Scrubworks Fleet: 2000 Mazda Demio (or, Why The F*** Do I Own This?)

[Missy Charm]

11 minutes ago, Scrubworks said:

Ahh so rather like Fairfax & Favor or Holland Cooper is now? In the year 2000 I was still getting my clothes from the kid's section at GAP 😆.

Maybe Country Casuals and Mazda worked out some kind of promotional deal together? There were apparently only 35 cars so it must have been short-lived.

Oh yeah, completely forgot about the 323F.

No, more like Bon Marche or Peacocks given a slightly fuddy-duddy makeover.  They were town clothes got up to look a little bit countrified, rather than the bona fide rural pretender getup of riding boots, skinny jeans, check blouse/rugby shirt and bodywarmer favoured by office workers who live in new builds in villages.  

[Scrubworks]

7 hours ago, Missy Charm said:

the bona fide rural pretender getup of riding boots, skinny jeans, check blouse/rugby shirt and bodywarmer favoured by office workers who live in new builds in villages.  

I couldn't have put it better myself 😆. All the girls at my public school wore that kind of stuff, and I am guilty of liking it a bit. I did at least grow up in a 16th century stone house in the middle of nowhere in Oxfordshire, so I've had my fair share of proper country messing about in wellies and a Barbour jacket that's older than I am.

[Scrubworks]

Some more messing about today. One of the first things I did when I got this car was start searching for a rear screen. I figured I could install it myself since it's far smaller and not as load-bearing as a windscreen, but the cheapest (rather, only) one I could find was 280 Euros in Germany, not including shipping. There were also some second hand screens available in Japan, but shipping glass that far? Ehhhhhhhhh.......

Another issue is that the bootlid that came with the car has a big dent around the wiper hole. I disassembled it to see how viable it would be to push the dent out, and it's not really. My panel-beating skills are rudimentary at best, and I knew that if I attempted it, I'd just fuck it up and hate the result. Fortunately, there was a chap on eBay breaking a 2001 Demio, which still had all its body parts. He quoted me £300 including postage for the whole bootlid, nearside rear light cluster (my one is cracked to fuck), and the driver's window regulator (mine has a slight glitch). It was probably a bit much to pay but he was the only person breaking a Demio I could find, so seller's market I guess. The parts arrived today, and I fitted the bootlid straight away.
The good news is the new bootlid is dent-free, rust-free, and has the important intact window. The bad news is.......

..........it's blue. So, yeah, at some point I'm going to have to get it painted, but it saves me all the faffing about with removing the thousands of redneck diamonds and glass bond residue from the old bootlid to install a new window, and I won't have to deal with the dent, and I no longer have to cover the damn thing with a tarpaulin. The eagle-eyed amongst you may also have spotted that this new bootlid has a spoiler, so that's also a bit of a win. The orignal lock barrel was very easy to transfer to the new bootlid. Also swapped over the NSR light cluster, which took but a minute.

That done, I did a little bit more surgery on the rear sill. That revealed some more holes, so I thought I'd poke my head under and have a belated look at the inner sill.

Fuck. Yeah, that's the main chassis rail that the bracket for the rear axle attaches to. It's beginning to crumble, and the passenger side one is even worse. I will probably have to drop the rear axle and assess the strength of the metal at the bracket mounting points properly. I should be able to get away with keeping most of the metal that the bracket actually bolts to, and rebuild the chassis rail around it.

Still, at least I've got a new copper pipe and flexi hose there 🙄.

[RoadworkUK]

This endeavour is looking more and more heroic with every instalment.

Top work.

[Scrubworks]

1 hour ago, RoadworkUK said:

This endeavour is looking more and more heroic with every instalment.

Top work.

Heroic, stubborn, unrealistic, ridiculous, pointless, waste of time. Take your pick 😆.

[High Jetter]

2 hours ago, Scrubworks said:

The bad news is.......

..........it's blue. 

It's a nice, shiny blue though, and easy to spot in a car park. Why not get the rest wrapped the same colour?

[LessThanEqual]

First saw this car when browsing eBay set to "Nearest First", wasn't expecting it to end here! Shame about the cripsy bits. You should definitely post your 180SX when you get a chance. 😁

[Amelia]

Ooh, I do like a Demio, will be watching this with interest. ☺️

Also good to see someone else not afraid to modify/personalise a bit (I've been messing round with my car too) 😁

My only experience with a Demio was an ex's one, but that was an automatic. Only drove it once, it wasn't bad, if a little underwhelming. 

[Pieman]

Like so many others, I wouldn't even know about the Demio were it not for the early Gran Turismo games.  I've had an affinity for them ever since, and wouldn't mind owning one.  Following this thread with interest - good luck with the project.

[Scrubworks]

On 2/21/2023 at 11:01 PM, High Jetter said:

It's a nice, shiny blue though, and easy to spot in a car park. Why not get the rest wrapped the same colour?

