Eikon's exterior build thread.

[jspec603]

Eeek! I forgot about your build. Looks like its coming alone quite nicely! I'm sure I can speak for everyone when I say that I can't wait to see the finished product. updates, updates and more updates!!!

[110octane]

Looks great Eikon.

Cant wait to see the finished package!!!

[TIMELSS_vert]

Looks great Eikon.

Cant wait to see the finished package!!!

holy crap, Mickey is alive!!!! hahahaha, i kid i kid, but seriously, haven't seen you active in a minute.

to stay on topic though, i agree 100% with what he said

[Eikon]

Here goes another update:

Well in the past week an a half, I've put in probably 30 hours on the thing, and it really doesn't look much different than it did before in the pictures. But rest assured, I'm making great progress.

Special thanks go out to my buddy Chad for all his help, and just as much to NICO member 1sikS13 (Mike) for all his help as well.

I'm almost done with the body work and paint prep. I've done a ton of bondo, sanding, glaze, sanding, primer, wetsanding, fiberglass resin, sanding, wetsanding, and a little more wetsending...

I'm very pleased with the repairs to the body kit. Thanks to Mike and his work and teaching, and to other NICO folks advice, it seems to have turned out really nice.

On to pictures: Here is where I'm at this morning.

[Eikon]

It's funny how you can put 30+ hours into a project and see very little visual evidence of the progress you've made.... then put in 3 hours and have huge changes and very obvious progress.

We fully attached the body kit today.



Hey wheel experts... You think I should do a 5 or 10mm spacer? In these pics, the wheel is up in the air, so don't mind the camber

[onosqv]

SEXAY! Welcome to the body kit club :P

If you don't want to run extended studs, 5mm, otherwise 10mm - you can always roll/pull your fenders more, haha.

You aren't going for maximum tire rite?

That body kit fits really well - you guys did a good job. I spent much less time fitting my body kit (you can tell), haha.

[Z Style]

Sorry, I haven't been on here to give you any tips from the way I do things. I have worked at a few body shops and they all do things differently. Some only swear by their way, but I can tell you that a good paint job is mostly in the prep work and that is where you should spend most of your time.

Now I will probably forget some of the questions that you asked so if you have any just send me an email at [email protected]

To fix kits I use the fiberglass resin and cloth. I cut the cloth the shape and length I need for the repair. I usually do few layers to give it some more strength. I mix the resin by the instructions into a small plastic bowl that is flexible so that I can pop the hardened stuff out of the bowl to reuse it later. I apply the resin with a paint brush, size depending on the size of the job. It helps if you apply resin to the part first, then lay a piece of cloth down, and then saturate it with resin pushing any kind of bubbles out with the brush. Use a like a dabbing motion and not a painting one because you will just pull apart the cloth. Also to go around tight corners pull the cloth apart and kind of fray it.

You could also use the tiger hair or kitty hair that you got, the fiberglass reinforced plastic filler; but it will be harder to repair the next time if it cracks again. I have repaired kits that have hit walls at 80mph and blown off into three pieces.

http://youtube.com/watch?v=qlIT8_H0X9cI repaired the kit on the orange Sil80, that was also painted by me. The rear shot off into like three or four pieces and I was able to save the bottom section. I riveted that onto a stock bumper to get a cool ground effects thing. The side skirt also broke into two pieces; that turned out so good you can't even tell it was in a wreck that bad.

One major thing that I want to tell you is screw that one part glazing putty ****. That stuff is pure junk. Get the Bondo two part glazing putty that uses the same catalyst as your normal plastic filler. Also don't use crappy primer out of a spray bomb, I just tried this on a bike tank I just finished this week. I had just some small sections where metal was showing through after I wet sanded it that I wanted to get sealed up. So I spray painted them and wet sanded it again. When I went to go us the wax and grease remover before I painted them I noticed there was a bare spot. Then I realized that the wax and grease ate the spray bomb primer off and I just wasted nearly a hour on a try at a quck fix that ended up not even being worth doing.

