When you click on links to various merchants on this site and make a purchase, this can result in this site earning a commission. Affiliate programs and affiliations include, but are not limited to, the eBay Partner Network.
Yesterday I finally got my Cayman back from the shop after a long period of work that started late last fall. I am very pleased with the results although there is lots to talk about the whole process.
Would I do it over again? Not sure, considering what we had to go through to make things come out the way they did. Lots of time and money was spent getting it right. You know the old saying... "You get what you pay for", well in this case it was true big time. Just the fitting of the fenders and of the hood to get them to fit properly took an expert body man about 45 hours, then there was also the fitting of the side scoops plus the RE/RE of all the other parts that came with the OE fender and hood removal front bumper assembly the AC, some electronic, the headlights etc. In total about 62 hours went into it not including the paint job.
The Carbon Fiber fenders were really nice in the pictures on the seller's web site and also nice when we got them out of the box but installing them, making them fit properly needed quite a bit of work. There are several errors in their fabrication that the trained eye would pick up but in the end the shop managed to make it work/fit pretty decently. One of the benefits is the OE fenders weighed in at 9 lbs. each and the Carbon Fibers ones at 3 lbs. each.
The Carbon Fiber hood was also a major PITA. To start off it weighs 4 lbs. more than the Aluminium hood! Without going into all the details, we needed to come up with a way to make its curvature or radii from front to back follow the fenders lines. Also, it seems to be a bit shorter so more aft to rear fitment was needed. Also prior to painting the hood, I had to make the decision without knowing if we could make the brake duct air inlets work. I decided to take a chance and have the "fake" brake air duct entry scoop cut open so that I could feed air to the brakes like on the GT4RS. In the end that was not possible to do because of where the brake ducts pass in the GT4RS versus what is in the way on my GTS. So now that the air was going in but had to where to go, I decided to have an exit point on each side cut out at the trailing edge of the hood so that the air and water (when raining) could extract itself from within the layers of the Carbon Fiber hood. Again, the guys were very good at making it work.
The side scoops were also a PITA. I even went out and bought the GT4/GT4RS inner guts to the scoops to make it work... In the end to secure it properly we needed to screw them in.
I also changed the OE front orange side markers by the white smoked version, much nicer.
I've got a respect for body technicians for the amount of work involved in these jobs that aren't seen.
The result turned out nice.. where did you get those side skirts from?
The good ones? Can't even tell there was any paint work without a paint gauge. Some of them are that good. Bad ones? Ever seen a badly painted silver car. Brutal. Either way, it's a hard job.
Fascinating the costs for all those carbon bits..... fitting and paint.
Versus buying an actual GT4RS
That and return on investment /diminished value. I could never get my head around a project involving so much downtime that won't yield a return / increase in value. I could get on board with mild restoration work on stuff over the winter, but these big projects that usually result in a less then stock value must be a big passion project.
Short term pain for long term gain….looks fantastic. I would imagine that the whole process from design to finish (except for the few minor issues) must have been very enjoyable.
Cayman mods...
