.c2

'Didn't get a good picture of the flakes in the gunmetal paint, but will later when I can bring it out in the sun Not liking the placement of the filter much, perfer the Stillen gen 3 placement... But wanted to try out the ETI thing


Gonna sit like this for the next few weeks since it's off insurance anyways, wheels are coming shortly Possibly ART pipes as well



Baking begins!


Damp cardboard on the bottom and damp cloths on top of the lens just in case..


Stupid 370z headlight didn't fit in my oven all the way so I couldn't close it.. because of this we had to rebake it multiple times before we could get all the sealant off. Unlike the 350z headlight we did afterwards where it actually fit in the oven and only took one quick bake + pry and it was off


After 4 hours, baking, prying, baking again, prying the other side, etcetc.. it's finally off!


Swapped the OEM lens with an 3" clear STI-r lens from theretrofitsource. Great for just $50 Top is the OEM lens, bottom is the STI-r lens. Same bulb, only a few feet away from the wall so the cutoff looks a bit narrow



Pieces ready to paint


Made a insanely ghetto painting hut in the shop LOL, to capture a lot of the overspray and so dust doesn't get on the part while drying


Before and after, I originally wanted a slightly darker shade of gunmetal but I was limited to only a few choices of high temp paint. My friend used normal acrylic paint on his 350z headlight and it ended up bubbling form the heat, so we picked high temp paint to do mine and redo his. I didn't want to paint it black or too dark of a gunmetal because I personally do not really like black headlights on a black car. Paint's still drying right now so I'll have to wait and see how it looks like on the actual car. The chrome is gone, replaced with a matte gunmetal color with slight flakes in the paint


Last picture with flash so it looks a lot more blue than it really is, but matte



Housing is almost back together! Just doing a few LED mods since I have the headlight apart..


I believe it's called devil eye? LED strip facing the lens to make the projector glow red when you look at it head on, but not affecting the color output of the lowbeam at all so the floor still lights up white. In the process of wiring this to a switch so most likely it'll either light up when I unlock the car with the dome lights, or just light up for shows/meets or whatever. Haven't decided yet but definitely will not be on while driving lol




Thanks I hope so! Hopefully the hours spent on laying down fatmat will help with the noise too haha. Spent another hour and a half or so trimming and putting down some more pieces and barely got anywhere lol, this is going to take a while to finish


Wheels going on tomorrow Just got my fenders rolled and slightly pulled by Gerard@SerialNine. Great guy, amazing work as always. You can kind of tell that it has been pulled because the fender arches outwards now, but it's nothing too extreme so I'm okay with it. Makes my stockies + 20mm spacers look hella sunk when they used to be kiiind of almost flush, lol. My 19x9.5 +2 tomorrow should fit no problem, fingers crossed


Spacers properly replaced, somewhat. 10mm spacer front and 15mm rear,
front now has 19x9.5 +12 after spacer with 255/40/19 tires
rears 19x11 +8 after spacers with 285/35/19 tires.
Going to up the sizes to 265/40 front and 305/35 rear within the next few months and hopefully the rear won't look as sunk as it does now :/ Also had to switch to open ended lugs for the front's extended studs meh. But wheels are now on with no rubbing at all at any speed, bump, or any kind of cornering





So this happened on Wednesday..
[Beware] Lotus Autobody (Richmond, BC)


Front lip fell off due to a bad mounting job by Lotus and also bad judgement on my part for actually trusting them when they said that the lip will hold with their install. Lip fell off on the highway while I was going 120km/h and my car actually pushed it on the ground, and it dragged for a while so the concrete sanded a hole in the bottom of the lip.. The crappy shop said it wasn't fixable because it's carbon fiber. So my car looked like this for a few days


I don't have the $550 that I want to spend on another front lip, so with the help of my friend we fixed the lip with fiberglass resin and sanded it back down.


Few days later, I properly mounted the lip back on. Cost of repairing and mounting materials was less than $30, and it's mounted a LOT more securely than when it was done for $100 at Lotus Autobody... You get what you pay for for shops, but you get what you spend time on for DIYs.

