Rexanne!

[ian65]

great work! Just goes to show that most peoples view that these cars are complex and difficult to work on is rubbish.
Enjoy the show!

[Lucky]

Pictures, take lots of pictures, Steve. Please!

Awesome work resurrecting Rexanne. Again, lol

[Steve-A]

Just a small report to say I've put some proper miles on her now and all is well with the new engine

She did decideto eat both her water pump belts on the way back from working in London the other night But I have to admit responsibility as they both came with the car so were 15+ years old and well past their best! Luckily they went not far from home so I just got a tow home and picked up a new pair the next day

I'm still making constant small changes to the megasquirt map. I was thinking as I drove back from London that on the motorway I was crusing on only the primary injectors and now that Im premixed that might mean the 2 stroke oil is being evenly distrbuted inside the rotor housings. So I've been playing with the staging point. I've also beenspending quite a lot of time working on the acceleration enrichments to try and maximise the throttle response and throttle transition smoothness. It's getting better but there's still a little way to go!

[RX_EJA]

you my friend are a genius!

[Steve-A]

Cheers mate

After weeks of being distracted by my new yellow toy...



...I finally did some work on the car over the past few evenings. I've got a number of on going small niggles. You know the sort of things that aren't going to ruin the enjoyment of the car but make me sigh every time I get in the car and notice them.

First off, a couple of months aog my fuel gauge started acting up. I know rotaries are bad but it was telling me it would cost £20 to do 20 miles, right up to the point where I brimmed the tank while the gauge read empty

I checked all the wiring out, made fresh earth, cleaned contacts etc, to no avail. I think I need to hunt down a new sender for the tank. Booo.

Another wasted effort was messing about recalibrating my LC-1 lambda probe which appears to have gone nuts. I think after 3 years in a selection of engines and having done ~20,000 miles in premixed rotary engines on the limit of its oil burning specification, I think it's just had enough.

Next up was to wire the oil temp send and oil pressure sender up properly, something I'd skipped ver when getting the engine swapped in a hurry to get to Japfest.



Not especially pretty, but functional. I've got sensible oil pressure readings once again which is nice, and as ever surprisingly low oil temperature readings. Cruising on the motorway on a long trip its sitting about 60-65 degrees. This was the same sort of readings as my old engine gave, and seems a bit low to me? Especially seeing as I've got a beehive cooler which should be heating the oil to coolant temperature if nothing else!

So I wondered if my £15 eBay temp gauge was dodgy. A wasted hour and a half later I can say it's pretty damn accurate.

Tonight I firstly tackled my wipers that never return to their proper place and never seem to return to quite the same place each time either. So out with the wiper motor assembly, and pop open the cover ot reveal the simple contacts that tell it when to stop, covered in 30 years of dirt and old grease.



I got that all cleaned out, cleaned up the contacts and replaced it with fresh grease, before resetting the arm on the motor itself and now the stop exactly at the bottom of their stroke every time.



I could set the passengers wiper a little lower I think still, but it then wouldn't overlap so well which with my simple bucket test made quite a difference to the water in the drivers eye line.

A word of warning, when testing wiper motors, they don't stop for fingers.
One of mine is now missing a large area of skin and has a nicely bruised nail.

Anyway, back on track, finally tonight I loked at my drivers window alignment. Recently it's been winding up on the piss and coming out of its grooves.



So I spent half an hour fiddling with rails and lubing the runners etc.



Much better now

So I need to buy a new lambda probe and a fuel level sender, then next on the snagging list is cosmetics. There's a few bits of paint to touch up, bits I couldn't be bothered to do last year when I was too excited to drive her to worry about!

[spoddy]

great stuff man, i'll say this you're not afraid to have a go and make it look so easy lol.
but its a great wee way of learning how to do your own repairs on bits where age and
wear have just got the better of the part.

i wonder how an fb drives as to an rx8, i am spoiled in my rx8 lol.

