GMballistic Posted May 4, 2014 Share Posted May 4, 2014 Been reading this for the last hour or so. Excellent pictures throughout and you've obviously put a lot of hard work into this so far. Great results at the Pod too. 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
BulletMagnet Posted May 4, 2014 Share Posted May 4, 2014 For those that don't know already, djtimo has a channel on YouTube, TCMedia, with some lovely automotive videos....and skiing 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
gareth29 Posted May 4, 2014 Share Posted May 4, 2014 thanks for this - really interesting and i hope you've sorted your oil leak out (mine was a right pain) Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
djtimo Posted May 24, 2014 Author Share Posted May 24, 2014 Been mad busy today but managed to get time to set the rear end up a little better for dragging (I hope! LOL)... Good old english weather (PISSING DOWN) but oh well! Whipped the car up on the Diff jacking point and pulled both rear wheels off. This is what my KW's looked like! Nice and dirty.... On the jack. Dirty shocks. Even though I was very tight for time I could not stop myself from spraying a little GUNK cleaner on them and gave them a quick wipe! ha. This is how you set the low speed compression on the KW V3's. There were set 2 1/4 turns from full hard, I have now set these at 6 1/4 turns from full hard (about 50%). Swapped out the old steel wheel nuts to my new open ended spline drives too! Forgot to get a pic of the new nuts fitted though Right guys have to pack my overnight bag for tomorrow! See you guys soon!! (or tonight Paul/Rich)! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
djtimo Posted May 24, 2014 Author Share Posted May 24, 2014 The suspension tweaking worked! LOL... Beat my previous 1/4 mile record today! Best run was 12.63 @ 119.60mph! Made up... Few pic's of the "falcon" on the strip! LOL.. And my time slips from today.... 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
djtimo Posted May 24, 2014 Author Share Posted May 24, 2014 Made a start today! Does not look like much but my god was this a pain in the a** to remove! LOL.... Started by using my spot weld remover drill bit and worked along the rear of the top speaker box. Nearly out! LOL... Its out! Also got on with removing the rear brace on the driver side. All in all a good 3 hours of drilling cutting and shouting and im about 1/3 the way there! LOL.... Spot welds come out easy now ive had a few hundred to practice on! Normal tack welds how ever are a major pain in the a** to remove! More work tomorow if its dry outside and my back feels better haha... Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
djtimo Posted May 24, 2014 Author Share Posted May 24, 2014 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! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
djtimo Posted May 24, 2014 Author Share Posted May 24, 2014 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. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
djtimo Posted May 24, 2014 Author Share Posted May 24, 2014 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.. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
djtimo Posted May 24, 2014 Author Share Posted May 24, 2014 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! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
djtimo Posted May 24, 2014 Author Share Posted May 24, 2014 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! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
djtimo Posted May 24, 2014 Author Share Posted May 24, 2014 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! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
djtimo Posted May 24, 2014 Author Share Posted May 24, 2014 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! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
djtimo Posted May 24, 2014 Author Share Posted May 24, 2014 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! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
djtimo Posted May 24, 2014 Author Share Posted May 24, 2014 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! 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
djtimo Posted May 24, 2014 Author Share Posted May 24, 2014 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! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
djtimo Posted May 24, 2014 Author Share Posted May 24, 2014 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! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
GMballistic Posted May 24, 2014 Share Posted May 24, 2014 Another fantastically interesting read djtimo. That's sh*t about the quote for the cage though ~ tbh I hate things like that so much. I mean what if you couldn't have afforded to pay it? If they f**k up and the job takes them twice as long as they thought it would then that's their problem, not yours and they should make a loss. I'd rather be quoted higher for a job I want doing and then have to pay less rather than the other way around. Glad it's sorted though and the cage does look very well made. Hopefully you'll never need to find out just how well made though. 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Dicky Posted May 24, 2014 Share Posted May 24, 2014 And here's me thinking that fitting a new K&N filter and plenum spacer gets me membership of the forums elite performance moders. I'm now going out to kick my car and may never lift my head again. RESPECT !!!! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
KrisRatcliffe Posted May 24, 2014 Share Posted May 24, 2014 There was me thinking you bought her with the TT engine already fitted due to some false info from the missus! Some awesome work Tim fair play will have to pop round soon to have a look. Sent from my iPad using Tapatalk 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
NeilMH Posted May 24, 2014 Share Posted May 24, 2014 Very interesting stuff Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
djtimo Posted May 24, 2014 Author Share Posted May 24, 2014 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 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Almeida1234 Posted May 24, 2014 Share Posted May 24, 2014 Epic Just owsome Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
djtimo Posted May 25, 2014 Author Share Posted May 25, 2014 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. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
djtimo Posted May 25, 2014 Author Share Posted May 25, 2014 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! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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