On prepping the car for for primer I and sanding filler this is how I do it. I usually only use 32/40 when something is really f-ed up and I need to cover nearly a whole panel. Other than that I use 80 or close to it for sanding filler. I grab an old piece to take of the paraffin layer that always clogs up the sand paper. Then I DA, dual action, sand the whole car down with 120 or you can do that by hand. After you prime it put a guide coat down, which is just a mist coat down of some flat black. This really allows to see your low spots that need more sanding and such.

Umm, I have to cut this short so if you have any more question just send me an email or ask them on here.

[jspec603]

Your car is looking great man! Keep up all the good work! Shame on me for not reading the whole thread, but what is the color of choice?

[Eikon]

Your car is looking great man! Keep up all the good work! Shame on me for not reading the whole thread, but what is the color of choice?

Thanks! I'm keeping it black. I like black, and I didn't want to paint the engine bay, door jambs, etc...

[Eikon]

Holy crap Z style.. Thanks for all the expert input.

Mike came over a couple times and taught be how to apply the cloth and resin to fix the fiberglass. I think it turned out really nice. I still have some hairline cracks to fix at the corners of the kit.. so I'm going to do some more resin tomorrow.

I've slowly come to the conclusion that the red glaze is great for very small imperfections, but anything bigger or deeper than an average scratch is really best to put the bondo mix in. Hopefully the glaze that i've used already will last a while and not turn into crap too soon.

I noticed the exact same thing happen on my driver side fender with that spray primer. It went down to metal w/out me even sanding on it. 95% of the primer that is on the car is a professional primer and thinner that we had to mix and spray with my HVLP sprayer.

I think I'm going to do the guide coat tomorrow as well. We did that on the fenders after the first coat of bondo. It works nice! I also found that using a sanding block and some 120 grit paper sanding in an X pattern helps bring out the low spots as well.

It's getting there!

[S15nS13vert]

car is lookin great...remember to put 3 wet coats of primer, if you put 1 you will go thru.... then sand it with 600 wet sand paper for prep work, the finer the paper less the scratches will show once the car is painted.here in florida, we got this tube for fiberglass repair, it is already mix, you only need to add the hardener, it will be easier to repair your bumper, but like Zstyle said, every1 has their own way of doing here is my shop website, still underconstructionhttp://www.bodystop.com

[110octane]

I'm a little partial....but.....Black verts rule! Hahahaha

Nice work Eikon. LOVE IT!!!!!!

[Eikon]

Thanks Mickey!!!

We put in another 5 hours yesterday.. each of us. I had found another area on the passenger side door that needed some work. So I sanded it, spread bondo, let it dry, then sanded the bondo, then mixed up some primer and shot it. Then wetsanded it down.

Then we started taping the car off.

After taping we cleaned the garage floor really well to get rid of as much dust as we could remove. Then we ran a hose on the garage floor to really wet it and clean it and keep the dust down.

Then we hung our "poor man's spray booth". It's not great, but should help keep the overspray off the walls and all the crap in the garage, and hopefully keep the dust and particles from the rest of the garage off the paint when it comes time (today I hope!!!)



We decided to break for lunch. We ran to the auto paint store and dropped some cash for 1 gallon of base, 1 gallon of reducer, 1 gallon of clear, and 1 quart of activator, plus a mixing/measuring pitcher and some other random crap.

After taping the car off, then heading to lunch, we cleaned the crap out of the surface. Lots of paper towels and wax and grease remover. We basically both did the entire car twice just to make sure it was good and clean.

What do you guys think of the new look? I've decided I'll skip the paint and just cruise like this..

READY TO PAINT!!!!

OR NOT... Mother Nature had different ideas I guess. We had some nasty thunderstorms roll through in the afternoon. After waiting out the first, we checked out the radar and saw a bunch more coming,



So we decided to ditch the painting for the afternoon and try for today.

So far today it's been a light mist all morning.. High around 70* and it should clear up this afternoon. Hopefully the humidity will drop after the rain moves out so the paint will dry faster for us. So hopefully today will be the day for painting!!!

