gibbon

10 hours ago, tomble said:

 My mate lent me his engine crane and leveller, just the leveller is missing any fixings for the ends of its 2chainz. The crane has been making the rounds so is proven fit for purpose (as you'd hope) and there are two clear mounting points on my engine so it really is just up to me to screw it up by picking up the wrong fasteners.

I ended up picking these up, the (pretty much clueless) mitre10 peeps steered me away from bow shackles.

Are you pulling the starion engine?

I've done a little bit of reading in the meantime, looks like controlling the voltage is part of the wideband function, ergo there's no such thing as a non-controller wideband? Makes me wonder what the point of advertising it as such is 

Hijacking a bit, what do they mean when they say "wideband controller"? What function is that beyond being a sensor and a gauge? 

On 30/05/2021 at 15:15, datlow said:

Seems like a dangerous game!

/they don’t do the within x% of reserve anymore do they?

Nah they dont that's how I'm the proud owner of my starion lol 

more stazzin' occured today, with pics to follow. 

in a sudden outburst of "i refuse to do work at work", I hauled the side skirts, rear bumper/spoiler and front light panels into the hangar and got them stripped back and repainted. Glad I elected to strip back, the front garnish *looked* nice but had all sorts of rusty nasties starting to form beneath the paint. Made the same mistake AGAIN with the rear spoiler ("I'll seal it up with silicone and then paint over the top!") proving myself an irredeemable retard. When I put the skirts back on I'll just try to discreetly seal them up without painting over the top

In the sikk mawds department I've started tacking together a 2.5" dump pipe to replace the existing mishmash. Also seeking an appropriately 80's headunit  

so yeah no pics right now but haven't seen a starion on the projects front page for a while so decided to bump it up

I used amayama, got the usual thing everyone says, part not in stock... they refunded my money though. Does make you wonder why they list stuff they know they don't have 

Been paintin'. de-masked and in need of the meke polish but otherwise pretty excited to start bolting stuff back together. If only I could find where I put anything 

Played a LOT of huey lewis during painting to try and correctly channel the 80s spirit. Yuppie rock in the background, assuring the wife that everything was going just super great, white powder everywhere.. this must've been what it was like to be a stockbroker back in '85 

22 hours ago, tortron said:

if it needs it.

Oh yeah it needs it lol 

Next question - painting rubbery plasticy bumpers, should I add some kind of plasticizer to the paint? Old paint was cracked to buggery 

quiet day at work again today so I got back down to real business. Blew some primer on the guards to see what I was dealing with. So many chips, cracks, fuzzy lines from drowning in twelve coats of paint.... I flipped them over and saw no dents or anything in the sheet metal so thought bugger it, I'll paint strip them

One guard is a donor and obviously from an earlier year stazza, hence the welded up nose mirror hole. funny enough I swear the metals had different sheens to them... import vs domestic treatments perhaps?

Otherwise my hunch paid off and they were all pretty good honest metal underneath. Feels good to not just blast more high build and paint on top of everything. Can proudly boast that the car is a 1/8 bare metal jobbie now

Paint stripper, bonderite C-IC surface prep, zinc phosphate primer onto the bare metal followed by strontium chromate altra-bond. I'm the script kiddie of paint prep and basically blazed away with carcinogens for the better part of the day. This car is going to be a rolling fukushima. fume extraction was less comprehensive so feeling wooo

Couple of little dents but otherwise we're in business. There are some weld repairs at the bottom of the guards that I didn't disturb - they look good from the inner side of the metal, I wasnt really interested in grinding bog out just to put it back in again

I also painted the first door and it came out... average. Forgot to get a pic but just a reminder that paint hides nothing lol. Painted the B pillar vents and they came out GREAT (could be the fumes talking)

Yip just a single stage. Our machines at work are just painted in a top coat and look pretty good, i just figured itd be hardly any more effort to clear coat it now... now or never really 

Still I'm always down for less work 

So what's next then, 1500 wet sand and a polish? 

Thanks for the replies guys, I'm just starting with a single door as a test. 2k white is on and looks to have come out ok, a bit of dust though. My "complete car paint job kit" didnt come with clearcoat, is clearcoating a personal choice too? 

