I couldn’t resist splurging and picking up a set of Denji headlights for the hatch. The OEM headlights aren’t that bad with their light output for halogen units, but I wanted a set of Denji’s because I plan on eventually doing a HID projector retrofit with a set of RX-330 projectors I’ve had laying around for years and Denji’s are perfect for that. Read more...

As of lately it’s been hard for me to see the overall progress being made on the hatch because I’m working on too many small steps simultaneously. Unfortunately that’s just the nature of the beast when it comes to this phase of a project car as you tend to uncover more and more things that need to be done while working through your TODO list. Read more...

With the engine back in the bay, I couldn’t resist starting to reassemble as much of the car as I could. Right off the bat the battery tray and wiper fluid reservoir were installed. Read more...

Before dropping in the motor, I wanted to make sure there wouldn’t be any surprises during re-assembly so I went through the engine bay and cleaned up every bolt / access hole. Read more...

Bodywork is probably my least favorite step when it comes to a project. It takes a ton of time and it often feels like your just going in circles. I’m grateful I didn’t have to worry about painting the entire vehicle but even just doing the engine bay I spent somewhere around 120 hours on it. Read more...

I made a mistake in the wheel wells. I had initially planned to leave portions of the OEM undercoating since it was so difficult to remove, and would use bed liner to recoat everything else that I had stripped, but I didn’t consider how it’d be next to impossible to blend the two together. Read more...

Having finished up the suspension (minus coilovers) I figured the next logical step would be to dive into the engine bay. I’m itching to start on the engine bay body work but I felt it’d be smarter to address every existing issue, and figure out how/where everything would mount up prior to spraying any paint. Read more...

The suspension on my hatch was in rough shape. Nearly every bushings was ripped, the ball joints were original and questionable at best, and all of the various suspension arms were covered in rust and some still had over spray on them from when we painted the car years ago. Read more...

With so many spots that needed to be addressed in the engine bay it was hard to pick where to start. To break the ice I decided to start with a small first step of unshaving the headlight adjuster holes that I had accidentally shaved. Read more...

Even with the motor and transmission already pulled there was still a good chunk of parts that needed to be removed from the chassis. The ever growing parts pile. Read more...