It's had a hard life. Attached are some photos of the initial ownership period, they are terrible, but I just wanted to snap a few pics to look back on to remember how the car started.
So in case anyone is wondering about the workspace/shop in the photos, I sublet 1/3 of a warehouse adjacent to a flower shop. This makes for hilarious photobombs from Santa Claus, Valentines Hearts, Mother's Day decor, Halloween stuff, etc.
First pic after driving it to the shop through a TORRENTIAL downpour:
I traded a car for it, unfortunately the XXR's weren't part of the trade. Not because I wanted the XXR's, but because I didn't want to have to put a set of tires on it before I could enjoy it.
I put some Enkei Bortex 17's with garbage tires on it just so I could move it around the shop and into the storage yard. It sat in the yard for a month or so until I had time to work on it, and it got filthy.
Finally brought it back in to do some work. Not much, but enough to make it livable. First order of business was to remove the straight pipe that the previous owner had fitted. If this was a track missile/total shitbox/hoonmobile, I would have left it. I plan on daily-driving this for a few months until I get another DD ready, so it had to go.
Safety wire. Yay!
Broken exhaust hanger still there.
There's some subframe rust that needs to be mitigated. Need to think about what all I want to do while I'm there without getting bit by the "while I'm in there" bug.
New cheapo exhaust from eBay... 230 shipped. Absolutely cannot complain about the quality for the price. Fit right up, robot welds look nice. Sound is still a bit much. It's quite tinny, probably due to the thinness of the tubing?
I think I'm going to look for a replacement bumper instead of spending a lot of time on this one. I forgot about this huge chunk missing in the bottom.
Drove it to fill it up with fresh 93 and also to pick up some hardware for the battery hold-down (pic needed). I put some stock wheels on with fresh (also cheap) Firestone all-season tires. These will hold me over until I pick wheels that I like, I'm thinking of going with 18's.
Also buffed the headlights. Happy with how they turned out, but I still need to clear/protect them.
Before/After: