Ok, the long weekend mad 3 day thrash is finally over, everything is back home in the Skunkworks, and I’ve had a chance to catch up on some rest.
Time to post a bunch of pictures and bring everyone up to speed.
After my last midday posting when I was waiting for stuff to dry, I next mixed up the Raptor Liner and applied one coat. I was a little surprised and dismayed to find that the liner liner material was white in the bottle, every other truck bed coating I’ve ever used has always been black.
It’s my own fault, I recall reading on the bottle that it was tintable, but never put 2 and 2 together that if it was black, it wouldn’t be tintable. Now yes, I could’ve added some black tint to it, IF I had’ve had some. Instead, I chose to topcoat the liner material with some more black epoxy primer. The additional corrosion protection isn’t going to hurt anything.
The coverage and texture one coat provided was adequate for what I wanted, so I stopped there, no sense in adding a bunch of additional layers and weight if it isn’t really warranted.
While I was waiting the required 1 hour flash time for the liner material to dry, I decided to multitask and shot the 3 coats of high build primer-surfacer on the filler panel. Thankfully it turned out great and I didn’t put any runs in it.
😅
After getting everything loaded up and back home, I had to quickly unmask the outside of the bumper before everything set up hard as concrete. Once that was done, I retired for the rest of the day and night for some much needed rest.
This morning, I went out to inspect the finished results and started to unmask the studs for reassembly. Here’s a few pictures just before the reassembly started:
Note these thin nylon washers over the bumper studs. Because the bumper reinforcement is aluminum and the bumper is steel, if the two are not separated, galvanic corrosion could occur. The nylon washers keep the two materials from coming into contact with each other. This was planned for from the beginning, so it will not affect the spacing of the bumper from the body.
Here’s the filler panel, with close-ups of the bodyworked areas so that you can see it’s seamless:
The air intake screens are stainless steel and do not require a coating, so they were masked off. I’ll decide later what finish to apply to them, whether I want to brush, polish or paint them.
Even the backside that nobody will see is pretty!
Ok, onto reassembly now. The first thing to go in were the new sequential LED equipped marker lights. Since this is essentially the final assembly before paint, all new stainless steel washers and hardware were used.
Next to go in was the trimmed down, cleaned up and powder coated aluminum reinforcement. Once again, all new, all stainless steel hardware was used here.
The shortened aluminum bumper shock substitutes were glass bead blasted and powder coated to match the reinforcement. Best part is, the powder coating on these was free because of a small favour I did to help out my customer when he was having issues with his air compressor while I was on holidays.
Gotta love making working relationships with your customers!
I wasn’t happy or satisfied with the exposed wires for the LED lights, so while I was at it, I de-pinned the connectors, installed split protective loom, and shrink tubed the ends. It makes for a really nice finished product, yet is still serviceable if needed by just cutting the shrink tube. It’s a lot nicer than wrapping the ends with electrical tape that always shrinks, peels and gets horribly sticky anyways.
So how about the outside? How does it look with the lights installed and fully assembled?
You be the judge:
This concludes the assembly portion, up next will be the hard part; the installation, adjustment and fitting to the car. Keep in mind that the tolerances are extremely tight, if out by even a 1/16th of an inch, it’ll be noticeable.
However it’ll also be the most rewarding, as it will complete the look of the entire front end of the car. The final reveal pictures to come once that step is completed next!
Until then, thanks for following along guys.
D.
