Mk2 Fiesta XR2 rebuild/restoration
Discussion
The original Nick the Greek said:
Fantastic.
I bought a new XR2 on 1st August 1985.
Following this with interest.
Ha! I was -2 months old then!I bought a new XR2 on 1st August 1985.
Following this with interest.
MH82 said:
Nice work, looking really good.
Can't beat the standard look and the XR2 really suits the black bodykit rather than being body coloured.
Like the way you are going back to CVH, the sound and the torque delivery really takes you back. I have the XR3i and it is so torquey low down in the revs. The CVh wears it's camshaft very quickly, replacing even with a standard cam restores power and quietness
Cheers! The kit is actually dark grey, when people paint them black they just look completely wrong. Don't know what I'm going to do about the kit yet. It's not in bad condition but I think it's going to look a bit tatty compared to a freshly painted car. I'll Cross that bridge when I come to it.Can't beat the standard look and the XR2 really suits the black bodykit rather than being body coloured.
Like the way you are going back to CVH, the sound and the torque delivery really takes you back. I have the XR3i and it is so torquey low down in the revs. The CVh wears it's camshaft very quickly, replacing even with a standard cam restores power and quietness
I love the noise of the CVH too - My dad bought an XR2 brand new in '88. There's a picture somewhere of me as a 3 year old standing in front of it. I remember there being loads of XR2's in the car park when we did the weekly shop but these days you never see one. Can't remember the last time I saw one out on the road.
Yes, the CVH does have cam shaft wear issues - I'm planning on changing the cam or having it re-ground at some point.
Small update on progress from today - My friend and I got the car pretty much ready for spray primer but ran out of time to fill the gun up and actually do the spraying. The whole car is rubbed down now (all brush primer nice and flat) and my friend even spent a few hours yesterday re-doing the repairs on the passenger front wing as we both weren't completely happy with it. The swage line almost perfect compared to the other side which has 0 repairs on the swage line so I don't think anyone else will be able to tell now! In other news, I'm not so sure I'm happy with the drivers rear arch repair either. Might end up getting the flap disc out, bare metalling it again and re-doing the repair. I'm going to see what it looks like in spray primer first and then decide.
Update time!
I was itching to get on with the project as it's all starting to come together now. My friend and I found a free day to get on with it and some progress was made. We spent the entirety of Sunday morning just masking up the bits we didn't want to get sprayed, rubbing a couple of rough spots flat, scratching heads about whether our repairs were good enough and generally trying to make sure everything was up to scratch before putting paint in the gun and priming the whole car.
All masked up and ready to go:
Better get the primer mixed up and in the gun! We had to thin the primer down loads more than anticipated as it was just too thick for the 1.4mm nozzle. Really, we needed a 1.8mm but it was still do-able once we'd thinned it out:
So, how did it turn out? Firstly, the pics:
In answer to my question: not too badly! We've got a few runs that need to be sanded out. I'm blaming this on being a bit excited that we were actually on the spray prime stage of the project and the fact that we had to thin the primer rather a lot to get it through the gun. Next time, I'll be a bit more careful! Also, the roof and some other areas have 'lumps' of primer showing where the primer was too thick in the first place when we started to try to spray. These should also sand out and leave us with a nice flat finish ready for the colour coat. That's the theory anyway, I'll update in due course...
After all our hard work, it would be a shame to let it get ruined in the garage while we wait for a free day or two to get get some paint on the car. A light guide coat applied to seal the primer:
That's all we had time for on Sunday. It'll probably be another couple of weeks before I'm able to do anything more but it's a good feeling knowing it's all coming together. 99% of the parts to put it back together have already been bought so once the paint is on it should come together really quickly.
Really can't wait to get it on the road in the summer!
I was itching to get on with the project as it's all starting to come together now. My friend and I found a free day to get on with it and some progress was made. We spent the entirety of Sunday morning just masking up the bits we didn't want to get sprayed, rubbing a couple of rough spots flat, scratching heads about whether our repairs were good enough and generally trying to make sure everything was up to scratch before putting paint in the gun and priming the whole car.
