Well, the time finally came and our UrQ restoration project is finally underway... I mean, we've killed off 3 other cars to supply parts for this one, so it only seems fitting that this one finally go under the knife! It wasn’t seeing a lot of mileage every year, but it was getting used from time to time. It wasn’t until this past Spring/Summer where she finally let us know that it was time. First the Slave Cylinder took a dump and we lost the clutch, and then out of the blue the RPM/Position sensor died and we couldn’t get the car to start (ran like a champ until this point though). I was able to fix the slave cylinder, but wasn’t willing to toss any more money into trying to get the car running again when the motor wasn’t going to be returning to the car. To add insult to injury, the rust on the car was getting increasingly worse over time, even with the car living in a garage and not really seeing rain/snow/salt. After some planning discussions with my brother, dad and meself, we decided that while I was up north over Christmas we would tear the ‘ol girl down and officially start the restoration process.
Since the car didn’t run, we had a real fun time getting it from where we had it stored to my parents’ house. To add insult to injury, the winch on our trailer was dead so we were forced to drive it onto the trailer with the starter motor. The only issue with this? The battery was dead. I wish there was a 4th person there to take pictures/video as we loaded this thing onto the trailer. We parked my brother’s pick up next to the UrQ w/ jumper cable running into the back seat to jump the car. We had my dad in the driver’s seat “driving” the car as best he could up the ramp of the trailer while my brother and I were pushing on the back to give the starter motor a fighting chance to move the car up the incline. It was comical and painful at the same time. Thankfully, unloading the car into the garage was a LOT less painful since we had gravity on our side!
Once we had the ‘ol girl into the garage, we had to devise a way to rotate it into “position” where we could maximize room in the garage. I forgot the proper wheel dollies at my house in VA, so we had to improvise a little bit. FWIW, 4 furniture dollies (w/ extra 2x4s to prevent the car from rolling plus extra support on dolly) are capable of holding up an UrQ!
From there, the tear down began. I started on the front and my brother started on the rear, and when he had time my dad jumped in the interior and started pulling that out.
Bit by bit, piece by piece… she slowly came apart
As we tore the car down, little things started revealing themselves… to the point you started to wonder how the car even functioned to begin with, and exactly HOW safe was this thing! There were enough of these interesting “discoveries” that I’m going to list them at the end of the post for your amusement.
But as expected, we found things that were showing their age, like this secondary radiator:
Impressively, this thing didn’t leak at all! Granted the fins literally disintegrating when you looked at them funny, so it probably wasn’t being overly efficient, but what have you!
More pictures as she slowly got torn down:
Typical for all UrQs that lived normal life in the snow/salt (and I believe this one was rallied at one point as well)… the coveted apron/fender rot:
And as the rear bumpers came off, more and more rust was revealed (
if anyone has the lower wheel arch pieces below the flare in reasonable non-rusty shape, please let me know!)
Despite the rust though, things weren’t AS bad as they could have been. The lower portions of the trunk were also showing signs of daylight (I’m being nice right now… lol) peering through once the carpet, etc was removed. Nothing we weren’t expecting, but also makes you realize that I will DEF be needing to get a hold of a 4000 shell at one point to get more floor pan parts in order to get this puppy back to one piece again.
Once we got the majority of the big panels off, it was time to get started on getting the motor out of the car. There was a lot going on here. Pretty standard setup for an UrQ from what I’m gathering, with a few “extras” added on over time (make shift oil catch can w/ in-line air compressor components, etc).
Once all the ancillary stuff was removed, it was time to start lowering the motor out of the car. We decided to drop the entire motor/trans/subframe/upright assembly as an entire unit to make life a little bit easier.
I had anticipated a few of the subframe bolts to give me difficulty, but unfortunately we were 4 for 4 of the heads literally sheering off!!! We will deal with removing those later on after the ‘ol bird is acid dipped. Needless to say, if we were just trying to remove the subframe to gain access to say, the oil pan, this would have been a real big problem.
Once the motor assembly was lowered onto the dolly, we then lifted the nose of the car w/ the engine hoist to gain the necessary height to wheel it out. Having two tow hooks on the front of the car is REALLY useful!
And motor ready to get palleted and sent off to its new owner
Also, little to our knowledge, my dad had recently topped the car off before it stopped running (thankfully it had burned up around a quarter tank or so before it died). So 15 gallons of fuel later (and my brother getting sprayed in the face a few times), we were able to drain the tank…tearing this car down is family bonding time, really!
