Well the process of painting my fd has started. I had paintless dent removal take out as many door dings as possible, and than had the rest of my dents pulled and primed. Hopefully we'll get the car de-trimmed and ready to paint next weekend and paint it the week after that. Im very anxious so I figured I would start a thread for everyone to see the progress.

paintless dent removal did a very good job


now I get to run around looking like a cheetah till the weekend


front fenders were sanded and primed from rock chips that were down to the metal


here is a before picture of the dent in the side before the rear tire

here it is now



I can't wait to have her painted.

 

Are you painting it too? I also painted and prepped my FD. Lots of work, but it turned out graet.

 

My bf is doing all the work, he's the painter not me what color did you paint your fd?

 

nice..i wish i knew someone who can paint cars..im planning on repainting my car too next spring and i know it will cost $$$

 

ohh finally repainting your single stage paint FD eh? what color? whos probe, rx8, and riced out RSX? oh yeah and ask them to dye your black front lip to black again.

 

probe=stealth.. which is mine
rx8=next door naighbors
"riced out rsx"=the bf's.

 

That looks like that will turn out great. I cant wait to see what it looks like finished. And i really love those stockers painted black on the red. It looks damn nice. Great job.

 

he doesnt want to prime the whole car?

Im not a bog fan of all that spot priming

basecoats can have a tendency to shrink in around all that spot priming and leave a scratchy outline down the road

 

I think we're priming the whole car this weekend (im not sure). We still have sanding and stuff to do so he just primed the spots he worked on.

 

that sounds good then if he wanted to coat the bodywork then figured on blocking it later on and applying some more primer-carry on then!

 

yup I think thats exactly the plan.

 

Looks good! I didn't know your BF was a painter. where does he work? wanna do my FD? I'm poor though. I need a "Dan's FD Relief Fund"

 

ya he works at crown coachworks. I'm guessing everyone will want him to paint there cars once mine is done Its expencive though even just paying for supplies. And when you paint your car you want everything to be perfect so you end up replacing this and replacing that and it ends up being a huge friggin' project

 

Lookin' good!


lol it is so true. Quality paints are expensive and I just HAD to get a '99 spec front.

 

nice. I was contimplating getting the 99spec front but than I just wanted 99spec everyyything so I stuck with a different kit.

 

what a weekend. So the plan was to get the body kit fitted and prepped. So we start by cutting the front bumper reinforcement so the new front bumper will fit.
(sorry for the blurry picture it was a little dusty if you cant tell)
and after a looongg day of trying 100different ways to get the darn thing to fit we end up with this

hood overlapped front bumper by almost an inch






back bumper looks cherry


here is the thing. the website advertised the whole kit as fiberglass reinforced plastic. Well the front bumpers and sideskirts are just fiberglass. the back bumper (which it looks like they ordered from someone else) is fiberglass reinforced plastic and fit pretty darn good. so I'm trying to get them to either refund my money or send me a front bumper and sideskirts from the same people they got the rear bumper from.

so after a 9am-12am sat and a 10am-2pm sunday my car is back to stock and we accomplished nothing. What a set-back

 

car is looking good, i have the c-west rear bumper as well.

 

Yeah, looks like the front bumper and sideskirts have terrible fitment issues.

 

yup. and there is no way Im going to let something that looks like crap stay on my car. Id rather be stock.

 

if you push the bottom of the bumper up towards the fenders that would probably take away alot of that 1" overlap by the hood

it looks like its sitting on there pointing up

 

tried it.. and it just pulled it away and made about a 1/2 inch gap between the hood and bumper. it was either too much or not enough we couldnt get it inbetween. If they dont send me good peices the only option will be to cut it and fiberglass it back together. take a little 1" peice out along that line and see how that works.

 

1" just seems so out of line quality wise, that sucks and I feel your pain

urethane bumpers tend to give more
I may also suggest you fully bolt the bumper up when fitting it, I made the mistake of just holding it tight up against the car with finger tight bolts to hold it on the car, when I tightened everything up after paint the bumper didnt want to cooperate all at once and gave me alot of last minute grief after it was all painted.

 

what grit sand paper did you begin with? i just started prepping my fd and began w. 220 grit, then move up to 600, finish with 1200 grit
did you wet sand or just dry sand it with paper?
even using the rough 220 grit seems to hardly make any progress. not too much dust at all, and i can't get through to the primer coat under the paint. any suggestions?? or am i in the right track?

 

we did it still looked like poo. that picture was when we had givin up at about 12am and started unbolting stuff and I decided to take pictures to remind myself how far we got.

 

600, let alone 1200 grit isn't needed during the prep. Way, way too fine a grit. If you're doing this by hand like I'm guessing, stop and get yourself a good air DA sander. You'll love yourself for it, trust me.

What paint system are you (planning) on using? The tech manual for the paint system you're using should recommend what grit each layer needs. Example, Dupont Chroma systems calls for 180-240 for most of its undercoatings.