All masked up and ready to go:
Better get the primer mixed up and in the gun! We had to thin the primer down loads more than anticipated as it was just too thick for the 1.4mm nozzle. Really, we needed a 1.8mm but it was still do-able once we'd thinned it out:
So, how did it turn out? Firstly, the pics:
In answer to my question: not too badly! We've got a few runs that need to be sanded out. I'm blaming this on being a bit excited that we were actually on the spray prime stage of the project and the fact that we had to thin the primer rather a lot to get it through the gun. Next time, I'll be a bit more careful! Also, the roof and some other areas have 'lumps' of primer showing where the primer was too thick in the first place when we started to try to spray. These should also sand out and leave us with a nice flat finish ready for the colour coat. That's the theory anyway, I'll update in due course...
After all our hard work, it would be a shame to let it get ruined in the garage while we wait for a free day or two to get get some paint on the car. A light guide coat applied to seal the primer:
That's all we had time for on Sunday. It'll probably be another couple of weeks before I'm able to do anything more but it's a good feeling knowing it's all coming together. 99% of the parts to put it back together have already been bought so once the paint is on it should come together really quickly.
Really can't wait to get it on the road in the summer!
Edited by Gallons Per Mile on Monday 20th June 21:27
Update time!
Unfortunately no pictures just yet as I'm busy with work and family but I'll try to provide photographic evidence of progress as soon as I can!
Basically, yesterday and the preceding days went something like this:
Wednesday night was a bit of a write-off as I ended up not having much time left in the evening, so we only got about an hour's worth of actual work done. Just rubbing down panels etc.
Thursday night wasn't too bad as we got a clear run in the evening and started to make progress getting the guide coat rubbed back off the shell so it was all smooth ready for a coat of paint. It was clear that we wouldn't have time to get all the panels primed and ready for painting on Saturday so just concentrated on getting the shell ready. Even that wasn't even half rubbed down by the end of Thursday evening, so we knew we'd have to get it done on Saturday morning and then hopefully apply some paint in the afternoon.
Saturday morning - I turn up at my friend's house and he says he's got something funny to show me in the garage. It turned out that Nick wanted to bring the plan back on schedule and spent all of Friday evening (until about 2 am!) finishing the rubbing down of the panels and then spray priming them! They were all hung up in the garage just awaiting a final flatting down for top coat. I was amazed! This meant that getting the entire car and all the panels painted was just about achievable if we got on with it. Massive thanks to Nick for cracking on with it by himself - I had an event to attend with the g/f's family that night.
We got busy with rubbing the rest of the guide coat off the shell and flatting back the panels ready for some colour to be applied. MANY hours later we had a smooth primer finish, blasted the car, panels, and garage with an air line to try to remove as much dust as possible and were just about getting ready to mix up the paint. We ran some panel wipe over everything we wanted to paint, double checked and got mixing...
And that's were the plan fell over slightly.
We started by spraying the insides of the panels as this was the least problematic area if anything went wrong while we got used to how the 2k paint went on. All seemed good, so we carried on with the outside of the panels. One spray gun full of paint applied, all seemed good so far and we mixed up the next batch. More spraying and everything seemed ok so we moved on to the front end of the shell. Once the engine bay, front panel and one wing had paint on, something seemed to go wrong. We started noticing odd 'blobs' in the finish... We went back and checked the panels. Some of them had the same problem but not as badly as the front of the car. Nothing we could do by this stage so we stopped spraying as there was no point carrying on until we worked out what had happened. If you look closely it looks like there are 'bits' that have landed on the wet paint. I know the panels were dust free when we started as that's the point of panel wipe. I think there was just too much dust in the atmosphere and it hadn't settled by the time we started spraying - we'd not long before blown the whole garage through with the air line to try to remove as much dust as possible from all the rubbing down. I don't know what it's looking like now it's dry so I'll have to wait for Nick to update me on that one.
Annoyingly I won't be able to get back to his garage until the weekend at the earliest. More plans will be made this week to work out what to do next and try to get the car painted properly and actually looking how it should. It was all going so well
Unfortunately no pictures just yet as I'm busy with work and family but I'll try to provide photographic evidence of progress as soon as I can!
Basically, yesterday and the preceding days went something like this:
Wednesday night was a bit of a write-off as I ended up not having much time left in the evening, so we only got about an hour's worth of actual work done. Just rubbing down panels etc.
Thursday night wasn't too bad as we got a clear run in the evening and started to make progress getting the guide coat rubbed back off the shell so it was all smooth ready for a coat of paint. It was clear that we wouldn't have time to get all the panels primed and ready for painting on Saturday so just concentrated on getting the shell ready. Even that wasn't even half rubbed down by the end of Thursday evening, so we knew we'd have to get it done on Saturday morning and then hopefully apply some paint in the afternoon.
