Project junk yard dawg

Wow someone is looking/reading my thread thanks man

Got back in town this afternoon. Got the new fuel pump in the mail sometime earlier this week and was waiting for me. Had a few moments to plumb and wire it up and do a test fire of the engine. I used an inline Walbro 255lph. High flow filter before the pump and the Kia's fuel filter before the engine.

Here's video of the first run since the swap. Granted it just came from my truck and into this one, no reason it shouldn't start right up.

Oh yeah...No exhaust.



Waiting on paint and rad fans...Rad fan won't be here until Monday now...That ticks me off. Ordered it...3 weeks ago now? My new spray equipment should be here tomorrow. For the price, it better impress me. I'm going to get the clutch and brakes bled and hopefully test drive the truck this weekend.

Sweet sounds good

firing on all four!!!! running nice and even, nice job man, I swear Im going to do this one day

I call it project junk yard dawg cause every thing on the truck came from a junk yard

Dave, you thought any about painting the bumper and grille flat black, or you still want it all body color?


I should be able to get exhaust on it and the hydraulics bled today after work and drive it this weekend.

Sent from iPhone; hacked and cracked.
~Chris, DW P.

Progress this evening:

Brakes and clutch bled.

Exhaust semi assembled. Needs welded tomorrow.

Its mobile! Drove it in the yard today. Windows are still taped up, so I didn't drive it on the road.

Planned for tomorrow is to finish the paint.

Oh yeah. Freaking oil cooler leaks oil! POS frustrating worthless, sanity sucking oil cooler. I hate it with a loathing passion. This one leaks between the cooler and filter housing. Its not leaking between the block and the housing now. "Lets design something out of porous pot metal and put 17 different types of seals and orings in it and put 50 PSI oil pressure and 13 PSI water pressure and run it to 200 degrees F. That'll make mechanics happy." Screw you, Kia, Mazda, Japan. Whoever came up with that BS piece of crap. Oh! And thanks for making the threads an oddball 20mm X1.5 instead of EVERY OTHER oil filter 3/4X16. So I can't even find a threaded nipple to just run a filter right on the block without that oil leaker...like Mazda intended. GRRRR!!!! EVERY kia FE3 I see leaks there. I though since this one I pulled looked almost brand new the seals INSIDE would be okay, since the ones between the block and housing were nice and new. WRONG!

I'm going to go punch a bear.

I'm renaming this project "I see more RED!" OMG, the sanding and painting has been hell. On the red body panels..Everywhere I touched with scotch brite, BRIGHT red base came through in spots. Had to prime the whole panel.
[ (HA! Fooled ya!! My LAST edit was up here, not at the end!) It was a rolling joke as we were doing the prep work. "I see more red here" "There's more red" "Another red!"]

We should have just left it in primer until you were committed to go ahead and do a full body job on it. Oh well. Its all one color now. Looks respectably decent.

I spent WAY more time on the body than I wanted to. Should have sanded the whole body down to good paint, primed and done base and clear. But it would have been a waste of money if you're just going to take it all down again in a few months/year. So its a toss-up what was a better route to take. Again...It doesn't look bad. don't get the wrong idea.

One whole bed side...The old primer lifted. Needs to be sanded down and re-sprayed tomorrow. Its from long ago when primer was layed down too quickly and not allowed to flash between passes/coats. I should have known...I sanded and re-primed one bedside because I kept cutting through to base color....the other looked okay after scuffing...But it wasn't ok.

Mechanically, all is well. Fixed that oil leak. Clutch is fixed. Brakes are working. No fires. Rad fan came today. Installed and working.

Still gotta finish the exhaust and attach the seals and body trim. And sand, prime and repaint that bed side. Still have the door solenoids and poppers to hook up. Couldn't do that until I had the tape and paper off the windows.

Plan on coming to get it this next weekend if nothing else comes up.

And pics will be up tomorrow...Maybe a video. I'll post a pic of that lifted primer on the bed side...and you'll see immediately whats wrong, based on old photo's.

Last thing..I promise.:
Yes, we did just clean up and finish at 1:30 am. Reminds me of what we'll be doing to our shop promo vehicles in a few weeks to be ready for local shows. Working 24 hours a day on weekend to get it done. I hate my life.

Last edit! Oops. Has anyone brokem their promise in the same post? Thsi time! i'm for real! Im so tired, I can't eben type:
I did manage to do a couple small (tiny) things to be somewhat (slightly) "unique". See if you even notice them when you get it back.

In for pics and more updates!

Alright. Pics.

I didn't do too much to it today. Installed the door seals. Installed the grille and bumper. Took pics.

It really doesn't look bad at all. I kinda like it. Today was the first time I had seen it in daylight since we painted it last night.



















The bad spots on the bed