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After what seemed a life time waiting for delivery, the next segment of the build had arrived and was ready to be fitted.
The first being a Sparco Sprint L seat and OMP 4 point harness. A friend modified the stock seat runner to allow the Sparco seat to be mounted. Its a really nice and simple design and he tilted the back up so the seat is level. We noticed the stock seat runner tilts back when bolted to the floor so he raised the rear up so I sit level.
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From previous experience, a harness with 2" webbing cut into my shoulders so I made sure to order a 3" version. I was abit dubious with the colour choice but I think it works
The last upgrade is very noticable in the previous photo, a 4 point half cage from Caged Laser. What should have been a reasonably straight forward fit turned out to be quite a head ache.
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The brackets aren't exactly a 'direct fit' in particular the rear legs. The cage isn't quite wide enough for the brackets to butt up against the rear wheel tubs. A piece of steel plate had to be sandwiched inbetween to fill the gap. Not the end of the world but abit annoying when neither the supplier or Caged Laser mentioned it when I rang them.
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I painted the brackets in red hammerite, but it looked awful so ended up painting the rest of the rear floor to match.
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The front hoop obstructs the factory seat belts so the passenger seat has been removed for now. I may leave it out permanently, because (slow) racecar lol
Next job at some point is to remove the front sound deadening and paint the floor to match
I also took a visit to H&S Performance for a wheel alignment. I hadn't had it checked since lowering and replacing the bottom arms (naughty, I know)
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Its been a busy couple of days
The wings were removed to be repaired and rust treated. I'm by no means experienced with body work/filler so this isn't gonna be a fantastic job lol
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With the filler sanded and the Kurust dry, I gave the treated areas a coat of zinc primer.
With the rest of the panels keyed and cleaned it was time for painting. I wanted to keep costs down so decided to paint the car in Montana Code Red graffiti paint, purchased from Graffcity.
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Its not perfect, its rough and patchy as hell but its all one colour which is the main thing. I'm sure it'll need redoing again at some point but I'll cross that bridge when it happens.
Now I need to get this rear arch replaced, get the bootlid holes welded up and the rest of the car can be painted
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Looks so awesome man!!
PS: Love the OMP Harness! I am the sales coordinator for OMP America.
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First part of this update is some good news, I've booked my first track day of the year woohoo! I'll be heading to Snetterton in July with a small group of friends so its gonna be a fun day.
When the Gizfab manifold was fitted it made the exhaust quite loud and raspy, which isn't ideal for a track day. So I purchased a stainless centre section with 2 resonators from Gizfab to help sort it. It still has a low end grunt but WOT it's certainly alot quieter than before
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One of the jobs that needed doing before the rest of the car got sprayed, was to have the bootlid welded up. I removed the rear wiper shortly after purchasing the car and had used an ebay blank. The wiper hole along with the holes for the original boot handle were welded by a friend and I done the filler work.
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The corners need some more sanding but overall its come out pretty well IMO
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The other job I've recently carried out is the removal of the sound deadening and painting the floor.
I used a freeze spray and hammer to remove the majority of it, followed by a Makita multi tool to remove the pieces stuck by the factory seam sealer. Unfortunately I didn't weigh what I removed, but reading on the forum its approx 9-10kg
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The holes were abit scabby around the edges so I cleaned them up with a drill wire brush attachment and gave it a coating of rust treatment.
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Once that was dry I applied seam sealer to cover the holes to prevent water getting in
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Next was to paint the floor. I used smooth red Hammerite so it matched the rear half of the interior (although that was aerosol and this was brush on)
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This weekend the rear arch should hopefully be sorted,removal of the graphics and door boards and any dings/dents filled
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Time was quickly passing and I was running out of time to get the car sorted ready for my track day. I spoke to a couple of people who work with bodywork (to get a price on cutting out and replacing the N/S/R arch) and they said it was solid metal and replacing the panel could distort the quarter panel.
So I attacked the arches with a flap disc on a grinder to see what I was dealing with. Turns out it IS good metal underneath, winning!
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Driver side wasn't as bad but had started to bubble so that received the same treatment
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The areas were cleaned, rust treated and then filled. I envy those who can do body work especially filler. These areas are pretty straight forward, but it certainly tested my patience lol.
Unfortunately I dont have any final photos of the repair.
Fast forward to last sunday (27th June). A friend had kindly allowed me to use a space in his unit to prep and paint the car. The paint booth he has is currently being re-done otherwise this whole process would have been alot better and easier.
With the car prepped with 400 grade sand paper, wiped down and masked it was ready for painting. The rear bumper was left on, a replacement was purchased and was being prepped off the car (I needed to cut the bottom for the diffuser and exhaust)
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We then used 8 cans of Montana Black Code Red with pink dot caps to paint the car. Someone recommended these caps as they give a wider spray pattern. We also repainted the bonnet because it was streaky from when I had painted it at home.
