Could I ask you to PM me the price of this paint job?
PM incoming.
Very nice. Looks almost done. Congrats.
Thanks Leon!
---------- Post added at 11:40 PM ---------- 6 hour anti-bump limit - Previous post was at 11:00 PM ----------
At this stage of reassembly the pressure is really on. The challenge is there to get everything perfect and some things just arent in your favour.
The first challenge was in the central locking. When I collected the car this was already intermittent for the passenger door. As it turns out during disassembly we discovered some modifications to the central locking system. The gun on the drivers door had been changed for an aftermarket unit, whilst the passenger one was the original unit. This frustrated me - as when I made reference online to some PDF manuals describing the central locking system I realised that the logic would be compromised if this were done and deadlock facility would not actuate.
The deadlock facility is designed such that if the car is locked, even if the window is smashed and you tried to unlock the car from the inside it would not be possible easily, unless either the central locking remote was triggered, or the key was used physically. I wanted this back...
Another thing which was annoying was that the replacement of the door actuator for a coupe requires the removal of the window glass to gain access. Therefore putting the car back together was stuck. Under the pressure of time the frustrations of being a fan of an old car kicked in. The actuators were not available new from my usual source. The chop shops said they had them, but when I went to collect them said they weren't available... Two days of hunting later and having lunch with some good friends they were able to help me out and I was sorted. The actuators were delivered, and after some head scratching with rejoining the previously modified wiring we were back on track. Wherever needed we soldered and used shrinkwrap on the connections so they would be as good as original, and more importantly, would not oxidise or corrode as they are potentially exposed to the elements being inside the door where water drains into when it rains.
some shots of the excellent documentation online for the central locking system:
The next battle was for the front kidney grills. Being an early 3.2 EVO, the car has a pre-facelift nose. Many people said that since I had gone to the extent of a full complete respray I should take on the small additional step and facelift the car with the facelifted e36 nose. I am a stickler for originality so I decided against this. For reference, an image I found online which shows the facelift vs non-facelift easily:
The old grills were crispy black plastic which were glued together using 255 windscreen silicone. I wanted replacement originals but again no originals were to be found... The car (for shame!) currently has some cheap taiwanese copies whilst I find some original ones as the pre-facelift parts are getting rare...
Around this time I also got somewhat excited because it meant some of the finer items I had been keeping would finally be closer to installation - original stickers for the engine bay and door jambs and fuel lid which had been removed during the respray!
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Thanks for reading!