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That paint was a good candidate for a Comet bath. It does wonders for white vehicles in removing scum and discoloration. Then a quick wax job with NuFinish. Less abrasive than scuff pads.
The simple "solid" colors used a single stage one coat. There is plenty of depth to these to scuff and buff.
The metallic ones are multicoat, base metallic/pearl, clear. Not very forgiving..
If you hit that lightly with higher grit (1000+) before the buffing compound it will really shine again.
the beautiful original metallic white paint got covered in this earl scheib special when it was totaled from the rear hit, I assume.
This is the leading edge of the hood. I imagine this is going to get much worse as time goes on.
Originally Posted by Melrose 4r
That paint was a good candidate for a Comet bath. It does wonders for white vehicles in removing scum and discoloration. Then a quick wax job with NuFinish. Less abrasive than scuff pads.
so, I bought a cutting pad for the buffer from harbor freight. I've never used one before. Any advice on using it with the nufinish or should I get the buffing pad? I figured I'd use the nufinish to try to knock down the scratches and wax over the top of it with my maguire's NXT tech wax.
Last edited by space-junk; 04-10-2018 at 07:07 PM.
Looks pretty good in the other photos. Having seen that close up I wouldn't worry to much about the scratch marks from scuffing it back. Maybe shoot some cheap white from a can after a vinegar scrub on the exposed metal..
Sand out the cracks and chips, seal with 0.99 cent semigloss. That will preserve it untill its ready for a repaint.
Lots of details in buffing. On the low budget, just make do. Probably just use the wool pad to give it a decent shine, not sure which pads you bought, assume you are looking at wool versus foam?
It's pretty much a stay away from the sharp edges situation. Watch the departure angle of the pad, rotated away from edge not into. Worth the time to watch some pro videos about handling the buffing wheel..
Just getting the old oxidized yellow crap off really does make it look worlds different. Good job you two!
Tha is for the advice and kind words, Co. Havent had a chance to work on the paint any this weekend. We head to the smog referee on Wednesday so we were busy taking care of some odds and ends for that like getting the bracket for the smog diaphragm installed and getting a broken cap on a VSV reinstalled. We also threw in the locked front 4.88 diff and reinstalled the fender liners in the front. Not sure if the diff works because we only had 1qt of gear oil, but I picked up some more and will get it thrown in Tuesday night.
we've also been having a transmission issue. The trans will start shaking pretty bad about 60mph. Only when the torque convertor locks up. At first I was thinking the torque convertor was going bad since the problem developed out of nowhere. However, I think I know what happened. When roomy first started driving the truck, we had pulled it out of the shop and I checked the trans fluid. I had to add a little, but not bad. I didn't think about it, but the truck was slightly facing downhill. When we went playing around off latrobe rd, I was trying to get up a pretty steep incline, and the truck was sitting faced uphill for a few minutes. What I believe happened is that the trans has been low on fluid the whole time. When i originally checked it, it was facing downhill so it probably read high. And when we went playing and I parked on the incline, all the fluid ran back onto the xfer case. I checked the fluid once I realised that and it didn't even register on the dipstick. So, we got a few more quarts to put in. I'll get that in tomorrow and see if the shudder goes away.
Didn't really get any pics. Here's all I got.
Last edited by space-junk; 04-15-2018 at 09:16 PM.
Feel free to come out and wrench! Shops open if you want. We will be building AR15s in there this summer.
small update on the truck.
shes got tags finally. The TL;DR is she went in for the BAR test and failed because I didn't have an exemption letter for the turbo. Only way to get one is to use a CARB system that is a dude who checks places for you to buy the factory part. Out of the 10 places he looked only 1 could get a CT20 but couldn't verify if it was cracked or not. And it was a thousand bucks. Couldn't afford that. So I have a friend who's got a friend with a friend who works for the [REDACTED], I gave [REDACTED] some [REDACTED] and a few days later I went into the [REDACTED] and picked up my tags.