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But we didn't stop there...
I thought it would be a great idea to PAINT a livery on. I didn't know how vinyl would stick to the graffiti paint so went this way instead.
We started off by applying 6mm 3M fine line tape
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Masked off the rest of the car
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We then sprayed the areas with Montana Black Snow White
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A band approx 25mm was masked down the sides along with the tops of the bumpers ready for the next colour
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Very happy with how crisp the lines have turned out
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Next was to fine line the bonnet and spray that white
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It was time for the clear coat. I applied the first coat of Satin lacquer (Montana call it Varnish). By the time I had done the whole car, I noticed it had started to go cloudy in places.
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Perhaps it was too cold in the unit? So we pulled out the little heaters and see if there were any improvements
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Much better!
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But the bonnet was proving to be a real struggle. I tried spraying far away and up close, tried the wider nozzle and normal nozzle, tried holding a heater above and then spraying. Nothing was seeming to work....ARHH!!
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In the end my friend mixed up 500ml of 2k lacquer and used his spray gun. Not ideal conditions but its the only option we had
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He did a single coat/pass over the whole car, left it about 20mins and we unmasked. This was now the end of the 2nd full day and we would return the following morning.
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It was another early start and I was petrified of walking through the door, hoping the 2k lacquer hadn't reacted with the graffiti paint. To my delight it hadn't, woohoo!
Although the first thing I noticed was the white on the front wings and the grille were brighter to the rest. Thats because the white was sprayed over the lacquer and then lacquered over the top. Later on all of the white will get re-done so it'll eventually match
With the windows unmasked it was time to fit the graphics followed by cleaning the glass,roof and spoiler.
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Yes, I know the tow sticker isn't above the tow eye. I'll get another one cut lol
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Painting in a dusty unit isn't ideal, it has its faults and flaws but we can all agree it's much better than it was before :)
We got the car done and had arrived at Peterborough East of England Arena the next day (Saturday 3rd July) for one of the UK's largest modified car show, Modified Nationals.
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Turns out the Micra got more attention than my R34
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Wednesday this week I had my first track day at Snetterton accompanied by some friends (Supra Mk4, Fiesta ST and Mini One)
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It had been awhile since I had done a track day (Snetterton 2015 and Lotus Test Track 2016, both in the purple MX5)
The day started out overcast with a drizzle of rain on the sighting laps. Spent the morning avoiding getting in the way of everyone else
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I think the majority of the time was figuring out which gears to use for each corner,cornering speeds, braking distance, when to accelerate out of the corner etc Theres so much to think about without realising.
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After lunch things started to improve as the track become quieter. I was very surprised the brakes hadn't boiled up, it was a good decision to get the fluid flushed through with Dot 5.1 a couple of weeks prior. I was still on the Pagid discs and ADL Blueprint brake pad, they survived the day and got me home. Probably because I eased onto them rather than braking late, which obviously effected 'times' and flow
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The Avon ZV7 tyres held up pretty good too. After a couple of outings I dropped the pressures to 29-30psi and left them at that. Whether I should have increased/decreased them more I'm unsure?
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As expected the car struggled on the straights,purley because of the 1.0L gearbox. Quickest I got down the back straight was 95mph backing off at the first brake marker (again, didn't want to kill the brakes)
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Confidence was much higher towards the end of the day so switched on the GoPro for the last couple of outings. Still lots to learn but that will come with more seat time :)
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Now THAT is badass! Honestly, I never liked the "dinosaur scratched my headlights" look or whatever the vertical and horizontal black lines everywhere meant.
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A few days ago I had thought of selling the Micra. It was advertised for 2 days and today it sold and drove away.
As far as builds go it was probably 90% done. I had planned on buying a Tornado Systems ECU, K12 injectors and an intake with remote MAF from Matt Humphries, smoothing out the map and increasing the power to approx 110hp. It would be alot of money for not alot of gain which was one of the deciding factors. Boosting or engine swap were out of the question due to time,space and money.
I had planned on buynig either BC Racing or Gizfab coilovers, stickier tyres and some improved discs and pads ready for the next lot of track days. Again, that would be in the £1100 region depending which suspension I chose.
I had alot of fun with the car, learnt new skills and would like to prove that with some planning and good choice of parts, you can build a pretty decent car.
The new owner is based in North London, hopefully he'll keep in contact
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You did a great job and learnt many things. It's better that you had that experience and moved on rather than let it languish unfinished. Thanks for all the great photos and updates along the way.
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At the end the Micra looked really good. You made a good job - a nice little racer.