Project Ruby a.k.a Neil F's old car

[Jonny Wilkinson]

Well, I thought I might as well start a thread for this S13 at the outset having learned my lesson with Precious.

She already has a name - Ruby.

The plan is to turn her into a reliable road car that's nice to drive without spoiling the S13's natural good looks.

No 8 billion hp, stanced, stickered cartoon drift car, just a "nice little S13".

As I'm in the middle of a refurb on Precious, you might guess that this wasn't a purposeful and planned purchase so I am currently planning to outsource most of the big work that's needed. I usually end up doing more than I originally intended though. I'm going to keep telling myself that time is money. I have no time so I need to spend the money instead.

Here's what we're starting with...

http://www.sxoc.com/vbb/showthread.p...early-18-years

One thing I can pretty much guarantee is that this thread isn’t going to look like many others.

It’s not going to be a nuts and bolts restore like Petrol’s and it’s not going to be turned into a track or drift car.

Its also going to be a rolling project as I already have the white car off the road for a major stripdown non-rolling type project

The overall objective is to bring the car up to a standard where its worth around £2,000 in the hope that someone will have it to enjoy as a daily or at least regular road car.

By pricing it at £2,000 hopefully it will not be attractive to the sort of buyer that will rip it to pieces, throw out the interior, slap a load of s/h “upgrade” parts on it and dorifto it into a tree.

The budget is £1,300 and I’ll be doing quite a bit of the work myself. As I paid £1,100 for it, that’s a expected loss of £400 plus insurance,tax,MOT etc. so around a grand for a year’s motoring and a sense of achievement if it comes off

That’s still a big improvement on my last project which was a moneypit TVR.

Job List

Jobs Done

Interior needs a spring clean. I do like to drive around in a nice clean car so was one of the first priorities. Took me 4 days but its now spotless.

Drivers seat is broken. Replaced with leather seats front and rear.

The steering wheel twists in your fingers. Its very disconcerting. Replaced with one supplied by Ronster.

Aerial doesn’t come up or only comes part way up or doesn’t go down. A good clean seems to have fixed it. Lasted 3 months and stuck in the up position now

The engine occasionally drops down to 3 cylinders. Replaced camcover seals (so packs/plugs aren't drowning), two coilpacks and two plugs. No more misfires.

Tickover is high at all times often even when its warm and over 2K when starting warm. Cleaned breather system and camcovers. Cold tickover is still high but base tickover now a steady 850

Windscreen wipers squeak. Cleaned windscreen (3 times and polished) and replaced wipers and wiper arms after a complete refurb. Like new now

Large areas of perforation in rear quarter behind the rear wheels. DAL sorted.

Turret tops need sorting. DAL sorted.

The engine bay would be much nicer to work on if it were clean so I may have a little session on cleaning it- Sorted with Astonish Engine Degreaser £1.89 a bottle off t'internet.

Sometimes (but not always) develops a nice steering wheel shimmy at around 70 mph. Replaced steering rack bushes. Problem solved

Passenger side light broken - replaced with non-broken one

Boot pop cable is broken - Replaced. All working now.

The paint also needs cleaning up and restoring then polishing - Looks better after a polish but still needs the scratches taking out.

Wheels need cleaning - Cleaned up pretty good. Still missing the wolfrace centres though.

Still to do

The interior

Speedo only works intermittently - still broken. Not had time to remove dash and resolder.

The Rust/Paint

Sills in front of rear wheels - Still solid enough to pass the MOT but are a bit crusty.

Rear spoiler is hanging off. – Standard bootlid rust

The Suspension

The suspension is KYB struts with CD lowering springs. If the budget would allow I’d get Apex Limos for it but the budget won’t. May fit some standard springs I have.

The Paint

Apart from the new metal having to be let into the bodywork, some kind soul has keyed the passenger side from front wing across the door and all along the rear quarter. Nice

The wheels – I may sell the 15 inch Wolfrace alloys and fit a set of standard non-webbed facelift alloys instead - I have 3 OEM facelift wheels - one more needed.

[arry]

I, for one, am really pleased you've ended up with this fella

[Jonny Wilkinson]

I, for one, am really pleased you've ended up with this fella

Everybody should have two dismantled S13s in their lives

[NeilF]

BTW - Just found a receipt I forgot to include in the wad of receipts I gave you - Two new tyres earlier this year

[Jonny Wilkinson]

And so it begins...

On the journey back from picking the car up, this....



...did this....



I managed to make it home 30 miles without a clutch but then had to get it towed 300 yds down the road to Steve at CRC after I managed to get the lever arm jammed in the clutch trying to free off the hydraulics.

The piston of the slave cylinder was jammed between the lever arm and the edge of the slave cylinder.

I took the hydraulics off the car, scrapped all the crappy damper nonsense and set to work on the master and slave cylinder.

Damper nonsense...



That's better...



Steve dropped the box off, replaced the pivot ball with a spare one he had lying around, replaced the gearbox oil and refitted the hydraulics after popping round to my house to collect the newly delivered clutch hose (from hose solutions). Cheers Steve, you're a star !

So she's now back up and running.

I've oiked out the passenger seat to make room for a good clean tomorrow then hopefully collect a new set of seats from Dan at HWH on Thursday.



An interior clean is the plan for this weekend.

Next... a bit of an underbonnet clean and sort the squeaky windscreen wipers.

[NeilF]

...did this....

OMG! Typical!

I recon she's missing me! Hope nothing else like that happens!


Thinking about it... Are the squeaky wipers just the rubber, or the mechanism? (Seems obvious now but lift up of screen and try?)

