Good news: one quart of sherwin-Williams oil based paint, properly thinned, is enough to paint one small car as long as it goes on kinda thin. Looks fantastic though! Now the car is gulf blue. I'll try to snap a photo tomorrow afternoon to post.
Good news: one quart of sherwin-Williams oil based paint, properly thinned, is enough to paint one small car as long as it goes on kinda thin. Looks fantastic though! Now the car is gulf blue. I'll try to snap a photo tomorrow afternoon to post.
how did you apply it
I sprayed it. There's a couple runs I need to sand out but overall I'm pretty happy, considering this was my first time spraying. Sneak peek low quality picture. I'm going to try not to post any more exterior photos until I finish the paint job.
edit: forgot to attach the photo lol
orange wheels.
If I keep these E30 bottlecaps I'm definitely going to paint the center orange, and probably redo the outside edge silver. Ultimately I'm trying to trade these with tires for some LS meshes, since those usually go cheap and the 15" wheel will be easier to get performance tires for. If I can get my hands on LS meshes, those will be used for daily driving and drag racing at the 2021 challenge. I have some Konig Heliums (3 now, 1 being shipped soon) that will be my autocross tires, 15X6.5 11.2 pounds each, and those will be painted orange. I still need to paint the underside of the hood and the engine compartment. I bought a welder yesterday, so once the repair panels come in I'm going to attempt to fix the rust in the rear wheel wells. I also need to reinstall the factory front lip, but my driveway is at a bit of an angle so I'm just trying to be cautious and not scrape the crap out of it. If I can get off my lazy rear end this morning then I'll go learn how to weld and fabricate some form of exhaust (probably just exit in front of passenger rear tire).
So the wheels will be orange, the side mirrors will be orange, then I just need to figure out the rest of the paint job. Most gulf paint jobs have the wide center stripe that spreads into the front bumper, and goes along the side skirts and rises a bit towards the rear wheels. I'm thinking of keeping the side paint the same and the bottom half of the front bumper orange, but instead of the stripe widening into the bumper, just doing an orange stripe about a foot wide and ending it with a big arrow pointing forwards. I dunno.
Did some painting today! Had to run to work so it was cut short but slow progress is still progress. Instead of spending nearly $30 on a quart of orange paint from sherwin Williams, I found some safety orange paint at ace hardware for $8.50. Hard to go wrong there.
Okay I know I said I was going to avoid posting exterior shots until the paint was done but I'm excited about my progress so I'll post this. I taped off most of the car and started spraying the orange on the front of the car. I'm trying to spray it a bit thicker on the front so it can deal with chips there better. It started getting dark and down here that means gnats come out so I stopped. Monday I should be able to finish the orange. And yes I know I still need to fix the rust. I'll do that and then touch up the paint.
Looks sweet!
Been doing some small updates. Removed some wiring from the doors and little plastic brackets and whatnot. This civic being an EX, there's plenty of extra wiring. I'm working on cleaning up the engine bay so I can paint it to match the rest of the car.
today I went to a junkyard and wandered around for two hours after reading Stampie's thread on junkyard zen. I really enjoyed it. I picked up a full width Integra radiator that's a big improvement over mine but I'll have to see if it'll fit with a turbo there. Also grabbed some tail lights to replace my broken ones. There was a 1968 Galaxy 500 convertible there:
it was in rough shape and the motor and transmission were gone but it had brand new 2.5" dual exhaust with glass packs so I grabbed my hacksaw and started sawing. I'm a pretty fit person so that's no big problem. Well, it was mega cramped under the car and after sawing and sawing I barely made a dent in those pipes. Apparently they're made of wolverine's bones or something. I saw another car with the exhaust pipe hanging down (factory pipes) so I went to go saw on that, then I remembered the integra I saw earlier, a 2000 model with a body kit. Just the type of car that would have an aftermarket exhaust. So I went back over there and sure enough, the mid section of a nice exhaust system was there. I cut the stupid rubber exhaust mounts and grabbed it. LKQ charged more than I thought for all this but it was a good haul. I can make a few cuts and welds on this exhaust and have a nice 2.5" side exit deal with a resonator so it's not deafening.
Also a few days ago I managed to trade my E30 bottlecaps for some LS meshes. They're dirty but straight. I am going to try to polish the lips and paint the centers gold to get a sort of BBS LM look to them. These will be my wheels for the challenge - I removed the Konig Heliums to save $280. Now I just need to sand these for like 50 hours. Polishing machined aluminum by hand isn't the most fun thing to do but it'll be worth it when I'm done.
