djtimo

Bored yesterday afternoon so washed the zed and had a play with the camera too

The beats came out to have a little more work done on him today Not really that exiting but I have been meaning to refit the head liner for ages but its a bit of a pig as it wont fit around the cage. The back section of the liner fouls on the main hoop Any way on to the pics! Finally after some "trimming" its in! LOL. Nice to have it back as the car does not sound as hollow as before "trimmed" bits LOL.. Next job is a want to retrim the liner with a black/grey alcantara as its a little creased now from the pulling and bashing about fitting round the cage. Looks ok though now so that can wait for a little while.

Quick cheeky video from today on the way to the gym God I LOVE THIS CAR! LOL... Such a fun car to mess about in, Not the fastest thing when every time it comes on boost the wheels light up but its just so fun! hahaha...

Well I know there has not been much progress on the zed as of late as the house im renovating is taking up a lot of time (and money!). Im not sure if you lot knew but I picked up a set of takata harnesses from bay that were sold as genuine items. I used them when the car went down to the brit car for the national and the driver side harness clasp failed!!! NOT VERY SAFE!! I emailed the seller asking for a refund and he tried to tell me im using them wrong and then eventually after 10 or so emails just said "sod off your not getting a refund" I said I would take this up with paypal and file a case against him and his response was "Go on then try it, YOU WILL LOSE!" After a lot of messing about with pay pal systems and many emails back and forth I won the case and had a full refund! I have been after a set of schroth racing harnesses for a while but no where had the saloon length in stock I phoned demon tweaks today and they had a set in so I wiped up there and picked them up! Sorry for the crap phone pic's, You can just see how I had the harnesses attached down in the chassis with eye bolts for the time being, These are the wrong angle and not really the safe way to fit them. The new harness came with eye bolt clips and you are also able to remove this to fit to a roll cage. Harness fitted to the cage. Shoulder straps crossed over to, as schroth recommend. Much better angle too Now I NEED to get my bucket seats sorted and a 2nd harness for the pax seat! LOL..

Well I tried charging up the battery again but Its dead and wont hold charge now. After having a little look on the net for batteries I think a racing battery would end up giving me more problems than its worth so I went for a new "normal" car battery. Halfords wanted £100 for a crapy halfords own brand but I rang up a local motorfactors LVW and they had a nice bosch S4 silver one in stock for £71 inc VAT! Score! So I picked this little bad boy up. And then took the beast out for a spin! LOL...115 miles round som eof the best roads in the UK! EVO triangle and around lake brenig! Very cold and wet really but I could not help myself as Ive not driven him in 4 weeks! Took to GoPro with me too..... And after I got home, it was clean before! LOL.. In need of a wash I think! ha.

Well I popped out today and went to halfrauds to pick up a trickle charger, I wanted the cTec one Greg had posted up but when I got to halfords they said that it was internet only and would take a week to come! LOL. I spotted a halfords own version for £25 and going off the packet it charges dead batteries and then automatically switches to maintain mode when fully charged. If its poo then Ill still pick up a decent Ctec one. Its got some nice little features one of which is a permeant terminal connector which I have wire in this afternoon. I've got a few pic's while installing it. You can see it a little better in this one, Its a fused +ve wire and -ve connection off each terminal that goes down to a sealed connector so when I want to charge it I can just "plug her in" Instead of messing with crocodile clips. I think this is a little safer too as I would no want clips to pop off and spark while the cars connected and cause a fire! The little connector, one side will live in the cars battery box and one in the garage to plug into the mains. (yes I know I need to polish the engine! LOL) And a little 'Bay shot before I left him charging up over night! Sorry Its dark.

Spent a little time cleaning the zed up. QUick wash off and then a good going over with meg's car soap. Dried off and back in the garage! The zeds had a coat of dodo juice wax and is tucked up warm and dry now as the weather is getting bad again! Zed in his house! Few pic's during the waxing! LOL.. Carbon weave on the varis bonnet really pop's after a good wax coating goes on! Until next time! LOL...

