1989 SX Liftback, Auto - "Ghost"

I just wanted to introduce my car, throw up some pics, and info...

I bought her around 5-6 years ago as my first car. $1200 (which, hell, was a nice low amount compared to what I expected them to ask).
She was in very good condition overall, nothing too note-worthy wrong. The body was very clean and pretty spotless, honestly.
There was a massive inward dent under the drivers side. The car was much lower when I first grabbed it, and has since been raised after a few many scrapes.

About a year later I started having issues.. Specifically major power loss taking off from a complete stop..
She was looked at many times, by mechanics... friends... friends of friends... The list goes on. It was never resolved, and killed my like for the car.
I decided on selling, and neglected the car for awhile.. as well as had a truck turn into me.

Skipping to today, I don't plan on selling after renewed love for the car. She needs a bit of work on the outside.. Paint fading, rust appearing.
The driver's side guard is caved in near the door, and indicator. The power loss issue is still hovering, but not as apparent after some small fixes.


Older pic, before the truck:



Damage from the truck:



Warped grill, and light stuck - ie winking :


I've since bent the guard back out to fix the light. Still needs work.

 

The car pulls up to 3.5-4k revs, before shifting.. and dropping to about 1500.
There's just no power at this point.. Pedal to the floor does nothing, it'll just gain speed PAINFULLY slow..
The car just lacks guts in general.. But this fluctuates, and it drives like a breeze other times. More often than not the power is lacking, though.

A friend of a friend used to service the car.. Turns out the oil filter hadn't been changed for a good 5-6 years.. :barf
I just switched it out today, which dramatically improved the car (not surprising at all, right? lol).. Methinks I'll be looking after it myself now
The power loss is still there, but nowhere near as apparent.. Thoughts?

 

Just started on a little engine prettying up...
Needs a good clean, but

 

Been devoting my time to little engine fixes, and such.. So nothing really picture worthy..

I did do a little wash today, so.. Random pic

 

Anddd just a wider shot, made me laugh.. It makes the car look.. comically toy-like, to me

 

Yea, cycling through everything slowly..
Air and fuel filters are done.. plugs too. Cap is next, planned on with the plugs, but eh..

Honestly, I had thought about the cat a bit back.. I'll look into it..
Aside from that, I want to check out the TPS (know the voltage range? - mine peaks at 3.8v, throttle completely open)

As for the mechanic.. long ditched, was much less confident to troubleshoot myself.. Still regard myself as pretty damn amateurish, but.. getting there.

I know, hey, but I was very weirded out... No kidding, it was an immense noticeable change.. The gears shifted flawlessly, and the car drove with twice the low end power.
Maybe I nudged something, or... god knows. The only "change" recently was a throttle body clean I did about a week beforehand.


I think the light covers being white at the front makes it look off, lol.. It doesn't bother me too much but

 

Just a small update. I've been pretty slack on getting anything major started, for a few reasons. Lack of space is a big one.

I've been switching out globes to LEDs (with a few plans on step lights in the door, door handle, and such).
I wasn't extremely happy with the park lights (T10 globe), the size of the globe just didn't cut it for a purposeful daytime light. I decided to tread pretty lightly here, as honestly, I find older cars with LEDs (especially the strip kind) to look tacky as all hell. I upped the size of the socket, nothing too major - took a little filing to fit the new housing.

The globe is large, and powerful enough to be nicely visible during the day, while still suiting the car to my eye.




Closeup of the globe itself:




Next planned is to straighten out my poor grill, drives me insane not seeing it flush against the bonnet.
Also I want to look at painting the lip white, as well as changing the eyelid colour to match the grill.

 

So I've been up to a little bit of prettying up, starting out with the grill. I didn't notice how bad it truely was until the light hit it.. Corners were pretty ugly, too.
Before and after below:





Excuse the water droplets, this isn't my poor paint job :lol
I'm pretty damn happy with how it turned out.. I've since done the corner lights (pics to come), and planning on the tail lights.




Also, I redid a fair chunk of the interior lights in white LEDs (as per Spyder's inspiration to get it done)
To anyone considering it - it really is a very straight forward job. WELL WORTH IT!







Now for the bitch of the update... Turns out I have oil leaking from my distributor cap..
SO, I'm assuming it's an o-ring in the distributor - next job on the list.

 

Nope, power drop is still there.. it doesn't really fluctuate between driving strongly, and poorly now... Just purely poor. So the sole time it drove well was after that oil + filter change..
So, hell, maybe the distributor leak is it.

I believe the last owner sprayed the grill over, and the sun faded the hell out of it.. I sanded it all very lightly, and redid it, so we'll see how it goes.

As for your comments on LEDs, I'm worried I might have a similar issue.. Some others I put in burnt out after about 2 weeks. I swapped them out, same issue again.
The ones I put in my corners above have held up perfectly, though.. They're constantly on whenever I drive, too.. So I'm impressed with them. :bounce

 

T10s in the corners, as well as the gear shifter globe. I think the set I got was just dodgy. We'll see how these ones go (same style as what you've put in)..
It's for the better, anyways... Given it made me up the size of the corner globes.


Left are the new corner ones (bought some housings and rewired + widened the hole), middle would burn out, right are the new gauge ones

 

My turn signals are the larger socket.. same as the left above. It's the driving lights that are the small wedge for me