Good update. You need a battery powered sawzall.
In reply to solfly :
In a major way. I can saw through stuff no problem in general, but laying on my back sawing at an awkward angle through some thick pipes that are apparently diamond plated? That didn't work out well at all. A sawzall would have been a life saver.
the radiator I got was from an automatic car so it has two extra tubes for transmission cooling, I believe. Can I run engine oil through there? That would be awesome.
I took this picture about a week ago. I still need to fix the rust, touch up the paint afterwards, paint the rear bumper orange, and polish the paint until it's shiny but here's roughly how it looks. I no longer have these rims: it's on stands right now waiting for my LS meshes to be completed.
yesterday I took the exhaust pipes from the junkyard and cut them up a bit so they'd be more useful:
I bolted the flange up to my header and welded the resonator to it. My welds still suck pretty badly but my second try was much better than my first. I picked up some extra tubing today and if it stops raining I'll finish the exhaust - straight back through the resonator, then a 90 degree to exit in front of the passenger rear tire.
Also my battery tray was pretty rusty:
so I put a wire brush attachment on my drill and went to town. Sprayed it down with some rust neutralizing black spray paint and it looks much better. I'm still chasing down some extra wires and removing them, it's all a learning process for me. With me removing the stereo system, power door locks, car alarm, sunroof, a/c, and overhead light there's plenty of extra wiring to remove. Also found my 220 grit sandpaper and started smoothing out the machining marks on the LS mesh rims. I'll work my way up to 2000 grit or so, then paint the centers gold.
So now I'm just waiting for this rain to go away so I can finish it up some.
infinitenexus said:In reply to solfly :
In a major way. I can saw through stuff no problem in general, but laying on my back sawing at an awkward angle through some thick pipes that are apparently diamond plated? That didn't work out well at all. A sawzall would have been a life saver.
the radiator I got was from an automatic car so it has two extra tubes for transmission cooling, I believe. Can I run engine oil through there? That would be awesome.
I don't see why you couldn't run oil through the transmission cooler.
BBS LMs have always been my favorite wheels, but they're not really challenge budget-friendly, to put it mildly. Fortunately it's a very copied style, with even these stock Acura rims being loosely based on them. Anyways, here's how the grungy rims looked stock.
I sanded the lips with 220, 400, 600, 1000, 1500, 3000, and 5000 grit sandpaper, then clear coated them, then taped them off and shot the centers with some rustoleum gold. They turned out pretty nicely.
Now I'll wait 2 days for the paint to cure a bit, gently sand a few imperfections, and then seal it all with more clear coat.
I welded the exhaust on a bit crooked, so I removed it and cut the welds so I can fix it. Hopefully tomorrow. I want the exhaust to exit in front of the passenger rear wheel so I'll have to chop the body panels a bit down there to make room.
I had a set of 4 tires on my watch list on eBay and the seller just sent me an offer of 5% off. $366 for a set of 4 Federal 595RS-RR in 225/45R15. Not a bad deal. They'll be a tiny bit pinched on a 6" rim but it's autocrossing, the Integra type R guys put 275s on stock 6" wheels. So once those arrive they'll get mounted and the car will finally start to look how I want it!
My hood pins just came in the mail so I get to do that tomorrow. I absolutely HATE having to open the car door, reach in and grab the lever, pull it, go to the front of the car, fiddle with that lever, and then finally open the hood. Removing all of that garbage and replacing it all with just two pins will be a wonderful improvement. Plenty more half updates but I want to wait until I finish note stuff to actually post about it.
So after reading about it for 20 years, I finally got to go see the $2000 challenge in person! Only, for some odd reason I thought it was a Saturday/Sunday event. Not Friday/Saturday. So The Wife and I left Friday around lunchtime to get there "early" and meet everyone and hang out a bit. I realized too late that I was a day off. Not too long of a drive though. Also my wife chopped off all her hair, so now mine is longer than hers
we made it there just in time to miss the one part I wanted to see the most: the autocross. I was pretty upset about that. So we went and got sushi and were there first thing in the morning for the drag races. It was pretty awesome watching Ed's turbo Mustang take off like a rocket. I got to meet a few of you and that was awesome as well. And I got a free seat from Travis! It just needs a little work:
I sprayed about 3 pounds of dirt off of it and removed the torn cover.