So with that out of the way, time to move onto pressing matters. The trans is acting up worse and worse. It has developed a problem where it wont go over 45 or so. I went and bought a trans from the toyota wrecker here and I've ordered a new trans mount and strainer. The strainer will be installed when I install the transgo shift improver kit which I also bought.
so, plan goes...
replace PS pump and feed line
rebuild front axles
rebuild hubs
rebuild front brakes
Check new trans for debris, install shift kit, and replace strainer
install new trans
after all that it goes into the shop to have the ARP head studs and the custom cometic head gasket installed and have the slight weep from the water pump taken care of.
then the goodies start to go in. I've got a cobra CB as well as a 5' firestik and 2 heavy duty spring mounts. One on each rear corner. One will have the firestik and the other will have an LED whip for when 4wheeling at night.
as always, tips, advice, or just any banter is always appreciated.
Had some spare time today after cleaning the transmission. Don't have the filter or trans mount yet so no point in taking the valve body out. So instead, we made a speaker box to house the 2 Kicker KS6930 speakers I got to add onto the stereo. I think the box turned out alright. I still need to find suitable places to mount the 2 Dual XPR82D's that I've got to power each set of rear speakers. The other set are 6.5" Kicker DSC6504's that are in the factory location behind the rear panels. Eventually there will be a 8" Kicker L7 Solobaric behind the right pocket door. But that's way down the line.
anyways, on to the pics!
Last edited by space-junk; 05-21-2018 at 11:10 PM.
Wow, Doomy, that's a steady hand. I like the little touches and texture combo, looks good.
Glad to hear magic happened and you've got tags.
Here's to the tranny work going well!
Thank you, Hab! I wasn't sure if it was going to turn out well, but overall I am very pleased. 😋
Originally Posted by space-junk
Tha is for the advice and kind words, Co. Havent had a chance to work on the paint any this weekend. [...]
Didn't really get any pics. Here's all I got.
So...its been a while...again...i promise that i didnt mean to, it just happened. Well, rather Doomy happened. HAHAHA. About a year and a half ago, Doomy was driving the runner around and the throttle body coolant line blew out and left her stranded on the side of the road. after looking, diagnosing, and finally fixing the issue, she was back to driving, but it kept overheating. about a week later it went supernova on her way to drop on of the kiddos off at school. I got a new Tstat from toyota and swapped that in because everything else was brand new. It continued to overheat at idle and short trips down our dead end road. I thought it just needed to be burped better, but Doomy was hesitant to drive it. So we agreed that it needed to wait until i could do the HG to inspect to make sure that it wouldnt damage anything IF the HG was the issue. So it sat. And sat. And sat. Until finally we got a wild hair and decided to go see if shed even start up. Good old Exide battery(Piece of crap, dont every buy exide products) was dead and had sulfated so it couldnt even be revived. so much for a sealed AGM battery......... Fast forward to the other day. Second stimulus check came in so we got a battery in her, aired up the tire that was flat from a nail in it and cranked her over. She came alive burping and farting, im assuming because of the bad gas. I babysat her to watch for overheating while Doomy did the airing of the tires and after about 20 mins of idling, she smoothed out. Temp didnt go up over normal. then we drove it down to the gas station(5 mile round trip on a years worth of expired tags, LOL) and she ran fine other than the electrical issues ive had with her since the start. so, next step is to take her to a local smog shop and hope he doesnt look too closely at the turbo and fail it. then pay all the back reg and she should be good to go. ive already got a bunch of parts ordered and ready to install, so it should be ready and safe for wheeling this year. Oh, how ive missed 4wheeling.
Runner is now smogged(smog tech had never seen a factory turbo before and didn't check the stamp on the turbo, thank god) and all the back registration is paid. Damn california. 2 years of non paid registration cost me almost $450. I have to go back on Friday with proof of insurance nd they'll release the tags to me.
I've also found a good home for my 2003.5 Mazdaspeed Protege to go to. I love that car with a passion, but she's just too small for my family of 5. I know It's new owner will take good care of her.
With that being said, the sale of my MSP is going to go towards a major suspension upgrade for this rig. More details to come in the coming months.
