MX-3.com

It looks better in the pics than it does in person. But I have worked to get her decent. The interior is sweet.. there are still a few bugs under the hood and the body work will be coming shortly. But she is a driver again and she definitely likes a heavy foot.. I have a feeling I am not going to be getting very good gas mileage with her.. but I think that will be exponentially evident by the size of the smile on my face at any given moment behind the wheel

Tunes67

Ok here are a couple of pics of the modified Power distribution block. I still have a couple of other pics I am waiting on from my friend. So I will edit this post with a before pic to show what the block of copper looked like before we started this project.. kinda cool to do this kind of machine work.. wasnt fast though.. took us 2 hours to make this little thing. Works great though







Tunes67

Oh yeah! It's looking really good now! Grats on your ride!

Just a footnote here.. at first attempt.. she failed to pass emissions testing. But only cause the IAC decided that at the exact moment of Idle testing.. that it was going to stick the idle speed at 1600 RPMs. So.. $32 worth of gaskets and seals later and bit of cleaning up.. she idles perfect now. Even though she failed to pass the idle portion of the test.. she still passed the cruise portion of the test with flying colors. When I took off the throttle body, I found some small drops of coolant in the front of the intake plenum.. right on that divider that seperates the upper & lower portions of the intake. I think the IAC seal was allowing coolant past in a couple of places so that coolant was getting sucked into the throttle body and probably getting a bit of coolant vapor into the combustion chambers. Probably a good thing it failed emissions and I had to do this clean up.. if that seal had failed altogether.. the results would have looked like I had blown a head gasket with the amount of white smoke (steam) that would have come out the exhaust. Worst case.. if it could flow enough coolant (I doubt this seriously though).. might even hydrolock a cylinder. Unlikely though.. but I am not sure how much water/coolant it would take to actually cause damage in the cylinder.

Also of note.. gonna have to get the exhaust done sooner than originally planned. The joint pipe I had made to connect the front and rear exhaust piping together decided to let loose last night at a rather.. inopportune moment So I'll need to get that taken care of this week I think. I'll post up pics of the old exhaust and new exhaust sometime soon

Tunes67

Looks awesome. Very clean.

Just a quick note.. I picked up a complete sunroof setup from mattster (Thanks again man) So that will be getting replaced here in the spring when I do my paint job. Got her to pass emissions and got the exaust system repaired as well. Have put about 500 miles on her now without any issues.. I still need to get the alignment done and get the brake system flushed. Hope to see those minor projects done before the end of January. I am getting a new digital camera for christmas.. so I will do a bunch of new photos and update this log in another week or so. Cheers and I hope a Merry Christmas to all

Tunes67

Are you going to paint your gauge pod, or keep it grey?

Just gonna leave it grey.. it matches the rest of the upper interior decently. I have similar to stock colored interior.. just with nicer materials. At the time I bought the gauge pod, I didnt plan to redo the interior.. that sorta came about later. Otherwise I would have done all the upper trim in black and I would have ordered the gauge pod in black as well. It looks ok And to be blunt.. taking the gauge pod out and disconnecting all the gauges just to paint it? Not gonna happen LOL

Tunes67

Tunes, you are truly an artist. Just read your whole worklog...Man I miss my mx3

Great job, Tunes! I am going to get an Odyssey battery and relocate it!
Here is something I'm researching for paint: http://www.rickwrench.com/" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false; Go to 1966 Corvair Corsa 140/4, and click on: $50 paint job
I've seen alot of great results. I'm going to try it on mine, and do a writeup. It could save us several hundred bucks!

Nice to see the car up and running! It looks very good Tunes!

Well its been a while since I have updated this log.. so I think I will make a small list here of the things I have gotten done on my GS recently and then follow up with some new pics later this week or so.

Finished projects:

I got the SS Brake Lines installed and the brake system flushed completely with DOT 4 brake fluid. Brake pedal and clutch pedal are MUCH more responsive.
Swapped the rear bumper off the parts car and got in installed on my car. While the color isnt a perfect match, its in way better shape than my old bumper. Thanks for the help on that project Josh. My friend Mike and I repainted and installed my wraparound spoiler. We used the Duplicolor paint system in his garage and we used the "Performance Red" color and 3 coats of clear. The color match is remarkably good.. better than the color of the new rear bumper by far. Got the rear mudflaps installed finally. These really add a good stance to the car. I decided to replace the pioneer DVD player with a Kenwood system. The pioneer system really isnt all that user friendly. And I have (at least for the time being) decided to ditch the carputer idea. Too many projects and that one really is very low on the totem pole of priorities. We cut and buffed the paint out and while the color came back amazingly well.. its incredible how many dings and minor dents I didnt notice on the car before. There have to be 50+ dings in various places on this car.. the body work will be time consuming. I also removed all the pin striping from around the car.. looks much cleaner now.

I did connect the clutch pedal switch for the cruise control, but as of yet the cruise control still isnt functional. I am gathering spare parts from the parts car in an effort to test and compare to see if I have any defective equipment. I had never used the cruise control in this car prior to the beginning of this project. So I dont know if it was having problems before I started or if I just havent managed to track down and finish all the wiring changes that the conversion from ATX to MTX require. This is the one thing I still havent managed to get functional and yeah.. it bugs me

Josh and I are going to be repairing the front lip soon.. hope to have that back on the car in a few weeks. Eventually I will get the mini euro side skirts from Mark (Mooneggs) and that will complete my "Body Kit". Then she will need body work and paint probably next spring or summer.

I have been driving my GS pretty much daily since March and have had no mechanical issues with the car. She seems solid and with the exception of a sloppy 3rd gear synchro, she has been trouble free with only typical maintenance like oil changes & such.

Projects left to do (before winter hopefully):

Swap in the new sunroof assembly. Timing and a bit of bad luck have prevented me from having the time to get this done.. hopefully this week will see this finally complete. Front lip. I need to remove the gauge cluster and replace some of the lights. And remove that damn seat belt light.. it bugs me. LOL Gonna swap in my spare cruise control switch while I have it apart and see if the CC will engage afterwards. Probably wont, I think I am missing something in the wiring, but its easy to do while the cluster is out. It looks like I may have hooked up one of the heater control sliders wrong when I had the dash apart so I will need to fix that soon... cant do winter without a defroster in these cars. And I should repair the 4 broken filaments on the rear window defroster as well.

Well its getting late and my brain is turning to mush.. I will post up pics in a few days.

Tunes67

Buddy! Good to see you back, its been almost a year haha. Welcome back!

welcome back man!!!

I want to get new seats or have them recovered....Eric yours look great.

I would like to keep the middle fabric and just get everything around it new...I don't know whether that will be possible.....Car looks awesome...what colour red is that...the original one????

DEB