Down but never out

i showed up this weekend expecting some primer action to be happening but found out that the car was pretty much in the same condition as last week. aside from this one section... which i now really like.

he put in extra time and hammered out the very corner of the rear quarter so now there is no clear "that fender is pulled because you can see how it flares back to its original position at the end" look anymore. its all straight now.

then of course the bumper no longer lined up because of the new position of the fender so we basically melted the top of the bumper near the corner and got it really gooey and then bent the bumper out and let the plastic reharden and as simple as that, it matched again. he seems as enthusiastic about doing my car as i am so now he gets a clear image of what i want and he's excited to do it which is good for me.




you can see here that if i line the bumper up to the corner where it should be, the rest of the bumper doesnt line up anymore


this is after a little bit of melting and bending... getting close.


and pretty much the end result.


he said that he is going to build up a fake body line like the OEM on the now pulled fender so that it blends with the rear bumper and the front part of the fender again. it wont be as bold as before but still noticable.


sorry about the last pic, cant get it to rotate. in that pic im not putting any pressure on the bumper to get it to line up, im just holding it up.

and its pretty much the same story on the other side.


until next saturday....

With that slight adjustment the rear of the car is going to look so much more aggressive and beefy sitting on some wide wheels. I'm excited to see how mean that will look.

Glad you found good help, it's scary to hand your car over to someone sometimes.

This is good progress.

Looking forward to seeing the fender work finished off.

so updates have been slow as of late because for 2 or 3 weekends, i couldnt go make an appearance on the weekend because i had other plans so not much happened during that time. then when i did go back again, the owner went to SEMA (understandable) and nobody works on my car unless the owner himself says so, sooo it sat there untouched for a while.

but the ball is rolling again.

windshields have been cut out (they're just resting in place right now), roof has been sanded down and the remnants of my short lived CF roof are all gone too, ready for paint. the faint lines on the rear fenders have been remade. rear bumper has been repaired from the accident. doors have been removed to prep the jambs. i believe next thing to come out is the rear quarter windows and possibly the front fenders.

he and i discussed that i may want to add a little custom touch to the paint to make it a little different than just the standard mazda paint. we talked about mixing in gold pearl into the clear and doing a faint layer over the base coat. i've ordered 2 types of gold pearl and should have them within a few days then he going to spray a couple small scrap pieces so we can finalize the mixture/look i want.

pics...
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I'd go for adding the gold pearl, my paint is a dark red at night but in direct light its a scarlet and looks like that Mazda color, but its got gold and silver Pearl in it, it's noticeable but not obnoxious, definitely the way to go you'll love it

This is coming along great, I hope you post a pic of the test panel with the paint on it.

cant wait to see the new and improved ride knightryder...as your vision and ideas are envious.

A lot work on the car its going to look sick man with cf front end can't wait to see the out come of ur car

well, still not painted. typical body shop "delays"

here's the sample that was painted.

no flash:


flash:


there is a good deal of dust/dirt on the surface as this was just a quick spray. i decided against using a gold pearl ontop beacuse it ruined the color, the red turned brown. so im sticking with simple copper red mica.

rear windows pulled out...


there is literally nothing left to be removed from the car now.

and here is me trying on some new wheels, i was only testing the sizing but the wheel is pretty nice too though. it's the new Enkei Kojin in 18x9.5 +15 . i'll likely not run that low an offset to keep the car more daily friendly and to not tear up my new paintjob because there is NOTHING cool or "legit" about rocking band aids or stickers on fenders that have been raped.





i already have a set of wheels picked out, just need to find the correct sizing/spacer setup to get the wheels sitting where i want. the wheels i have my eyes on are 18x9.5+38 (going to add an 8mm spacer to bring it to 18x9.5+30 FRONT) Rears are 18x9.5+25 (going to add a 5mm spacer to bring it to 18x9.5+20 REAR) all 4 corners with 225/40/18. the wheels i have in mind resemble my old AMEs, at least imo they do.

all that sizing is simply going off of what i had before and envision the change using some wheel offset calculators online. im not gonna actually pay for the wheels until i've got my air ride on and then i can truely get an idea of what offsets i can safely run for DD.