And of course, working with rusty 30 year old fuel lines is so much fun. Again, the fuel filter, accumulator and pump were zip tied in place vs replacing the bushings, but I digress. I got HOSED off when breaking the fuel filter banjo bolt free b/c the other end literally snapped off (very thin from rusting away):
More fun things that were uncovered: holes in front uprights!!!
I knew that the suspension was a wee bit rusty, but has anyone ever seen this happen before? I was in shock, and am questioning whether or not we should be replacing these uprights at all, or just cutting out the damage and repairing them. I’d like to keep the original UrQ suspension if at all possible, but also wasn’t really expecting to find holes like these! Thankfully, this was the only hole I found in all 4 uprights, but there was also a hole forming in the rear subframe as well. So yeah, this ‘ol girl def saw her fair share of salt/dirt/gravel/etc.
But once we got all the running gear off the car and the underside of the car stripped out (brake lines, fuel lines, center drive shaft, heat shields, etc all removed), it was time to make it so we could wheel this car around while we start to plan out its future:
Basic construction is that the front and rear 4x4s land on solid jacking points for the car (or as solid as the rusty underside will allow!), and the rest stabilizes it as well as gives us areas to tie the car to the dolly so we can tow it around on the trailer. Dollies are meant for about 250-300lbs each, so they’re slightly over loaded, but still roll.
And the ‘ol bird loaded up on her new “wheels” for the next X years:
The last stretch for us was getting the interior fully gutted and wiring harnesses removed. I always thought the ’85 and up fuse box setup was a rat’s nest, but the early fuse box officially takes the cake! What an ungodly mess that was! We started by getting all the “easy” interior stuff out, and then I got into the wiring:
And after several hours of cursing and swearing, I managed to get the body harness and the motor harness out w/o cutting anything off (impressive, huh?):
We will probably hold onto the body harness for now, even though we’re replacing it w/ a CGT wiring harness, but is there a market for the ECU harness? We won’t need it since we’re installing an AAN ECU/Harness, so figured if anyone is interested in it, just let me know.
But after 4 days of back breaking work (and three rather disgruntled wives – oops)… we finally got everything but a few trim pieces and the front windshield removed from the car. What are now left are loose body parts and a peg board with every nut/bolt/plug/etc bagged, labeled and nailed to it
And the initial parts list as we broke things as we were removing them… needless to say, I have every expectation that this will at least double in length by the time we’re done… lol.
And as promised as earlier mentioned… a hit list of interesting things we found as we tore down the car. Some comical, some scary, but the moral is: they will all be fixed in the end
1) Standard relaying of the headlights…
sure, looks functional from here, but as you start to follow the wires around… things start to look a little more… well… not quite right.
Other end for the pass side lights was tied together w/ a standard wire nut and electrical tape. The mess of other wires you see was a remote starter to bypass the ignition switch since the PO was having a lot of difficulty w/ the switches dying on him or being overly tempermental.
2) The Previous owner(s) LOVED zip ties!
Yes, you’re seeing it right… instead of replacing the isolators, they managed to zip tie it all together instead. This seemed to be a theme throughout the car – when it doubt, zip tie it!
3) Home Made Heat Shields! Yes ladies in gents, AL does make a good heat shield, but I’m not necessarily sure that ALUMINUM FOIL is the best idea!
But here’s one more use of an old license plate:
4) Wiring follies… Things like this scare me (notice the lines going into the empty relay slots):
While I’m sure it’s safe in its own right, there are signs like this in the wiring harness that just gave me a little bit of an uneasy feeling:
And empty relay slots (this was behind the glove box – no relay present, so not sure what used to go here):
5) Golf tees aren’t JUST for holding up your ball to tee off:
So from this point, we have the car stripped down and waiting the “next step” so-to-speak. This is going to be a very long term project without a doubt, but should be fun! Right now we’re looking into finding an acid dipping shop to send the shell off to so we can get ALL the old paint/undercoating removed and reveal what other rusty treasures lurk beneath! There used to be one really close that would bake the car, acid dip it, then dip it in an epoxy primer of sorts so there was paint on all the nooks/crannies, but unfortunately they went out of business within the last year, so we’re looking for other alternatives. We might have found a viable shop in NC just south of VIR as well as in Indianapolis, but still need to research and determine if they do exactly what we need them to do. Then begins the fun of fixing the rust damage (have pretty much all the parts needed for the front end from the CGT we parted out) and then modifying the shell for all the tricks we have up our sleeve
That’s about it from here. Hopefully you enjoyed the show! Now it’s time for me to get back to finishing off the paint on the 4000 so I can remove one more project from my list!
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