Making it better, One step at a time

[kota02]

Hello All and thanks a lot for all the wisdom on this forum.

The car is in Blacksburg, VA. I has been a daily driver for past three years and I feel the time has come to give it a good cleaning, fix some of the major issues and make it last a lot longer. The rust is not that horrible, but that is just my view. I am sure some of you will think it needs a ground up restoration, I just do not have the resources. My goal has been to strip the old carpet, get rid of all the "professionally" body filler jobs, patch the holes with fresh meta and in the process learn a lot about my little car.

I have tried to take pictures at all the right moments, but it is by no means a comprehensive documentation of the process.

Will keep posting more images as and when I make progress.

[kota02]

Few more shots of the process.

[kota02]

OK......

After looking at endless posts and trying to gather enough courage to do it, and then deciding not to do it, a decision has been made.

I do have to replace the floorpans. Patchwork is just not going to cut it because I plan to put in new carpet, the rear seats have been re stuffed and look good, but I I do not fix the rust holes (millions of tiny ones) it is going to eventually come back and bite me. So, I am going to do it.....or give it my best shot. You must have already noticed my noobie welding skills, but the point is to make the car better while I learn complimentary skills during the journey.

Will post more pics soon.

[kota02]

This is how the seats were...

[kota02]

In the past few months, I removed a lot of things, got under the ca whole lot and learned quite a few things about how things were done in old days.

It is not a show car by any means, but I love it.

Here are some of the things I did, I am not going to go into details as this website has much more detailed accounts of almost everything that can be done to this car.

Just a few things that I wish I knew before I started the project:

1. The rear windows are a bitch to put back, it makes it a breeze if you have another pair of hands. In my case, I had to use a bunch of shims, extra long sheet metal screws, I will discuss the reason in a minute.
2. Patch work of sheetmetal might not be perfect, but it, I feel is definitely a worthwhile investment and makes the car better. If you can not afford to replace the floor pan, just do as much as you can, the car will still love you and thank you.
3. The window sill weather strips are really old school design, even by 1975 standards, but you can definitely do a DIY hack using self adhesive backed 1/2" felt strip, $ 2.74 per door, and I think it makes the window operation smoother.
4. The 3M chrome adhesive trim is a better alternative to the original belt-line trim as it takes care of the water logging issue behind the original trim.
5. The lower trim ican be replaced with a stick on trim from a 2007 Altima and matches the width pretty nicely. Its not perfect match but I wanted to lower the number of moving parts, especially the non critical ones.
6. I did a DIY carpet job, 20 dollar outdoor black carpet and two rolls of universal carpet. Again the idea was to make the car better as I can not afford to make it perfect.
7. Most important aspect, I kept the car in a driven condition or near derivable condition, so the project never got out of hand... 

 

I am trying to figure out a way to post images here...

[kota02]

http://www.flickr.com/photos/10893264@N00/9572446186/in/photostream/

[kota02]

Just drove the car from Blacksburg to Harrisonburg and back.

I think it can do 60-65 in fifth all day and never complain.

2002 has to be the car with most thumbs ups......period.

 

I wish I could make it little bit quieter, just the noise inside....