Saturday morning - I turn up at my friend's house and he says he's got something funny to show me in the garage. It turned out that Nick wanted to bring the plan back on schedule and spent all of Friday evening (until about 2 am!) finishing the rubbing down of the panels and then spray priming them! They were all hung up in the garage just awaiting a final flatting down for top coat. I was amazed! This meant that getting the entire car and all the panels painted was just about achievable if we got on with it. Massive thanks to Nick for cracking on with it by himself - I had an event to attend with the g/f's family that night.
We got busy with rubbing the rest of the guide coat off the shell and flatting back the panels ready for some colour to be applied. MANY hours later we had a smooth primer finish, blasted the car, panels, and garage with an air line to try to remove as much dust as possible and were just about getting ready to mix up the paint. We ran some panel wipe over everything we wanted to paint, double checked and got mixing...
And that's were the plan fell over slightly.
We started by spraying the insides of the panels as this was the least problematic area if anything went wrong while we got used to how the 2k paint went on. All seemed good, so we carried on with the outside of the panels. One spray gun full of paint applied, all seemed good so far and we mixed up the next batch. More spraying and everything seemed ok so we moved on to the front end of the shell. Once the engine bay, front panel and one wing had paint on, something seemed to go wrong. We started noticing odd 'blobs' in the finish... We went back and checked the panels. Some of them had the same problem but not as badly as the front of the car. Nothing we could do by this stage so we stopped spraying as there was no point carrying on until we worked out what had happened. If you look closely it looks like there are 'bits' that have landed on the wet paint. I know the panels were dust free when we started as that's the point of panel wipe. I think there was just too much dust in the atmosphere and it hadn't settled by the time we started spraying - we'd not long before blown the whole garage through with the air line to try to remove as much dust as possible from all the rubbing down. I don't know what it's looking like now it's dry so I'll have to wait for Nick to update me on that one.
Annoyingly I won't be able to get back to his garage until the weekend at the earliest. More plans will be made this week to work out what to do next and try to get the car painted properly and actually looking how it should. It was all going so well
Edited by Gallons Per Mile on Sunday 3rd April 07:27
Right, time for some pictures now I've done the uploading!
As per previous post, here are the pics of what went on:
As you can see, much contamination. We decided it was just down to too much dust hanging around in the air and settling on the car, combined with not using a tack rag to wipe the car down with immediately before painting. Lesson learnt, so we tried again.
This time, we decided on a different tactic; Spray all the door shuts, re-do anything that can be seen on the panels (ie bits not hidden by trim panels etc), attach panels to car, mask up newly painted shuts etc, rub down the whole car to remove the blemishes and prime the surface for a new coat and put a top coat over the whole car.
Here's how it went:
Not bad, looking much better - paint seems to have gone on well and most importantly there were virtually no blemishes or 'fish eyes' as I have learnt they're called. Excellent, this means we're on the right road now.
Confidence restored, we carried on. Panels were attached to car and lined up 100% so they didn't need to be moved around later on. Bonnet was left off as we needed to paint the engine bay fully still. Then, everything got rubbed down, checked and doubled checked, and some paint went on...
Fully painted!
[Red Dwarf mode] An excellent plan, sir, with only two minor drawbacks[/Red Dwarf mode]
That was last weekend, and I went back to the garage last night to see how it had dried and to start flatting panels down and seeing how they'd polish up. It seems that while we put exactly the right amount of hardner in to the paint we didn't put quite enough thinners in the mix as the finish was rather orange peely in my perfectly dry and hard paint... Not really what I wanted to see after a 12 hour working day and rushing around after work to get over to where the car is stored.
Better see what I can do to get it looking nice. Test subject: bonnet. I started wet sanding with the usual 1200 one might use and, well, not a lot was changing on the orange peel front. I stepped down to 600 and a bit more came out, but you could still clearly see the surface was far too pitted. At this point I thought I might as well get the 320 out, get the surface actually flat and then work up through the grades of paper to give me a surface ready for polishing. Only problem is that there wasn't enough paint for this to work. The orange peel was just too thick and I started to see through the paint to the primer by the time it was reasonably flat. Bugger!
