jordisonjr's photography/progress thread, Projectors and Fog lights installed. Options

[jordisonjr]

Hey man, your ride is awesome, and you have done some nice and very clean mods to it, but I have to ask something pretty nooby.
I took off my license plate from the bumper and really want to put it in the mouth of the car, like you did, now that iv been ticketed for not having one in front. I looked at your pictures here and cant get a really good view of how you did it, was it just zipties? what did you attatch it to?
Thanks so much for any help!

Ahh you got nailed with the old no front plate too hey? I got the 2 or 3 times and I got sick of paying for it.
Yea its basically just zipties tied to more zipties which are tied to the posts in the bumper haha.

Basically I made small loops with zipties and then ziptied another one to the plate, to the other loop (hopefully that makes sense)
But I pretty much just crawled under there, and configured a load of zipties together to hold it in place.
Good Luck!

[jordisonjr]

Wow has it been ages since any sort of significant update. Aside from upkeep/maintenance I haven't really done anything to the car. But FINALLY I have an update.
After about 5+ years or so waiting for a decent set of side skirts that didn't cost an arm and a leg + another arm to ship, I finally managed to get my hands on a set of OEM skirts, and locally too.

They actually Came of Azian_advanced old wrecked Celica, the same vehicle I took the JDM tail lights off of from an auto wrecker. At teh time, the car was sitting right on the ground with no wheels, so the skirts were impossible to get off. This was about two years ago, so maybe the car was moved since then, but if not i have no idea how the guy got them off the car.

With the skirts I managed to get his rear SS-III Splitters and a WRC hood spoiler which is now for sale. The splitters aren't in the greatest shape, with one corner being cracked and needing some new paint.

Pic of the damaged area. I'll be using fibreglass cloth to repair this. Unfortunately I forgot to take pics of the paint damage, but both looked like there was some sort of impact causing the paint to flake everywhere.


Last night I started prepping the splitters for paint, went at it with 100 grit to remove the clear/paint and to rough up any imperfections. Only picture I took, but there wasn't too much excitement anyways


Took off the mudguards and mocked up the OEM skirts. This is probably the worst looking skirt of the two, with some paint damage at the bottom from scraping, and a bit at the top of the door, I guess from Passengers getting in and out.



And here's the Driver side, not as much paint damage on this side aside from a couple small scrapes




As you can see the paint matches fairly well on the skirts, so I'm a little on the fence whether I should repaint them or not, or just live with the small imperfections and do a bit of touchups on the white spots/stone chips.
I think I'm going to re-do the splitters, and I will make a decision on the skirts based on how well the splitters come out. Given I have very minimal painting experience and will be using rattle cans as opposed to a real paint gun.

Regardless I can't wait to get these on the car!

[kloudkicka]

Your welcome hahahahaha

[jordisonjr]

Your welcome hahahahaha

Yea yea, I would have found them a couple hours after you emailed me the link

[jordisonjr]

Picked up a fiberglass repair kit today and when to town fixing the crack in the splitter. Laid one cost of fiberglass cloth, and it was easier than I expected. Tip for anyone doing this, wear gloves. I had to sand the resin off my fingers and trees still stuff stuck to them

I'll decide tomorrow if I'm going to do another layer of fiberglass or if this will be sufficient. Also going to pick up paint and priemer from PegGTS tomorrow

[jordisonjr]

Stopped by Rondex today and picked up some supplies; Primer, paint, and clear coat, thanks to WpgGTS for helpin' out.
Got home and went right to it. Finished up the sanding, started off with 100 and then 150 to take out the imperfections as the paint was pretty cracked and flaking from impact.

Once the was done I went at it with 220 and the 320 and it was off to primer.

