300BHPZE's 93' MX-3 SE ZE

[300BHPZE]

Yeah I won't lie...it's a bit scary cutting into your car.

[Mazda_Powered]

gonna go cut a fender lip off another mx-3 and butt weld it on?

[300BHPZE]

Yeah I have a guy here with a parts car who's gonna let me cut it up. Another guy is lending me his welder. It's nice to have generous friends, but it's a PITA to have to rely on people to help you out all the time.

[Mazda_Powered]

Nice, shouldn't be too difficult to replace a section though, just have to make sure your measurements are exact lol, cut off as much as the parts car as you can. Easier to trim it up vs adding some on.

[300BHPZE]

So big day today. I borrowed a small mig welder from a friend and attacked the rear quarter panels. Turns out I'm a crappy welder, but in the end it came out ok for the first time I have ever attempted to weld sheet metal in my life.

I have a full driver's side quarter in pretty good shape I got from a friend...


But he hasn't been returning my calls for some reason so I wasn't able to get the other side. So I picked up some cheap sheet metal at the Canadian Tire and set to basically making a mirror image of the one I have...seemed like something I could do.




Worked out fairly well but took about 4 hours.

I then cut the driver's side donor fender up and took what I needed. That was much easier and only took an hour or so to fit it up.

Here it is tacked in...



Close up of my tacks...


I did not take any pictures of the hours of grinding. It was painful. Literally.

I got both sides done and gave them a bit of Bondo just to smooth it out and then a coat of primer to keep things safe till I can finish and do some spot painting. Sorry no pics of that as it was dark when I finished. I'll take a few tomorrow.

There's my totally amateur body work debut. What do you all think?

[Mazda_Powered]

wow, definitely sounds like a lot of work so far, but I think it's turning out nicely, the home made piece flows pretty nice, so I don't see why it shouldn't work! Keep it up!

[300BHPZE]

yeah they look ok if you don't get too close. I'm definitely no pro when it comes to body work. I have a sunburn on my face from the welder...

[Mazda_Powered]

not welding with a mask I take it lol, I've done that for tack jobs myself and always end up a little bit toasty afterwards haha. Your skin might start peeling btw lol

[300BHPZE]

it's just such a pain in the ass to set the tip, put the visor down, make your tack, lift the visor, set the tip, put the visor down, make your tack...

I know better but honestly wasn't even thinking.

[white-lightning]

Harbor Freight auto darkening helmets are nice, that's what I have. You might look into buying one if you are going to weld any more.

[300BHPZE]

Yeah I had to borrow the welding gear and he doesn't have one. In the future I will definitely have an auto dimming hood.

[Mazda_Powered]

yea, I snagged my auto dimming one on sale lol. It's not as responsive as I'd like, but it beats the non dimming type, they're definitely a pain in the ass.

[300BHPZE]

Going Black!!!

For the past 6 weeks or so I've been working on the body of the Purple Beast trying to identify and remove all the rust. In the process I have figured out two things. First I'm a terrible body man. Second a real bodyman is the only hope for my car and I can't afford it.

So I decided to have some fun with it and started looking into Vinyl car wraps. I have learned a lot about vinyl in the last couple of months.

I started with the basic body work which you've seen in previous posts. It's not great but I decided that the goal of the project was just to do the best I could so that i could drive the car around with being horribly embarrassed and hopefully stop the rust from progressing quickly. Then I ordered 10yds @ 30" and 10yds @ 48" of Oracal 651 Calandered vinyl in matte black and started changing the Purple Beast to the Black Beast.

First step was to paint the parts that I couldn't wrap. Door sills, the inside of the doors, the bottom of the hood and the hatch. I also put a thin coat of paint on the hood so that the vinyl would have something better to stick to.





I forgot to take a picture of the hatch.

Then I started wrapping stuff. I started with the front bumper...long story...it didn't go well. The vinyl I bought is just no good for the complex curves of the bumpers. I'll come back to that later.

I went on to the hood. The basic strategy is to cut your vinyl roughly to size, remove the backing on one side and cut it off, spray the application fluid on the work piece and the vinyl and lay it on...





Then you use a squeegy to remove the wrinkles and push the fluid out. It's much trickier than it sounds but the application fluid makes it possible.

Went on to the fenders...



This is what it looks like after I did the doors today...



Long story short...I wasn't able to wrap the bumpers so I decided I would paint them. I used the same Krylon Fusion Satin Black that I used for the other painted parts and it's not bad but it's too shiney and it doesn't hold up at all on the front bumper. So I decided to go find some of the good stuff. I found a decent deal on 3M 1080 matte black vinyl which aught to be enough to complete the job. I hope that it's the same color as the cheap stuff. We'll see I guess.

I bought enough of the cheap stuff to cover the whole car for $97 locally. I got less than 5yds of 3M @ 60" wide for $120 + shipping. Enough to cover the whole car would be about $600.

So I'm wrapping the bumpers and redoing the hood (it has seams because the cheap stuff is only 48" wide) with the 3M and I'll use the cheap stuff on the roof and the hatch.

I'll post pics when it's done. Happy to hear your thoughts.

[bogaut]

that looks pretty good. ive considered that approach before, nice to see what it would look like.

[300BHPZE]

Thanks. I'm fairly happy so far but there is a learning curve with this stuff and there is a lot of room for improvement on the car. The material I used is not made for wrapping cars. It's much less expensive but it is very hard to work with on curved surfaces.

Looking forward to working with the 3M 1080.