my hijet project.

Right, after a winter tucked away I thought i'd finally crack on to see if I can get my vision to resemble some sort of reality.

Here she is at the beginning -



Currently cleaning all the chassis and applying Vactan then Rustoleum then waxoyl. its pretty clean underneith in most areas.





I can't get it to go as low as i'd like without notching the rear chassis rail, i've use a cheap coilover set to get an idea of realistic ride hight but need to get the front dampers shortened to allow for more travel -



Hope to get it a little lower than this -


Cleaned up along the lips of the arches then paint and waxoyl.


Wheels to refurb then fit- Will need some non intrusive arch extensions.


Planning on a respray in a new retro colour and a basic removable/sleepable back...more soon

Oh, planning on converting the front to an old style front too.

I haven't looked but with some struts you can weld more of the upright in and redrill the mounting holes and slide them further through the hub mount as there is no clearence issue unless you have a 4x4 version.

Looking better already with the roofrack off

Can't wait to see it with the wheels on

Nice i kind of "cough" like the roof rack "cough" is it going back on or would you part with it "cough" also the shopping trolley in pic two....
Those wheels are K.I.L.L.E.R!

Fuck yeah!! This is going to be so good.

Those coil over conversion thingies look ace, can't wait to see this sitting pretty on those pepper pot rims.

Sod paint, get polishing them and lacquer them up.

Roof racks gonna be polished up a bit maybe with wooden slats and put back on. Comes in Handy. Only cost a £1 too from the Boot.

Wheels are now stripped. I gave up on Polishing a set pretty much Identical a couple of months ago. Too much effort and too much maintainance to keep them shiney.
I'm going to do them all silver. I quite like the black centres but for some reason am feeling the all silver look. Theres a place in Birmingham doing a dip and powdercoat service for £20 a wheel which is a bargain. Think i'm going to give them a spray job for now as i'd already started with the paint stripper and see how they go for a bit.

Front dampers are being shortened by 2.5" as we speak.

When doing the front arches and dampers I discovered the brake pads at the end of their lives which probably wasn't helping my brake problems and in turn that led me to discover a seized offside caliper piston and a rusty brake pipe.

Oh and I put the vantan on when it was too cold which is a massive pain meaning more work

Also picked up about 400 postcards, not sure if I'm gonna use them yet but the idea was to line the internal rear pillars with them then lacquer or pva over top.

Away now till Next wednesday which is annoying as i want to get on

I cant believe how rustfree yours is under the arches, guess mine had a hard life :/
Are you keeping it red?

Reds one of my least favorite colours. Going for a retro tone, maybe beige, or a pastel greeny or sky blue or something like that. Prob Satin too, firstly because the hijet is so thin I can't see how i'm going to get a good enough prep job done to do gloss justice and my spray skills aint up to much.

You've got a good sized garage/workshop there. Yep i've got garage envy.

Bit of an update...

Any rust on the front arches ground out and undercoat applied -




Rear arches half way through the same, before pic -



Does anyone know how the bumpstop is fixed in place? Want to get some smaller replacements.

Front dampers shortened and ready to go


the framey thing is part of a slide in slide out bed I made last year, slides out to nearly a double bed.


Fitted a new (used) master cylinder and vacuum unit.

I'm getting underbody envy Between you and HJ with all the painting my wee rustbucket is looking embarrassing
Maybe next MOT.....

8bit-ash wrote:Does anyone know how the bumpstop is fixed in place? Want to get some smaller replacements..

No idea mate, but when you find out, what are you doing with the old ones?

wheels stripped and nearly ready for paint...Was already half way through when I found out theres a place in Birmingham that does powdercoating for £80 a set, mega bargain but thought i'd carry on this time.

Logi wrote:I'm getting underbody envy Between you and HJ with all the painting my wee rustbucket is looking embarrassing
Maybe next MOT.....

8bit-ash wrote:Does anyone know how the bumpstop is fixed in place? Want to get some smaller replacements..

No idea mate, but when you find out, what are you doing with the old ones?

Why you need them? I've kind of butchered them already by cutting them down.

Painting the underbody is a pain in the arse but guess it'll be worth it.

Mine's have rotted away and are missing, told you it was rusty underneath

This is looking very good, top progress. Thought about cutting those little lips off the front wheel arches and under the doors to get some extra wheel space? Those are a really nice set of rims, what are they off?

go and lie down but your project does look wicked.

HighlyJetted wrote:This is looking very good, top progress. Thought about cutting those little lips off the front wheel arches and under the doors to get some extra wheel space? Those are a really nice set of rims, what are they off?

Think they once lived on a mazda rx7. They're ATS. Offsets a bit more pokey than i'd liked but can live with it. Found them by luck when searching to see how much I could sell an identical (but different PCD) set I had. They were listed unsold on ebay so lapped them up.

It would be a piece of piss to polish your rims as they are pretty flat... you just need the right sanding wheels and polishing wheels

you'd think but i'm pretty lazy and polished wheels need looking after once they're on the road too, which I can't be arse with. Found a mate of a mate to take my wheel centres out too for beer monies When it stops raining i'm going to get a coat of etch primer on the back two.

Is he too far away from crewe to get him to cut two of my wheels?

He's just a general engineering place, prob worth phoning around locally as he said it'd not take long. Think the first guy just wanted to rip me off.

I'm thinking about grinding my hubs down, some sort of trick by spinning the hub with the angle grinder running to take an even cut off the whole diameter.

I'm not sure I want to modify these wheels because they might be worth a few quid if I ever have to part with them.

Ash, you know you want to...

That is pretty special.

Bit of a boring update-

Arches are all done.





so is 98% of the chassis.

inside is empty ready for some paint on the floor-



Got some free seats off a mate. He said they were porsche seats but they're not they're old celica seats, shame but they're still pretty comfy.



Wheels now have paint and tyres - pics tomorrow. Hopefully tomorrow i'll have a mini packet from the postman so I can get the brakes back on and I can try the wheels out.

oh and I won some new wing mirrors today on ebay, chrome ones off an old suzuki SJ.

rim trial fitted. -





Coilovers fitted. typically as always nothings ever straight forward. One of the arches seems to try sticky. The rest are fine just the one doesnt seem to want to dry. Real weird. Painted with tetra Shutz.

The wheel looks the biz, can't wait to see it rollin on all 4

Those wheels look brand new, and I can see the nicely machined hub there too.

Top work on the arches, its not the best fun getting covered in wax oil but well worth it. Hope your odd one dries out in the end!