Redline165
20+ Year Contributor
- 82
- 95
- Mar 3, 2004
-
Raeford,
North_Carolina
I have been lurking tuners for a while but never really posted on here. Now seeing the local boards dying down and loosing traffic Tuners seems to be the best place to keep in the loop. The beginning part of this thread is cut and pasted from a different forum (too much photobucket linking for me!) If you dont want the novel skip to pictures for the fun stuff but the story is pretty interesting.
Background on the car is i bought and paid for it when i was 16 (first car and my money). Somehow I had enough respect for it to not wreck it or blow it up to badly. Over 2-3 years I built it up to a 600ish fwhp car. It was just stupid fun to drive on the street with a GT4088R, 2.4L, DSMlink yada yada. During this time a crazy ex-girlfriend somehow got upset with me (that part might have been justified, haha) and ruined my car (not justified). Spray paint, tires, mirrors gone, ect... So i had a "Buddy" that claimed to be a great painter and was starting a shop and wanted a "Shop Car" to show off his skills and would just charge materials. I pulled the motor and what not to do it right and after 6 months with the car and countless unanswered phone calls he claimed it was done.
I got it back and almost vomited but just decided to cut my losses and leave. The car had no clear coat, it appeared to be just a single coat of base and more orange peel then words can describe. The bodywork was awful. While there was no sheet metal damage from said crazy person, there was scratches from a key and the spray paint all over. Where he "repaired the key marks and spray paint you could see where he just sanded and primed those spots so the car looked like it had almost zebra stripes in it because of un-level paint. The door jams appeared to be rattle canned with a similar color, the front bumper had cracks in the paint (no flex additive i assume) and the paint appeared to have little halo looking things in it.
I just took what i had and wrote it off as a bad investment. I figured i would get it done properly but it was "painted" for now. A couple weeks later i took it to the car wash and was going to spray the dust off of it, turned the pressure washer down to the lowest setting and stood about 10 feet back and as i was rinsing sheets of paint started coming off. Upon closer inspection the paint underneath was un-skuffed and had zero primer. He just sprayed a new color directly on top off the factory paint. to make it even better, i noticed little pits all over the car and after consulting an actual painter friend of mine it turns out they were tiny rust spots from water in his paint. I was then told that the only way to fix it right was to strip the entire car and remove those little rust marks.
Shortly after this i said screw it and put the motor back in just to drive it. One day I got greedy and lifted the head running way to much boost on pump gas (i was against O-ringing it at the time) and burned a hole in the cylinder head. I got the head fixed but started getting busy at work and some girl showed up and you all know the rest of the story. I lost interest due to wanting to do a new turbo setup with the money involved and with the dying paint issue. I was offered a bunch of money for the motor and decided that it was time to get rid of the things collecting dust. Sold all the remainder of the $$$ parts. I ended up with the chassis and a few misc. parts sitting in storage.
I got out out of DSM's for 5-6 years, but I never got rid of my 2G, and after a career change from the automotive industry I actually got the itch to start working on the damn thing again.
And so it began
Car with the bad paint
Day one after engine removal
Lots of Stripper, sandpaper and elbow grease
Decided to just get everything out of the way and dropped the fuel tank, brake lines, and sub frame making it a 100% bare shell and then brake out the sand blaster for the engine bay. That was a level 10 pain in the ass.
Replacing the front frame rail and radiator support due to the swiss cheese effect from a few different FMIC's and Radiators.
Decided that id clean up some things on the car and seeing that i'm going with a fuel cell i'm filling the fuel door. This was my first real welding project, teaching myself as i go. i quickly learned that with metal that thin you cant weld the whole thing at once. warped the piss out of it but luckily i had a spare and it turned out nice after some grinding and sanding.
Primed up the body, (got tired of sanding surface rust) Still waiting to finish a few little things in the engine bay before priming there.
I'm welding up and filling the Heat and A/C passages
Completed first coat of primer
Blocking discovering a few small imperfections (i expected the fuel door, but was happy with how close i got it to start with)
Fill sand repeat.
On to the Hatch and Spolier
Anyone with body experience feel free to chime in with suggestions. I've never done any type of bodywork and have been teaching (and screwing up) myself as i go. The interior was skuffed and cleaned prior to primer. The body was sprayed with a 2K "direct to metal" building primer. 2 coats then sanded with 320 and body repairs done. The final primer coat is in the works (on the chassis) and has been sanded with 600. Everything is cleaned with a wax and grease remover prior to spraying primer and the garage is at 80 degrees and let dry over night bore any work is done. Im using a decent HVLP gun (with about 3 inline driers on the air supply) and spraying with a 1.4 tip @ 25psi per the tech. sheet on the primer.
