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Holy cow, 5 months in the body shop? I hope you're happy with the work. It certainly looks cool in the photos.
You must be itching to get this thing back home to your garage!
Yup, but I'd rather it be perfect than quick, and we have 5 other vehicles to drive, so not that big a deal, but yes, we're itching to have it back. The shop doing the work is primarily a collision shop, but owned by a friend of ours, so they do the work on the weekends and after hours.
Quick update - body work continues and they about have the rear bumper completed. Since it's going to be one color on our car, rather than having the lower section a black or CF look (which I think then makes the rear bumper then look too narrow), we decided to bond the 2 sections together once the fitment work was completed.
Looks like this now and is just about ready for primer.
They're also working on the front bumper to front fender transition and are going to have to build up then reshape the curve of the front bumper to make an even panel gap.
Looks like some good progress. It kills me to see how dusty your interior is getting, though!
Yea, me too, but they say that as long as you don't sit on the seats or crush it into the car's arpet, it pretty much just blows out with compressed air. Wish they'd put up some plastic when they pulled the doors though.
They're going to have to fully detail it before we get it back anyway, so I've stopped worrying about it.
Progress continues - they've jammed out the car, painted a couple of the doors, are doing final sanding of the rear quarters and have begun work on getting the front bumper to marry up to the hood they way it needs to look. The hood marries to the fenders and headlights nicely on both sides, but the center of the front bumper is low, so they're probably going to have to internally brace it up and do a little building up of the center section so it meets the hood smoothly, then we should be very close to doing the exterior respray. I think we're still about a month out.
Thanks a lot. Friend or not, I'm not looking forward to this final bill
Looks great!
Yeah, that's the problem with mods... I just give my guys something like $1.5k / month when I have them do something bigger and then just pay the difference. It's a lot less "bloody" at the end this way.
Looking great...can't wait to see those 22's installed with the CC brakes
Thanks - I can't wait either.
The PCCBs are actually going to take a bit of work as I'm going to need to have radial to axial mounting adapters made once I get the car back and can mock-up the rotors with the PCCB calipers and take very specific measurements with a digital caliper. The purpose of the adapters will be to allow the bolts to mount the adapter through the side going into the current wheel carrier and have threaded holes in it for the 958 style calipers which have their mounting bolts go through the top and thread into the adapter. So, I may have to drive it around with the current Big Reds for a little bit while that's taking place - unfortunately, I think the rear pads are almost shot so I may have to purchase a set of new rears to get me through that month or two - not so bad though as I can probably recoup some of that cost when I sell the Big Red braking package complete to another 957 owner that is looking to upgrade their brakes to the Turbo S spec.
While I'm waiting for the adapters to be custom manufactured by Epytec in Germany (https://www.epytec.de/en), I'm probably going to order 2 sets of the Rennline stainless caliper mounting stud kits with the 12 point ARP nuts so that I only thread them into the adapters once and then any future pad changes or caliper removal (wheel bearings, etc) will be done by removing the nut and sliding the caliper away from the rotor on the studs, which will stay permanently installed - this will eliminate potential stripping of the aluminum wheel carrier or threaded aluminum caliper adapter. I have a set of these Rennline studs in the parts cabinet for my 997 that I plan to install some weekend when I have nothing to do (had them since last Christmas and haven't found that weekend yet - LOL).
BTW, if anyone knows of a place in The States that does this same type of custom caliper adapter work, I imagine without the shipping, I could get a faster turnaround using someone in this country, so let me know.
Epytec does offer a very nice service though, where they'll produce polymer versions to the supplied specs in order to do a test fit, so that any small adjustments can be made before they machine and ship the more expensive aluminum versions. https://www.epytec.de/de/prototypenbau-1933?c=2221
All 4 interiors of the doors and their door jambs have now been painted and the doors have been reinstalled onto the car.
This weekend they'll be removing and taking care of the rear hatch jam and painting the roof since it's a different reflective surface and doesn't need to be painted at the same time as the rest of the exterior. Then they'll finish the fitment of the front bumper and prep the complete exterior for the final respray. Bumpers and hood will be painted off of the car for completeness of coverage, then reassembled.
Here's the current status. You can see how well the flare pieces line up between the door and rear quarter and also why the stock wheels are being changed out for larger and wider ones since they're too far inset and though 21s, dwarfed by the aggressive body flares - new wheels are a 22"x12" with 315/30 rubber.
06-28-2017, 08:46 PM