Wish me luck!!! I'm SO nervous. I afraid I did a sucky job of paint prep. I'm scared my bondo work was terrible, and with a freshy glassy finish all I'll see is bumps and dents and fish eyes and orange peel. I just know I'm going to find some spots that i should have worked on harder, or missed entirely...

Oh well.. we'll see what happens.

Cross your fingers everyone!!

[S15nS13vert]

GOOD LUCK BUDDY!!!!THE FORCE IS STRONG WITH U!!!NICO FORCES UNITE!!...sorry i got carry away

[Eikon]

Well, we got it done today.

Shot 2 coats of base and 3 coats of clear. I'm tuckered out.

Here's a couple shots after the base coats.

Here are a couple of shots of the car after clear. My camera really sucks with low light, so there will be many more shots to come of the car in better light.

So the question is.... am I happy???

I don't know yet. I'm going to reserve judgment until I can get it out in the light after it's dry and then we'll see what it looks like.

I can tell you that there are some areas that I definitely did a crappy job of prepping/sanding/priming/etc... I think I can also see some orange peel, but it wasn't dry and the light was bad, so we'll see what it looks like tomorrow.

So here's the question for everyone/anyone..

Would it help if I wetsand the entire car in a day or two with like 1400+ grit paper and then shot it with one more clear coat? There are some issues that i'd like to work out... a few drops of water from the air hose, a few bits of cottonwood tree cotton that landed on it while it was wet, and some other airborne particles, etc... We are out of clear coat after 3 passes (well, 2 full and like 90% of a third pass). I sure don't mind putting in a few more hours wetsanding and a few more dollars on more clear and activator if it will make a nice improvement. My buddy Chad suggests that it really isn't going to help out. He says lets buff the car good after a few days of drying.

Thanks gang.

[Coolwhip]

looks good Seth

[110octane]

I am sure it will turn out great Seth.

Keep up the great work!

[onosqv]

Looking smoooottthhhh. All you guys & ur black verts, ur gonna all look the same :P

[Z Style]

I would wet sand it with a 1000+ paper, be careful you will sand about two coats of clear off only leaving you one. That will get ride off your orange peal and such. Use a 3M small rubber squeegee to swipe the water off and show you how much more you have to sand. That should take out even your other imperfections as well. Then buff it with a cotton wheel and some high cut compound; then you can move to your foam wheel with a lesser cut compound.

[Eikon]

Yep, I think we're going to need to do that. There's a spot on the pass 1/4 panel that got a really light coat of clear and isn't glossy at all. Plus on the driver side of the hood and fender there are a bunch of little water droplets... we thought would dry up and come out, but they didn't... so we'll need to wetsand those and get rid of them. Then I'll spring for one more coat of clear and activator and we'll shoot it once more.

Here's a few pictures from this morning.... still no good shots of the front of the car because it's dark in the garage, but you can see the shine in the rear.

[DeXteR]

OMG are you kidding me?!

SUPER shiny.

Seth, dude, looks awesome!

[Eikon]

Well, I've been going back and forth about what to do with the orange peel and other imperfections in the paint.

I'm definitely not stripping the car back down, that costs too much to repaint, and it's really not necessary because the paint is decent... just not up to my standards.

The question was to wetsand or not to wetsand. The buddy who helped me paint was adament that we should not wetsand. His thinking was that the orange peel was from the base coat, and wetsanding would only scratch and ruin the surface. A few people here on NICO have advised me that I should wetsand and then buff it good and that would help a ton.

So I had a buddy come over (kjlindgr on NICO). I really trust Karl and I appreciate his input, so I wanted to see what he thought. He said from looking at it, he thought the orange peel was on the surface.

His idea was to wetsand on the trunk lid a bit to experiment. We figured if we messed it up, we could just pop the trunk off, strip it down and repaint it... easy enough.

So he took a few passes with some 1200 grit paper.. sure enough the orange peel is on the top of the clear coat.

