Mazda RX3 Restoration

Project Undertaken 23rd May 2011

Although at first sight Andrew's RX3 looks tatty, on closer inspection is is pretty solid. There is some bad corrosion around the front and rear screens caused by metal trim clips, but otherwise it is as good as you could hope for. Here is the car as we received it:

And then stripped, ready for blasting:

The blasting did not throw up any major hidden horrors, which makes a change! Most of the work looks 'relatively' straight forward (although saying that at this stage is tempting fate!!)

The first job we are tackling is the roof. The skin is being replaced with a good, non-sunroof skin removed from a Mazda 818 (same car without the rotary engine!). Firstly the spot welds on the front and rear window seams are drilled out. The leaded joints on the 'C' pillars are then heated and scraped to remove the lead and reveal the spot welded join beneath.

Next, the skin needs seperating along the gutter. In this case it is a spot welded joint, but to be safe we cut the skin inboard of the seam, remove it, and then grind away the spot welds and chisel away the remaining edge of the skin.

The skin then needs seperating from the donor roof. This is the same process, but with the welds drilled and ground away from the opposite side, so as not to damage the skin. The original frame and new skin are given a good coating of anti-corrosion, weld-thru primer before fitting.

Finally, the new skin is offered up, alignment checked against measurments taken on the original roof, and finally spot-welded in place. The 'C' pillars are plug-welded with the MIG, ground back and then lead filled as per the original.

Moving on, we tackle the offside sill/arch area. Although we have a replacment sill, we decide not to use it, as the fit is not perfect, and much of the original sill is ok.

The car has previously had new chassis rails, and the offside has a little corrosion present, and an untidy edge where the spot welds were chiseled out during the previous repair. We decide to cut out the lower section of inner wing to treat the rust, and allow us to make a new section with a neater edge.

While working in this area we've repaired the front of the sill.

Next we move on to the rear arch and lower quarter panel area.

There are also some repairs needed to the rear of the offside inner wing reinforcer, rear inner arch and some small repairs to the floorpan and inner wing itself.

While our fabricator is working on other projects, we press on with preparing panels. The doors are stripped and smoothed out ready for primer (one has some accident damage which needs straightening out before filler-work begins). The bonnet and boot have also been prepared and primed - both were in very good condition. To our suprise the nose section is plastic, so no rot here! just a few holes to fill and a good clean and sand ready for plastic-priming.

We have also pulled apart the suspension components ready for blasting and repainting of some items.

Back on with the metalwork. Both front and rear screen apertures are very rotten due to the metal clips that retain some trim parts rubbing the paint - bad bit of design! The rear 'scuttle' panel is bad, but thankfully Andrew has tracked down a genuine replacement part. We remove the old one, and cut out the mounting flange underneath (which is also badly rotten). A new flange is made up and welded in and the bottom corners of the screen aperture repaired, before fitting the new panel.

While working on the rear end, we also weld up the old Vinyl roof edge-trim holes and aeriel hole.

At the front the scuttle is only rotten on the outer skin, so this is repaired with a series of butt-welded sections.

Amongst the myriad of smaller repairs is the rear of the nearside inner wing reinforcer, the floor above both jacking points, front of the nearside sill, bottom of nearside 'a' panel etc.

Although the upper front panel is plastic, the lower is metal and badly pin-holed. Andrew comes to the rescue again, with a NOS panel. this is blasted and the prepared for paint.

There is a small repair to do at the rear of the nearside inner wing, where it meets the scuttle, and then we move on to the front end of the inner wings. Both headlamp surround panels are removed, the front edges of the inner wings repaired, and brand new headlamp panels fitted (thanks again Andrew!!)

The final piece of metalwork is to reconstruct the nearside rear arch and rear end of the sill. With this complete the underside is seam-sealed ready for underbody paint.

We use a Polyurathene 2-part underseal which is tinted to match the body colour. Very tough!

Moving on to body-prep on the 'shell, we offer up panels to check alignment of the new wings - they require a fair bit of work to get them right, but we get there in the end! Once all the initial filler work is done, the car gets and all-over coat of 'Reface' sprayable filler, before being block sanded back ready for primer.

The inside and engine bay then get a coat of Zinc Phosphate primer, before the exterior gets a heavy coat of 2K build primer. The Wings get a second coat of Reface to make sure we get them 100% straight.

Once the primer has been block-sanded, wet flatted and double checked for any defects (very time consuming, but not very photogenic!) we are ready to start getting yellow on there! Inside first:

.....Then outside!

.......and not forgetting all the bits!

So with the shell in paint we start piecing it back together. we start with the dash, heater assembly and wiring loom. The metal part of the dash is repainted, and the bulkhead sound deadening remade with modern materials. the original dash speaker is replaced with a modern Alpine speaker of the same size.

We then start to clean up and paint more mechanical components, including the axle and steering column/box. Andrew has supplied us all new polybushes, rod ends, ball joints etc. At this stage we also collect together a batch of parts and bolts for zinc plating.

The axle is then fitted with new wheel bearings and seals, along with the front hubs, and the whole lot assembled and fitted. the rear leafsprings have been custom made to give a 50mm drop to match the lowered front coils. finally the car is rolling once again!

Ready to begin the fun part - bolting it back together!