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Just bought a 94 323 SE as the base of my new project car. I plan to use
MX-3 front and rear sub frames, engine and chassis wiring harness' and a curved necked KLZE.

The car wash seemed like the best place to start.


It looked a little better after.


The engine compartment was a little yucky! I am saving the 1.6L for my other 323 so I hosed it down also.
I used "Revive" engine degreaser. It is the best degreaser I have ever used.

Before:


After:


Then I pulled the interior. (I plan to use an MX-3 chassis harness)


I actually power washed the inside of the car!! I figured if it fried the wiring, it would not be a big deal. (I am using a MX-3 wiring harness engine and interior so if it fried, I was going to call a tow truck). People at the car was stared in disbelief I drove the car to the car wash, un-bolted the drivers seat, hosed it out, bolted the seat back in and drove it home! LOL


Then I took the dash out.


After that I took out the engine.




That was day one! Somehow I think the project will slow down a little from this point on. Well at least until I buy a MX-3 parts car. Next round I am going to knock the rear sub frame out and paint the top and bottom of the floor and the engine compartment. I have to fix a little rust in the passenger rear inner fender also. I screwed-up the sub frame to rad support nutserts, so I got to somehow fix those too. There was some kinda metal splash shield inner fender type deals under the air box that must of been retaining water because they are dust?! Cold air via a rust hole?! I will have to have a closer look.

Today was a very happy day! I picked up my new wheels and tires. I got Konig Maxxim air's with 205/50/15 Falken Azenis RT615's


I also got an engine crane. The crane should make removing and replacing engines much easier. The crane went on sale Tuesday, but Monday was my day off, so the 323 had it's engine removed quick and dirty like. The KLZE will go in on the hook though. I refused to rent one on Monday because the guy at the rental place said I could have bought their crane 3 times over with all the money I spent renting it. (computer records) My new crane was on sale at Princess Auto for only $219.00! I am planing to put KYB GR2'S with B&G lowering springs on the MX-3 suspension before it goes into /on to the 323. Other then that performance wise I am going to add an ACT clutch, Pacesetter header, Vibrant cat and Muffler

I plan to paint the car flat black for the stealth vibe, well that and I am cheap, broke and generally sick of washing cars.

Sick rims
Sick tires
Sick muffler
Sick car

Sick build. Keep us posted

The car smells less and less like horse poop all the time, so after a serious steam clean and some fresher MX-3 seats driving it will not make you "sick" which will also be sick!

I have not had much of a chance to play with the 323 this week. I went to the shop for a few hours yesterday. I managed to remove the rear suspension, front bumper and lights. I broke one of the rear subframe bolts trying to remove it. That sould be fun to get out! The rear trailing arm bushings are F'd and they won't come out! The nutserts started turning in their cages. (I heated all the bolts with a torch, I used to dismantle cars for a living). I removed the trailing arms from the suspension end for now. I think I am goin to leave them until the car is mobile and take the car down to my friends fabrication shop to plasma cut-out and repair that area. (suspension mounting points in front of the rear wheels). The rust areas in the inner fenders that I was worried about are not really structual, so I am just going to remove the bumpers and clean and fix them up. The rear upper strut mounts looked rough, but on closer inspection they just need a good wire brushin' and some rust paint. I am really happy that the breaking *&%$ portion of the car build is over. I really can't complain as the car is Canadian and 14 years old. The little 323 is really is in good shape considering it's age and the fact I payed $500.00 for it. I am going to spend a couple of weeks fixin' up the 323 then it will be MX-3 parts car time. (Start the whole clean and dismantle phase again). I will post up some pics soon. I have takin the before photos. Time to get to work and then take some after photos.

damn I may end up doing this to my winter beater after the winter!!

It's going to be great.
Google "$50 paint job Moparts" if you haven't already. You can make it look great, and scratch resistant, and easily repairable for $50.

