So its finally time for Bodywork and Paint!

[RafalGTZ00]

the grill looks awesome with that front end, what color will the whole car be? (Hopefully black)

[SkylineG1]

the grill looks awesome with that front end, what color will the whole car be? (Hopefully black)

Hell NAH!!!! Silver G powa!!!

[4g63lover]

Hell NAH!!!! Silver G powa!!!

werd

[Stewi]

Silver FTW!!

[RAZ_76]

Looking good dude.

[Stewi]

Ok so a while has gone by without any updates so here we go. I have been really busy as its crunch time, car almost done, wedding in 3 weeks and trying to make it all happen on schedule. So far I removed the dash, and steering wheel. All the JDM parts have been fit and mounted, the side skirts still need to be sanded and evened out where I had to add on to them. The body work on the left side and hood will be done tomorrow, the trunk and right side should be done either thursday or friday and by friday night into saturday, we should be in primer. Im hoping to be totally painted and ready to put it back together beginning of next week. I also started working on the interior, see pics below.....





I cut this from a damaged 2008 Expedition front bumper...




Viola!!!! I tacked it in using a plastic welder (glorified soldering iron) and then bonded it
fully with SEM Problem Plastic Bumper repair epoxy. This stuff is EXPENSIVE, but its the BEST money can buy. A tube of this stuff is about $35-$40.




JDM Rear Bumper and Extensions are on...



Even tho the hood was new, it had 2 small dings on the front, it took me about 10 mins worth of looking to find them, but they were there.....



Fender needed more work than I thought. The problem is the metal is so thin, when you weld it warps a little, even though I was using low heat and doing spot welds, it still warped a fair amount, but wtf, I will have flush fit JDM sidemarkers.




The body work master Rohan doing his thing.....



Steering column covers and airbag covers color changed.....



Steering wheel color changed.....




Dash color changed....




I have to do the rest of the interior over the next few days. All I can say is that SEM makes amazing quality products. I painted my A pillar pod with their paint last year and it came out like total shit and it was all my fault. I didnt properly prep the surface and I didnt use the correct paint. They making something called SEM Color Coat Vinyl/Plastic paint. Its AMAZING. Its not cheap, but well worth it. All the stuff you see in gray was painted using an aerosol can, anything black was sprayed from a HVLP professional paint gun. It sucks because the gray is only available in aerosol, I would have liked to spray it all with the HVLP as you can adjust pressure, material volume and fan width.

[RedGalant2k1]

Looking great!

Thats one color I wished Mitsubishi put in our 8Gs, was black. It would have been tits with CF.

[9G]

nice!

[4g63lover]

looks like its going great Brian!

cant wait to see it done.

[99 galant]

wow. i cant wait to see this done

[IceDouTGaLanT]

looks awesome man! Dash looks perfect

[Blackstare]

Can't wait to see it finished!

[fatal1]

damn man moving right on along...

[SkylineG1]

looks good Brian. That dash is sex.

[ricky_db]

lookin good

[galant350z]

nice

[wright06jhs]

Very nice car, keep up the good work

[galant305]

nice, i cant wait to see the finished product

[Stewi]

Ok so im not even sure where to start. Alot has gone on since I last updated this thread. All the body work has been done with the exception of "shaping" the JDM sides where they meet the fender so that there is no gap, that will be done over the weekend. The entire car has been primed, the door jambs and all the edges have been painted for the color change. As of tonight 80% of the wetsanding has been done. The car has about 10 hours of wetsanding into it and another 2 hours of wetsanding to take place tomorrow before the final paint can be sprayed. The color I went with has alot of flake in it! How much flake you ask?? Well the paint formula consists of only two components, an aluminum silver flake and a semi transparent "binder" so to speak. To mix a gallon it takes 3 parts flake and 1 part binder, I cant wait to see this thing in the sunlight. I also opted to use a high quality D-BASF Glasurit clear coat. 1 gallon of clearcoat with the appropriated catalyst was $525. I talked to as many shops as I could and they said this particular clear is the best money can buy. I also found several cars that appeared on the covers of Super Street, Modified and Import Tuner that all use this same D-BASF clear coat.

The plan is to finish wetsanding tomorrow, clean everything up, re-mask it all and shoot the color and clear. The base coat im using is a honda/acura silver that has very fine flakes. The problem with the color I am using is that the large flakes dont cover well, so to try and completely cover the primer I would need alot of material and alot of light coats. By basing it in the acura silver, I can get full coverage with 2-3 coats.

here is how it all went down over the last week and half....



















All the parts getting edged out, I am wearing a mask because there is paint in the air. This is just the acura base going on, the car was in the booth baking the primer on, so once it was done baking, we rolled out, put all the parts in the booth and shot the color coat and clear coats then baked them.











Alot of time went into making the shaved license pocket straight.








still waiting to be wetsanded. a black guide coat is used so after your done wetsanding, if you still see any black, you know you have a low spot that needs to be fixed prior to the color being sprayed.



the entire left side is wetsanded with 400 then with 600 and is ready to be cleaned



right side almost done being wetsanded.




this pic doesnt do the color justice. I dont even want to put the heatshield back on, thats how nice under the hood looks.





One thing I will say is this, if I could do this ALL over again, I would have done all the primer and wetsandind and stuff with the motor/engine harness out of the car. When you wetsand, that dirty primer filled water gets EVERYWHERE. I bet I will spend at least an entire weekend cleaning out the engine bay from that stuff because it gets stuck in all the seams where the spot welds are.

[VegasMatt]

I am going to put a grenade in your car and blow it up for payback from xbox the other day....

Lookin good tho. :)