It is a very nice blue to be sure, but I think I prefer the red. It doesn't really look great in the pictures but it's actually got some depth to it in person. I also suspect it hasn't been polished for at least a decade. I've worked with wraps in the past and they're not really my thing. It would also cost me less to get the bootlid repainted (I can do the sanding and prep work myself) than to get the rest of the car wrapped.

[Missy Charm]

On 23/02/2023 at 03:28, Scrubworks said:

It is a very nice blue to be sure, but I think I prefer the red. It doesn't really look great in the pictures but it's actually got some depth to it in person. I also suspect it hasn't been polished for at least a decade. I've worked with wraps in the past and they're not really my thing. It would also cost me less to get the bootlid repainted (I can do the sanding and prep work myself) than to get the rest of the car wrapped.

Yes, definitely stick with the red!  It's a much warmer and more pleasing colour than the blue.  

[Scrubworks]

It's been raining/I've been procrastinating, but I do have a little update on another thing that I have done with the Demio.

As you've seen from the photos, being a 90s Japanese car it is fitted with the "like driving inside a 20 year old photocopier" grey plastic interior. Yawn. Fortunately, I have a plan to blacken the interior. I was going to leave this until much later, but in order to fit the new bootlid I had to remove one of the side panels from the boot to access the wiring for the centre brake light and rear wiper, so I thought I would give it a go now.

The secret to this process is Halfords black plastic bumper paint. Sounds a bit gimmicky, but the stuff really works. Ironically I've never used it on a bumper, but I have used it on several grey interior pieces from a K11 Micra, and they turned out fantastically. All you need to do to prepare the pieces is give them a thorough scrubbing with fairy liquid to degrease them. This actually needed to happen anyway with the Demio's interior plastics, as they were all covered in dirt from years of dogs riding in the back. Here's the piece after its wash, but before paint:

Dull. Boring. Scuffed. Here it is after a couple of coats of the bumper paint:

Far, far better. It also covers up any remaining dog dirt I wasn't able to shift. The finish can turn out a little bit patchy in places when doing large panels like this, because the spray can is small and getting sufficient coverage can be tricky, but 2 or 3 coats will produce a nice even finish. It's actually pretty durable as well, and I find the more flexible/rubbery the plastic you're trying to paint, the more durable the finish will be. If the surface is cleaned properly, and is suffciently keyed or textured, and you apply enough paint, it actually becomes very difficult to even scratch off. It also doesn't crack or flake if you apply it to something bendy like a vinyl rubber gear stick boot. Obviously if it takes a very hard gouge or repeated wear in a specific place it'll go through, but then you can just get the can and touch it up in seconds.

With enough cans of this stuff I can transform the whole interior. I reckon it'd probably take about 10 cans, and at £5.20 a can, a new interior for £52 is an absolute bargain.

(PS, the little hatch in the panel is so you can access the rear washer bottle; it has its own separate reservoir, first car I've had with that)

[yes oui si]

Demio good. 

[Noel Tidybeard]

you fully deserve to be stopped by a policeman!

[Scrubworks]

On 6/3/2023 at 5:06 PM, yes oui si said:

Demio good. 

Too low, too much poke. Good choice of wheel though, they are (almost certainly replicas of) Enkei Big End Barrels, a proper JDM wheel from back in the day.

[Scrubworks]

The immortal phrase of project cars: “I really thought it would be done by now”

I have made some progress on the Demio, just not as much as I'd like. In doing the surgery on the thing, I've discovered just how many layers of steel a (relatively) modern car is built from, especially at this corner of the body. I've counted not fewer than five layers of metal that are sandwiched together in this corner. I'm much more used to dealing with older, Cold War era stuff that is made out of fewer, thicker layers. The annoying thing about this is that the inner layers are often inaccessible, unless you were to cut away perfectly good metal above them. Since I'm just trying to make this thing solid, and not do a concourse restoration, I'm just working around it where possible, even if the welding ends up looking a bit messy. All actual rot is being cut out and properly replaced though.

I've completely cut back the chassis box section all around the mount for the rear axle on the driver's side, and rebuilt it using 2mm steel plate.

It'll last another 50 years now at least. The welding is rather ugly, but far more solid than the factory spot welds. It's taken so damn long because of procrastination, genuine other things to do, and the fact that motivating myself to cut and grind and weld on my back is difficult. It's probably my least favourite thing to do on a car that is not on a ramp. This picture also doesn't do justice to the sheer amount of rot that had to be removed and replaced. Compare with this earlier photo:

Virtually everything you see here below the floor has been cut out and replaced. Like many rot issues, the full extent is always more than you can initially see. I removed the axle mounting bracket for some good rust treatment too. Also, looking at these pictures now I've realised I need to weld the little tab for the brake line back on.

Fortunately, I can now turn my attention to rebuilding the rear sill and wheelarch section, which can be done sat on a mat, so will be much easier. I'm going to use 1.5mm steel to rebuild these parts; much thicker than stock but far easier to form into shape than 2mm.

