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After taking the plunge and ordering 1 gallon of gunmetal grey and 2 gallons of white plastidip, i began prepping the car to paint...again, except this time i was painting the whole car and not just some body parts. Even though i really like my RX-7 in red, I've always wanted a white one as well, so i figured why not try it out since it's temporary anyway. Plus i always thought red wheels go best with a white car.

Even though plastidip doesn't require it, i masked off all the parts i didn't want to get dip on, and since there's a lot of areas that need to be painted behind the wheels, i jacked the car up and removed all four wheels.



Since the white plastidip goes on very thin, i was advised to spray the whole car with a gunmetal grey basecoat to ensure i got good coverage with the white. Here's what the car looked like with 2 coats of the grey. Turns out 1 gallon of dip was only enough to spray two coats.



After i began spraying the white, i began panicking, because i started to see what they meant by the white going on very thin, and after the first full coat, i had nearly used up my first gallon. I thought for sure i was going to run out of paint before getting full coverage of the white, but i pressed on, knowing that worst comes to worst, i could just order another gallon of white, but the downside is i'd have to pay extra shipping costs and wait another week before i could finish the car. Here's the car after one coat of white:



And here's two coats:



In the end, i just barely had enough paint to cover the whole car. Luckily i didn't have to paint the hood or i definitely would not have been able to get full coverage. As i mentioned earlier, the main benefit of plastidip is that it's a temporary covering and it can be peeled off any time after it dries. I never bothered to tape the front turn signals because i knew i would be spraying enough dip on it to be able to peel it off once it dried, and sure enough, it peeled off like a charm:



Although the plastidip didn't come out perfect and there's a ton of imperfections, i'm just glad that i'm done and the whole car is a uniform color. I do plan to try to repair some of the imperfections at a later time, but for now, i'm just going to breathe a sigh of relief and sit back and enjoy being able to drive the car again. So without further adieu, here's the finished product:











And here's one last pic i took with my iphone and edited it through the iphoto app on the phone that came out pretty cool



So in the end, even though the car didn't come out perfect, it was definitely a huge learning experience for me. Painting cars is definitely not something to be taken lightly, and i don't want to have to paint for a long time. I think the car looks good in pictures, but definitely not good enough to win any car shows. It's unfortunate that i couldn't do RE雨宮 justice with my build. Hopefully when i get the car professionally resprayed, i'll be able to better represent RE雨宮 here in the US. Now i need to go make amends with my wife and kids for having neglected them for the past month and a half!! じゃあまたね

This past month has been crazy! I don't even know where to begin. I guess i need to catch up from where i left off on my RE雨宮 Transformation. After i finished installing the body kit, i started making preparations to paint the kit. So the first thing i did was remove all the parts from the car, then i prepped my garage for paint.

I set up all the pieces on various tables and wet down the floor to reduce, as much as possible, the amount of dust getting kicked up into the air and onto the paint:



Here's my car, sitting outside on the driveway looking like a monster:



Here you can see how much the wheels stick out without the rear over fender on:



I also went back and JB-welded the inner and outer fender together to ensure they stay together. Then i used body filler to fill in the holes and cover up the exposed metal to prevent rust. I know it looks like crap, but at least it's protected.



After getting all the parts situated and stable, i began by spraying the primer which was relatively easy and came out fairly good. I actually ran out of primer, so i had to make a trip out to the paint supply store to buy more primer and more paint, which i later found out to be a waste of money because i only used the primer and not the paint which is $150/quart versus the $20/quart for the primer. Anyway, here's the bumper after spraying the primer:



After the primer was the basecoat which also came out decent, but again, i probably should've sprayed it a little thicker



Where i really messed up was the top coat which is essentially a hue to give the red a slightly different shade and more depth. This is where i was supposed to try to get the paint to match the rest of the body. Unfortunately, due to my lack of experience, i couldn't figure out how to match the paint, which is what ultimately screwed me over in the end, but i'll get to more of that later on.

Of all the steps for painting, spraying the clear coat was the hardest. The parts looked nicer after the clear coat was sprayed on, but there was too much texture in the finish because i sprayed it on too thin.