Well Time for another little update! Just a few more picks of the car going back together! Rear mount point for the lap belts. (these are just being used untill I get my new seats) Fitted. I also removed the rear boot vents and cleaned them up. Still very dusty even though I had sheeted the inside out. All hoovered out again! nice and clean! The cage work is 95% complete. I just need to finish the very rear boot floor and rear bulk head area. the next job is getting the head line back in. the head liner will require mod's to get it to fit as the cage main hoop sits very close to the roof skin and the head liner will not fit through the gap. Im still not sure how im going to do this but Ill get it done some how Im going to make a rear boot mat from thick carpet thats a good sound deadener that can be thrown in and out quickly for long drives as the cars quite loud inside now! These are the last pic's I have of the cage. Car packed up ready for **REMOVED** national!

Started finishing the last bits of colour this morning and just put the fist part of the clear coat on now. While the clear coat is drying out i've made some small brackets for the seat lap belt to screw to. Eye bolt for the lap belt. with nylock nut. 3mm stainless steel plates. Centre punched and drilled from 3mm up to 11mm for eyebolt and 10mm for the bolt to the chassis. This took me 30min to drill these little bloody things! SS is very hard to drill! Cleaned up with a file. Yes I know there ruff! LOL.. Back to work!

Before pain I wiped the inside out again and then went on to wiping it out all over with panel wipe. Then a final hoover! First shot of 961 etch primer going on! Getting there! Now was a bad time to realise that I had WAY under estimated the amount of paint needed! Quick trip down to the paint supplier and came back with a load more! also picked up a mask as I had been using the "hold your breath" technique! Not a good idea as the fumes were getting to me! ha.. Fist coat of primer done! After the primer had dried, panel wiped the whole inside out again. Then keyed the primer with a scotch pad. The very first coat of Nissan WV2 silver going on! Nice and dirty! Over spray goes everywhere! Starting to look less like a load of scaffolding! ha. Masked off the tops of the KW V3's too, just the thread and the adjusters. More coats going on! Ran out of paint! LOL....AGAIN! last bit left to do... Used paint cans! My spraying fingers killing me! Ready for me to start again in the morning! Well thats it for today again! Ill have it done tomorrow! Fingers crossed!

Still working on it! LOL>.. Teaser pic! ha. Back to work!

I went to our local paint supplier and picked up the stuff I need to paint the inside. 1L of panel wipe 2 X Etch primer 2 X nissan WV2 spray cans I also need to make a trip out tomorrow and pick up for emetal (belzona or such like) to fix a few small tears in the metal work that happened while pulling it to bits. Need to do a bit of work filing down some more spot welds too I got the car prepped last thing today as there was not much else I could do! LOL. Not fully done but every little bit done makes less work tomorrow! ha. How the zeds sleeping to night! In a big plastic bag! ha... Until tomorrow!

Well today's progress was to clean up the MASSIVE MESS that the car was in! LOL... the inside was in a state, covered in black metal bits and dust from grinding etc. Started with hoovering up all the lose dust and crap, wiped the whole car/cage out with rags to remove the heavy stuff. Then wiped the car out with degreaser fluid again. I still had some left over metal that need to come out. So I wipped these tabs off. Gone, maybe another 0.5kg gone! LOL.. both sides now removed. Spent about an hour wire brushing every weld, and making sure it was as clean as I could get it. Cleaned up the custom cage logo's and Cage Tags.. Spent ages, taking even more seam sealer off! Bloody had job and even thinners wont help! LOL...Just have to mash it off with a screw driver/scraper. Nissan dont expect you to see the messy sealer! LOL... Not really put on with any care. Cleaned up now. Still needs more work but not far off now. Moved on to removing the last bits of foam and glue off the front chassis rail behind the seats. Cleaned up. Quick test fit of the lap bet eye bolt fixing for my harness. The out side (door side) fits perfect into the OEM seat belt captive bolt but the trans tunnel side needs a bracket making as the OEM seat belt clip is fastened to the seat rail! I've cut some 3mm stainless plate up and just need to drill it and added a nylock nut to it.

