What a hectic week at work. My plan had been to get the spot welds all ground down during the week and get the quarter panel put on. As it turned out though, I was working until 8 pm most nights. Fortunately, like most others out there, Labor Day means a long weekend, so I was able to get a lot done.
First up was grinding down the rest of the spot welds. This was easily and quickly accomplished with the electric grinder that I borrowed from a friend. I had picked up a spot welder at Harbor Freight to put the new quarter panel on, but after deliberating for a while, and realizing that there weren't a whole lot of places that I could actually get to with the spot welder, I decided to forgo the spot welding and just rivet the whole thing on. My original plan was to rivet the spots that I couldn't get to with the spot welder anyway, so it wasn't really a huge change. Since it's a race car anyway, I wasn't worried about the fact that it wouldn't look 100% factory. Once I got the panel on it was easy to see what needed to be done to get the dented portion to match up with the new panel. A little work with the BFH and all was good...
As I posted previously, I also ordered up some carbon fiber doors. They arrived, but unfortunately were damaged. I got the okay to temporarily install them to take measurements for the cage. They are a really sweet setup though. The shipping weight for each door was only 11 pounds. I pulled the stock passenger door off today, keep in mind I had already removed the windows, speakers, interior panels, etc., and the door weighed 32.5 pounds. So, each door is saving over 20 pounds from the weight of the car!
I've also gotten a good start on cleaning up the wiring. Eventually my plan is to get rid of the wiring from the interior connector plugs to the fuse box, but that will have to wait a little while. Meanwhile I've removed an amazing amount of wiring and learned a lot about how much there really is in our newer cars!
The car is again looking almost whole. I had recently sold off the front bumper cover to the same person that bought the headlights. Once I realized that the selling of the headlights meant that I didn't have to go with a 2006 front end, I decided that getting rid of the bumper in an effort to get a bumper from a 2010 to make the car look like the current model made a lot of sense. I'm also thinking about updating the sideskirts and rear bumper as well while I'm at it. If anyone is in the market for a rear bumper cover, let me know.
My excitement is definitely going up with each of these steps. Tomorrow morning the car goes into the cage builder. I have Day 3 Creations (www.day3creations.com) doing the work. I'll post more pictures once this is in!
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