Adjusted gaps and some nip tuck action on the front bumper. Hopefully next week I will be sending the car for seamseal, undercoat, paint interior, and firewall.
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Printable View
Adjusted gaps and some nip tuck action on the front bumper. Hopefully next week I will be sending the car for seamseal, undercoat, paint interior, and firewall.
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Looking great! I need to do that with my bumper next
Something exciting is happening. Anyone care to guess what it is? Obviously besides different door handles. LOL
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BAM! Tesla Model 3 door handles
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Looks great.
Don
Car went to body shop last week to be seam sealed, undercoated and painted inside. In the mean time I dropped off all suspension to powdercoating. Started painting the rear diff. Came out excellent. It’s a VHT metallic fire red. Paint looks super thick and shinny. Everything under the car will be satin black but the driveline (engine, trans, driveshaft and rear diff) will be metallic red. Since the outside of the car will be like a candy apple red. This is the closest color I found to a candy apple red and I’m really really happy with it!
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Painted the engine, this was a huge hurdle for me. This is my first time taking apart an engine so I was very nervous about disassembly. So I took off 1 part at a time, labeled and took pics. Hopefully I can reassemble everything as quickly and easily as it all went apart. I’m still in the process of painting the supercharger and the accessory drives.
The VHT system seems very high quality. I normally hate painting because 90% of painting is prep and I just don’t have the patience to prep properly and get pretty poor results. Luckily my engine is fairly new (15’ pullout) so it was fairly clean and obviously unpainted. I prepped with brake cleaner and wire brush. Then scuffed with a pad and then again a very liberal spray of brake clean. Let everything dry then sprayed 3 coats primer. Next day wiped off any dust and sprayed 4-5 coats of color. VHT recommends only 3 but since this is a metallic I had to use really really light coats to prevent runs. It was also hard to get into all the nooks and crannies which is another reason I had to do light coats. Then I put about 4 light coats of clear and the result is amazing! 3 hours later I was scared to touch it because it looks super wet but it was already dry to the touch. I’m really happy with how this turned out and basically needed only minimal prep to get almost a show quality paint job. If I had taken some sand paper and grinder to remove the casting imperfections and smooth everything out it truly would be show quality paint job.
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I took apart the supercharger snout to replace the isolator with a solid one and to my surprise it was already solid. My engine is from a 15 ZL1 which was the last year of the LSA perhaps GM started putting in solid isolators? I also bought a griptec 2.38” pulley which required a 3 jaw puller to remove the stock pulley. Rented that for free from Advanced Auto, it came out super easy, but the new pulley doesn’t fit the snout and needs to be machined. My dad said I was crazy to do this but it only required 1/16” all the way around so I marked it and started grinding it down with a grinder really slowly. Took me about an hour to do it, then I filed down the grinding marks, then used some sandpaper and it came out awesome! Pulley fits with no rubbing! Now I just need to press on the new hub.
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man that engine came out nice, great work
She’s all dressed up with nowhere to go. Body is still stuck in bodyshop. They told me a couple of weeks and it’s been a month and they said to give them 2 more weeks. Attachment 181766
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That's a body shop for you. I had my mother's truck in for a paint job, was told 1 month and it took 4. They uncovered a few hidden issues that had to be fixed in order to get it right, which extended the body prep time. Plus, your job isn't the only one they have to work on and being a for-profit shop they have to prioritize each day to make the best use of their time. The wait was worth it though, because it was stunning when complete. No pics though, because I wasn't thinking about posting anything on it at the time.
Unfortunately, the restoration part of the body shop is only a 1 man show and the owner, the person who promised me couple of weeks has been out for a few weeks because he’s sick. So far they scuffed everything down and seamsealed. Undercoating and painting inside and firewall is next.
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Nice. What accessory drive are you using.
It’s stock LSA, with the CTS-V steering pump. I’m also running a dirty dingo low mount AC. I painted everything satin black. Shoulda powder coated it but it’s too late now.
Hand painted those letters to match the metallic red on the engine
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Nice job it all looks great!
Thanks! Can’t wait to start assembly!
Excellent attention to detail there! I'm following along as I'm in the middle of an LSA / TR6060 (magnum hybrid) swap myself.
cool build!