[Jonny Wilkinson]

Looking at it, its been broken for ages as there is loads of corrosion around the break. It probably just didn't like my driving style.

Its not something you'd notice when driving until the slave cylinder popped its piston.

[craiglancs]

Get a black carpet jonny, it makes all the difference or dye it!

[Jonny Wilkinson]

Get a black carpet jonny, it makes all the difference or dye it!

I'll see how it comes up first. I have some pretty effective carpet cleaning products in my valeting armoury

I'm replacing the seat because I want matching seats and the drivers seat has started to collapse inside after 100K miles of having Neil's big fat arse squashing it. Rebuilding seats is a specialist job.

Carpet cleaning is within my limited skill set.

[NeilF]

I'm replacing the seat because I want matching seats and the drivers seat has started to collapse inside after 100K miles of use.

What are you saying about my arse exactly?!

[Jonny Wilkinson]

Is that better ?

[Pablo13]

You greedy bugger

Will keep an eye on this. so it'll be at HWH thurs? will have a nose about

[NeilF]

Is that better ?

Git

[Jonny Wilkinson]

A little progress with the seats...

Here was the problem...the drivers seat is starting to collapse on the door side bolster.



I sourced a set of leather seats from Deacon that were living in the rafters of Dan@DbPower's lockup. They were a bit grubby after hanging around for quite a while and they had quite a few compression marks, grease smears and oil stains but I set to with my trusty cleaning products to see what lay beneath...

BEFORE





I wiped them over with a damp cloth to remove the surface dust, then used AG interior cleaner to remove the embedded dirt and dried them. I then tried to remove as much of the underseal, grease and oil as possible using WD40 and a rag before laying into it with AG leather cleaner and a toothbrush to get into the stitching



After a couple of goes with the leather cleaner, I fed them with a leather feed and protective topcoat.



I removed the plastic side covers and the handles, gave them a proper clean then set about cleaning up the mechanisms for tilt and the runners etc. using WD40 and a rag.

The passenger headrest was in a bit of a state as it had been resting on something sharp and rusty so the leather and the sponge underneath were misshapen and scratched. I removed the headrest cover, cleaned it thoroughly then
packed the sponge out with rags to try to gently persuade the leather back into shape. I guess only time will tell if it works.

Here's a few pics of the results...













The seats do have some wear (not really shown in these pics) but I'm using the old classic car buff excuse of "its in keeping with the car's age and gives it a nice patina" As long as its clean, I don't mind.

I was hoping to clear the old seats out of the car and have a bit of a spring clean in there then refit the seats today but the weather has turned against me and its lashing down out there

Maybe this afternoon...

[Actual_Ben_Taylor]

Top work, seats look really good.

Could you not just have swapped the leather cover onto your old headrest?

[Jonny Wilkinson]

Top work, seats look really good.

Could you not just have swapped the leather cover onto your old headrest?

Its not something I had thought of. Most of the problem was in the stretching, compressing, scratching and staining of the leather though. If the headset doesn't revert to shape, I'll try swapping them over. Its a 10 minute job if that so thanks for that idea

[Jonny Wilkinson]

Well, I've been making progress but not been able to get any decent photos 'til today.

So, 30-35 hrs of effort over a period of two weeks went into cleaning the interior. It went something like this...

BEFORE



Me ?? Finicky ?? Surely not...



AFTER

[Jonny Wilkinson]

BEFORE













AFTER



















and a couple of close-ups



even cleaned the back of the steering wheel

[Jonny Wilkinson]

First thing I did was to turn the blowers onto full blast and try to get as much of the leaves out of the vents as possible. There was a lot of sh!t blown out into the car so I was glad I did that before and not after.

The cleaning basically involved removing the seats and interior panels completely, washing the inside of the tub, cleaning behind the panels, up into the foot wells and the spare wheel well.

For each plastic panel, I washed it, dried it, cleaned it with AG rubber and vinyl cleaner then treated it with a black trim cleaner.

The interior carpet and mats got vacuumed then washed three times with a Vax wet-and-dry valetting shampoo then dried and vacuumed again.

The seatbelts were washed using car shampoo then dried and cleaned again with AG interior shampoo.

The interior lights were removed and the lenses cleaned inside and out using a toothbrush and AG rubber and vinyl cleaner.

The windows and mirrors were cleaned inside with AG glass cleaner then AG glass polish.

I then refitted the panels and seats and the floor mats. I had to steal the drivers mat from the white car but the other three are the ones that came with the car.

Overall, I'm pretty pleased with it. It feels like a nice place to be.

The leather seats have some marks and signs of wear (mostly on the drivers seat) but I think it kind of suits the car so I haven't gone to the trouble of correcting the wear.

[Jonny Wilkinson]

I managed to do a little bit of work to the outside too.

The most annoying feature of the car is the squeeky windscreen wipers.

To fix this, I've cleaned the outside windows (twice) with white vinegar which is extremely good for ripping grime off the glass. I then cleaned it with AG fast glass and AG glass polish and replaced the windscreen wipers (£35 ouch).

That seems to have fixed it for now but if it comes back, I guess it may be the bushes on the wiper mechanisms so I'll have to go have a dig behind the bulk head. We shall see.

I also got around to cleaning the petrol flap.

Bleurgh...



That's better...



I've also

- removed the hot start solenoid in the hope of fixing the idle problems but it didn't work I'll put that in a separate post when I've got time.
- swapped the steering wheel for one that doesn't twist in your fingers
- booked it in at DAL's to get the crusty bodywork fixed but that won't be until early January.