Lancer is the answer! What was the question?

carnut222

WTF was the deal with the spare wheels that had been hacked in the centre?

Nice job on the clean-up so far.

Lancer...reminds me of my partner's sister-in-law who had a black Lancer when they lived in Perth. For several days, they noticed some strange smell in the car that kept getting worse. [Edit: it was summertime.] They thought maybe it was trapped roadkill or some such thing, searched everywhere, plus power-washed under the car. Then they were sitting around talking and her husband says "what are we having for dinner tonight"...she says there's a fresh chicken in the fridge, we'll roast that. He looks in fridge and no chicken to be found, and he says "it's not here". She immediately jumps up and races out to the car, to find said chicken decomposing in its bag in one of the bootleg pockets in the boot. Guess it had come out of the bag and slipped down there somewhere and was hiding. Yuck! Hilariously she's a vegetarian now. Not sure whether she was at the time of the incident and whether the chicken was just for hubby or not, but I'm sure that would put you off chicken for a while.

They’re from something else, and must have had a too-small centre bore … and this is someone’s inelegant way to make them fit a Lancer.

Was cold this morning, so spent time in the workshop rather than outside on the car.

First up was double-drilling the CH Lancer brake rotors to suit the 4x100 CE Lancer hubs.

The RVR calipers turned up too.

Barely visible behind the brake is the two aluminium discs that were holesawed out to become strut tops.

Here’s a better photo of the strut tops to be.

.…. and finished!

Once it had warmed up a bit, I cut the dust shields off. This needs to happen, because the 276mm rotors rub on them.

Dummy fit of everything. I have been trying to keep the car mobile so I can move it to get the trailer out of the backyard.

I knew they’d clear, but it was still a relief to see daylight between the wheel and the caliper!

Swapped the driver’s side guard and door with the prettier parts from Ratty.

Passenger’s side guard was swapped with the one I bought with the bootlid etc.

Took the opportunity to strip the wiring out of the doors. Foil tape to cover the holes.

This guard has had a hard life… someone had totally misunderstood how the bumper is held onto the car and drilled a bunch of holes for cable ties…

Some adhesive vinyl will make this problem go away.

I always get the poops with how the bonnets don’t open far enough on these cars. I forgot to take a “before” photo, but here’s the spare pair of hinges with the stoppers cut off.

I will make a longer bonnet stay when I find the length of 6mm aluminium rod that I have been keeping for this exact purpose (but now can’t find…).

Random observation: the car was a ling way clear of the door until I jacked it up.

Motor and box are almost ready to be removed from the blue coupe, and then fitted to the green/aqua Mirage (no photos because my phone objected to the cold and went flat).

The $25 “plastic welder” arrived today. It actually works pretty much as advertised!

Test run on the rear bumper from Ratty.

I kind of messed this up, in that the two sides of the crack didn’t want to come back into place. I should have heated it to get it back into shape.

Lesson learned, I tried on Bloop’s front bumper.

Definitely seems like a serviceable repair, so I am happy with it.

Discovered this genius effort on the rear muffler… I mean, life really doesn’t have to be this difficult.

Adventures in clear coat today, simply because the weather was good!

I started on the roof because the clear was pretty much entirely gone. The base coat was thin, and I rubbed through it in a few spits:

The paint was always thin in the gutters.

A couple of coats of blue. First coat was a $5 tin of very close, being cleared from Supercheap. Second coat was the correct Mitsubishi blue that cost $19.

Even in cool, sunny weather, it is difficult to get an even coat from an aerosol tin.

Photo is flattering.

After sanding back the orange peel of the blue, I managed to add some orange peel clear…

Again, the photo is flattering.

And then I began sanding out the orange peel of the clear but it was getting dark I didn’t want to mess it up because I couldn’t see properly.

I am happy to persevere with the aerosol blue, but I went and bought a litre of clear to use in the proper spray gun.

$43 of blue, $16 of aerosol clear.

$931 (will add the cost of the other clear when I use it).

Orange peel sanded out.

Hopefully the weather will be good enough to polish it up tomorrow.

Messed around scraping the daggy clear off the LH door and rear quarter until the light ran out. I think quarter won’t need more paint, just clear.

Less sure about the door.

Pretty sure that I will go with a variation of Evo6.5 stripes to hide some of the dodgier paint.

We had sun today!

…which allowed me to polish the Lancer’s roof.

… and bootlid.

The roof has some weird lighter coloured spots that look a bit like fingerprints (they aren’t!), so I am not sure what is going on there.

There’s also some smaller spots that look like humidity blisters (pretty sire they’re not) but only in the centre of the roof.

It does look a lot better than it did, so I am not going to stress over it.

Dragged the good 1.8 litre out of the shed where it’s been sitting for 4(?) years.

Gave it a hose down and degrease - it doesn’t appear to be leaking anywhere, which is nice.

Fitted the new timing kit and water pump. The parts I took off were almost new… obviously this had been done very shortly before the maroon sedan was crashed.

I still went ahead and fitted the new bits just so I didn’t have to think about it again.

This is a stupidly easy job when the engine is out of the car. The only difficult part was getting the bolt for the front pulley out - heat from the propane torch and a fully charged battery in the rattle gun got it done.

I have two flywheels to suit. They look identical, but one is 200g lighter than the other. I will wire-brush the rust off it tomorrow and bolt it onto the engine.

Hopefully will get the motor and box into the car tomorrow.

Also cleaned up the flywheel. The surface was damn near perfect under the surface rust.

Painted it yellow, because race car. And bolted it all together including the gearbox.

Went to the indoor gokarts this morning, so not a productive day on the car.

Started on the “interpretation” of the TME Evo stripes.

Not happy with the front part, will re-do it.

Cut out the door number plates.

Worthwhile progress today.

Got the motor and box in this morning.

Got about half the stuff reconnected/refitted.

Some sticker progress, but the top of the yellow needs to be finished.

The real purpose of this photo is to show how far the bonnet opens with the standard bonnet hinges and stay.

Then with the modified hinges and new stay.

It even clips in nicely.

A few hiccups along the way - things like the hose from the PS reservoir is different between the 1.5 and 1.8. I discovered this when the hose was hard up against the pulley on the pump.

The 1.8 hose was on the green Mirage, so of course I made a mess of ATF swapping them.

Similarly, the 1.5 alternator has a 2-pin plug, where the 1.8 has a three pin plug, so that part of the loom had to be swapped over.

The driver’s side strut top needed a piece cut out to clear the captive nuts for the bonnet stay.

Put the headlights in. Discovered that the radiator support was slightly bent down on the passenger side, but nothing a mallet couldn’t deal with.