Restoration Project

Great work mate

It's amazing how good the rear diffs look cleaned and painted up.

Wow looks like brand new .... top effort

Hi all I've been busy over the last few weeks wading my way through countless bags of bolts and nickle plating them........I'm nearly 90% there now so the end is in sight.

I got the last of the running gear that i could clean up a couple of weeks ago and laid every thing out on the drive to catalogue for my local powder coater, I can't believe how much has made it on too the needs powder coating list.







So fast forward two weeks and I got a call from the powder coater this afternoon to tell me everything was ready and he'd dropped everything off after work, I'm really pleased with the results.



Inspired by lots of nice shiny parts I couldn't resist fitting the Powerflex bush kit straight away.  This has created a very long shopping list of wheel bearings, CV boots,  etc.

They came up great, was it expensive? you aren't leaving anything untouched, its addictive once you see how good stuff looks

Not really, it only cost £375.00 including collection and delivery. I know your right its hard to know were to draw the line.

Well i've been busy over the last few weeks getting the wheel hubs, front wish bones and drive shafts reassembled, I had to do a bit of research on the centre CV joints as nissan list three part numbers for the CV joint grease.  The outboards run standard molybdenum but the inboard need tripod grease at £35.00 a tube, so armed with two tube of grease, new CV boots, ball joints and wheel bearings I set to work.  Then I discover in my haste when remove the old wheel bearings i'd thrown away three circlips, to my dismay Nissan list them but on ordering I got an email saying they were discontinued with no alternatives.  After trawling the internet I found Timken bearings do a range of circlips and I tracked down three (MT411) at Rockauto's in Wisconsin USA so £10.00 later disaster averted.  

Anyway heres the completed items next to a spare to show the before and after.

Wow they came up looking great!

While I've been of over Christmas once I got some time for myself I got out in the garage to do some more on the GTiR,  I've pulled out the engine loom all the way to the firewall and after a couple more hours work the engine was out and on the floor.   All I need to do now is lift the front a little more and move it out of the way.

Well done I got man flu but need to get out and sort mine

Thanks my plan is to get it fully stripped in the next few weeks an get the shell to the body shop.  I hope your recovered from the man flu!

This week I lifted the front of the car using the fence post method and man handled the engine out of the way to work on at a later time.  This week has been taken up with refurbing the engine mounts and nickle plating all the attaching bolts and washers and a couple of additional brackets, they came out looking really good.  The engine mount brackets to the chassie legs have been cleaned up and painted this coming week.

So in the last week i've finally got the whole car stripped down, and after having a detailed look around the car I found that dispite the sills looking sound externally when I looked inside them there was rust starting to appear.  After talking to a local car restorer i've decieded to ditch the soda blasting and opted for acid dipping.  So this morning the shell was shipped to have the front and rear windows removed then tomorrow its off down to Birmingham for dipping.  I'm hoping the next three weeks go quick so I can see what actually needs repairing and replacing on the shell.

Nice, that will give you a good starting point and a plan for moving forwards.

Excellent work, very thorough, I would like to go that far with mine but I don't think I would be able to. Access to a blasting cabinet is great I would think just blast every bolt, I am having trouble getting mine clean enough although that tumbler seems to be doing a good enough job for me.

Hopefully there wont be much needing repair when it comes back from the acid dipping.

Acid dipping is fantastic, I'd love to do it but it's very expensive in the USA thanks to the EPA trying to force these companies out of business (over $1500 to have my shell done) and the nearest place that does it is a 14 hour drive away, in Oregon

One tip when you’ve tumbled or blasted your bolts is to polish on a wire wheel then when you re-plate they come up like new and you also get less failure of the plating not taking.
The dipping isn’t  cheap in the UK to be honest as it £1200.00 but the end result will be worth the extra expense, got a message today that the shell arrived at the dippers in Birmingham ok an they’ll be starting next week.

Would like to see a few pics of it dipped if you get a chance .

Pulsartim wrote:Access to the blasting cabinet at work has saved me loads of money an everything is coming up like new.  One tip when you’ve tumbled or blasted your bolts is to polish on a wire wheel then when you re-plate they come up like new and you also get less failure of the plating not taking.
The dipping isn’t  cheap in the UK to be honest as it £1200.00 but the end result will be worth the extra expense, got a message today that the shell arrived at the dippers in Birmingham ok an they’ll be starting next week.  

I hope you removed your VIN plate or it's gonna disappear in the bath lol

Ryaneg6freak wrote:Acid dipping is fantastic, I'd love to do it but it's very expensive in the USA thanks to the EPA trying to force these companies out of business (over $1500 to have my shell done) and the nearest place that does it is a 14 hour drive away, in Oregon

14 hour drive! Im complaining driving an hour and half to get my engine rebuilt lol

Yeah I’ve got the VIN plate in the garage, the only item I couldn’t get off was the rear seat mounting clips, there on order from Nissan UK an should be here the next few days.

Good to see your doing a proper job.Looks like a huge effort.......... well done man

gtir_woody wrote:

Ryaneg6freak wrote:Acid dipping is fantastic, I'd love to do it but it's very expensive in the USA thanks to the EPA trying to force these companies out of business (over $1500 to have my shell done) and the nearest place that does it is a 14 hour drive away, in Oregon

14 hour drive! Im complaining driving an hour and half to get my engine rebuilt lol

Yea, the USA is rather large lol. I live in Las Vegas, Nevada and the closest metal dipper is in Eugene Oregon, 14 hours due northwest. Pretty much sucks.

Looks like a lot of time, effort and money there dude, good work!

Just for my own info, assuming the rear arm bushes are powerflex, did you have to remove the original outer metal sleeve before fitting them or just burn the rubber out & fit new?
I'm good at setting fire to things, not so good at pressing sleeves out! :p

Ryaneg6freak wrote:

gtir_woody wrote:

Ryaneg6freak wrote:Acid dipping is fantastic, I'd love to do it but it's very expensive in the USA thanks to the EPA trying to force these companies out of business (over $1500 to have my shell done) and the nearest place that does it is a 14 hour drive away, in Oregon

14 hour drive! Im complaining driving an hour and half to get my engine rebuilt lol

Yea, the USA is rather large lol.  I live in Las Vegas, Nevada and the closest metal dipper is in Eugene Oregon, 14 hours due northwest.  Pretty much sucks.

After watching dudes on YouTube, road tripping looks like so much fun over there though