@Mister Clean glad you enjoyed the read. If you have any questions I'll answer as best I can, I've had my hands on almost every part of the car and I'm guessing by reading you can see I don't mind sharing what I've learned or helping!

I'll answer anything even if it's a silly question, because there are no silly questions!

 

Thanks man, appreciate it! I especially loved the part where you mentioned your Dad taught you how to work on cars, same here. Your thread reminded me to give him a ring and show him your thread, we both love looking over restorations like this. I'll be sure to post with any questions, thanks again for the inspiration!

 

That's awesome man. Yea my first experience was rebuilding the head on my Dad's 1986 Integra. Had the old VHS video recorder out, and the bench laid out with bagged parts labeled. I got to read all the torque specs and pick the pieces following the shop manual to hand to him as "what's next". I was about 11(he taught me to build my first PC at 9)

Over the course of those young years to 16-17 it turned into I got to do all the maintenance andoand washing the family cars, where my brother got the grass cutting lawn chores.

My mom had one of the first 1984 CRX imported into the states, and that became my first car, and I had worked on it since I was younger. It was really great.

Sounds like you got to have the same thing with your pops. That's awesome man.

Thanks again for the compliments.

 

Welp, was drinking and got bored so. Figured this has been upstairs for a year and I was working on pulling wires in the center console anyway so..


Bare Plastic and foam

Foam adhered and trimmed

Liner sprayed

Liner on

Trimming and adhering the edges

Liner done

Last layer, marked to line up

Wrapped and trimmmed

Old vs new

Thickness difference - oh yeah my elbow



PS Incase anyone is curious. The liner layer was to form the foam so that the leather liner could be applied straight without pulling and deforming the perforation lines from straight.

 

Well done. Very nice.

 

I went to pull the amp power wire today through the firewall. And ended up on a completely different project. -_-







I pulled the battery and went "oh God" and proceed to pull alot more out and start claying the bay.. because you know I like torture.








Still got a few more corners on the driver side to hit but maybe now I can pull wires and be satisfied it's not so damn dirty. Phew. My arm hurts. Lol.

 

I want to do this to my car. Where do you find the energy? Nice job.

 

Some where in the "I'm not putting this back together like this feeling" is the energy. Sometimes I have to stare at it in disbelief for a bit before it kicks in.

 

My car has yet to reach 25K miles. Still, the car is about 18 years old. I doubt the bay has ever been cleaned. It looks ok, but honestly not great. I want to pull the battery, pull the air box, cover up any sensitive elec. stuff and have at it some afternoon. It really makes a difference. I was thinking a hose, a weak de-greaser in a spray bottle, and some soft brushes would probably do the trick. I should have done it the other day when I had the heat shield out while doing a VA. That also opens things up a bit. Anyway, your bay is gorgeous. No one would believe it if you told them how many miles your car has on the clock. It really looks great.

Did you use clay? I have not used clay much. How does that help the job along?

 

I used clay, and a watered down Super Clean(Degreaser) as the clay lube lol. Degreaser wasn't doing it on it's own. And clay wasn't doing it on it's own either. I've previously degreased with a brush and power washer, but it never really pulled this stuff up.

I went through a whole clay bar, and several rags. So on the scale of how harsh was this? Pretty Harsh. But it's the engine bay and stuff gets baked in. I can't fit a polisher in there, and pads and rags, would get contaminated too quickly. So Clay was used to keep the cleaning surface 'clean' by continuing to keep folding clay. And normal clay lube doesn't have much emulsion properties to lift and suspend, where degreaser does.

I'd never use degreaser with clay on the outside of the car. But for this 200k+ of baked on gunk in the bay, it worked really well. As I needed some type of abrasive, a cutting compound would have left me needing to polish, and would have been extremely wasteful of the compound.

This combo fit the scenario.

I used a wet shopvac too, as I did this in the garage, more towards the side of a "rinseless" wash, where i'd soak and adgitate, and suck out all the big dirt/grease blobs before using media(rag/clay) to continue