SO... I'm going to wetsand the rest of the trunk lid tonight. Then I'll buff it really good and see what the finished product looks like. If it turns out nice, I'll wetsand the rest of the car.

[Coolwhip]

Yea, Karl's car is SICK. Glad you guys don't have to go too far to get it up to par.

Looking forward to the b4 and after pics of that trunk in sunlight,,,hint

[S15nS13vert]

1200 grid OMG dude, you gonna have swirls like a motha, 3d effect, use 2000 2500, and finish it with 3000, then use perfect it III 3m compound, and swirls removerlooks fantastic

[jspec603]

Wow man, the pics look pretty good! I'm sure your being an anal bastard when your looking at it, like I'm sure all of us would be! No worries tho, sounds like a lot of these guys know their stuff when it comes to paint work. Keep at it!

[Eikon]

1200 grid OMG dude, you gonna have swirls like a motha, 3d effect, use 2000 2500, and finish it with 3000, then use perfect it III 3m compound, and swirls removerlooks fantastic

Yeah, 1200 grit was the highest I had in my garage at the time.. I'm gonna get 2000 grit.

Should I really go over it 3 times? I'm afraid I won't have any clear left when I'm done.

Karl recommended "perfect it II"... is there a difference between that and III?

Thanks for the input man.. I really appreciate it.

I've put SOO much time and energy into this, I really really really want it to turn out super nice, so I was feeling a bit depressed the last couple days.

[Eikon]

double post.. lol.

I've had so little time the last few days... I helped my brother with his wheels and spacers this afternoon, after working late at the office.. so I only had a few minutes to mess with my car.

I AM SUCH AN IDIOT!!!!

I was lowering the driver's side off of the jack stand to the ground, and I didn't realize how low the car was with the body kit on it now. So it started to bend the skirt a little bit.. I got scared and rather then jerk the jack closed to stop, I jerked it the wrong way.. SNAP!!! I turned white and almost passed out.

On further inspection, not much damage done. I popped out one of the screws that was too close to the end of the inside of the fender anyhow. So the skirt just twisted a little on the side. It went back to normal and I just have to re-sink a new screw. No biggie. I did scratch the paint on the bottom of the skirt, but again no biggie as it's on the bottom edge, so it's virtually invisible.

It's down on the ground now.

Obviously I still need to get the lights in there. I have to repair one of them as one of the studs broke out of it.. I'll get some sort of JBWeld for plastic or something to patch it up... maybe even some fiberglass resin might work?

I test fit the taillights. Question... I'm assuming I need to remove the spongy seal they provided and use some dumdum or something like that to seal it up. They don't seem to go in all the way with that plasticky crap on there.



I taped up the NISSAN and SE logos in silver on either side of the bumper piece. But I'm not sure if i want to un-tape those... kind of looks cool with nothing but black on the rear end.

[nismofly]

Hey wheel experts... You think I should do a 5 or 10mm spacer? In these pics, the wheel is up in the air, so don't mind the camber

you need coilovers for sure...but what are your wheel specs for once you get them? like 18x8 +30 with a 225/40 iirc?

[Eikon]

my wheels and tires are messed up.

18x8 +3518x9 +43

all 4 are 235's. I thought I was getting 4 18x8 wheels...

I think i'll go 215's in the front at some point.

I don't think I'll swap to coils anytime soon.. The AGX are installed on the front, but not yet in the rear.. I'll do that this weekend.

I don't want to shell out the dinero for coilovers, and I don't want the bone jarring ride from them either.

So I was thinking maybe an 8mm or 10mm spacer would do the trick.

[nismofly]

tbh theyre not as bad as a lot of people make them out to be, i dont know what they were expecting, but ive had mine for over 20k miles driving through NYC and snowbelt roads the whole time and as long as you avoid the deepest potholes there isnt too much a noticeable difference when youre taking it easy

anyway, with them, youd want probably at least 15-20mm in front, and 10 in rear...but youd want to be able to fine tune the fit with camber and height and whatnot so running just like a 10 front will be ok for now...