I thought i could just wet sand it smooth then polish it, but what i should've done was sand down the clear and respray it. After wet-sanding all the pieces down, i went ahead and installed everything back on the car with my plan being to polish and finish the parts while they were on the car. I also took this opportunity to install the rest of my RE雨宮 AD-GT kit add on pieces:



I didn't realize when i ordered the rear super canard, but it's actually designed for the AD-GT I kit, not the AD-GT II kit. I had to modify the canard in order for it to fit the AD-GT II kit. You can see the white area at the top of the part is where i cut the tab off.



After i got all the pieces on the car, i realized what i had been dreading since the day i decided to paint these pieces myself...the paint didn't match!!! ARRRRRRRGGGGGHHHHH (ノಠ益ಠ)ノ

Here are some pictures of the car with the mismatched paint.





Since i hadn't driven the car in months, after i got all the parts on, i decided to take it out for a quick spin and fill up some gas. This was a good chance for me to see if the gas cap opened far enough to get the nozzle in. Luckily it did! At least one thing worked out through this whole mess of a project:



The body kit isn't very shiny because i didn't bother to polish the parts after wet-sanding because i knew i would have to respray the whole car. Unfortunately, respraying the whole car was cost and time-prohibitive at this time, so i had to find a cheaper and less time consuming way to get the whole car in one color, that's when i decided to give plastidip a shot. Plastidip is a peelable paint that requires minimal prep work (no sanding), is easy to spray, is cheap, and is easy to change colors or remove completely when you get sick of it. I figured i would use it as a way to hold me over for now until recover (financially) from this project to get the whole car professionally resprayed in vintage red. I'll get into that last phase of the project in my next post, so stay tuned...

Well today, i finally sold 1 of my 4 cars, a 2003 Toyota Camry LE. Here's one final picture of it before it goes home with it's new owner.



This was actually my wife's car (妻の車) from before we got married. She had bought it from her mom for $10k in 2004 when it was practically brand new. She drove this car up until 2008 when we bought the Honda Odyssey in preparation for Isaac's arrival, then i started driving it as my commuter car for the past 6 years. So in reality, i actually drove the car the most during our 10 year ownership of the car. I had been meaning to sell it since we got the Mercedes back in January, but with the car being snowed in for months, and my being lazy, i never even got around to listing it for sale. Randomly, some guy came to the house yesterday and out-of-the-blue asked us if we were selling the car, which, of course we responded, YES! So today the guy came in the morning and haggled with me on the price of which we ultimately settled at $2800. Honestly, my only goal today was that he bought the car. I didn't really care how much i got for it, i just wanted it gone, so i happily took his offer, but only after making him think i accepted it reluctantly. I felt kind of bad because i didn't even have a chance to clean the car since i was holding off until i was ready to list it...which is probably why i never listed it; i was just too lazy to clean the damn car.

Anyway, the timing could not be more perfect, because i just found out a couple of weeks ago that my dad wants to give me his 2011 BMW 335D!



He bought the car brand new back in 2011 and has only since put 19000 miles on the car. He recently moved to Taiwan as part of his retirement, so the car has just been sitting in his garage. Now that my parents are set on staying in Taiwan on a more permanent basis, they're starting to get rid of the things they don't need, but my dad is really attached to his car (he's a car nut like myself) and he can't bring himself to sell it, so instead, he decided to give it to me as part of my inheritance. Cars have always been one of the ways my dad and i bonded since i started working on cars with him at a very young age. As far back as i can remember, as long as my dad was in the garage working on cars, i was usually out there with him, helping him out, although, i'm sure i was of very little help when i was younger. So despite never having really been interested in BMWs, besides the M3, i do think this car in particular is something that will be very special to me for a long time. I just hope i can do a good job taking care of it. Here are some additional angles of the car





