Danger Ranger. Saving a Mazda from the crusher

Ive got a couple friends/family members/co workers that need a cheap beater. So today I had the chance to buy a rough manual Mazda B2500. It was an amount of money that no matter the car, I agree to. There is no way I can lose.

Then I got a closer look. It has too many miles, it rougher than I though, needs more repairs than I though, and doesnt smell great. I definitely paid too much.

Anyways here is the truck

This is after quite a lot of cleaning out and vacuuming. It smells a little better just cleaning it out. Early saturday Im going to do a pretty deep interior clean and a better assessment.

So far I know the compressor has been removed, power steering pump is new but the steering locks up when turning, front end is smoked, cat is plugged so it has about 8 hp, pours out of the rack and leaks oil.

I think using jy parts and some online cheapies I could probably be all in with a decent safe beater for under 1500. At the end of the day its a 2.5 and manual trans so if i can manage to keep it cool and keep oil in it, it will probably run forever, and I it was going to get smooshed and I have a thing for saving cars that are interesting at all (manual trans) and putting them back on the road.

Opti said:

I think using jy parts and some online cheapies I could probably be all in with a decent safe beater for under 1500. 

I remeber a girl in primary school whose father had nice(ish) yellow Mk2 Escort Sport with a bumper sticker that read, "Rebuild using genuine stolen parts".

If the goal is to keep it running using mainly JY parts, maybe make a sticker say something along the same lines?

Ps: The irony of that sticker was that he was a Police officer

Today I did a little cleanup on the truck. The heavy stuff is tomorrow, I mainly just vacuumed with my good strong shop vac and took before pictures.

I cleaned out some more trash, and found what I think is a rear floor mat. It was pretty dirty so I hit it with a water hose after vacuuming it. I didnt use pressure just rinsed it off.

The floor mat isnt any cleaner. The brown spot isnt mud. I dont know what it is, its what was under the mat after rinsing it off. I did it 3 or 4 more times and it always left a spot like this. I think I might be in for quite a challenge with the detail.

Under the shifter boot. Found some chicken bones

Drivers side dash. 

Pass side dash

Drivers side floor

Pass side floor

Seats

Random rear panel. lots of staining

Rear seat area

Do yourself a favor and just pull all the interior out and pressure wash it. 

Then use a upholstery cleaner 

The only way to do it on these dirty beaters. Only way I could get my free b2300 not to stink 

In reply to bigfranks84 :

That's actually the plan for today

First I pulled the seats out and pressure washed them. They came out pretty good.

before

after

Then I pulled the carpet

before

It didnt come out so good. A bunch of the stains came out but plenty are still there. I did get quiet a bit of dirt and mud out. After about 3 dousing in simple green and 7 pressure washes the smell seems to be gone from the carpet

I did the seat belts, which came completely clean

With the carpet out, the floorboard still smelled so I bleached it. That seemed to knock the smell off of it.

I normally do the interior plastics with the two bucket method with woolite. After I cleaned all the plastics with it, it was obvious it wasnt strong enough for this job, So everything got a massive amount of simple green, and a good scrubbing. Plastics cleaned up pretty good. Then I extracted the seats and carpet, the stuff coming out was super nasty, so I kept rinsing and extracting until relatively clean water came out. I left it out to dry for a while and reassembled. It was still a little damp inside so i left the windows down and put a little ozium freshener in there.

In a day or two once its nice and dry Ive got an ozone fogger Ill set off in there.

After the interior I went ahead and gave her a wash and claybar so If i decide to buff out whats left of the paint Im not grinding stuff into it.

will report back with results of ozone fogger