PhoCup's 408 Exo Build

[phocup]

I've been lurking this forum for quite a while.  Don't know how many nights of sleep I've lost perusing the various build threads on here looking at all the pretty pictures.  Now I'm finally ready to jump in the deep end.

Let the games begin.

Preparation:

I've prepped the space for it.   With two layers of RustBullet, I'm ready for any oil spill that's bound to happen.




I've said good bye to one of my favorite toy to fund this project.   Good bye dear friend, thanks for all the memory.   Your sacrifice will not be in vain.



I've gather the required funding for the project. 



And have now moved the donor ( a 91 NA 1.6 long nose with 85k miles ) into its new home next to my other project.



Time frame:

My hope is to get it down to PPF by my birthday in Oct so the frame order can be a gift to myself. I see that some of you guys have gotten it down to PPF in less than a month but I have two kids ( one 7 month old currently ) so time to work on this project will be quite precious.  I'll keep a detail log of time spent as well as take tons of pictures so things will be moving slow unfortunately.   3.5 months seems like a reasonable time frame to get this done without letting myself make too many excuses.

I'm debating wearing a gopro on my forehead to record my build.  More so that if I forgot anything after its all in pieces, I can go back and trace my step.   Curious if anyone has done the same or a video log of their build ?

[golden86]

I took pics of EVERYTHING on the car before I tore it apart. It helped a lot with the "what the hell is this piece from" moments. I also took a few short videos of the major sections of the car, ie. rear cradle, engine, brakes, trans. This actually came in handy when a pic I had didn't show the correct angle I needed for a few vacuum hoses I was missing

3.5 months is more than enough. I had mine stripped in 2 weekends, but I also don't have kids, I know that is a huge factor.

Good luck

[eman]

Label label and label. And then label some more.

I've got a half started kit with no labels..... hahaha sheesh what have I bought???

[phocup]

Not sure if this was progress or set back to my project but I got a new donor.  

LOL .. was just going to tear into my silver '91 with 85k miles on it, when I went to check out this '93 with my friend.   My originally wanted to pull the motor, but after we test it and compression checked, the owner didn't want to sell the motor by itself and that deal fell off.   I ended up buying the entire car for pretty good deal ( $400 ), so hoping after I sell off the few remaining items worth any money ( hood, bumper, glass soft top, ect ) the car will be free for me.    It runs, with decent compression although cyl #3 looks just a tad low.   The frame / PPF looks good and rust free.   A testament to CA weather really.  Also, there's no leak I can see in engine bay.   So that's another big plus.

The bad is some parts are falling off already ( like the lights ) but maybe this will make my job easier taking things apart.   Another big con on this donor is that some were was simply cut,  leaving not much left to label.   Lights still works and engine runs well enough, so hopefully electrical wont be an issue that comes back to bite me.

I dubbed her "Lady Melisandre", the red witch.  May she be reborned to full glory by the power of the lord of light.  

[miatagr]

What part of Cal are you in?. I'll have mine at Willow Springs this weekend if you want to come by. Gene [e-mail]

[gwnwar]

phocup.. Check out the rear end/diff housing right side wing they are made to break in a rear end accident..

[phocup]

Jul 13, 2016 21:42:55 GMT miatagr said:

What part of Cal are you in?. I'll have mine at Willow Springs this weekend if you want to come by. Gene [e-mail]

I'm in San Jose, so Willow Springs is a bit far.  I've always wanted to drive / ride there.   When I have more free time I hope to be able to do a week long trip down there and experience all the tracks you guys have.

Jul 14, 2016 1:43:14 GMT gwnwar said:

phocup.. Check out the rear end/diff housing right side wing they are made to break in a rear end accident..

Hey gwnwar, I just looked over the diff housing on both left / right side and didn't see any major break. Some picture below. I can't confirm though if there's a micro fracture or not until I get in it a bit deeper and start cleaning things up. No leak though, so hopefully its okay.



On a slightly related tangent, yesterday I stumbled onto a fantastic Youtube channel ( Crossthreaded ) that was detailing out their Exo build. Not sure if the channel authors are on this forum, but it looks like that will be a great help during my build in general. Part 1 of their build was swapping out to a Torsen 1.6 diff. The job seemed easy enough where it wouldn't be the WORSE thing in the world if my diff housing is cracked. Kinda crazy prices on CraigsList though. $400-800. That's the cost of my entire donor!

[gwnwar]

With the swap you will need the diff, housing, axles, PPF unit, drive shaft..to go 1.8 into a 1.6..

[phocup]

Thanks for the info. I didn't realize needed so many parts. The video didn't really detail the parts list and I haven't really done my research much into it except for a quick search on CL.

[phocup]

Tear down update. Took a personal day off work today to get started on this project. About 4 hours into the tear down now. Doors are off ( wow .. those suckers are HEAVY even with the manual window ). Hood is off. Trunk is off. Tail lights are off. Passenger side seat and carpet is off. Both fenders are 75% off ( so many dang bolts on each of them! ). I was also shocked at how much dirt / crap collected in there. I think this is about 2 hours worth of work but being its my first time, I took tons of pictures and labeled everything I could find.   

The dash seems like it will be a PITA. I took the big screws off on both sides and center console but that thing isn't budging. Might introduce it to my 'persuader' tomorrow.

The convertible top design seems not too smart. The crap that was stuck in my drain rail area .. wow .. wouldn't be surprised if 1/2 the quarter panel was rusting underneath.

[phocup]

Yesterday a friend came over to help for some incentives and we got a lot done.






All the wiring is pretty much stripped and ready to be pulled through. There's quite a few unconnected wires that looks like it should be connected somewhere which kinda worries me. Fingers crossed.



A few questions about the parts / wires labeled below ..









A. What is this and what does it do ?



B. There's two of these connectors leading to some kind of black box behind each fender and one next to the hood open latch. What are these and what do they do ?



C & D. Some of the disconnected wires that worries me.



E. What is this and what does it do ?



F. For these and the fuse boxes with a bunch of connectors, do you guys just label it and take it off ? Or do you reconnect everything after pulling the harness through ? Also what is it and what does it do ? LOL



G & H. More of the disconnected wires that worries me.

But overall, I think I'm making pretty good progress.    Hoping to get the PPF separated beginning August to place my frame order!  Quite exciting!

[miatagr]

I found it very helpful to take my laptop out to the garage and pull up a wiring diagram for my year car. The Miata doesn't use duplicate connectors so reconnecting is easy and they do a good job of identifying the colors of the wires. That way, if I had a wire going to a box, I just needed to look at the colors of the wires going to the box and find it on the diagram to identify what the box is and what it does.

[miatagr]

And like most people on here, I couldn't have done it without the help of Gwnwar.....

[papabear]

All of the Blue/Orange connectors are Air Bag related. The black boxes they go to are crash sensors. They will all go back to the blue air bag box under the dash.

[phocup]

Thanks papabear!

Miatagr, I think I'll end up doing that sooner or later .. just kinda dreading looking up wiring diagram because past experiences have proven I kinda suck at reading those.  LOL