Lotus autobody used 2 self tapping screws in total, about 30 cm of 3m tape which barely even covered the corners, and that was it.
I used 3m tape almost all around (ended up running out of tape or else I would have covered the whole thing lol..), silicone all around the edges, 4 bolts w/ washers and locking nuts, and also a bracket + bolt on the bottom of the lip. Install only took a bit over an hour in total with the help of a friend

Having space to work on my car is a huge help. After silicone and 3m tape


The 2 bolts and locking nuts, the top hole was originally drilled by Lotus Autobody. You can see that they ****** up the inside of my bumper with their shitty drilling skills too. Once the lip fell off I actually realized that Andrew @ Lotus Autobody CRACKED my bumper with their shitty drilling skills. The lip just covers it... Well nothing can be done about that now :/


Since the bottom of my lip is lower than the bottom of my bumper, I bought two L brackets at home depot and made a U bracket so I could mount the lip to the bumper. Just a bit more reinforcement



Anddd all done.. properly mounted and slightly cleaned up my engine bay a little. The 350z in the back is owned by my awesome friend who helped me with the repair and install of my lip



Washed as well, even though it's raining tomorrow. So happy to finally have my lip back on





Finally finished my sound deadening (only for the trunk) and put my trunk back together today! Took a looong time the first time I started putting this stuff down, but the second layer literally took me less than half the time of the first one. I guess first time always takes the longest

Put 50 sq ft of fatmat in the trunk of my car, tried my best to cover the wheel wells and stuff from the inside. Covered my entire trunk, twice (2 layers of fatmat). Really helped dampen the drone of my exhaust



Put on a bunch of insulation for more dampening since it felt like it worked pretty well on my hybrid



The foam thing for the floor wouldn't fit anymore because of my insulation, so had to trim it a bit but it fit fine afterwards



Put the side trims and foam in



Since I decided to keep my spare tire out, there was no floor so the original trunk carpet sunk down and revealed all my insulation :/ Didn't look so great



So I bought some trunk carpet from Canadian Tire, cut it to fit my trunk and covered the floor of my trunk with it Put the original carpet back overtop. Finally my trunk looks like a trunk again instead of a baking pan!


Got my EVO R diffuser the other day, propped it up against the car just to see how it would look Now just need to find time to install this along with the rear fog..



Previous owner wrapped the interior trims in 3m di noc carbon fiber, and I didn't like them much so I rewrapped them in 3m 1080 gloss black metallic It's like gloss black, but less prone to scratches and has flakes in it


So since this is my daily driver, my goal is to make this more fun to drive and also more comfortable to drive to some extent. This means that I do not want an all out performance car (stripped interior for maximum weight saving kinda thing), but I also do not want to make it toooo slow by adding a 1000lbs sound system. However, I do like music obviously... and since my base model w/ sports package doesn't come with a sub, I added in one myself Goal here was to have a good amount of bass, but not take too much space or add too much weight. So got a small little 10" JL sub, a Phoenix gold 500w amp and it is already way more than enough for me. Can't even max out the sub without feeling uncomfortable



Save money where I can, and learn while doing it So wiring up everything with the help of my friend


Hooked up the power wire so the battery trim kind of blocks the power wire and fuse. Ran it through the trims and underneath the carpet



Sub mounted on the shelf behind my seat, since I can't reach there anyways from my seat so it doesn't affect me Right against the seat means I feel the sub a lot more too lol. Amp is mounted behind my seat so it's not in the way, and I can still adjust gains and whatnot fairly easily. Not taking up much space, and not too in your face. Actually turned it around so the sub is facing the back after a few days, having the sub pound on my back wasn't too comfy lol




Got my ipad mini mounted the other day since my deck doesn't have navi. I stream music and videos through bluetooth. The ipad is easily removable and the lid can also be put back on easily via magnets. Will post more pictures later



I.C.E is almost done, just need to sound deaden the doors and put in some better speakers


Finally installed my TWM short shifter today, took a loot longer than expected but definitely worth it Love the feel, even though it's a bit rough for dd


Wrapped the cubby thing in 'pleather' fabric from fabricana to make it look a bit more presentable during the day. iPad mini and the cover are both held on by magnets. Pretty sturdy, doesn't fall or move when I rip the car lol

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