I got a chance to play with the car again tonight. I removed everything from the engine compartment. I removed the whole wiring harness. (I had 80% of it out last go, so I finished it off). Decided to take off the fenders, doors, hood, wiper cowl, rear bumper and tail lights. The gas tank had been replaced by the previous owner and the lines looked O.K, but I decided to rip all the brake and gas lines out of it, so I could paint the floor properly. Removed the gas tank also. The floor is in really nice shape, so I figured a good coat of rust paint and some asphalt rocker paint should keep it that way. The rust issues are definitely not going to be a big deal. Basically there are rust holes under each bottle! The right rear corner inner fender where the rear washer bottle sits. Front right corner under the front windshield washer bottle. Left front corner under the coolant overflow bottle. Going to wire brush /grind-out the bad and fiberglass them. Figure they are hidden, the holes are not structural and fiberglass makes a good easy repair (if your used to working with it). Besides have you ever seen a rusty Corvette?? I took a whole disposable camera of film today. I will post up the pics as soon as I can. Priced out some new MX-3 trailing arms. They are quite reasonable, so next time out, I am going hack whats left of the 323 ones out / off. I try never to kill things until I price the replacements! I once replaced the rear end in my Lincoln mark VII and I pounded out the control arm bushings because then were shot. It turned out you could not get new ones!! I had to carefully remove them from a car at the wrecker. (At the time the car was old enough that Ford stopped makin' replacement parts and too new for the aftermarket guys to have come up with anything). Looks like you can get just about everything for the MX-323 and everything seems to be quite reasonably priced even for a cheap prick (like myself). I plan to replace all the bushings, ball joints, tie rods, struts, strut mounts, springs so it looks like a old car, but drives like a new one!

I painted my winter beater 323 with rattle cans! Flat black is very forgiving. It turned out really well. I ended up using semi-flat and flat by mistake, so I suspect project Jay-Spec will turn out a little nicer! I have painted cars with a Wagner Paint sprayer, they work good too. (the plug in the wall socket house paint guns). I prefer the rattle cans though, because it takes forever to clean oil based paint out of the Wagner! You have to watch it lie a hawk too, because when the paint reservoir nears empty it starts to spit paint and creates a mess. I am going to use krylon fusion plastic paint on the bumpers. I used this stuff on the grill of the Mustang it works great! Looks like new. The Mustang grill was black plastic, but it looked white due to the sun fading it over the years.

My winter beater / daily driver 323

fowljesse wrote:It's going to be great. Thanks that's really nice to here, I am really excited about it. My friends and customers at the speed shop where I work are less excited (to say the least) . My girl friend is very happy that I will not be driving her to work in the Mustang. The Stang is really a drag car (that I drive on the street). It does not like city life much. Once the coolant temp reach 210 (5 minutes idling at a stop light on a hot day) the floor starts to melt your shoes! I was thinking about doing a bunch of stuff to make it more street-able, but I decided on building a real street car instead. The birth of Project Jay-Spec. A thirteen second car you can really drive and enjoy as a true street car.

Google "$50 paint job Moparts" if you haven't already. You can make it look great, and scratch resistant, and easily repairable for $50.

That is really cool, not sure you can do that with flat paint though?? That dude likely has 10 million man hours into wet sanding and buffing though

colinsmx3 wrote:damn I may end up doing this to my winter beater after the winter!!

Two words: Do it!

Photos from the last trip to the garage!

I started the day by removing the front bumper.


I then removed the fenders to see if there was any rust under them. There wasn't
(well no holes anyway)




The under bottle holes! (both front corners)


The under bottle hole right rear.


Small hole in right rear inner fender.


Then I took out the crusty 323 rear subframe.






I took off the rear bumper and tail lights too.


Took the doors off and what was left of the wiring out of the interior.

I took out all the plumbing remaining wiring.


I have almost ran out of things to take off! Next round I am going to attack the rear trailing arms, patch some holes, remove some....ah....I mean MANY broken bolts then I am going to clean the bottom of the floor and give the whole works a nice coat of flat black rust paint.


When I got tired I looked lovingly at my wheels

That looks like a proper work environment; more than a couple fast cars were built with that stuff. The stickers and banners alone are worth 100 HP!
As for the paint: They make an additive that makes it flat, and there is a guy that painted his Miata straight out of the can in one coat, and then buffed it, and it looks like a mirror.
I'm going to do my car gloss black soon, and put up pictures.
Appearently, bottles are cancerous. MX-3s rust under them, too.

"Appearently, bottles are cancerous. MX-3s rust under them, too".

No wonder they rust, it is like the car has a tin bucket on three of the four inner fenders! I guess in Japan a wad of salty snow in your inner fender likely never happens.

I love the hubcaps. You should paint them flat black, too. You can easily sand it off, if you want to go back. I want to put some on my fronts, but don't want the brakes to heat up too much.