Dyno : Great writeup... takes time to lay it all out like that. Ive done glassing myself. I understand the steps you laid out... It all is just a matter of patience and time willing to spend if you want a real smooth body job to look right.

Jim : good luck with your install.. i would see your front clip painting running about 300$ adv. it costs us at a dealership shop rate 70 bucks to have a tow hook cover painted for bumper covers, and thats a 1 x 1 square.

I would suggest just taking the cover and the spoiler to a few paint shops and ask for quotes, they dont need to know about the rest of your car... also if your doing more paint work in the future, you arent looking for the BEST quality, you just want color... you dont need to go to your biggest fanciest Bodyshop... low size shop would easily like a few hours of "customer pay" work, and should be able to have it done in 2-3 days... Including prep, paint and drying. By just taking the part to be painted, your not paying them for the labor of masking,and other part removal.

Good luck

Thanks again. I'm putting it together now. I'll basically get everything fitting right and then I'll drive around with it in the back seat of the other car, looking for someone to paint it.

For the brace that goes through the front of the splitter, are there any downsides to just drilling through the glass like that? Won't holes weaken the structure and make it more prone to cracks?

http://www.iscracing.net/images/0supportbracket3.jpg

I also was looking under the car and I realized that the air dam, when properly aligned, seems to make the front of the car the exact same ground clearance as every other part of the car.

It depends on how large the hole is and how thick the fiberglass is. I have a fiberglass shop and we drill holes in our stuff all the time. If you don't have a lot of stress directly on the area of the hole, then you should be fine. Fiberglass is pretty strong stuff.

I took no offense, don't sweat it. I hope it turns out well for you. if you're worried about it cracking just use some big fender washers on the back side or some other way to spread the load. you could even build up more glass in that area for strength.

If a shop wants to charge you a grand to paint it, that's because they don't wanna mess with it and are just pricing you out of the job. insurance jobs pay more. your best bet is to find a painter that is willing to do it after hours on the side, but be fore warned it takes time to do it right and time is money. I would say 3 to 5 hundred would be a fair ish price for a good job.

Yeah, I think it was mostly that they have a routine they are comfortable with for dealing with typical jobs (ie, insurance claim jobs) and they don't want to break the routine to deal with an individual who has an unusual request (paint my car and also an air dam- they said "body kit").

I'm would bet that 50+ percent of their customers who come in asking for body kit work turn out to be problem customers who come back later complaining about damage that isn't the fault of the body shop.

Fairing the dam to the car with fiberglass, I think is a losing proposition. The fiberglass will fair into the fairng but I don't think it will adhere to the nose cowl very well. The two body pieces are of two entirely different base material. There is an adhesive used in aviation that is called PR 1422 B1/2, when mixed is the consistency of toothpaste. You would bolt the fairing on with wide area washers and at the faying surfaces fill with the adhesive, it works like body filler(Bondo) but it remains pliable, is paintable and it will hold. This compound is known in the aviation field as fuel cell sealant. (works like silicone sealant but is paintable)

I will post pics soon, but I'm halfway done with the install.

So far I have done the following:
1) mount stock bumper and air dam together, held in place with c clamps
2) drill 1/8th inch holes on the side where I want to put fasteners
3) take everything apart, widen holes to 1/2inch on the stock bumper, 5/16ths on the fiberglass.
4) on the stock bumper, for each hole... Sand the area around the hole, and take two 1/2 inch fender washers and a 5/16ths nutsert (1/2 inch outside diameter) and use the washers to make a sandwich held together by the nutsert. I JB-welded the outside fender washer to the resin of the bumper. Now instead of bendy resin, it is a rock solid metal surface with a 5/16ths 18tpi thread on the inside.
5) on the fiberglass, sanded the gel-coat around the holes, widened the holes to fit a 5/16th 18 tpi bolt and then JB welded washers to each side of the holes to reinforce them against abrasion and pulling stresses mostly.

So now the sides of the air dam actually bolt on to the stock bumper and all the load bearing areas are made of metal and well supported.

Implements of JB-Welding
http://i42.tinypic.com/vwsc1x.jpg

Washer sandwich from the front. Nutserts are basically rivets with threaded centers. I didn't feel that the resin was a particularly sturdy thing to rivet, so I reinforced it with fender washers.
http://i41.tinypic.com/153buxx.jpg

And from teh back:
http://i40.tinypic.com/2uz8dvq.jpg

And the dam itself. I basically just didn't want the bolts to eat away the fiberglass or for the hole to become the beginning of a crack.
http://i39.tinypic.com/wjyp37.jpg

More to come.

Jim. I take back anything I said in earlier posts that was derogative. Didn't know you were tracking the car too. You're doing a great job fabbing that up to be removable. Well thought out. I may be stealing some ideas!

It is all good.

It's on the car now and I'm getting ready to jack it up and mount all the other braces. I think I might have been off a little on one of the holes, but I'll just redo it if it becomes a problem. I'll probably drive it around on the highway to see what breaks at speed, but I think I've got it figured out. It feels completely solid.

The unintentionally cool thing about this is that the washers on the back of the fiberglass mean that it only really contacts the front bumper at the front lip area and at the metal contact points. Everywhere else is like 1-2mm gap or so.

And done. I just got back from testing it on the highway. The front feels much more planted now. If I accelerate through a turn now, the front doesn't try to plow of the road, it stays planted.

http://i39.tinypic.com/1043eyx.jpg
http://i42.tinypic.com/j0b153.jpg
http://i43.tinypic.com/33jlmxu.jpg

Just tested some more. There is a section of road where I used to understeer like crazy above 50mph. Now I actually have so much front traction at 80mph that I actually experience noticeable body roll. Guess it's time to move the front swaybar up a notch.

Just for reference, even my GV urethane lip wasn't a direct fit, I still had to bend it to conform with the bumper.

Anyway, is the lip supposed to angle up like that?

looks good, but the color is a big turn off, any plans to paint it? Just flat black would look 100x better.

I know how it looks like it is angling up because of the angle at the back, but it's really level with the ground. I measured by putting a thick board under the car and sliding it around measuring clearance.

And yeah, I already removed it and I'm pricing out paint quotes this week. The color should match soon.

Maybe I screwed up with fitting it because of the slight concavity underneath, I dunno. I suppose I can put it back on and try adjusting the angle downwards a bit.

It's much easier to judge everything when you fit it with the car outside from a distance during the day. Doing it inside a garage with only artificial light is a huge hindrance. I might have misaligned, which is a pain in the ass to fix, but it's better to discover it now rather than later when I've already painted it.

Ae the center braces too tight? That would pull up the middle. Looks to me like the entire thing could go down about an inch, and towards the rear of the car a bit more to fill up the gap between it and the bumper. A little trimming and refitting could do wonders I think.

Guess I'll mess with it more this afternoon.

Any updates? Long-term impressions? Ready for paint?

I sanded and cut away at the center portion to make it sit lower. I also made longer front braces and braces to locate the rear of the splitter portion.

I've been too busy with life to work on it much beyond that. The economic downturn has me concerned so shoring up my financial situation comes first.