Primer complete:


For a rattle can primer I'm pretty happy with the results. On one of the splitters had paint that was slightly cracked but still adhering fairly well, so I didn't bother sanding it all off. After laying down the primer, its evident that the cracks from the paint below have started to show through. It's hard to see in this pic, but you can see a small amount of it, but theres a bit more than you can see



There's also a couple minor imperfections, that I'm hoping will be worked out once I hit it with 320 and 600 grit. If not, I'll probably just end up painting over it and hope for the best. I'm not expecting professional quality paint, but as long as its better than before, I'll be satified. I also ran out of primer so I'd have to wait untill next weekend to get to the shop to grab more primer, so I'll risk it.

[PegGTS]

Looks good! Surprised you ran out of primer...were you drinking it?

[jordisonjr]

Looks good! Surprised you ran out of primer...were you drinking it?

I must have been a little stoned on paint fumes when I wrote that, cause i meant to say if I fixed the cracks, I most likely would have ran out of primer.

Just finished up the final coat of clear and I'm really impressed at how it looks so far, given that its a rattle paint and clear. As expected, the small amount of cracking and imperfections are still visible through the paint and clear, but I'm not to bothered by it at the moment.(Ill try and photograph that later) I look at it as a learning experience, as I wasn't really expecting perfection from it either.

Here's the splitters after the final coat of clear, still drying:


Can't wait to get these installed on my car and FINALLY have a small update to the exterior look. Will post more once they're mounted up

[jordisonjr]

Got the splitters all finished up, and installed today.
Ended up breaking one of the bolts on the rear bumper due to rust, but managed to make it work. Now I just gotta pick up mounting hardware tomorrow to mount the skirts up.

[Box]

Wooo o.e. body kit!

[jordisonjr]

Starting Prepping the Skirts this past week, got them all sanded down and laid 3 coats of primer on one of the skirts.
Wasn't sure if I was going to have enough primer so I was going to do it one at a time. I think Ill be okay with what I have so Im going to prime the second, and then lay some paint down

[Box]

I could never find the 3L2 touch up paint in a spray can when I owned mine. I was thinking if I ever came across the o.e. skirts, lip, and splitters I'd just do them in black.

[jordisonjr]

I could never find the 3L2 touch up paint in a spray can when I owned mine. I was thinking if I ever came across the o.e. skirts, lip, and splitters I'd just do them in black.

There's actually a local paint/body shop that mixes off the paint codes.
Results were better than I had expected too.

[Box]

So it was a bajillion dollars a can. *waits for finished product*

[PegGTS]

I work there so I hooked him up with the paint for free

[Box]

Make sure no one else sees.

[PegGTS]

I'll trust you won't tell anyone Box

[Box]

I'm good at keeping secrets.

[jordisonjr]

I've been prepping the side skirts for the last week or so. I once again realized I should have done a bit more prep work as there are still some imperfections with the skirts, but overall, I'm happy with the outcome as they still look better then the original paint that was on them.

I ran into some issues after laying a second coat of clear. For some reason the clear became cloudy and almost spotted on one of the skirts, and had a large cloudy area on another. I'm not really sure what cause this, but after reading it may have been the ambient air since I painted while it was raining. Although it wasn't too humid, the air temp/moisture still cold have had an effect on the clear coat, but who knows.

With the advice of a friend I did a rough sand with 1000 grit sand paper to clear up the cloudyness. Being the first time I've really painted much, and had this issue, I was a little bummed when the whole skirt was scuffed white, and was skeptical that spraying clear over this surface would turn out how it should. But I didn't have much material left, so there was much to lose, aside from having to repaint if it didn't work out.

Luckily, the next two layers of clear turned out great. Theres a couple rough spots, and slight orange peel, but from what Ive read/been told, this can be corrected easily with wet sanding, although, I'm not too concerned with it.



After painting the splitters, and the skirts, I've realized that its a lot easier to paint and get a good result on smaller items than larger, and by now, I think I've had enough issues/experience to get a near-perect finish once I get front splitters to paint!

[Box]

Woooo!!! Now just to get them on.