Lucky's Series 3

[Lucky]

Made some progress today. There's good news and bad news....
Good news is I managed to make the front end of the car look a hell of a lot better. In my humble opinion

Before;


After;


Much better. Mazda made the orange indicator inserts out of something that seemed to be recycled Quality Street wrappers Even with the heat gun, there was no way it was coming out intact, it just shattered into pieces even under gentle persuasion. Conversely, the glue they used to bond it would be good enough to glue the car to the side of a building, it's relentless. The only way I could get rid of the fragments of remaining tango lens and glue was to Dremel the unholy hell out of it Bit barbaric, buit worth the time. Good job I only had one gin last night, steady hand required.

While I was in there changing the indicydator bulbs to nice chrome ones that flash orange, I thought I'd swap out the feeble old sidelights that are a bit like the arse off an arthritic firefly. Only dimmer;


...in favour of some hyper-cyber-multi-directional-six-LED ones. Winner



...right, the bad news. Well, slightly bad. Partially. Okayyyy, let's start with this;


Nope, not an FD moustache, but the spoiler off Safka. I finally decided I couldn't live with it any longer, it's horrid. Consistency like a zombie's tadger, cracked and rotting and soaking up water, plus it just ruins the lines on the back end of the car. I know the cars' slightly more aerodynamically efficient with it on, but I don't care. I hate it. It must die.

Considering it's been there 27 years now, the fixings gave surprisingly little resistance. They were pleasingly un-corroded...


..though by no means easy to get at lol. With the abortion, sorry, spoiler off I think I got to it just in time. It's full of water, the tabs for the plastic flange fittings (oooooh, flange ) are rusty as hell and the damage it's started doing to the paint is worrying. Even though the stud and nut fasteners weren't rusty yet you can see in the above pic evidence of water ingress starting. This pic shows the state of how bad it was getting underneath;


Just check out the state it underneath though


We all like a nice dirty council gritter (Worthing rhyming slang) but this is ridiculous


Still, it was fortunately mostly surface filth. Cleaned up pretty well, though there's a definite line where the leading edge of the spoiler rubbed through the paint and the rear valance has started rusting


And the paint bloom around the little discs Mazda stuck on (WHY didn't they do a whole strip of it, tight sods? Would have saved me so much aggro) is, I fear, to far gone for T-cut alone to remove



So, that's the bad news. This leaves me the choice really of re-spraying the back end (which would would at least mean the holes could be welded up and lost forever) ...or putting a different spoiler on. Which is what I think I'll try first. I have a certain look in mind, but I'm not gonna say what it is in case it turns out crap and y'all laugh at me If it works, I shall bask in reflected glory of my cleverness and you can say what an unsung genius I am instead

...let's face it, it'll be the former lol. If the spoiler plan doesn't work out then I can fall back on the fill/paint option later. Thanks for reading, as always, any comments/suggestions welcome

[Marc S]

Hi mate,

De-tangoed lights look much better - I had to do the same with the old dremmel...they were well in there them orangey bits

If you can get over to my workshop on the A22 in Whitesmith, we could always have a go on the back end with the machine polisher - nothing to lose

[Lucky]

Cheers, Marc. I may well have to take you up on that one, been meaning to enquire about getting the paint on the FD some love anyway so maybe that'll come sooner rather than later lol. If my spoiler strategy works hopefully the damage'll be covered up and it won't matter. It definitely ain't gonna shift with T-cut alone and I have my doubts a machine polisher would do it either. Not without taking the paint back to micron-thin, anyway.

What the hell were Mazda thinking when they used THIRTEEN fasteners to hold a bit of rubber on with, for God's sake ? The FD spoiler is FRP and it only has four fixings. Madness Maybe they knew how heavy the rubber would get when it degrades and soaks up loads of water....

[Marc S]

The word T-Cut scares me

Yes, polishing will remove some...but it's always worth a shot, if you'd have to paint it anyway, you have nothing to lose, if that makes sense Hopefully your plans will mean you can get away with it, fingers crossed for you

Give me a shout if I can help in any way mate

[KiwiDave]

Lucky

I'm very much liking the clear indicator look that you are rocking there. Also the hyper super multi LED lampoid things, did they come from EBay per chance? Anyway, once I collect my lenses from Postman Pat's Storeroom, I shall look at doing the same. Will post photos anyway.

[RamoNZ]

Pics of the led things please.

[Lucky]

Here you go, Ramon. And for those others who CBA to turn back one page



The thing with LEDs is to remember they're directional, so the "bulbs" that just have a cluster of tiny LEDs pointing one direction will just look like a tiny circle of light if used in a sidelight because the light is too focussed and there's no reflector bowl. These ones are good because they have six separate lightsources that shine in all directions. You can get wide-angle ones too but they tend to be expensive. Also, they're polarity-sensitive so if they don't work take em out and turn them round lol. Or they might just be FUBAR because the eight-year old Pacific Rim slave child had already done ten hours with the soldering iron that day and was starting to lose focus God bless eBay

Speaking of which, I managed to score the spoiler I was after on the good ol Bay of E last night, so hopefully there'll be an update on that coming soon

[RamoNZ]

Haha - this one doesn't know the meaning of 'CBA' - give me a shovel and point to dirt and I'll give a hole and a mound.

Dear Nick, do you use a candle to light your way down a sunny street? Neither do I...

So I'll rephrase the question and ad lib to the beginning to show you my train of thought.

"Wow nick, gee those LED things look interesting, I do wonder what they would look like with the covers back on, and say in a night time or dim light situation so I could get a better feel of the light refraction - hey, since youre fitting them up, how's about a quick snap for us?"

[Lucky]

Lol, very well put, thanks for being so gentle with me Of course, I am here only to serve. Allow me to furnish you with your requested illustrative photogrpahs, kind sir

This is one of each, the drivers' side have been done and the pass side haven't. Obviously the inidctaor is brighter unconverted because the light isn't negotiating a layer of orange tint and chrome coating. Still clear enough though. The sidelight is a lot whiter and crisper light, but you can see what I mean about it not filling the lens quite so much due to the directional level of the light.


This is them at night. Seem to work


We have super-bright massive wide angle LEDs in our cab lilluminations on the consoles of some of the trains I drive. I've often been tempted to... appropriate some, reckon they'd be bright enough you wouldn't need headlights Mind you, the headlights on the FB you'd be better off with a candle in a jamjar stuck on the front of the car

[Marc S]

If you use philips silver vision bulbs you will find them much much brighter - they don't have such a solid silver coating on them as pretty much all the other ones