Had to check where I last left off because I forgot…

SR, torn apart. Car, also torn apart. Progress… very minimal. But since then, a few things have started to happen and by the time you’re reading this, I should have made pretty good progress. So here is where that started.

A few weeks ago I finally took my block to Bahrain to get the machine work started, after weighing all my options and seeing what the local shops had to offer. I wasn’t impressed to be honest. If I was still going to rock a simple, stock bottom end engine, maybe I would have done the work locally, but after getting all the Tomei stuff and needing to get the cylinders bored out, I knew I had to take the engine somewhere competent.

So I did that, it was a bro trip for a couple of days that had a few unexpected obstacles, for those that don’t know, Bahrain is a neighboring country to Saudi, and although you don’t need a visa or anything to go there. You do need an ID to cross the border. I ,of course, know that. And so does everyone else. So I made sure not to forget my wallet when leaving home at 5 a.m. to drive 6 hours all the way there.

So… what happened after we drove 6 hours away from home? I realized… I forgot my ID. I did have my wallet, but with no ID in it, because I forgot it at the bank. I hadn’t realized this until we were 20 minutes away from the border. So yeah, great start to the trip. Funnily enough this wasn’t the only thing we forgot to bring, my very good friend who made sure I don’t forget anything myself, went and forgot his family’s apartment’s keys, the apartment where we were supposed to stay at for the trip…

It all worked out though, as we were able to ship the ID and keys and get them the same day. Once that drama was over with, we headed to Bahrain early the next day to drop off the engine. I forgot to take photos of the shop but plan to when I go to pick it up later. The work would take a few weeks.

Once I was back in Saudi, not much was done. I just recently graduated and have more free time than ever. I had a small project going on restoring some Bride seats, but nothing major.

Working on the car itself kept getting delayed for months because the shop I wanted to do the work at was busy. I was getting pretty frustrated by the situation as it seemed like they didn’t see my car as a priority. And when I asked and requested that we get started on it for the last time, I received the news that the shop was closing down and they couldn’t take my project on even if they wanted to…

I wish the owner well and everything, but I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t pissed off by this. I’ve been waiting months just so I can get the work I want done, done by them! but that never happened. As much as it sucked to hear this, I was at least free now to find a different shop. This meant that I’d have to cut down on the work I was going to do though.

The shop I wanted to work with had experience building full on drift/race cars and had all the equipment and qualifications to stitch weld and reinforce my bay. That was my original plan for the car. I really wanted to build something with no compromise to my vision and would last a long time.. Welding the bay and doing a few other custom fabrication stuff was worth it for me, even if it costed more and took more time. But at this point, that wasn’t an option anymore. as all other up to par shops were simply too busy to even give me a date, as this type of work takes scheduling months in advance. Which I thought I did but it didn’t work out.

But no reason to harp on that now, as cool as it would’ve been to have a racecar spec engine bay, and doing the rest of the chassis to that level at a later point would’ve been. I’m going to keep it simple for now, and just paint the bay and get the car running soonish instead.

So that’s what I did. I found someone else that’d take on the job, simple bay repaint with some rust repair.

The day came and the flatbed truck was here to pick up the car, it was kinda emotional to see it leave the garage for the first time in so long lol.

I took the car to the same guy that painted my car last year, they do general body repair and body work. The last few parts I wanted to take off were the brake booster and subframe. So I did that there. The spare tire wheel well had a previous rust repair done, but two years after the rust is back, work wasn’t done well and it’s worse than it was before.

The booster was an absolute bitch to remove, I never knew it was such a pain to take off. Took me around 2 hours to take off just 4 nuts. But I got it done.

Once the guys were done with a few customer cars, we pushed the 240 to the corner so I could begin taking the front suspension apart. I want to do this bay repaint as nice as possible and that means taking everything I can off.

My subframe had lived a hard life for the past 2 years, so I wanted to get it refreshed and reinforced, so I took it to a different place to get welded up.

I then took out the gas tank to address the rust in the spare tire well, it was repaired before but like I said it got rusty again. Hoping this time it can be fixed right so I don’t have to deal with it again.

The guys got started on the front end quick. few things I wanted to be addressed were the battery tray area, as in the process of removing it I destroyed the metal underneath it. So a patch panel was made to replace that whole section.

