice, but no big deal.
To avoid rubbing back another bloody wheel, I cleaned up and painted the grille that originally came on Stinky.
It came up well.
The win on the grille motivated me to sand back the third of the 17” wheels.
Could i leave two of my cars with you for a while!!???? It would be very satisfying to make them nice!!
And then there were three…
But getting to four was a painful slog…
I had assumed that the 4th wheel was going to be the easiest because someone had already had a go at painting it with some crappy paint.
Turns out that it was decent paint very poorly applied, so it was awful to sand off.
So I bought aome paint stripper and reminded myself why I hate paint stripper so much. 
Apart from the mess, it took four goes to remove enough paint to be ready to sand back.
And then I still had to sand it back!
Got there in the end. 
Side quest was to work out the replacement rear door. I was worried about the colour match, so I polished the front door and rear quarter so I was comparing apples with apples.
And I was right to worry - it’s terrible. 
If you look closely, the top section of the replacement door is the correct red (more orange visible) but the majority of it is a more purple shade of red. 
So that idea has been put on hold. The way forward is to respray the new door in the correct red and then fit it. The colour is close enough that any chips won’t be super obvious, the jambs are the right shade of red, so it still makes sense to use this door rather than one of my blue or green spares.
How's the roof paint on the blue Magna holding up?
The bonnet of my V70, and various parts of my red Toyota need doing due to failed clear, I'll probably take a similar approach to yours
Finally got the wheels on the car.… tyres are RE003s that came as pair on the other two sets of 17” Magna wheels.
Needs to be lower, but that can wait.
Dragged the crappy aftermarket E36 fire extinguisher bracket out of the cupboard, bent it slightly and made it into a Magna extinguisher bracket.
Confused myself with clutches today.
First, non-confusing part is that I confirmed that a second generation RX7 (FC, aka Series4 & 5) turbo clutch plate fits a Magna box/clutch.
So the gamble of buying a nearly new RX7 button plate paid off - it was less than 2/3rds of the cost of a new plate for a Magna.
Then… despite the 3.0 Magnas having 225mm clutches, the 3.0 pressure plate is actually designed for a 240mm driven plate. 
And despite the 3.5 clutch being described as 240mm, the spare 3.5 plate I had is 230mm?!
Then onto my pile of old clutches…
Long story short, is that if I can find a source of the pucks and rivets, I’m feeling confident that I can make my own button plates.
The star bit in the lower middle is the splined section from the worn out 230mm plate in the earlier photo. This can be riveted/bolted to a disc like the plate in the bottom left.
I’ve found a Chinese seller of the parts, but I assume they will want to sell me 10,000 at a time.
And after all that, Google spat up a good spec Lancer Evolution button clutch for about the same I paid for the standard clutch that went into the red wagon…
All of the brain melting wasn’t worthless, because I can still use the knowledge to make something for the blue 2.4 Mirage.
2 months later
Overdue update.
Blue car sold back to the previous owner, but he decided that he was making a poor life choice and brought it back to me a couple of hours later… 
Red wagon and blue Magna both making me happy as my alternative daily drivers, although I need to get serious about tidying up the blue one and selling it.
The wagon goes quite well, but Blagna feels super fast when I get back into it after a couple of days of driving the wagon.
Bigger news is that I bought two Veradas and a Magna from one of my vintage dirt bike mates.
This is the first one I’ve picked up.
It’s an AWD Verada that is pretty decent overall.
The other Verada is also an AWD but has a decent exhaust, some lowered suspension and a 3.8 engine swap. And a few other niceties like a strut brace and aftermarket head unit.
The Magna has been my mate’s car for years. Its a dual fuel FWD auto with a blown head gasket.
There’s also a boot load of new parts and oils which is a bonus.
Plans are like usual: Ummm?!
Currently thinking that the Magna will be fixed and sold, the gold Verada will be reshelled in the Whagon, and the white Verada will be used for khanacross.
Alternative idea is to make the white Verada look like an older, less ugly model using Candi’s panels and having a laugh with it.
The idea of a 3.8 AWD wagon is very appealing, but it is NOT an easy or straightforward conversion.
The sedans are all IRS, but the wagons have a live axle. I’m sort of hoping that I can find a live axle diff with the right ratio and go down that path.
But this train of thought might be highly optimistic.
11 days later
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Tidying up the white Verada… 
… was interrupted by the arrival of this: 
It’s a KJ Verada with a dead automatic and no rego. The previous owner of the blue Magna found it but had nowhere to pull it apart, so we went halvies … and it ended up at my place.
Hopefully it we’ll get everything we need off it tomorrow, and it will end up at the scrap yard on Thursday.
The white Verada looks like it will be a reasonable car once it is sorted.
Still blathering on what to do with it, but if I can get it running properly, it should be worth a reasonable amount and worth selling.
a month later
I enjoyed this Maga post.
I recently had a 99 EI Verada and it was a fantastic car. It was originally the seller's in-laws that dumped it one day and then thn he overhauled it.
Anywho, I sold it to a nice family that seemed like they were going to love it (was nice to see it a couple of weeks ago still clean).
4 months later
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I haven’t been doing nothing Magna related for the last few months… but I haven’t done a lot either.
Brief update is:
Black Magna (Batman) was stripped and the remains scrapped;
White AWD Verada is sold;
White LPG FWD Magna is sold.
Still have the red wagon (currently on loan to a mate), green wagon (still dead auto), white wagon (untouched since last mentioned in this thread), Narry, Stinky, Candi, and the gold AWD Verada.
I also have another mate’s shabby, badly neglected black Xi Verada in the backyard. He’s just bought it because he’s in love with all the luxury crud and is going to try to resurrect it.
My main Magna project is to rebuild the engine from the grey Verada wreck to put into Stinky.
I began stripping it down today in anticipation of taking it in for a rebore during the week.
I’ve taken a gamble on buying pistons and bearing without knowing what sizes are in there/how much wear there is…
My logic is that if I have guessed wrong, I will probably have another block/crank that the parts will suit.
Parts total cost was about $1200, which I thought was pretty reasonable. Pistons are on the cheaper end of the spectrum, but appear to be not-junk.
I have balanced the pistons. No photos because I forgot to take them.
The rods will come out of the engine soon and I will balance them too.
This is all in anticipation of getting Stinky registered with a manual gearbox and then turning it into a rally car.
4 months later
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This was the AWD Verada yesterday at Pheasant Wood Circuit, after 5 laps… wasn’t hot on the gauge, and the plastic didn’t look old… but here we are.
Managed a 67.2 second lap before the radiator exploded, with a lot more to come. I am confident that I can get a 64.x second lap from it, and a 63 wouldn’t be out of the question.
Although the leather seats weren’t good - I had to put in a lot of effort to hold myself in the seat…
The 67.2 was good enough to keep me in 12th place for most of the day but a few people (including The Boy) improved late in the day and pushed me back to 16th(?) outright from 31 entries.
I was totally unsure what place this car has in my life, now I am even less sure. I could see an argument for it being a fantastic shit-stir track car if the automatic was more co-operative.
It would be an excellent road car for lots of reasons, but I don’t think any of those reasons apply to me… 
It’s also worth a lot more in parts than it is as a car.
Procrastination will continue!