UPDATE
Hey guys, I definitely need to update this build thread! I didn't do much work to the car for about a month and have just been enjoying it.. here's some pics!
My friends and I have really gotten into touge runs during the night
*Eurobeat intensifies*
On one of my drives I was coming out of a corner in the top of 4th and my right side windshield molding flew off!! It scratched my mirror and door unfortunately. I wasn't too upset though because the moldings will be getting replaced this year, I was just worried about the paint!!
Luckily Indepth Detailing was able to take care of it and fixed the scratches.
The car developed a leak from the transmission casing, thinking of having the trans rebuilt with carbon synchros while this is being fixed sometime this year.
Got some extra rubber pieces that my hood was missing.
I had Rodriguez Auto Body start on painting my rear bumper and grill. The rear bumper was damaged and the entire grill was white rather than the trim being bare plastic like it should be.
While that was being done I decided to make this muffler look half decent, here's what it looked like before.
I sanded it down, polished the tip and painted the canister a flat black just like the factory muffler!
I noticed the axleback leaking where it bolts up so I tightened it a bit more, is this normal?
With my JDM rear bumper cover getting repaired and resprayed, I had to find something out to mount my plate so I decided to remove the USDM rear bumper bar and install the JDM license plate bracket. They are only $33 IIRC from Honda!
I dropped off the JDM rear license plate bracket at Rodriguez Auto Body to get sprayed with the grill and bumper cover.
While I was waiting on that, I decided that I wanted to replace my fuel door cable and remove the remaining sound deadening that the Type R is not supposed to have. This will also give me a good opportunity to inspect the car and make sure there are no problems... which I know there will be lol.
Looks as if the driver's floor is still wet from the car leaking. It's been out of the rain for at least a month but I wash the car once a week and didn't realize how much water was still coming in.
This was in the driver's foot well.
Found some mystery wires and a unwrapped wiring harness.
More wiring for an auto system the car used to have..
Getting ready to redo this interior.
I removed the ECU because I didn't want it getting damaged while I work on the floors, looked up the link on it and it's some Japanese site so I'm thinking while the swap was in Japan it was probably tuned.
Here's the inside of it, I don't know much about what to look for but I thought I'd take a peek lol.
Put multiple layers of masking tape on the seam sealer and wiring. While I won't be spraying them directly I just want to protect things as best as possible.
Instead of heating it up or using dry ice I used keyboard cleaner.. upside down. It freezes it and worked pretty well. I just had to use quite a few cans so I bought some 4 packs at Walmart for like $13 a pack.
Once it freezes you want to use a hammer to crack the sound deadening, but don't be using so much force that you damage/dent the floor. I used a plastic scraper and gloves to help me lift the frozen sound deadening. The only part I couldn't use this method on was the sound deadening on the exhaust tunnel, had to use heat.
I took a break from the sound deadening to pull the aftermarket radio out, including all the sub wiring and Bluetooth stuff. I'm just more of a factory radio kinda guy.
While pulling the sound deadening I popped this cover off and found a quarter! Lol, it must have been left in there from the RHD conversion or something.
Got an update from the painter!
I wanted to take a break from the sound deadening again so I worked on making the body panels fit better up front and install the rear bumper. Here's what it looked like on the passenger side.
It's not perfect but definitely much better.
The grill and headlights previously didn't fit very well either, I fixed all this using washers and slightly longer bolts on the support beam from the front bumper cover and grill.
Here's the headlight gaps before fixing the bumper fitment..
Here's after! Plus I got new OEM clips for the bumper cover now that it lines up with the holds in the support beam.
They aren't perfect but it's definitely better! Also got new OEM hardware and clips for the grill. It was previously held in with the wrong screw, a zip tie and no clips.
Unfortunately one of the holes is stripped out so I had to put a different screw in one side, I'll go back and correct this later.
New piece to hold the hood latch! The old one was missing.
I got my rear bumper support beam powdercoated semigloss black and picked it up. Looks great now, this is how it looked before.
Installed it with new OEM clips, it previously only had one clip out of nine!
I started on drilling the holes for the JDM rear plate bracket, I got pics from some a JDM ITR owner on where the holes go. It seems that they line right up with the body lines you can see.
This ended up being the final size I used.
I wanted to protect it and make it look better so I painted the rear with a can of CW after sanding and cleaning the area of course.
It turned out perfect, can't even tell that spot was painted separately.
I also dabbed some paint around the back side just to make sure I was good.
While I wait a day for the paint to dry, I replaced this horrible looking cabin air pressure reliever that was falling apart with a cleaned up one.
The next day I bolted on the JDM rear plate bracket using OEM nuts for it and some new bolts I bought.
New cushions for the rear bumper support beam.
Turned out perfect. I also recently got new all white Idaho plates and redrilled them to fit since it's different on the Japanese plates. Bumper fits super well now.. also the trim being painted black the way it's supposed to be makes me happy.
My brother and I finished off the sound deadening and we finished it off with bug and tar remover. After that I painted some spots that looked like they could rust after prepping the surfaces. I forgot to get a picture of the floors completed though.
It all worked great, currently I have no carpet so I just now took a pic of the driver's floor board.
You might be wondering why you see a dead pedal and Recaros without the carpet.. I'll be explaining that in a bit.
Since I had to replace the fuel door cable, I decided to pull the quarter panel plastics off both sides to inspect and clean some more. I found that they welded the trim holes closed on the quarter panels and then did not protect them. I'm surprised they look this good after the car being built such a long time ago.
I used that same black paint and cup from before. The welded holes closest to the door were a paint but thankfully with the great cameras our phones have I was able to get it done.
This cable was modified to work with RHD, didn't work out too well and you would have to pull the carpet to open the fuel door.
While I was about to install the new fuel door cable I remembered I was missing the cord for the antenna so I went and got one.
Sprayed the inside of the other quarter panel too. It kinda looks iffy but there was other rust spots under the main areas from welding.
Here's the hard one to get to...
My quarter window plastics were missing these.
While installing the new cable I noticed a manufacturing defect in the rubber seal on the new one so I swapped it out from the old one. Notice the lip on the defected one you can see installed on the cable.
There's a fair amount of slack in the fuel door cable, but if works well and I know it came out of a DC2 not a DB8 so I hid the slack under the carpet on the passenger side.
Got the new seat belt buckles ready (my old one had cut wiring) and retaped the wiring cover to the correct spot since it fell out from the old tape.
Now to the part as to why I have Recaros in the car.. it was Mother's Day weekend and my brother was in town so we wanted to drive the DC2 but, I wanted to find where the water leak was coming from so I put them in to take the car to the car wash and drive it the next day.
While installing the driver's Recaro, one of the floor nuts broke off unfortunately.. so I am going to have it welded ASAP.
Took the car through the wash and wow, I did not realize how bad the leak was. By the time the (touchless) wash was over. There was already water that had come from the corner of the firewall to the center of my floorboard. Plus... it's on the passenger side too. It's not as bad but it's there and definitely needs to be fixed soon. Like this week. Lol
On the upside, it was fun driving the car around gutted! I am definitely looking forward to reinstalling my interior though.
