Looks great!
Awesome job

 

Wheels on. Coilovers are enroute. The rear needs to be dropped a bit.

 

Damn, that looks amazing. Great job!!!!!

 

Going black on the interior

 

I'm always hesitant about respraying/dyeing plastics. Maybe I missed it but what products did you use and are you happy with them?

 

I think the biggest issue is getting them clean before spraying. They usually have years of grime + old armor all and other build up on them. At the end of the days it's just plastic, once cleaned properly, plastic primer and some good plastic paint, lots of thin coats.

 

forgot about this thread, it seems like the sky is the limit for you, there’s nothing you can’t do.

Pretty amazing so far. Even though it’s always that last 5% that makes or breaks, have 100% confidence that you’ll make it and more.

.

 

I'm using the SEM products and following the instructions to the tee. As someone mentioned, cleaning and prepping is all the work to make it stick. I don't think it will hold up the same as a factory black component but man it looks awesome. And, I think touchups will be easy.

Here are the products I'm using:
1. Windex for initial cleaning
2. Alcohol further cleaning
3. Grey scotchbright
4. Final cleaning
5. Vinyl/Plastic prep according to instructions
6. Color spray

 

When you watch this in super-fast speed it almost looks like I know what I'm doing.

 

SEM Products are the real deal.
I agree with all the others, this is an amazing build and everything you are doing is very impressive.
Love your choice of wheels/wheel color

 

Another vote for SEM stuff over this side of the world. No one had any of their 'trim-black' in stock though, so I did some reading and decided to give their 'bumper coater' paint a go, as its designed to adhere to PP plastics, which almost all the interior stuff is made out of. Thoroughly impressed. Everything was prepped to within an inch of its life, scratches sanded, furry fibers melted with a MAP gas torch (carefully), cleaned, scotchbrighted, cleaned again, dried thoroughly. Leaves everything looking a dull-grey and generally worse then it did before. Then three light coats of the paint, no primers or adhesion promoters required, and holy ****... As close to an OEM satin black finish as I've ever seen, and once it'd dried you can't tell its been painted at all, just looks new.

 

Amazing work quality. The car is looking great and it is much cheaper to paint the plastics than to buy oem black ones. I congratulate you on the quality of work.

 

Coilovers on and wheel gap gone. This is lower in the front than I'll ever drive it but I figured it would be cool to see it slammed .

 

White car with black wheels looks great

 

Building the console for the EV monitoring system, master power switch, and gear select. I used the faceplate from the auto gear shifter and built up from there. I guess what I like about these projects is there aren't any rules...
I used plastic, epoxy, foam, body filler, polyester resin and SEM paint

 

The silver rings on the gauge cluster were looking pretty sad. There may be a replacement method for these but for now I repainted them.

 

On to the interior. The only place I found that sold the rear seat covers that seemed to have good reviews was Ridies. Short answer is.... don't buy from Ridies. My shop, Leathermenders are absolute pros and when they tried to fit the covers on the front seats and back the fit was absolutely terrible.

Here are some pics comparing the nice tan covers that came off my car to the Ridies covers:
Tan = my old nice covers that fit perfect
Black = new Ridies

You can see the measurements are off all over the place. Also, one zipper was on backwards, etc. Totaly useless.

 

We ordered Katzkins for the fronts and the shop custom made the back covers. Just incredible results.



I need to have the missing pieces made.

 

Lots of interior refinishing. The cover for the sunroof bezel was already cracked but changing it to black went pretty easy. The paint definitely isn't as durable as OEM but it's much better than the dirty tan it was.

 

I bought some Mazda emblems to match the Ray's centercap size. I wish they were color matched but black will work for now. I may try to find another solution.

 

AND, I slammed it all together in time for Radwood

 

Here is a video of a test drive. More to come. She drives ultra smooth.

 

OMG - I'm ready to buy stock in what ever start up you create .. lol

 

The quiet is awkward!

 

It's true... I had a Prius for a while and when it would run battery-only at low speed, I used to call it "impulse power". They're almost going to need to build sound effects into electric cars, so you can choose like "1970's Cosworth DFV" or "The Jetson's Car" SFX to play out of internal/external speakers.

Awesome build, what a project!

P