[danteisme]

Are those pieces discontinued from Honda?

The trim pieces are, and the green clips are, but they are still showing the white clips are available. I can't see any difference between the 2, so i might order enough clips in white for both sides and see what happens. I'm still not 100% sure what the correct way is to remove these pieces, clearly the way i did it is not the correct method lol.

 

[g3teg97]

The trim pieces are, and the green clips are

That sucks.

 

[popanollie]

it makes me sad and mad when i see or hear of these cars being neglected, so when i see your work to save her it brings a tear to my eye. a tear of joy and hope.

 

[danteisme]

it makes me sad and mad when i see or hear of these cars being neglected, so when i see your work to save her it brings a tear to my eye. a tear of joy and hope.

Thanks! Sometimes I can be too much of a perfectionist, but in the end it will be worth the effort/trouble/headaches lol.

 

[danteisme]

I'm going to order enough white clips for both sides and see what happens. Not sure what the difference is between the 2 sides, other then green and white coloring. I'm also going to order parts to rebuild my shifter so when I install the new short shifter I can do everything at once.

On another note, what lug nuts does everyone recommend these days for aftermarket wheels? I have black "tuner style" lugs now, and I hate them. The black coating just flakes off, so now i guess they are chrome lug nuts. I'd like to get something where the coating won't flake off during their first use.

 

[danteisme]

Order placed for the clips, we'll see how they work out. Also placed an order for all of the pieces to rebuild the shift linkage. Car is 98% back together now, makes me so happy!

 

[tony4311]

awesome!

 

[danteisme]

A couple of hours of work Friday night and Saturday night after the kiddos went to bed. After cleaning the car, I sanded the car with 2000 grit, and then followed up with 3,000 grit. I avoided the edges and around the door handles and such because I am not a fan of getting the buffer that close to the edges and because my buffer has a 7" pad. Too risky for me. I also realized that I definitely could've sanded a bit more in a few places, but I was nervous to sand much further. No real indication that this fear was warranted, but just getting too much passed my level of comfort given this is 100% DIY paint job by a guy that never previously painted a car before lol. A few pics:

After one pass with meguiars 105 and a wool pad. This is the trunk lid:

The hood:

I think i'm going to go over the whole car one more time with the 105. I can't tell if some of what i am seeing is swirl marks or hazing from the wool pad or if its still 3,000 grit sand marks. I plan to follow up with 205 on a polishing pad and then with meguiars 7 with a finishing pad. Then i'll put a solid coat of wax on it. I think I have chemical guys butter wax and some meguiars nxt wax, i'll just pick one of them. So hopefully after a few more hours in the garage this weekend, i'll have all of the buffing done and protection done.

 

[danteisme]

Went back over the car along the edges with the 3000 grit to get the same uniform finish on the paint from a recommendation on honda tech. i also went over a couple of places again with the 105 and the wool pad and i'm glad i did. it really cleaned up a couple of places. I had limited time to work on the car this weekend, so i completely finished the trunk lid and the hood. When i say completely finished, i used 205 with a polishing pad, then followed that up with meguiar's 07 with a finishing pad.

here is the hood:

I absolutely love the depth of this color.

And here is the trunk lid:

Also, i installed the rear spoiler. Still getting used to seeing it on the car since mine didnt come with it from the factory. I like it, i think it finishes out the rear of the car nicely for being a stock oem part. Crappy part is it will need to come off again at somepoint when i repaint the other few pieces that need some attention.

And i think its finally time for this guy to go.

And lastly, i'm thinking about picking up a set of these from delray. I took them off the car long long time ago for fear of rust starting between the wheel arch and the protector since the car was still driven in the winter. Not sure if that is a real threat now that the car won't be driven in the winter. I feel like i need something to protect the paint on the wheel arch. thoughts?

 

[danteisme]

Moar updates!

I decided i'm just going to try to PPF those wheel arch lips. It will be a good place to practice.

Finished the polishing process with the car. There is a downside to this though. Now that the car is polished and "flat", you can really tell how badly i warped the doors when i was stripping the paint...However, if i you look at it at the correct angle, you can't tell lol.
Door warpage. Well, maybe not so much warpage on this one. This is the one that had all of the damage to it that i tried to fix just because it was too late to try and track down a straight, rust free door in Western PA lol.

You can also tell in this picture which pieces were the ones affected by my compressor regulator exploding. Look at the difference in the orange peel between the front fender and the front door.

Some reflections

Once the snow is cleared out, I'll flip the car around in the garage so i have a little more room to try and take care of the clear coat runs in the back passenger door. In the meantime, i'm going to clean up the overspray and junk off the windows, put some paint protectant on the car now that its all polished out, and attempt to clean up the compound splatter all over the car. its everywhere. I think i'll also pull one of the wheels to test a small spot for polishing these rotas out, just to see if its feasible / worth my time.

Couple over overall shots and my newly installed emblems on the trunk (i'll have to wait until i redo the front and back bumpers to install the rest of the new emblems.

Speaking of emblems, i'm really glad i bought mine when i did. i dont recall paying this much.

Also, is there some trick i don't know about to get the plastic nuts to stay on the tabs on this emblem? I push them on, and they just fall right off? These guys. It looks like its just a pressure clip. They came with the emblem and i just twisted them loose to remove them from the emblem. Now i cant get them to screw on, snap on, anything on?

 

[danteisme]

Ugh. i figured out the emblem, i'm an idiot. hopefully i can still fix this without having to buy another freakin emblem.

And I liked the way the car looked when i was taking out the trash the other morning. Warped doors and all lol.

 

[danteisme]

I now enjoy posting pictures of the car now that its in this stage lol. Several things happened this weekend.

I flipped the car around so that i have more room to work on my runs on my door. Also nearly have the garage back in order (although the pictures really dont paint that picture)

Paint sealant is applied, just have to do the wax coating on top of this. Love the reflection it has now. Is it perfect? No, far from it. But I am incredibly proud of the job.

Spoiler brake light is wired up and working the way it should be. (yuck, look at the textured paint on the underside. can you tell this is one of the pieces that was a victim to my air compressor regulator explosion?)

And i cant figure out what i am doing wrong with this emblem... I removed it so i could put the clips back on the prongs on the back of the emblem. Well, this apparently is not correct either. How the heck does this emblem correctly attach to the car??

i have also decided against polishing these wheels. After talking to some powder coaters, after i spend lord knows how many hours to polish them, i would still need to pay a powder coating a couple hundred dollars to protect the raw alloy. I just don't have it in my to hand polish these things for a couple hundred hours lol. So, once it warms up, I'll be repainting these bright silver. I'm over the gold color. When i do the wheels, i'll also touch up the calipers and a few other things that will need to wait for warmer temps.