Background on the car is i bought and paid for it when i was 16 (first car and my money). Somehow I had enough respect for it to not wreck it or blow it up to badly. Over 2-3 years I built it up to a 600ish fwhp car. It was just stupid fun to drive on the street with a GT4088R, 2.4L, DSMlink yada yada. During this time a crazy ex-girlfriend somehow got upset with me (that part might have been justified, haha) and ruined my car (not justified). Spray paint, tires, mirrors gone, ect... So i had a "Buddy" that claimed to be a great painter and was starting a shop and wanted a "Shop Car" to show off his skills and would just charge materials. I pulled the motor and what not to do it right and after 6 months with the car and countless unanswered phone calls he claimed it was done.
I got it back and almost vomited but just decided to cut my losses and leave. The car had no clear coat, it appeared to be just a single coat of base and more orange peel then words can describe. The bodywork was awful. While there was no sheet metal damage from said crazy person, there was scratches from a key and the spray paint all over. Where he "repaired the key marks and spray paint you could see where he just sanded and primed those spots so the car looked like it had almost zebra stripes in it because of un-level paint. The door jams appeared to be rattle canned with a similar color, the front bumper had cracks in the paint (no flex additive i assume) and the paint appeared to have little halo looking things in it.
I just took what i had and wrote it off as a bad investment. I figured i would get it done properly but it was "painted" for now. A couple weeks later i took it to the car wash and was going to spray the dust off of it, turned the pressure washer down to the lowest setting and stood about 10 feet back and as i was rinsing sheets of paint started coming off. Upon closer inspection the paint underneath was un-skuffed and had zero primer. He just sprayed a new color directly on top off the factory paint. to make it even better, i noticed little pits all over the car and after consulting an actual painter friend of mine it turns out they were tiny rust spots from water in his paint. I was then told that the only way to fix it right was to strip the entire car and remove those little rust marks.
Shortly after this i said screw it and put the motor back in just to drive it. One day I got greedy and lifted the head running way to much boost on pump gas (i was against O-ringing it at the time) and burned a hole in the cylinder head. I got the head fixed but started getting busy at work and some girl showed up and you all know the rest of the story. I lost interest due to wanting to do a new turbo setup with the money involved and with the dying paint issue. I was offered a bunch of money for the motor and decided that it was time to get rid of the things collecting dust. Sold all the remainder of the $$$ parts. I ended up with the chassis and a few misc. parts sitting in storage.
I got out out of DSM's for 5-6 years, but I never got rid of my 2G, and after a career change from the automotive industry I actually got the itch to start working on the damn thing again.
And so it began
Car with the bad paint
Day one after engine removal
Lots of Stripper, sandpaper and elbow grease
Decided to just get everything out of the way and dropped the fuel tank, brake lines, and sub frame making it a 100% bare shell and then brake out the sand blaster for the engine bay. That was a level 10 pain in the ass.
Replacing the front frame rail and radiator support due to the swiss cheese effect from a few different FMIC's and Radiators.
Decided that id clean up some things on the car and seeing that i'm going with a fuel cell i'm filling the fuel door. This was my first real welding project, teaching myself as i go. i quickly learned that with metal that thin you cant weld the whole thing at once. warped the piss out of it but luckily i had a spare and it turned out nice after some grinding and sanding.
Primed up the body, (got tired of sanding surface rust) Still waiting to finish a few little things in the engine bay before priming there.
I'm welding up and filling the Heat and A/C passages
Completed first coat of primer
Blocking discovering a few small imperfections (i expected the fuel door, but was happy with how close i got it to start with)
Fill sand repeat.
On to the Hatch and Spolier
Anyone with body experience feel free to chime in with suggestions. I've never done any type of bodywork and have been teaching (and screwing up) myself as i go. The interior was skuffed and cleaned prior to primer. The body was sprayed with a 2K "direct to metal" building primer. 2 coats then sanded with 320 and body repairs done. The final primer coat is in the works (on the chassis) and has been sanded with 600. Everything is cleaned with a wax and grease remover prior to spraying primer and the garage is at 80 degrees and let dry over night bore any work is done. Im using a decent HVLP gun (with about 3 inline driers on the air supply) and spraying with a 1.4 tip @ 25psi per the tech. sheet on the primer.