I was thinking of making a seat cover out of some old heavy metal tshirts but I can just buy a cover for like $20 so I'll go that route. Then I just need to recoup some stuff to make sure I have room for a rollbar, steering wheel, and a harness. I also finished painting my Konig wheels orange. The paint went on flawlessly. Yay! Then I decided to put some clear coat on it and it immediately wrinkled on every rim. The humidity was too high, no matter how thin I sprayed it, it immediately just wrinkled and ruined the paint. I had a visitor show up:
then I drilled big holes in my perfectly good hood and installed my hood pins. Fortunately old Honda civics have holes in the radiator support that are the exact diameter of the pins and in the perfect location. So it wasn't too hard.
I really like having it with hood pins. Such an improvement. Today I also removed the crooked exhaust and re-welded it. I'm getting better at welding. I installed the freshly welded exhaust and decided to start the car up to hear how it sounded. Certainly with a 2 foot long resonator it'll quiet it down some right? I realized the seats weren't in the car so I had to sit on the floor to turn it on. Also half the stuff is covered in aluminum foil because I painted part of the interior the other day
The resonator does basically nothing, it sounds like it has straight pipes. Pretty loud. It was fun though. One more short pipe welded on the end and it should be done. I also patched a small rust hole in the rear floorboard. The metal is thin so welding it was tricky for me - I kept vaporizing the metal and had to go back and fill it in. I might just buy some scrap metal and start practicing soon. My tires should be here Wednesday so I'll mount them on my nice Konig rims and start learning this car. Then later on I'll go either Hoosier A7 or a full slick on my LS mesh wheels.
Finally some good updates. So that awful, horrible seat I posted a picture of - I grabbed a seat cover from Ollie's for $6.99. It's good enough for a challenge car.
ugly, but functional. I wasn't sure how to make seat mounts so I took the stock seat mount and welded some angle iron on it (not yet welded in this photo)
then drilled 4 holes in the angle iron and bolted the racing seat to it. Works great and I can still move the seat forward and backward to adjust my position. Although once I get a roll bar I guess that'll end as I'll bolt the back of the seat to it
I also painted the engine compartment. Without removing the engine it's hard to get everything but I got a decent coating of gulf blue in there. I also painted my battery tray and hood prop rod orange, heh. I still need to paint the underside of the hood blue.
and my tires came in yesterday! Federal 595 RS-RR in 225/45R15.
They fit pretty nicely on the car and look great. Super grippy too, with a treadwear rating of 200. I finished welding the exhaust - still about an inch lower than I'd like so I need to adjust my exhaust hanger - and found the tires were rubbing the stupid plastic fender liner when I turned left. So I grabbed a pipe to fix that, and rolled the front fenders a bit after my quick test drive
also I finally painted the rear bumper orange this afternoon. The car is getting pretty close to being done, it's at least drivable now. But without further wait, here it is!
Still left to do:
finishing polishing the LS meshes, my challenge rims
adjust exhaust
roll bar, harness, and remove airbags
paint the underside of the hood
weld in rust repair in rear wheel arches
finish buffing the paint
install tinted polycarbonate sunroof patch
remove door windows
finish removing excess wiring
install front canards
find a larger rear sway bar
turbo
That looks really good!
Well, we're moving across the country in about 3.5 weeks so the car is up for sale. $1800 on Facebook so $1500 here. Includes the car as well as the rust repair panels for the rear wheel wells, an extra set of wheels (LS meshes), a welder with gloves and helmet, two car ramps and a jack and two stands, spare paint, a catch can, and some other stuff. It has a harness bar in it and a Crow 5 point harness, just needs two mounting points welded in. A great car, just needs finishing.
stellar deal! glws
Said goodbye to the car today, but sold it to a really nice guy that is building it up with his son for the $2000 challenge.
Storing the car until we install the roll bar. The guy who bought the car is my buddy Tom. He and his 16 year old son are super excited to build it for the challenge.
pimpm3 (Forum Supporter) said:
Storing the car until we install the roll bar. The guy who bought the car is my buddy Tom. He and his 16 year old son are super excited to build it for the challenge.
What are those big plastic things under all the tires?
In reply to Woody (Forum Supportum) :
I'll guess golf car roofs.
Golf cart roofs. They do an adequate job of hiding the junk i have under the tires and they don't rot. They accumulate when I sell golf carts with extended roofs, and are basically worthless to sell.
You'll need to log in to post.