Cheers guys, Its been a labour of love and keeps getting better so ill keep uploading the project on here In the process of my front end suspension over haul at the moment

Well made the trip down to custom cages to pick the zed up yesterday! Nice trip down on the train and an easy (ish, ill tell you in a sec) drive home! Well theres some good points and bad points about this bit, the good bits are, Im very happy with the cage and workman ship but customer service and a few other things a not to great. The bad bits are, I get a quote from them before I bring the car to them, plenty of emails back and forward to confirm price and what I wanted doing etc. I pick an email up from them the day before Im coming to collect the car saying my bill is double what they quoted me before I dropped the car of with them! I got straight on the phone and said there must be a mistake as this was not what I agreed and there come back was it took them over 10 hours to drop the rear suspension out and refit and they had to remove the strut bar! They said that I had removed the "easy bit" of metal and left them the hard parts and thats why the price has gone up! I had asked them to box in the area around the turret top to neaten that area up and they were asking for another 2 hours labour, I said ill leave it! Went down to pick the car up and spent 30mins "telling them its not right" and they said they could have charged me by the hour and the quote would have been 3 times my first quote so they doing me a favour! End of the story is I said that its not right for you to quote a price and then say when you come to pay that they had to do extra work and charge more! The first quote from them should be the total price and not just a guide. I bent over and paid as I need to get the car home to fix it up before the national Get down to collect my car and find they bloody areal has been snapped off!!!! They try to "fix" the snapped off areal but its in need of a new part so they have agreed to pay for the parts I need now. Well rant over and on to the pic's! Dimple plate chassis gussets. Ties the main hoop into the car to add stiffness. Foot plates nice and beefy going onto the chassis rails. Ill post up todays clean up efforts and prep later! Time for a shower and to go get some tea!

Just got these downloaded! Cage is just tacked in for the time being. Monday it will be fully welded, turret tops boxed in fully and the dimple plate stiffener added to the main hoop X brace and to tie in the main hoop to the chassis! You can see the extra bar I have added to brace between the turrets where the OEM bar is removed. I cant wait to get it finished and home so I can get it prepped and painted!

Well had a fun day so far! LOL... I set my alarm for 7:30am to wake me up in good time to get ready to leave for the 2.5 hour drive down to custom cages. Im in bed and can hear the door bell going off? Its the post man dropping off my bride seat rail! All good so far! But why is the post so early? haha...I check the time and Its half 8! My bloody alarm did not go off so Im really late! LOL.. 15 mins later Im on the road (after rushing like mad to pack a bag, find train tickets, find sat nav, get dressed etc etc....LOL). Made good progress down to custom cages but one thing I never realised was how LOUD the car is now! OMG with having no passenger seat and nothing in the car low rev's drone like hell now! I drove down with no stereo and with ear plugs in! ha... Custom cages was easy to find and were very nice when I got there. The website is not really very good so me being nosey asked for a tour round the work shop! They are working on some really smart project's at the moment. I wanted to take more pic's but the kev the guy showing me round said his boss does not really want pic's taking as the cages are there designs and does not want them being copied! I still got few though! The zed out side custom cage! The only project I was really allowed to take any photo's of! Its a new shape subaru impreza rally car. Fully tig'ed T45 cage was really well done! Smart little Custom Cage logo that gets welded to every cage they make! Custom cages make Jig's for other cage fabrication companies to use and also do full tube chassis and panel beating! The work shop looked very professional and they bread and butter work its building FIA/MSA rally car/race car cages! Thats nice to know as Its better to have a cage built by guys doing race cars than a shop doing show cars IMHO! Took a few pic's in the waiting area of cages they have built. Mini demo cage! A few metro 6R4's! A list of cars that had CC cages in them and there title wins! Im having a few pic's sent though as the cage is built so Ill up date as soon as they come through! Well exited to see it done!

Its been a long slog today getting the car done for tomorrow. I have removed the passenger seat belt. Belt gone! Just a few bolts that arnt needed anymore! LOL. Spent AGES removing all the excess seam sealer I could. I think the back looks ok now but ill spend another day finishing it off before paint! I've filed down the weld lumps that were left from the centre support too. Panel wiped the back end and hoovered it out again! Next job that needed doing was to remove the head liner. Bit of a mess job getting the head liner out as you need to under all the connections for the door lights and sun visor lights! Few "finished" pic's! Its taken me a long time to get the car to this stage! I would say about 15-20 hours over many days but at least its done now! Off to the cage fabricator tomorrow!

Well I picked up a bottle of chemicals from work and they work a treat! Started to clean up the last messy bits this afternoon. Also I love how much care goes in to the seam sealer! LOL... A hole that has a big mess of sealer on! And the other side that I have cleaned off! More work tomorrow!