The rest of the car is looking very much the same as the bonnet did - far too orange peely. Plus I've noticed a few bits that got missed in awkward areas so that's going to need more paint anyway. Extra work, paint and time required, but the learning curve has been good. I'm a perfectionist with this sort of thing so it'll be right come hell or high water. I'm now thinking of this as a 'pre-top-coat coat'... :lol: Another lesson learnt!
As per previous post, here are the pics of what went on:
As you can see, much contamination. We decided it was just down to too much dust hanging around in the air and settling on the car, combined with not using a tack rag to wipe the car down with immediately before painting. Lesson learnt, so we tried again.
This time, we decided on a different tactic; Spray all the door shuts, re-do anything that can be seen on the panels (ie bits not hidden by trim panels etc), attach panels to car, mask up newly painted shuts etc, rub down the whole car to remove the blemishes and prime the surface for a new coat and put a top coat over the whole car.
Here's how it went:
Not bad, looking much better - paint seems to have gone on well and most importantly there were virtually no blemishes or 'fish eyes' as I have learnt they're called. Excellent, this means we're on the right road now.
Confidence restored, we carried on. Panels were attached to car and lined up 100% so they didn't need to be moved around later on. Bonnet was left off as we needed to paint the engine bay fully still. Then, everything got rubbed down, checked and doubled checked, and some paint went on...
Fully painted!
[Red Dwarf mode] An excellent plan, sir, with only two minor drawbacks[/Red Dwarf mode]
That was last weekend, and I went back to the garage last night to see how it had dried and to start flatting panels down and seeing how they'd polish up. It seems that while we put exactly the right amount of hardner in to the paint we didn't put quite enough thinners in the mix as the finish was rather orange peely in my perfectly dry and hard paint... Not really what I wanted to see after a 12 hour working day and rushing around after work to get over to where the car is stored.
Better see what I can do to get it looking nice. Test subject: bonnet. I started wet sanding with the usual 1200 one might use and, well, not a lot was changing on the orange peel front. I stepped down to 600 and a bit more came out, but you could still clearly see the surface was far too pitted. At this point I thought I might as well get the 320 out, get the surface actually flat and then work up through the grades of paper to give me a surface ready for polishing. Only problem is that there wasn't enough paint for this to work. The orange peel was just too thick and I started to see through the paint to the primer by the time it was reasonably flat. Bugger!
The rest of the car is looking very much the same as the bonnet did - far too orange peely. Plus I've noticed a few bits that got missed in awkward areas so that's going to need more paint anyway. Extra work, paint and time required, but the learning curve has been good. I'm a perfectionist with this sort of thing so it'll be right come hell or high water. I'm now thinking of this as a 'pre-top-coat coat'... :lol: Another lesson learnt!
Edited by Gallons Per Mile on Monday 20th June 21:28
Right, time for an update!
Since the pics above (so just over a month) we've been busy respraying the car again. We used the correct mix of thinners this time in the paint/harder/thinners love triange and this worked an absolute treat. The paint finish was at least as good as a factory finish and in some places better. Totally nailed it this time, and we were both really happy about that! We've done some flatting to lose pretty much all of the orange peel and leave just nice dull paintwork ready to be polished. I looked at a new car in my work car park the other day and realised I'm actually being a bit anal about the finish... It looked quite shiny but was ornage-peel-central when you actually looked closely. I think my car's going to polish up nicely even though there's a hint of orange peel in places. I won't bore you with pictures that look exactly the same as above of a white car and crack on with the more exciting stuff.
With the main paintwork done the only thing left to paint was the satin black that goes around the side windows and in part of the door shuts. I spent many hours with masking tape and pictures downloaded on my phone of other XR2's to try and match up exactly where the black should go. The curve to the back of the rear window was a total nightmare. I think I've got it as near as possible to original but it's never going to be exactly the same without some sort of template to mark the exact shape. I had to go by eye and my own intuition. I hoped it wouldn't come down to that! See the very first pic in this thread for comparison of before/after. I think I did OK, all things considered. Just the black pin-stripe to put around the edge of the satin to mask the join between black/white and as per the factory.
Masking up:
See what I mean about that curve at the back of the rear window?
On to the painting:
Not looking too bad. Better get that masking take back off and see if I cocked it up or not...
Quite happy with that! Comparing to the very first pic on this thread it's not exact, but I don't think you'd tell unless you knew precisely what it looked like before. Anyway, it still needs the black pin-stripe around the edge and that should make it look a bit better too.
