My Car had a little plastic surgery
Joined: Nov 2004
Posts: 17,181
Likes: 154
From: OC - So Cal
My Car had a little plastic surgery
As some of you know, my car has been under the knife for the past several weeks… Auto Explosion has done a tremendous job changing up parts of my car pretty much spot on to what I told them I wanted – I couldn’t ask for a more accommodating shop & they are full of talent!
SouthbayGsedan/Darren, caskyline/Randy and rookie/Viet; thanks a million for all your help, advice and support!
I know I’ve been a pita at times, but I really appreciate the help you have given me!!!
All of the body work is done and the car has been painted – the shop is wet sanding and putting finishing pieces back together… it might be a while before I have photos of the completed project… but Darren and I took pics of the progress as it happened – I thought some of you might be interested in checking it out…
Fenders:
One of my biggest pet-peeves about current new vehicles are the flat fender edges… some think its to help strengthen the thin aluminum, others think its to help get the extra 1 mpg that the government is pressuring manufactures to do, some say its just manufacturers following what someone originated… all I know is its f-ing UGLY!!! And for some reason Nissan made the flat area real big (as compared to many other makes).
So a little of this:
And some of this:
Sprinkled with this:
Results in no more flat fender edges!
And of course the nemesis of all sedan owners, the dreaded door moldings
Gotta ditch them!
A Kurookie bumper is nothing without rookie’s side skirts – I had mine molded into the fender and quarter panels – also, had the front and rear slightly curved to follow shape of wheel well (bottom edge of front bumper wheel well was curved back as well):
And of course to flow with the Nisrookie/Rookismo (whatever the name is gonna be) sides, I had to find something for the rear bumper… I had a piece molded in:
No lines FTW!!!
Those that know me, know I don’t like the “cat ear” turn signals on the 03-06 sedans… so a while back I did a first by omitting the top blinker and making the LEDs blink (the taillight/brake light)… but it didn’t look quite right – so I figured make the top look like its part of the quarter panel – and might as well mold the trunk lip to flow across the taillight/quarter panel:
WTF is he doing???:
Oh, I see… it’s a hood cowl:
Quite a while back I had cams & headers installed… even though the headers are Jet Hot coated, they still create a tremendous amount of heat! I’ve data logged intake temps on street and track and they are stupid hot… I’ve tried a number of things to get it under control and nothing has really helped much – so I figured venting the hood would help… I don’t really think hood “vents” look right for my style/theme – so a hood cowl was molded in… there are only 3 cut outs in the hood and the aren’t real big… plus the cowl is only 1” high – so I’m not sure how much this will help, but I’m hopeful…
So… some funny things happened while the car was going through this transformation… it kinda took on a life of its own… I really didn’t intend to do all these things – there was a small delay and the car was sitting – so caskyline worked his magic making things disappear and I had the shop weld empty holes and mold some things in... I’ll post engine bay pics later – its another little project that will be done soon, in the mean time here are pics of the body work:
Also, during the car’s down time I had Master Interior Wizard, Chuy take out my headliner, and A,B,C pillars to wrap in black suede (fixing another part of the car I never liked, tan upper interior with black lower)… Also having him fix the crappy plastic armrests by making them padded leather… I’ll post pics of that later... but for now here's my custom interior
So all that was done and mid last week the car was prepped for paint:
So that’s my car’s little project – I hope you like it (or at least find it interesting)… I’ll update this thread with final painted pics later…
Edit:
Okay - sorry this post ended up being so long, but I figured it's better to post finished pics here than later in the thread that might get buried... Most ppl hav seen these pics in other threads already
Photos by Calvin:
Photos by Grant aka gdup35Sedan (gp.photography)
there some other less quality pics in "my garage"
crappy cell phone pics of interior can be found here:
https://g35driver.com/forums/4662107-post152.html
SouthbayGsedan/Darren, caskyline/Randy and rookie/Viet; thanks a million for all your help, advice and support!
I know I’ve been a pita at times, but I really appreciate the help you have given me!!!All of the body work is done and the car has been painted – the shop is wet sanding and putting finishing pieces back together… it might be a while before I have photos of the completed project… but Darren and I took pics of the progress as it happened – I thought some of you might be interested in checking it out…
Fenders:
One of my biggest pet-peeves about current new vehicles are the flat fender edges… some think its to help strengthen the thin aluminum, others think its to help get the extra 1 mpg that the government is pressuring manufactures to do, some say its just manufacturers following what someone originated… all I know is its f-ing UGLY!!! And for some reason Nissan made the flat area real big (as compared to many other makes).
So a little of this:
And some of this:
Sprinkled with this:
Results in no more flat fender edges!
And of course the nemesis of all sedan owners, the dreaded door moldings
Gotta ditch them!
A Kurookie bumper is nothing without rookie’s side skirts – I had mine molded into the fender and quarter panels – also, had the front and rear slightly curved to follow shape of wheel well (bottom edge of front bumper wheel well was curved back as well):
And of course to flow with the Nisrookie/Rookismo (whatever the name is gonna be) sides, I had to find something for the rear bumper… I had a piece molded in:
No lines FTW!!!
Those that know me, know I don’t like the “cat ear” turn signals on the 03-06 sedans… so a while back I did a first by omitting the top blinker and making the LEDs blink (the taillight/brake light)… but it didn’t look quite right – so I figured make the top look like its part of the quarter panel – and might as well mold the trunk lip to flow across the taillight/quarter panel:
WTF is he doing???:
Oh, I see… it’s a hood cowl:
Quite a while back I had cams & headers installed… even though the headers are Jet Hot coated, they still create a tremendous amount of heat! I’ve data logged intake temps on street and track and they are stupid hot… I’ve tried a number of things to get it under control and nothing has really helped much – so I figured venting the hood would help… I don’t really think hood “vents” look right for my style/theme – so a hood cowl was molded in… there are only 3 cut outs in the hood and the aren’t real big… plus the cowl is only 1” high – so I’m not sure how much this will help, but I’m hopeful…
So… some funny things happened while the car was going through this transformation… it kinda took on a life of its own… I really didn’t intend to do all these things – there was a small delay and the car was sitting – so caskyline worked his magic making things disappear and I had the shop weld empty holes and mold some things in... I’ll post engine bay pics later – its another little project that will be done soon, in the mean time here are pics of the body work:
Also, during the car’s down time I had Master Interior Wizard, Chuy take out my headliner, and A,B,C pillars to wrap in black suede (fixing another part of the car I never liked, tan upper interior with black lower)… Also having him fix the crappy plastic armrests by making them padded leather… I’ll post pics of that later... but for now here's my custom interior
So all that was done and mid last week the car was prepped for paint:
So that’s my car’s little project – I hope you like it (or at least find it interesting)… I’ll update this thread with final painted pics later…
Edit:
Okay - sorry this post ended up being so long, but I figured it's better to post finished pics here than later in the thread that might get buried... Most ppl hav seen these pics in other threads already
Photos by Calvin:
Photos by Grant aka gdup35Sedan (gp.photography)
there some other less quality pics in "my garage"
crappy cell phone pics of interior can be found here:
https://g35driver.com/forums/4662107-post152.html
Last edited by OCG35; Oct 28, 2009 at 06:02 PM.
Holy Shiet! You have done some amazing things with your car before, but now... you are a god... Congrats Mike... I cant wait to see the finished project... I envy you so much. You do the un-thinkable and bring it to life!
Alot of work Mike (and time/$!). But your mods always look good. Hope to see the finished pics. I assume you took the opportunity to change up the color also?