[MelloYello]

MMMmmmm cannot blame you gettin distracted by a Ducati

[Steve-A]

Today I took advantage of a free sunny afternoon to give the poor old girl some TLC. After months of use through crappy weather and muddy roads she was looking a bit sorry for herself.



So I set about giving her the biggest clean she's had since I put her on the road. I soon remembered why I normally can't be bothered cleaning cars, god its dull. Still I'm pretty happy with how the paint's come up.



I gave the engine bay a once over with a damp cloth too as it was covered in a layer of dusty oily muck.



And gave the interior a good going over with the hoover and even cleaned the glass, which is one thing I should do more often! The amount of crap coming off the inside of the windscreen was scary.




Thoroughly bored of cleaning I pulled out my dead lambda sensor and popped in the new one.



This time I thought I'd give the exhaust sealant plenty of time to set to see if I can finally stop my mid section blow. So I don't know if the sensor works yet, but it calibrated itself up ok which is good.

Leaving Tims at silly early heading for Goodwood on Sunday my starter solenoid decided it first didn't want to play, then when it did go after a few tries it stayed out and the starter span with the engine for 30 secs or so making a horrid noise. Since then it's stuck a few times so I thought I better have the starter out and see if I could sort it.



It was full of crap, the sliding section that the solenoid moves was very stiff and gacked up and some of the wiring was badly corroded.



Cleaned up and re-wiried it seems to be working again

Thinking of re-wiring, I had another mess with the fuel level sender and ended up rewiring it right back up to the clocks and now it works again!

Finally for today I made a start on polishing my wheels back up to go with the pretty paint. Again I haven't really polished them properly since the week I got it on the road and they were looking pretty dull.



Some time later the first one was looking good....



1 down, 3 to go!

I'm working my way through the current niggles with the car quite well now. The bodywork I didn't do last year is next on the list really. Might need a bit more prolonged good weather for that though....

[Steve-A]

So it's been a bit of a quiet week for me work wise, and between the rain showers I've made a start on this damn paintwork. All the paintwork I'm tackling looked 'ok' last year when I put the car on the road, but has slowly deteriorated to the point where it lets the car down compared to the areas that have been repainted.

Firstly I tried to sort the lacquer peel on the sunroof panel. The more I tried to flat it the more whole chunks of lacquer were lifting so in the end I just decided to take it back to primer.



At christmas I got a compressor, so this stage of painting will be with a proper spray gun rather than aerosols. With the weather looking dodgy I thought I'd prep all the areas that need attention now then try and do the actual base colour and lacquer in one go. Sometimes a garage would be nice!

The next area requiring attention was the fuel filer area.



As I premix , I tend to give the petrol pump nozzle a good wiggle to try and make sure the oil is being mixed up well, and sometimes this has resulted in a little splash back. I bought petrol resistant lacquer for this area when I painted it last year but forgot to use it so it's looking a bit of a state. The petrol had discoloured the base colour as well so I had to go quite a way back.

While I was at it I tackled some areas on the rear valance that were a bit surface rusty with some rust killer then filler. I think I'll go for the underseal type textured approach for the rear valance as where it joins the rear quarters there is this textured look and the valance is barely visible below the bumper so you wont notice the change. It should offer some stone chip protection ( and means I don't have to spent so much time sanding for a perfect smooth finish )



The final area requiring attention is the drivers door and rear arch lip. Both looked fine last year but I'd see some signs of rust along the trim line and arch lip. Removing the trim revealed this horror.



So out came the wire wheel, then sand paper and rust killer, luckily I've caught it while it's all still very much surface rust.



As skim of filler to smooth things out...



And finally some primer courtesy of my new spray gun. I've got a long steep learning curve ahead, but for this first rough layre of primer, it'll do the job!




So she's looking a bit rougher than last week but the darkest night comes before the dawn and all that!

[ian65]

looking better already Steve, fair play to you for having a go at the paint. I've got a compressor and spraygun but have never used it.... I might learn how to from your experience. Metallics are a bitch to spray I find, at least with a solid colour, you can wet and dry any orange peel and polish it up.