I think that's it for the painting stage. Might be time to start actually putting bits and pieces back on the car once I've polished it all up
I'll start the polishing over the next few days.
Since the pics above (so just over a month) we've been busy respraying the car again. We used the correct mix of thinners this time in the paint/harder/thinners love triange and this worked an absolute treat. The paint finish was at least as good as a factory finish and in some places better. Totally nailed it this time, and we were both really happy about that! We've done some flatting to lose pretty much all of the orange peel and leave just nice dull paintwork ready to be polished. I looked at a new car in my work car park the other day and realised I'm actually being a bit anal about the finish... It looked quite shiny but was ornage-peel-central when you actually looked closely. I think my car's going to polish up nicely even though there's a hint of orange peel in places. I won't bore you with pictures that look exactly the same as above of a white car and crack on with the more exciting stuff.
With the main paintwork done the only thing left to paint was the satin black that goes around the side windows and in part of the door shuts. I spent many hours with masking tape and pictures downloaded on my phone of other XR2's to try and match up exactly where the black should go. The curve to the back of the rear window was a total nightmare. I think I've got it as near as possible to original but it's never going to be exactly the same without some sort of template to mark the exact shape. I had to go by eye and my own intuition. I hoped it wouldn't come down to that! See the very first pic in this thread for comparison of before/after. I think I did OK, all things considered. Just the black pin-stripe to put around the edge of the satin to mask the join between black/white and as per the factory.
Masking up:
See what I mean about that curve at the back of the rear window?
On to the painting:
Not looking too bad. Better get that masking take back off and see if I cocked it up or not...
Quite happy with that! Comparing to the very first pic on this thread it's not exact, but I don't think you'd tell unless you knew precisely what it looked like before. Anyway, it still needs the black pin-stripe around the edge and that should make it look a bit better too.
I think that's it for the painting stage. Might be time to start actually putting bits and pieces back on the car once I've polished it all up
I'll start the polishing over the next few days.Edited by Gallons Per Mile on Monday 20th June 21:28
Time for another update!
I've been away on holiday but spent a small amount of time either side of that doing some polishing. The car's pretty much done now, although the boot and the drivers wing need some *more* paint as we rubbed through in a couple of places while flatting back...
1x machine polisher, Farecla G6 compound and some microfibre cloths:
The results:
Looks quite shiny now! The best thing about using florescent lighting in the garage is it shows up ALL the imperfections in the paint. If you look at the right angle you can see some flatting marks still. The roof looks a bit scratchy - I think the P1500 must have had something trapped on it when the roof was flatted as the scratches are deeper than 1500 would normally be. It looks like the roof's been through a dodgy car wash at the moment but those marks should polish out. I'm just concentrating on getting the paint to a decent shine and I'll faff around with perfecting everything over time. Likewise with the bonnet, there are a number of bits of dust that settled on it while it was still wet, but it's polished up pretty well for now.
I've been away on holiday but spent a small amount of time either side of that doing some polishing. The car's pretty much done now, although the boot and the drivers wing need some *more* paint as we rubbed through in a couple of places while flatting back...
1x machine polisher, Farecla G6 compound and some microfibre cloths:
The results:
Looks quite shiny now! The best thing about using florescent lighting in the garage is it shows up ALL the imperfections in the paint. If you look at the right angle you can see some flatting marks still. The roof looks a bit scratchy - I think the P1500 must have had something trapped on it when the roof was flatted as the scratches are deeper than 1500 would normally be. It looks like the roof's been through a dodgy car wash at the moment but those marks should polish out. I'm just concentrating on getting the paint to a decent shine and I'll faff around with perfecting everything over time. Likewise with the bonnet, there are a number of bits of dust that settled on it while it was still wet, but it's polished up pretty well for now.
Edited by Gallons Per Mile on Monday 20th June 21:29
My pictures have gone walkabouts as Virgin Media are no longer giving free web space!
Unfortunately for the time being you'll have to imagine what some new shiny parts look like bolted to my Fiesta. I'm excited it's all going back together after so long being in pieces.
I'll fix the webspace issue soon and show you how it's looking now.
Unfortunately for the time being you'll have to imagine what some new shiny parts look like bolted to my Fiesta. I'm excited it's all going back together after so long being in pieces.
I'll fix the webspace issue soon and show you how it's looking now.
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