88 Convertible Build

WankelsRevenge · 09-11-2017, 02:51 PM

Well after putting my purple car in a ditch and messing up the front end I decided to trade up. Had a local guy selling a vert shell for $400, and after thinking about it realized it would be cheaper then the cost of fixing my front end, plus since it already had 5 lug hubs I would be saving some money there as well.
So I picked up the shell, and sold my purple car to a friend with the plans to swap out the motor/trans and anything else I might need out of it to swap into the convertible to get it running and driving.

WankelsRevenge · 09-11-2017, 02:55 PM

After picking up the car decided to do as much work as I could to it before swapping the motor and trans over. Picked up some cheap MaxSpeed coilovers a bunch of the other local guys were using and had good luck with. Just seems the biggest thing was they are heavy as hell. But install was a breeze and after playing around with them a little bit both camber and height adjustment were fairly simple. Overall for the price I'm fairly happy with them.

WankelsRevenge · 09-11-2017, 02:58 PM

Well since I bought the car with a fairly stripped out interior I got to work swapping over as much stuff as I could from the purple car. Though it wasn't much I moved over my seats, harness, and steering wheel. I also picked up an extra dash from a friend since the one currently in the car is broken off below the center console section.

WankelsRevenge · 09-11-2017, 03:03 PM

Since the engine bay was pretty bare I decided to go ahead and paint the bay. My last car was bright purple, but the previous owner didn't paint any of the jambs or bay to match so the original white stuck out pretty bad. I decided to go with a simple black since it matches pretty much everything. I plan on painting the car in the future and wanted something simple that would go with it.
The below pictures are the three stages of the paint job. The first is after I cleaned/washed the engine bay, the second is after I did a layer of primer, and the last is the final black.

WankelsRevenge · 09-11-2017, 03:09 PM

Set aside a weekend off work to get the engine swapped over. While I was at it I put in a whole new Exedy clutch setup including master/slave and hard/braided lines. Also decided to install a lightweight Fidanza flywheel since I had everything out of the car and knew I'd regret not doing it in the future.
After getting the car towed over to my house I worked on getting my RB exhaust back on, and getting my Megasquirt harness installed. I picked up a relay box from Stu Kelley Motorsports to clean up the install a bit.