Now that i'm back to having 4 cars again, i need to decide whether or not i should keep the Mercedes. My mother-in-law, who sold us the car to begin with, has graciously offered to buy it back from us if we do decide to get rid of it. I know my wife isn't willing to sell the car except back to her mom since that was the last car her father bought before he passed, so if we wanted to get rid of it, this would be our only option. Me, on the other hand, i still really like the Mercedes, so getting rid of it is a difficult decision. Actually, as far as looks go, i think i prefer the Mercedes over the BMW, though just slightly, but that goes for both interior and exterior. But on the performance end, the 335D vastly outperforms the C300, not only in power (265hp/425tq vs. 228hp/221tq) but also on gas mileage with the 335D averaging over 30mpg and the C300 around 22mpg (observed by me). So if i was forced to choose between the two solely based on the car's attributes, the 335D would be a no brainer. Luckily, i'm not forced to choose between the two...at least not yet. My wife is pressuring me to sell the car back to her mom, but i'm still debating whether or not i want to. I know 4 cars is kind of excessive, but hey, it's good to have options! We'll see in a month or so what i decide then. As of now, i haven't even gotten hold of the BMW yet (end of this month), so i'll still be driving the Mercedes for now.

It's been a busy two weeks since i got my shipment of RE雨宮 parts. Since my last post, i've done the following:

Cut the drivers side fender to accommodate the rear over fender. This side was much cleaner than the passenger side since i had a little bit more experience and knew what i was doing this time.


Cut the fuel door and fitted the new door to the old one. Here you can see where i had to cut part of the body to fit the bracket for the new door. It took me a while to figure out what i had to do while i was trying to decipher the instructions that came with the kit. I was surprised when i was able to read a couple of words here and there that actually helped me figure out what to do.


Here's the fuel door mounted to the supplied bracket


Here's the new door skin mounted to the modified old door.




And here's the new fuel door mounted to the car with the fender. I know it looks really ugly here, but i do plan to sand it down a bit and paint it so it doesn't have that green body filler color. Funny thing is, when i first applied the filler, i was a little over zealous and applied too much which ended up making the door really heavy. When i realized that the door might not be able to open being as heavy as it was, i quickly started scraping away as much filler as i could before it hardened. Luckily, i was able to remove a decent amount so that it wasn't so heavy anymore.



I was able to get it pretty flush, but i think it could use a little more adjustment to be 100% perfect


The fuel door has definitely been the hardest part of the install. I'm just glad that it's over with now.

After i finished with the widebody, i started working on getting the undersweep to fit. Since i trimmed the bumper to clear the radiator, i knew i was going to have to trim the carbon undersweep as well, which i was really reluctant to do. But having cut so much sheet metal off the car already, i think i had finally accepted that to complete this build, modifying parts to fit was inevitable.

Here's the trimmed undersweep. Luckily, you can't really tell where i trimmed unless you inspect really closely.


I also had to cut a big rectangular whole on the underside of the undersweep in order to clear the radiator fans. My first cut ended up being perfect, and now the fans have somewhere to vent the hot air. The only thing is the left fan touches the undersweep slightly when spinning, so i'll probably have to trim a little more once i take everything back off.

Now that i had the full body kit installed, i could finally fit my wheels. As expected, i had to readjust the ride height and the alignment completely. I first started off resetting the ride height at all corners. For some reason, the driver's side rear was perfect, so i ended up setting the other three corners to match. Even the camber on that side was good, so i did the same with camber. Here's a picture of the suspension compressed to see how much clearance i had with the rear fender. Not much is all i can say!


I ended up setting the camber to -2.4 degrees at all four corners which seemed to clear the fenders quite well. Next up was setting the toe. The front wheels' toe settings were obviously screwed up because i could visually see the passenger front wheel pointing inwards despite the steering wheel being perfectly straight. After i measured it, i found out it had 25mm toe in, when it's supposed to be 0 - 2mm toe in. I used the string method to help me measure the toe settings.


And lastly, to finish off the install portion of this build, i installed the rear wing. I gotta say, it was a little bit harder than i expected. Turns out, there's two skins, so when you drill from the outside, unless you drill through the second layer of metal, you don't have access to mount the bolts for the screws. To make matters worse, i ended up breaking two of the bolts that came with the kit, so the install took a little bit longer.