Should I wet sand my high build primer? Worried the top coat won't stick if it's too smooth 

couldve done more on the car today but too pissy about the paint can debacle. havent had a beer in two days but this shit is pushing me to the limit 

had another wonderful day of pushing shit up hill and trying to paint my car with it.

decided that the amount of faffing around with the side spoilers warranted a can of high build primer, to save cleaning the gun a trillion times. drove to town and bought one. pulled the trigger and it promptly fountained paint all over my fucking hand.

drove back to town and hit up the paint shop guys for an exchange. "no, you mustn't have shaken it up enough, here.... OK i've cleaned the nozzle out and gave it a real good shake up, works like a charm now"

drove back home feeling like a bit of an idiot. went back to work on the car, grabbed the can and hit the trigger:

if you can make out the picture through the tears of rage which somehow permeated the camera lens itself, this is what happens when a motherfucking geyser of paint from a shitbag fucking paint can hits 1k filler primer. well what you can see is from after i quickly wiped it off.. too bad it'd already taken the paint with it. not sure if leaving to dry would've been any better. guess i shouldve tested it first :/ didn't go back to the paint shop again, too mad

29 minutes ago, ProZac said:

The springs in the parts car I've just picked up are yellow, so they're likely aftermarket ones. I'll see if I can find any deets on them :-).

awesome man, if theyre the goods then I'll have them in a heartbeat

Hey while I've got you on the line, do you have any lowering springs for a starion on the shelf? This thing sits super high (might be clearance for the kit - will be funny to find out)

Olds cool can do cobras for about 450 shipped, mookeh in the USA can do a similar price, with 250 of that being shipping! So probably worth it if I can get them into a container or something 

I'm not sure I could pick the difference between an aerotech and a stock 3 piece spoiler? (This one is definitely aerotech, its etched on the underside)

One of the mount holes had turned into a big rust hole and another had previously been repaired... I got the buggered one fixed but did end up re-drilling them, I've just been quite diligent with sealing them up (I hope)

I've already come to terms with the fact that this car isn't going to be perfect, I'm simply not a good enough bodywork guy. So I'm trying to compromise and come up with something that isn't an embarrassment, but will actually still get finished eventually 

made some pretty big fuckups over the last week or two, lads. Blew some high-build primer over the body and that came out pretty good at least. Yucky stripes on the roof, my compressor decided it was no longer self-regulating so I had to manually shut it off every minute or so to stop things going pop. definitely need to get that sorted before I do anything beyond laying waste with the primer

Decided I had to smooth the spoiler into the body - it'll never fit perfectly so shit was always going to get trapped between it and the body, and ultimately rot out. So I banged some sealant  (KD bond+seal) on the side pieces and fixed them on. I was originally going to blend them in with bog, but when some of the sealant squicked out the side, I thought "why not just mask it up and blend it in with the sealant?" So I did just that. Then it dried and didn't look very good.... and you can't sand this stuff.... so I ended up trimming all the carefully-shaped sealant off and then reformed the blend with filler 

Then I made another fuckup. At the top of the spoiler where it blends in, the radius forms a little valley all the way along. And so I thought "why not just pour paint into the valley, it'll self-level and come out perfectly smooth?" as it turns out, paint doesn't like being poured in real thick, and it all cracked and just turned into a bag of roaring ass. So I scraped THAT back, and reshaped it with some filler. Two cockups from being a lazy ass SOB

this is the Valley of Death. Best of all it's 90% hidden by the window and trim so really it's a lot of work for no great reward. blending this fucking spoiler in has nearly beaten me tbh. 

I wonder if I should have just owned the seam. masked up a tidy, straight seam of bog or even sealant, painted it up, and have it visible through the paint rather than spending hours trying to make it all blend in. It's a 4mm bead of sealant around a bodykit, who gives a shit? I probably will end up doing this around the sideskirts as it's less likely to root the paint if they ever have to come off

started prepping the guards too. Thankfully they're pretty straight, some meaty repairs at the bottom but it's all steel and again will be under the kit

The blacktop 4age used to be the finest engine that 200 bucks could buy. Now even the throttle bodies go for more than that thanks to every mongler in town needing a set for his hopeless project (myself included)

Theres all the BMW stuff but I wouldn't have a clue how readily it transplants 

I'd definitely pick a BEAMS 3sge over an SR20DE, the 3SGTE doesn't seem to be a popular option over the SR20DET though 

I'm an aircraft mechanic... pays just well enough to pay a local fella to do rust repair works of art for me

Regarding holiday pay I'm in a similar situation, the boss semi-seriously informed me that I wouldn't be getting my full payout if I ever left, because the company would go under trying to pay me out lol. Typical thing though, once you start taking a bit of ownership its hard to just take time off and let others deal with it 

Man we need to try and close up shop for the year every week... fucking phone has been ringing off the hook all day. Looks like I'm not getting my early holiday :/