The air intake box bracket was removed as I didn’t have a need for it anymore, and it simply looked ugly.

Some rust was developing near my driver door fender, so that was cut out and patched.

As for the tubs, I decided against cutting and trying to weld them higher as I’ve seen others do. It’s a cool idea but the shop didn’t have the ability to do it as well as I would’ve liked. So instead we only hammered in some more in a few sections. Using some heat they were able to get the metal to be a bit more malleable. The upper pinch welds were hammered completely flat to the top, giving me just a few extra mm of clearance. The front and back sections were pretty thoroughly pushed back, so I’m hoping I won’t have problems there anymore.

These are some before pics, the rusty areas are where I rubbed, and in the after you can see the hammer marks and how far in the metal was pushed.

It was slightly painful to hammer this much, but it’s best to do it now as all of this will be cleaned up and painted over. I’m aiming to have the car rub as little as possible while putting it back at my old lowest ride height. It’s going to be a challenge but I’ll do my best.

In preparation for fixing the gas tank straps bracket, I took off the rear bumper.

End result before grinding and paint. Should last longer this time I hope.

Passenger side tube was hammered a bit more to match the driver side. Should have more room to run less caster if I want to. Or if I ever wanna run 18s in the front lol.

With that, all metal work is done and paint perp begins.

Body filler and sanding.

Primer.

And then some more sanding. While the guys were doing the paint prep, the machine shop messaged me saying that my engine is done. So I made a quick same day trip to pick it up and come back in my trusty Kia.

Almost had some drama crossing the border on the way back, but thankfully all went well in the end. Sucks that we have to go so far to get reliable machine work here but it is what it is. Will cover more of the engine build details in a later post when the rebuild process begins. For now it’ll sit for a bit while I get just a few more parts I need.

The car was finally moved into the paint booth, last bit of cleaning and sanding was done before the weekend, with new seem sealer applied. I left on Thursday, came back on Saturday and the bay was fully painted!

The camera died on me that day, so only got one nice booth pic lol.

After the bay paint dried, we tapped up around the wheel wells and chassis rails as all of that will be raptor lined. Although I wanted a fully painted underbody at first. I was convinced that this might be the better choice. Since roads here tend to have lots of rocks and rough surfaces, paint probably wouldn’t have lasted long. And although it is dry out here, these things want to rust so bad that it’ll somehow find a way to do so.

Plus raptor liner has some added benefits of keeping road noise down and probably being easier to clean. Black wheel wells aren’t super stylish but if done right it can look good I feel.

And after all that, here are the final results:

The bay was painted in Nissan KL0, the famous silver seen on Kouki 180s and R33 GT-Rs. I wanted the color match to be as close as possible so I was looking for a gas cap off of a KL0 180 in Japan for months. The color match id say is pretty good. Silver is one of the hardest colors to paint I hear. Differences in pressure or painting style can throw the color off. But overall I’m very happy with the results!

Some small bits and pieces I had painted, black for the brackets and booster. Silver for the coil pack cover. Not sure I’ll run it but thought might as well.

Subframe after welding and paint looked pretty nice.

The guys’ work was done, now it was up to me to get the car back on the ground ready to roll. Almost everything went smoothly with minimal cursing and frustration. But unfortunately one of the tension rod bracket bolts snapped. I had to get the car on the ground that day so I decided to push forward and will extract and replace it later on. Hopefully I don’t forget…

All big parts back on, gas tank in the trunk, and bill payed.

It’s time to go back home.

This… pretty much marks the half way point. A lot of work is done. But a lot of work is yet to be completed. The engine is very close to being put together but due to some geopolitical tensions, some of the parts necessary might be delayed.

As for the bay, the to do list is pretty long and tedious, lots and lots of cleaning. Hardware, brackets, wiring, etc. I’m in no hurry to get this car back on the road as the driving season is very close to coming to an end. So I’ll just take my time with it with hopes of driving next season.

Who knows when the next car post will be, but I plan on making it once the engine is inside the car, whether that is in a few weeks or a few months I don’t know. But it feels good to finally have stuff to do instead of waiting around on other people, or saving up for parts. It’s down to me and my will power to get this car moving under its power again!!