[Vettezuki]

Originally Posted by enkeivette

I've been thinking about this, if we don't need a paint job that will last 20 years on this car, it would be best not to strip this thing down to bare metal/ plastic. (Just in the places that it needs to be, for body work).

Skipping this step will allow us to save many hours stripping (and dollars on sand paper and chemical strippers), and more importantly it will allow us to skip the primer surfacer phase (which will save another $100, more sand paper, and many, many more hours guide coat/ block sanding). I vote to feather edge scratches and simply scuff the factory paint with 400 (maybe cover with epoxy if funds allow) or maybe 600 if we dont prime and take down only the places to receive body work to bare metal. This will save A LOT of time.

In principle this is fine with me. There are a couple spots where the body is down to bare metal. Most notably the passenger front quarter panel because of something I did. Would a little bare metal here and there cause any problems to using this strategy?

Instead of a 20 year quality paint job, would this be a good 5 year durabilty? How about other issues like final finish? Could it still be color sanded to at least slightly better than OEM orange peel?

BTW, what bout touch ups on pearl paint job. I'm thinking maybe to just go with a flat arctic white and candy letters. THe pearl would look great, but this car is gonna see a lot of action and I'm wondering how that pearl is going to look if it needs to be touched up several times. Or is it candy that's near impossible to match, I get confused.

Fender flares! There are a few routes. If someone wants to cough up $150 for these:
We can do it the easy way, I would outline where they are to be mounted, cut the metal fenders off the car, and glue/ screw/ mold these in place. (I should have enough of that $50 glue left to do this) This will buy us about 2 1/2" of track width, not very much. Or, I could space these out, and fill in the gap with glass, then mold them in transition smothly. (Unless these are bolt on replacements, that would be too easy.)

In the pic these look fine, though if we go with a fuel cell instead of stock tank, I'd like to glass over the filler cap. An extra 2.5 inches track on each side should be plenty. I imagine something like a 255 - 275 max width. No need for anything wider on a 10 second car with this weight as far as I understand.

Or we could do it the hard way. I was thinking that I could lay some foam on the car, and cut away till we get the shape that we like. Then lay out a set of our own in glass, cut away the metal, bond them in place, and spend lots of time with filler shaping them to get it looking good. This will obviously take A LOT longer, but we would be able to make them as wide as we want and I should be able to do it for about $40 (Since I should have enough resin already).

Probably I'd prefer to use the off the shelf flares, then spend a little extra time on the idea you had for the front and rear bumper. I think that would have lot more visual impact.