Ivan's coupe: bodywork is done

[banpei]

Both Lennert and Aram are back?

[Ivan141]

This month has seen a lot of work and not much progress, but every little bit counts. Here's a summary:

-I've finished my supplied air respirator system.
Only to find out that it overperforms to such a degree that my idea of using a cheap full face snorkling mask will not work without some serious modifications.
The pump, even at half power (1/2 of 1750 Watts), supplies enough air to blow the mask off my face (the mask cant vent enough pressure).
This hampers my willingness to work with 2K paints, but once stores are opened after the holidays I think I'll just get a painters hood with air supply hole and see if that works.

And then the car itself:
I just spent an afternoon masking and plugging the bottom of the car for undercoating. I used a box full of cheap ear plugs as bolt hole plugs and masking tape.


Slapped some paper masking sheet to the sides


And as the more astute may have noticed: I slapped a can of the KH2 gunmetal grey on the bottom.


I was painting some small loose parts grey and then emptied what was left in the gun on the chassis. Then I got carried away and slapped the rest of the can on as well. Is this smart? No. The one upside is that I no longer have a patchwork of lightgrey/black to cover with undercoating, The downside is that I will have to scuff this up again(3rd time's the charm), and that it is a rather foolish way to waste 40 euro's worth of paint.

The internal motivation was that I was planning to buy a litre of unthinned paint anyway, which will get a better result when mixed with the Raptor liner than the pre-mixed gun-ready can I used today.
You can only mix in about 10% by volume (so about 400ml), so I'd rather have that be all pigments and no thinner.
The color (as mentioned before) is Nissan Gunmetal Grey metallic (KH2) as known from the R32 Skyline. It looks nice when it catches the light, and close enough to black to just be a detail only an observant person would catch.

The reasons the undercoating has not gone on is that it is too friggin cold at the moment.. <5 deg C is too far from ideal.. That and the lack of safe respiration, which will be remedied soon enough. Who knows when the weather will play ball.. The garage is too large of a space to be heated (and we dont have any heaters suited to that type of use).

[Ivan141]

While still waiting out the cold days I've finally bought a press for the shed, so I could finally get around to finish putting all the suspension arms together.

She's cheap and dodgy, but she does the trick.


Pressed in my shortened OEM (Honda) rubber bushes. Because I will never forget how much the ride sucked after installing polyurethane ones back in the day.
Having done this I do understand why many people go for the easy poly install.. this was much more hassle.


Pressed the LCA bushes home and pressed new (Aisin) ball joints in.
Just look at the size of that snap ring.. it was a real doozy to fit. In the end I used the press die I built to fit over the balljoint, centered it on the ring and smacked it hard with a heavy hammer. Great success, I like.


Finished items. I managed to tear the rubber of one balljoint (pressed it on with a too tight die), so thats what the tag is for (to remind me to replace that). I just tapped the other one on with a drive and a hammer to avoid damaging that one too.

[banpei]

Nice!
I'd wish I had one of those presses at hand in my small shed.

[Power_uP]

Its cool that you were able to use a press to get the job done properly. It really makes a difference.

[Ivan141]

After complaining about the cold weather since basically christmas we finally got some warmer temperatures (only about a 30 deg.C rise in a week).
I decided to take the day off and make the pilgrimage to the shed to get some shipoopie done.

The raptor liner hadnt quite warmed up as much as the weather had, so I chucked the bottles in hot water to get the stuff a bit less gooey.


Health and safety advice kids: 2k products with isocyanate hardeners are potentially lethal, so protect yourself. I built this little contraption to supply me with breathable outside air. Basically a 1700W vacuum cleaner pump strapped to a HEPA filter, connected to a modified snorkelmask with a 3d printed adapter. This thing chooches away outside, far away from me and the polluted air.


First 3 bottles went on the underbody through a 'schultz' gun (silly americanized name that sounds like a crappy translation of the german schutz). This gives it some texture, which I dont mind as it camouflages my patchwork body a bit.





I like this shot a lot: (note the new LED tube lighting I installed last saturday.. SUCH an improvement, can recommend the upgrade if you still have TL).


Hit the back panel as well since it sits out of sight and likes to rust.


The engine bay was shot with an HVLP primer gun (2mm) to get as flat of a surface finish as possible. I intentionally masked off the top part, it will be shot with regular paint to avoid my chassis nr from filling in by accident.



I think I'm going to order up another batch of Raptor liner to do the inside with.. I like the finish with the HVLP gun and it will also act like sound deadening. Weight saving is not a priority. Will need a new HVLP gun though, wrecked my brand new one while taking it apart for cleaning...FML. Lucky it was not an expensive one.

[DJexor]

Good work!!!

[zenki]

Really clean. Good thinking with the diy paintmask.

[banpei]

Wow really nice work!

[Power_uP]

Looks impressive. Its always good to see a job being done properly.