Body Restoration
A few photos of a work in progress
In the fall of 2003, I started work on restoring the body of my 1985 Mazda RX-7 GSL-SE. By this time, I had owned this car for about four years, and had it fairly well "sorted out," mechanically speaking. (For non-gear-heads, that means it runs well and is reliable.) But I had put off any bodywork and painting of the car for about two years since the last major mechanical work was finished. Funding was a significant concern, aggravated by tenuous job security in a shaky, post-recession job market, as any proper restoration of the car would likely cost $3000 to $5000 or more. Of equal or greater concern was the repair experience that I had with my other car, and the quality of the repairs that were performed on that car. Without going into those details here, I learned that if you want the job done right, you have to do it yourself!
So I signed up for a bodywork course at a local vocational/technical high school's night school. For $225 per half-semester, I could learn this black art on my own car, using the school's tools and under the supervision of a master craftsman. Unfortunately, the master craftsman was unavailable, so we got Eric. ;)
These photos are grouped together, roughly, by "repaired section." This page last updated January 27, 2005.
September '99
The original "big dent" and the spoiler that was on the car when I bought it:
Shortly after purchasing the car, I found these pics of a car for sale on E-bay. The goal is to restore my car to a similar appearance.
March 2002
Once I had the car mechanically sound and was about to start work on the body, one of my neighbors beat me to it. While attempting to park her SUV in the parking spot in front of mine, she clipped my front bumper, damaging the bumper cover, corner lens and fender in the process. She was good enough to leave me a note, and offered to pay for the damages. With her being a single mom, though, and with me about to start the long road to sheetmetal perfection anyway, I asked her only to buy a used bumper cover, and I would try to find one at a reasonable price. She got off with only a $100 tab, and the occasional taunts of the neighborhood about her inability to parallel park.
Here's the driver's side fender, after I fixed it:
I'll get to the bumper cover later.
Not two months after one neighbor did that alteration of my front bumper, someone else managed to back into the driver's door. This undoubtedly happened fairly late at night, as I arrived home at about midnight that night, and was up early the next day. The car was parked across the street from another neighbor's driveway, and I'm fairly sure that it was the drunk boyfriend of a coke-head former neighbor who didn't even realize that he backed into me when he arrived home that night. We spoke about it the next day and, even though he thought that he might have done this, he was not sure, and certainly didn't have any recollection of bumping into anything. He did admit to turning around in that driveway at about 2:00 in the morning, though, and he offered me "a couple of hundred bucks to cover the damage." Because he wasn't sure though, I turned him down.
Incidentally, the bars all close at 2:00 AM in New Jersey. Guess where he and his girlfriend were that night? Here's my door, and his rear bumper:
I was able to partially pop out the dent with my hand by removing the interior door panel, but couldn't quite bring it back to its original shape. Here's the driver's side door, in the shop, before the repair:
Driver's side door, almost done with the repair:
I finished repairing the door on a Thursday night, and parked the car until the weekend. Sometime before Saturday morning, somebody backed into me again! This most likely happened on Friday night. I suspect that the culprit, again, didn't know that they hit me. I'm also pretty confident that it was a new, different drunk neighbor this time.
I need to buy a house with a garage!
Driver's side door, in the midst of the second repair:
Driver's side door, close to being finished (after the second repair):
Driver's side rear corner, before repair. This is a pretty common rust spot on these cars.
Driver's side rear corner, after repair:
Parking lot dent in the driver's side rear wheel well:
Passenger's side rear corner rust:
When I bought the car, it had some cheap, aftermarket mud guards on it, which contributed to these rust spots behind the driver's rear wheel well:
Driver's rear wheel well repair, in progress:
Driver's side rear wheel well, after repair:
Driver's side rear corner, rust above the bumper:
After fixing the spoiler holes:
Happy Birthday to you, happy birthday to you.... My car passed the 100k mile mark on the way to class. :)
Header panel. The dent on the passenger's side was there when I bought the car. A previous owner had covered it up with touch up paint, which kept it from rusting, at all, for years.
Passenger's side front fender, which apparently had some work done on it by one of the previous owners:
BTW, that's Roger working on my fender. And, no, we're not done!
Passenger's side front wheel well, including surface rust from my fender lip rolling and some curb damage:
I had a really tough time repairing that fender. Everything that I did left me with a
kink in the fender flare,
right around the 3 O'clock position as you're facing the wheel well:
Utlimately, I ended up cutting out much of our previous repair, and
welding in some new metal.
The end result came out pretty good, but I don't
have those pics up yet.
Prepping the hood for primer:
That's one really ugly POS without the front end on it!
The hood and header panel after primer. I ended up replacing the header panel.
Midstream in the passenger's side dent repair:
Passenger's side rear wheel well surface rust:
Passenger's side kick panel rust hole and speed bump (?) damage:
Patching the kick panel:
Kenny, in desperate need of a beer!
Cracked weld and paint behind each kick panel. This was caused by uneven jacking at autocrosses:
Most of the following pictures are not going to be included in the final version of this page, so if you want any of these pictures, you should download and save it as soon as possible.
Eric, the class instructor, trying on a student's bike:
One of the other student's projects:
Tony, the school's custodian:
Another student's project:
Below is my old fuel pump, which died on the way home from one of the classes. Some of the other students were quick to help push me off the road and into a parking lot. Kenny saved the day by running home to get his trailer and towing me home. I replaced the pump with a high-volume, turbo-friendly Bosch unit, lying in the street in 40-something November weather.