Well another day of back breaking labour done! LOL.. Ill start off with this! LOL...The car takes another chunk out of me! This time elbow! Finished cleaning up the driver side wheel arch. Not fully ready for paint, still needs some more work and grinding etc. Removed the centre deadening. Removed another 3-4kg of this stuff in total today! Nearly got all the centre done. The next job was to remove the passenger seat to give access to the spot welds I needed to drill out. Finally got all the metal out I needed and moved onto the last small section of the centre support. First off I needed to removed this thing. Its covered with warnings about the airbag system going off if its dropped,bumped dismantled etc! I took this bit off like I was defusing a bloody bomb! ha... This small centre section took about 40mins of cutting and swearing to remove. I had to cut it out as I could not get to the spot welds to drill them out as the big brace I wanted to remove was bolted in from under the car in the transmission tunnel! Next job is to fully clean the inside out, I need to get the tar off and vacuum out any left over deadening and metal shavings. Then its off to custom cage's for some sexy welding work!

Little more work again. This is never ending! LOL. Well as Rick B was the first owner of the car, He said "Im surprised you've not found all the business cards I stuck in the trim to stop the rattles yet!" Well Rick I've found my first one! This afternoons efforts went in to the strut brace plates. Not bad getting these out. Im waiting for some new cutter bits to come in the post so I've moved onto removing more tar deadening. This brings back memories! LOL.. As best I can using hand tools. I need to buy some solvent to get the rest off. Random pic! And a quick shot of whats been cut out so far!

More work done this afternoon! I started by removing the driver seat. (I have wanted to know the exact weight of a UK leather GT seat for ages! I weighed it twice to be sure and for others the seat weighs 21.45KG! Bloody heavy! LOL) Seat removed. Found 50p too Next item that needed to come out was the drive shaft tunnel trim. Started to work on removing the last bit on the driver side of the sub enclosure. Quite a lot of work for a small bit of metal too. The access to get the drill in is bad. Next bit to go was what was left of the centre support. This needs a big bolted in brace removing to get the whole thing out, It needs the passenger seat out to get to the bolts too. So for the time being I've just cut the top off so Its out the way! You can see the big black tunnel brace that needs to be removed to get the centre support out. This brace will be going back in. Nearly there now! Just the passenger side to remove and some small plates on the strut brace. Next job will be clean this massive mess up!

Just a nice pic of the zed from a few years ago! This was taken early morning on the EVO triangle in winter! Great fun..

Let me start this off by saying "WEAR GLOVES AT ALL TIMES!!" LOL....I was wearing safety glasses but know gloves and managed to put a nice deep slash in my left hand while pulling a bit out and the weld broke, I caught my hand on a bloody sharp edge of a removed spot weld! So blood and sweat has defo gone into this part of the project!! ha.. Bodge job on stopping my hand from bleeding! LOL..Should be fun working a 12 night shift tonight with a saw hand! LOL.. Anyway back to the job. Started today by cutting the centre support out. This gave me some more room to sit in "back seat area" while working. After the centre support was out I moved on to the hard part of removing the last bits of the sub box that were welded to the inner car body skin. Removing these sections was by far the hardest part of the job so far. The access to these areas is crap and to get the drill in took alot of work with tin snips/gilbow's and hammering the metal out the way! Im glad thats done now! Also removed the last strut brace stiffener. Looks massive in there now! To get the last section out at the front I think the seats are gonna have to come out to get the drill in place to take the welds off. Should be quite easy to get to once the seats are out though. The bad bit is the sections over the wheel arches on the driver side two of the spot welds have pulled some small holes in the outer wheel well skin! Its not a huge problem as ill have the cage fabricators weld over the holes and grind it back flat. Just a little bit of a pain. Im also thinking Im going to make some custom rear "door" cards to cover the are where the sub box has been welded to the inner skin. Carbon fibre sheet or alu would tidy that up a lot IMHO. Well thats it for today again.

More deconstruction work this afternoon! LOL... Spent about an hour taking the false floor section out that I had left in yesterday. Coming out. Fully removed! Im gonna keep this section Incase I want to put the panels back in....... Well Im about half way there now, I have learnt how to get the spot welds out quicker now but I've burnt the tip off my spot weld cutter! LOL..Ive ordered a new one so that will be here soon. I need to remove the centre support and the front plate where the glove box and sub used to sit and then onto the hard part of removing the metal that joins parts of the car Im keeping!!! I think Ill take A little longer doing those spots than just wizzing these lot out! ha.. Untill next time hey!