Once i got everything mounted, i took a step back, and to my surprise, the wing looked A LOT smaller than i had anticipated! i was actually really shocked. I almost wanted to stop right there and order the RE雨宮 GT-II High Mount wing. The wing looked so small (at the time) that i thought perhaps i had gotten the low mount wing instead of the high mount. Even when i compared it to pictures of my old RE雨宮 GT-II low mount wing, the GT-III high mount looked low, so i started doing some research and found out i did indeed get the high mount. Alas, i figured i'll just live with it for now, thinking in the back of my mind that i can always switch to the high mount wing at a later point in time. One side note, it wasn't the width of the wing that i thought was small, it was the height of the wing that bothered me. I bought the wing knowing it wasn't as wide as the GT-II wings by design to be street legal in Japan, but all the pictures i saw made it look as high as the GT-II high mount, so i was expecting something higher. More on this later.

Once i got everything bolted on the way it would look once it's done, it was time to take a test drive. I was particularly excited about this part because i wanted to know if my alignment settings were ok because i've never done my own alignment before. I was mainly concerned about whether or not the car would track straight. So this morning, when the rain stopped, i fired up the car and started reversing out of the garage. As i was maneuvering the car around, i started to hear some crunching and cracking. I quickly got out of the car and started inspecting the front bumper and undersweep. Eventually i found out the tires were hitting the front bumper when trying to turn from lock-to-lock. I ended up shutting the engine off and taking out the dremel, and proceeded to trim parts of the front bumper and undersweep off so the wheels could clear. By this point, cutting up the car didn't even phase me anymore. I eventually got the clearance i needed and reversed the car out of the garage. This was the first time in 3 weeks that i had the car moving on it's own power, so it was nice to be able to drive the car again. I also took this opportunity to snap some pictures which i'll share at the end of this post.

During the test drive, i was really excited when i let go of the steering wheel and the car continued straight. Granted, that's probably not the only way to gauge whether or not the alignment is good, but at this point, it was good enough for me. I hope the tire wear is decent as well. The other thing that really surprised me was the wing didn't look nearly as small anymore. I'm not sure if it's because i finally got the car out of the garage so i could see it better, or if it was because i got used to it, but either way, the wing looked exactly the way i imagined it to look when i chose to buy it. Also, it's definitely higher than the GT-II low mount wing because when i was driving the car, i had perfect visibility to the cars behind me, where as with the GT-II low mount wing i had on my previous FD, the wing would block a good chunk of the cars behind me. Needless to say, i'm very happy with my decision to go with the GT-III high mount wing. My favorite part of the wing is that it really makes the car look wider. Besides that, during my short drive around the neighborhood, i didn't really hear any scraping which was a good sign. When i got home and went to pull into the driveway, i noticed some scraping at both the drivers side front and the passenger rear, so i plan to do a little bit more trimming before i start prepping for paint.

Here's the clearance of the rear while pulling into the driveway


And the front


I've made pretty good progress in the last two weeks, but i still have a long road ahead of me before i actually finish. Once the clearance and suspension issues are sorted, i need to:

1. wash the car
2. wipe down the body work with wax and grease remover
3. apply filler to areas that need filling
4. sand the body work down up to 200 grit
5. remove the body work and repair small cracks at connecting points with more filler
6. sand down the filler so that it's smooth
7. wash the body panels one more time with wax and grease remover
8. air dry the panels to make sure they're 100% dry
9. spray primer
10. sand primer
11. spray base coat
12. spray top coat
13. spray clear coat
14. sand clear coat
15. install body parts
16 buff and polish body panels

wow...that list is making my head spin...oh well, there's nothing to do but just put my head down and tick each one off one-by-one.

In the meantime, here are some photos i took with my D300 to show the completion of Part 2.

Hooray! My RE雨宮 parts finally arrived after 3.5 months of waiting!! Considering how momentous the occasion was, i prepared my camera when the delivery truck arrived and snapped some pics of the boxes being unloaded...i know it's a little ridiculous, but hey, cut me some slack, i waited a whole 3.5 months for these parts!

Here's the delivery truck backing onto my driveway with my precious parts inside



On the boxes are labels that state, "do not rest boxes on its side", and of course, here they are, not just laid down on their side, but on top of each other!



I immediately opened each box and checked for damage before signing off on the packages. The parts were wrapped extremely well with bubble wrap, so there wasn't any damage. Here are the four massive boxes holding all of my awesome parts



I inspected each part to make sure i got everything i ordered and also to ensure there was no damage.



