Shiny!

by Darren on Sep.25, 2011, under Build

So, there were no new parts appearing this weekend, so I couldn’t do what I’d planned, build the new bottom end, sort the diff out and put it all back in the car. The parts I’ve sent off are where they need to be, being serviced (fire extinguishers) or rebuilt (rear damper). I’ve ordered the replacement driver’s seat, and put the other one on eBay to get some money back from the £400 it cost to replace it(!) – it’s in excellent condition, you’d really not think it had been in a rally car for 5 years.

This left me wondering what to do, so I consulted the list, which is actually thankfully quite short; the bits above are just bolt in items, with the majority of the work being the engine and diff; the rest of the car has a number of little issues which need sorting, and I’ve ordered the parts for them, but one thing could be done – making the car look better by sorting out the bumpers; They were painted in 2008 (by me), and have never looked great. Two Rally GBs and sitting out side for nearly 3 years have not helped, with them scratched, rough and matt.

Scabby old bumpers

As I needed to remove some sponsorship stickers from them, this made them look even worse, as they took the paint off as they came off! I’d got the paint already (Signal Green, a ‘standard’ RAL colour, so it’s cheap and easily matched), so I cleaned them up and rubbed them down with fine paper to try to get the primer to stick. The primer is an old can (from when I built the car in 2007), and when I opened it up, it looked hideous. Stirring helped, but it had lots of lumps in, which isn’t good for spraying, so I filtered this out with a high-tech arrangement using an old sock! Looking at the thinners I thought I’d need to give up when I saw this:

I'd better leave it then...

But I thought I’d ignore it and have a bash anyway. Primering went pretty well, spraying them off the car in the back garden as it was a nice day, and then I put the green on; it took a bit of experimentation with the mix to get it to spray well, but in the end I got it right and overall they look much better than they did before – not bad for a £25 paint job.

That's better.

The pictures don’t show just how much better they look, and now they are back on the car (having welded replacement bolts for those that sheared off), it looks a lot better.