Because 99 (aka what's Greg been doing since he's not been working on code)

[Greg E]

As many of you know I bought #16 from Jason a little over a year ago now. It was... less than complete...



...and needing some serious attention to detail... For the price (even though it wasn't the exact car I wanted) it was worth every dollar.

I never made a thread about it here or 3SI because I don't care for hype threads and during the course of me rebuilding the car, I must have changed my mind with it 10-20x as most of us do during slow builds. So this is the story from beginning to now!

The car was dropped off mid-March 2013.

[Greg E]

April last year...

Some time ago I bought a spare engine from Hans to use as a core for the stroker, DR heads and DR750s.

It needed some cleanup.




All the parts in the oven for an 800 deg over night burn off.



This is what they looked like the next day.




After blasting.

[Greg E]

The color scheme I was originally planning for was around the white 98, so I picked black, black chrome, copper and red. The copper looked much better in pics than in person...




This is what I ended up with...

(pre-bake)



(Post bake)






Not sure if I'm going to keep the copper or not. Kinda thinking of a different color combo for the black 99.

[Greg E]

4-6-13

Today I finally got the manifolds done. They are ported by hand with a just a normal SS router bit.





This is the velvet black ceramic coating. It's supposedly good for 2000 degF so we will see. Did 2 sets (one for me, one for a 97 VR4 I'm building this weekend).

I still have to do my turbos. Debating doing all the bolts in this color. It's pretty slick.

[Greg E]

6-16-13

More rusted ugly parts...



Glass bead blast.



Coating.










Wrinkle black







Chrome Smoke.


Wrinkle Red.

[Greg E]

6-23-13

(during this time I was hunting for a set of stock turbos to install into the car and ran into a lot of issues with sellers ripping me off. Todd came to the rescue and gave me a good set)

So the copper wasn't doing it for me. Changed it to this. Gotta be my new favorite color now!








Dark metallic grey. The pictures don't really do it justice. Here's a manufactures picture. This is what it looks like in person:

[Greg E]

6-30-13

Also made these:



7-2-13

After a 2 month wait this finally showed up!



Underbody panels and wheel well covers. These were destroyed and removed from the car.

Few other misc items too. Nuts/bolts minor hoses and what-not.

[Greg E]

8-9-13

This is the strangest thing I've ever seen...





It's only growing on the vynil panels. The floor, glass and plastic parts are clean. This also appeared sometime in the last month. Interior was spotless... Car sat parked in the garage under a cover the whole time.



8-10-13

Borrowing this from work.



It's a heppa filter, dehumidifier and AC unit all in one. I'll let this blow cool/clean air into the car for a week after its cleaned. Shouldn't need worry about this anymore.


8-28-13




Clean!!

And what's this??



Kinda looks like a car.



True 99 SMICs with proper ducting! Something missing from nearly every single 99 front end conversion.



Oil cooler mounted up too.



9-13-13

Last night I got the engine back together, trans bolted on, turbos...

[Greg E]

9-14-13

Looks like I will be redoing a lot of powder coating. This color I made is amazing!!

Starts off as this dark blue with silver metallic.




It was experiment that failed. Wasn't happy at all with the color. Gave almost a baby blue look instead of a blue metallic like I was hoping.


....then I sprayed a wild transparent red over it expecting it to turn purple. Boy was I wrong!!



Photos do not do this color justice! This is hands down my favorite color. Even more than the shocker yellow!



Close up this effect is really cool!

Now I am thinking about burning off a number of parts and doing them in this color! It's amazing!



At the same time I got the last round of parts done for the motor. Yes that's the spare tire mounting bolt.



Final pieces of ceramic coating are done too.

[Greg E]

9-22-13

Ended up redoing the valve covers after discovering the ugliness underneath the baffles.



I scratched up the coating trying to drill out the rivets so they had to be burned off and redone.

Here's the base coat. Again a dark blue with heavy silver metallic mixed in. Somehow the innercooler pipes got coated too.



Did the top coat in multiple thin layers this time heating the part for only a minute at 425, spay till the powder stops sticking, re-heat for another min, repeat. Made the finish a lot more even and smooth. Never do I want to do this again though... Took forever.







My reds clash now... :/



I've got another set of fuel rails which I think I'll do in that metallic dark charcoal I like but the thermostat housing stays as is. Don't feel like dealing with the coolant lines trying to get it out and back on again.



Heat shields look good.

Didn't get the rear valve cover on because I'm having difficulty reinstalling the baffles. Someone put a 3/16 drill bit into a 1/8 bit cubby and this my holes are different sizes... Probably going to buy some small screws and go the DrGonzo method.