And here's Isaac posing with the GT wing, the one piece he's been asking me to install since i got the car!



Unfortunately, the joyous day was slightly marred when i realized they delivered the wrong canard. I ordered the canard that was specifically meant to be used with the N1 undersweep, but the one they delivered was a just a generic canard that didn't have the side piece that attached to the undersweep. Bulletproof Automotive, the company that helped me import all the parts, was gracious enough to expedite an exchange, so i'll be shipping the canard back to RE tomorrow. I should get the replacement part back before i'm done installing the kit, so i should be good.

Since i had removed all the existing parts earlier, i was able to start fitting the parts onto the car the same day. The front fenders bolted onto the car easily, then i started fitting the front bumper, which required some cutting to fit properly because the bottom of the radiator extended too far out. It's unfortunate, the main reason i converted to a vmount setup was so that i wouldn't have to cut the RE雨宮 bumper when i finally came around to installing it. Luckily, i didn't need to cut away too much material, but the fact is, i'll have to cut away parts of the carbon undersweep as well which is sad. Oh well...it's sort of too late to swap out my vmount for another design where the radiator didn't extend out as far.

Here you can see the little notch i had to cut to accommodate the radiator.



After the front bumper was settled, i moved onto the passenger-side side-skirts and rear fender. The parts lined up really nicely right out of the box, but to make it perfect, i would need to do a little bit of cutting.



Here's another shot of the front. The parts really do fit awesome with minimal modifications. Another reason why you should always buy authentic products from the original designer/maker.



Probably the most dreaded part of the whole process was cutting the rear fender. The whole point of the widebody kit is to extend the fenders outward allowing you to run larger wheels and tires. Since the rear was only an over fender, to really make use of the added width, you need to either roll the fenders significantly, or cut away the fender. I didn't have a fender roller, which meant it had to cut the fender. In the end, cutting the fender is really the only way to maximize the amount of space gained with the over fender, so i think i made the right choice. As much as i prepared myself for this moment, cutting the fender off was kind of heart-wrenching, but i knew that this was the only way to properly complete my build so i had to continue. I had to keep reminding myself of my commitment to the build. In the end, the cut came out relatively clean and i managed to hammer the inner fender up to meet the new edge of the outer fender.

Here you can see where i cut the outer fender



After removing the outer fender, i cut slits into the inner fender and hammered the inner fender up to close the gap between the two.



Once the two edges met again, i cut off the flaps. Now i just need to use some JB weld to weld the two lips together, then use some body filler to fill in the holes and prevent rust.



Luckily, once the over fender was on, you couldn't tell how much "damage" was done to the fender and it looked like new again. With the fender cut, i could now mount my new wheels onto the car to get my first preview of what the car will look like when it's finally finished.



I was surprised by how much room i had at the rear with the new fenders, so i took the one inch spacer i had in the front and moved it to the rear.

Here's the rear wheel without the spacer.



And here's the rear wheel with the spacer.



Here's another angle of the rear wheel with the spacer.



As for the front, i have no idea how anyone could fit a 295/35 tire there because even with a 265/35 tire on a 18x10.5 inch rim, i have barely enough clearance. Granted, the car isn't level and i still need to dial in some negative camber, but still, i can't picture fitting a 295/35 at the front. Oh well, i still have time to play around with the setup in the future when i actually decide to go wider.

Here's the front wheel. You can see how much it sticks out.



And here's one last pic of the passenger side of the car resting on some ramps.



It looks like i still have plenty of room to lower the car more, but i'll work on those adjustments after i've got the kit fully mounted to my liking. I'm halfway done with the driver side as well, but i still need to cut the driver's side fender and also figure out how to mount the gas cap. Once that's done, i should be able to set the car done and really figure out what kind of alignment changes i need to make as far as camber goes. Considering it's only been 5 days since i got the parts, i think i've made pretty good progress so far, not that i'm in a rush or anything. Actually, i plan to really take my time with this kit and make sure it fits exactly how i want it, so there are no regrets after i get around to painting, because i don't don't want to fool around with fitment after i paint the parts. I'll start another post after i make some more progress.