Resurrelica

This past Monday (4 1/2 months later) I got the car home for good.  It’s shiny again.

I’ve still got some work to do (waxing, interior, new tires/wheels, new suspension, etc), but here are some pictures.

Notice the side skirts and the new fog lights.

The hood has a shine again!

No more dents in the rear driver-side fender as before.

The bad: Okay… These pictures are at flattering angles.  Up close, things aren’t perfect.  At the beginning I knew that I’d get what I paid for (which was $0 labor).  So what’s flawed?

• Side Skirts: The side skirts were not installed correctly.  It shows along the runner below the door.  They used glue and the factory clips to hold the side skirt on.  Why glue? I don’t know.  It mostly caused a mess.  The factory didn’t use glue; the clips sufficed.  From what I can guess, the holes for the clips were drilled too big and the clips wouldn’t hold.  Secondly, when it was put into the paint booth (where they increase the temperature to 110 degrees +), the side skirts began to pull away from the body and the glue seam was then visible.  To remedy most of the problem we put small screws along the top of each side-skirt which look a little like rivets.  It looks kinda cool.  But if I had it to do over again: I would insist that the car and side skirt be painted separately.  And then install the side skirts properly using only the clips.  This allows the body and side skirts to flex slightly as necessary.  It remains to be seen if the solution we used works out in that respect.
• Runs: The color looks great.  But there are a few runs in the clear coat around the body seams.  They’re not noticeable until you get pretty close and we polished them out for the most part.
• Orange Peel: There is some orange peel in the clear coat (a surface quality that looks a little like a an orange peel) in a couple of places on the roof.  I think the problem was that the painter could not really get high enough over the surface.  It’s not really that bad, and I think it may be able to be buffed out.

While not perfect, all in all, it’s a 900% better.  Thanks goes out to Spince at the school.

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Uncategorized by ddurham