I've already rewelded two of the inner sill strengtheners, one behind the other.

Since I've had to drop the axle to do this repair, it seemed silly not to replace the two axle bushings at £15 a side. I nearly destroyed my cheap Chinese bushing removal/installation kit trying to get the old one out, so I burned the rubber out with a small portable blowtorch. This left the outer bushing shell in the hole, which I sawed a cut into with a hacksaw blade, and then knocked out with a cold chisel. The new bushing was then squeezed in with the kit.

So, here's a look at the rear chassis rail on the other side:

Yeah, even more fucked. Oh, and because the fuel tank is offset to the passenger side to allow room on the driver's side for the exhaust, I'm going to have to drop the tank before I do any work on the passenger side. Fun.

BUT WAIT, THERE'S MORE.
As I was poking around today with the metal near the rear chassis rail where it goes under the boot, I saw daylight from underneath. Fuck. This then quickly led to this:

Sigh. Easy to fix though, I can do this part standing up! Positively luxurious.

[yes oui si]

37 minutes ago, Scrubworks said:

Too low, too much poke. Good choice of wheel though, they are (almost certainly replicas of) Enkei Big End Barrels, a proper JDM wheel from back in the day.

They're reps of Hiyashi Streets... Which are themselves reps of Campagnolo 40802s... But the first Street Mags were cast in Italy by Campagnolo themselves. 

/nerd

[Scrubworks]

6 minutes ago, yes oui si said:

They're reps of Hiyashi Streets

Yes you're right, Big End Barrels fill out the entire dish, not just the centre like those do. Been years since I've seen any.

[Dick Cheeseburger]

24 minutes ago, Scrubworks said:

Yes you're right, Big End Barrels fill out the entire dish, not just the centre like those do. Been years since I've seen any.

Jeez, the rot on your Demio looks a proper headache. Good to see you saving it though. 

As for the alloys mentioned, I bet those on the silver Mazda are modern Rota BM8s. There was a set fitted on a mk1 Eunos I owned years back and they worked a treat. 

[Matty]

52 minutes ago, Scrubworks said:

The immortal phrase of project cars: “I really thought it would be done by now”

I have made some progress on the Demio, just not as much as I'd like. In doing the surgery on the thing, I've discovered just how many layers of steel a (relatively) modern car is built from, especially at this corner of the body. I've counted not fewer than five layers of metal that are sandwiched together in this corner. I'm much more used to dealing with older, Cold War era stuff that is made out of fewer, thicker layers. The annoying thing about this is that the inner layers are often inaccessible, unless you were to cut away perfectly good metal above them. Since I'm just trying to make this thing solid, and not do a concourse restoration, I'm just working around it where possible, even if the welding ends up looking a bit messy. All actual rot is being cut out and properly replaced though.

I've completely cut back the chassis box section all around the mount for the rear axle on the driver's side, and rebuilt it using 2mm steel plate.

It'll last another 50 years now at least. The welding is rather ugly, but far more solid than the factory spot welds. It's taken so damn long because of procrastination, genuine other things to do, and the fact that motivating myself to cut and grind and weld on my back is difficult. It's probably my least favourite thing to do on a car that is not on a ramp. This picture also doesn't do justice to the sheer amount of rot that had to be removed and replaced. Compare with this earlier photo:

Virtually everything you see here below the floor has been cut out and replaced. Like many rot issues, the full extent is always more than you can initially see. I removed the axle mounting bracket for some good rust treatment too. Also, looking at these pictures now I've realised I need to weld the little tab for the brake line back on.

Fortunately, I can now turn my attention to rebuilding the rear sill and wheelarch section, which can be done sat on a mat, so will be much easier. I'm going to use 1.5mm steel to rebuild these parts; much thicker than stock but far easier to form into shape than 2mm.

I've already rewelded two of the inner sill strengtheners, one behind the other.

Since I've had to drop the axle to do this repair, it seemed silly not to replace the two axle bushings at £15 a side. I nearly destroyed my cheap Chinese bushing removal/installation kit trying to get the old one out, so I burned the rubber out with a small portable blowtorch. This left the outer bushing shell in the hole, which I sawed a cut into with a hacksaw blade, and then knocked out with a cold chisel. The new bushing was then squeezed in with the kit.

So, here's a look at the rear chassis rail on the other side:

Yeah, even more fucked. Oh, and because the fuel tank is offset to the passenger side to allow room on the driver's side for the exhaust, I'm going to have to drop the tank before I do any work on the passenger side. Fun.

BUT WAIT, THERE'S MORE.
As I was poking around today with the metal near the rear chassis rail where it goes under the boot, I saw daylight from underneath. Fuck. This then quickly led to this:

Sigh. Easy to fix though, I can do this part standing up! Positively luxurious.

Nightmare. Still, you're doing it so it'll be right