Day 50 - 30th October 2011, Time for a bit of painting

The past few weeks I've been making sure everything is cleaned and ready to go back on the car.  The front bumper was always an issue, scratched, paint missing and it had a few dints in it.  The rear bumper was in good condition as is the rest of the cars body.  One thing that was missing was the rear wing, when I got the car it was missing, just a few holes in the boot where it used to be.  Well last week one came up on the RSLC forums and I got it, red in colour and the paint flaking off, but it was in one piece and the bonus was it came with the boot, so a spare boot.





The first job was to sand down both part, as well as get ride of the dints in the bumper.  After watching a few video's online (might car mods being one), I got out the heat gun I used to remove the tar and slowly heated up the bumper.  A few pushes with the blunt end of the hammer and massaging the plastic and it actually looked good, and after a bit of sanding you would never know there were any dints.  Tapped up the  bumper and a coat of primer, followed by more sanding and more tapping then a top coat the bummer looks great, as does the now silver rear wing.



Next item was the front brakes, these where 4 pot 99 STI brakes, bigger brakes then the RS original 2 pot but not as large as Brembo's or big WRX brakes as the rims are still only 15".  Still the callipers needed a bit of modification to make them fit, the rims I've got have a 35mm off set, where the RS rims are 45mm.  All that means the callipers foul the rim, the fix is to grind a bit of the calliper body away until they are clear.  The other option was to fit spacers on the rim, well at the moment I have about 2mm clearance, so I might still go 5-10mm spacers for the extra clearance, will see how things go.  Now the callipers fit a quick clean with the grinding wire wheel, tape it up and paint them black ready to be installed.



Other things that are in progress as part of the build, new Jim Berry racing clutch, flywheel has been machined, rear diff is being rebuilt with new plates so it will be a locked diff, wheel hubs are being pulled down to have new wheel bearings and seal along with new wheel studs 1" longer, new rear trailing link, new bushes to replace all suspension bushes, new STI top strut mounts and new DMS 50mm coil overs.

So is the build out of control yet??