Well, the hard work has started...and almost finished. Kinda. Finally tackling the head gasket lifting/timing issue. We have spent the past few days prepping for and working on this head gasket job.
A few things we've done not for head gasket job, finally installed the locking hubs we built up over a year ago. They'll look a lot more slick when the wheels are clean. We also pulled off the running boards. Makes the truck look a LOT taller. LOL.
As for the head gasket, we got everything tore down and drained out. The copper shim was installed along with the cometic head gasket. Also went in were the ARP head studs. We stopped last night around 11pm and got back at it today. I worked on rewiring the injector pigtails I wasnt happy with before and doomy took out the Catalytic converter and put in the test pipe. Curious as to how thats going to change the exhaust note. After that, I reassembled the hot side of the motor while dooly used her little t-rex arms to work on the cold side. We left off with the lower intake almost fully bolted in(minus one bolt) and the egr bolted in. Hot side is fully bolted and ready to go. We had a fuel rail crush washer exit stage left and is hiding somewhere from us so we are waiting on that. Also waiting on an upper to lower intake gasket and a throttle body gasket. And a water pump. And....well, I hope thats it. Water pump should be here friday(the orm toyota one I bought is making noise from the bearing. Less than 5k miles too! I think I overtightened the belt.).
I also put in some big orders that should be here soon. Hopefully the install on those parts should go smooth, however with this truck......probably not. 😂
Here's some photos from the work we've been doing.
where we stopped the first night.
Doomy working on getting the old crusty seal scraped off the hub.
Start of night 2, tearing the motor down more
All torn down inspecting the block. you can see where the oil has been RUNNING down the block between the #2 and #3 cylinders. either the HG was weak there, or the 12PSI that this turbo is shoving down the gullet of this truck is lifting the head. any way you look at it, the graphite/mushy gasket was NOT enough to hold back the pressure.
ARP head studs installed. we actually pulled all of them but 2 after getting the gaskets seated and stuck in place since the head virtually refuses to fit on with the firewall in the way.
Custom thickness Cometic HG letting the copper gasket spray get tacky.
.020" Copper Shim going on.
Cometic sliding down. This was rough since the layers kept seperating. i think at one point we had 3 sets of hands all trying to settle this thing down. LOL!
Doomt tightening up the hot side stuff.
slowly getting there. Ive decided that im going to add in an Oil Catch Can in line between the vent on the valve cover and the return on the intake piping. its dumping a LOT of oil vapor into the turbo and making a mess.
Rewiring my injectors. These heat shrink solder connectors are AMAZING. 10/10 would buy forever. not only do they shrink with a heat gun, they also have a solder ring that melts itno the wires AND those red things are balls of plastic that melt around the wiring to make them water tight.
Ive long suspected that my old butt connector job has been a source for a randomly appearing and disappearing misfire. we shall see.
Getting re-taped. god, i hate old electrical tape, but i dont know what else i can use.
while i was working on the rewire, Doomy finished reoving the Catalytic convertor and installed the test pipe.
Doomy getting her t-rex arms into the little places i cant fit my mitts.
The Asin hubs installed. yea, the wheels need to be cleaned. thats coming!
Running Boards before
The bomus kid putting in some hard work removing the running boards.
while the running boards were coming off, i decided to see how hard it would be to put in an old intercooler i had lying around. i really believe that if i move stuff around in the engine bay, i could actually fit this in there. then just stick a hood scoop over it.... Hmmmmmm.
Doomy approves of my idea... :rolleyes:
And, like magic, theyre gone! No more scraped shins, dirty pants, or wondering if they will hold the wright of my fat ass. also makes more room for future mods.
Last edited by space-junk; 01-20-2021 at 06:49 AM.
i decided to see how hard it would be to put in an old intercooler i had lying around. i really believe that if i move stuff around in the engine bay, i could actually fit this in there. then just stick a hood scoop over it.... Hmmmmmm.
For the love of everything good in this world... yes! Bring some of that sweet cool air into that whirlwind of an engine.
Looks great! Makes me miss my 22R a bit... (not more than my love of the 3.4, though, hehe)
04-10-2018, 06:54 PM
