The Art Thread

Capttripppp · October 3, 2021, 7:40am

Looking good!

SubstituteCreature · October 3, 2021, 4:28pm

Ok - So I love cars. I’ve never been much of a mechanic so this year I decided to change that. I’ve always thought cars were a work of art so once I customized one of my guitars and a few other things around the house and saw how easy it was I thought there was no reason why I couldn’t make my car nicer with my own two hands

JDM calipers - if you have an import, chances are the japanese specific parts for your car are way stronger than a lot of aftermarket junk. These will eventually get a green coat of paint and have something obscene painted on it instead of subaru

This is pretty much what started this whole ‘eterna-project’, we got a late snow and the plow drivers around here have some sort of mental issues so I hit a 6-8 inch deep pothole and fucking nailed a 1in. or bigger dent on the old stocks so I decided to upgrade and really really really liked the look of her with the two tone color so I decided to explore a bit…

First idea was plasti-dip (which still isn’t bad in my opinion but there’s better things out there for customization). I plasti-dipped the hood scoop and the grille which for my beat up car looks much better than a stock with tons of rock chips.

Disassembled and ready!

better than before!

Looking better but it could pop a bit more than it does…

Was frustrated because my ambition was far exceeding my budget so I decided to learn how to clean out the engine bay next…

It’s frustrating

And extremely time consuming

But my fucking god the difference it makes…

When you have a clean engine bay your attitude goes from ‘ugh…piece of shit…i don’t wanna fix it…’ to ‘fuck better get this done ASAP’.

Next job was full chassis rebuild essentially. New control arm bushings, new axles, new seals, new hubs, sway bar end links, sway bar, ball joints etc. Corners feel rock solid now even doing 60-70

Burnt out and sliced a really good groove in the control arm bushing to be able to knock out the hella-corroded sleeve (LEARN FROM MY MISTAKE JUST REPLACE THE FUCKING CONTROL ARM, THIS TOOK SOOOOOOOOOOOO MUCH TIME EVEN WITH THE RIGHT TOOLS)

Decided to forgo my idea of plasti-dipping when I found out how easy vinyl wrapping is. Don’t let the shops bullshit you, vinyl wrapping is extremely easy if you set your mind to it. This is the black/allcolor vinyl wrap I want to ultimately do my car in - the jury was sort of out on it in my mind so I decided to buy a sampler strip and do my side views - probably gonna do the spoiler soon too.

Fog light vinyl (less than 10 bucks for the material, 300+ if you get it done in a shop)

Who says i’m not a good hubbyboyfriendwhateverthefuckiam, pink fog light wrap for the woman’s subie too.

I figured I went this far, why not make my own grilles. I bought bulk of the black metal mesh sheets they normally make those aftermarket grilles out of. 20 bucks.

Vinyl wrapping is a process. These took me somewhere around an hour each. It’s been a bit over 3 weeks since I’ve done those and i’m cringing at how long those took me - it literally took me 5 minutes each for the woman’s fog lights to do a better job. Same shape same material same everything. Only used my thumbs and a hair dryer.

FIRE. NEVER UNDERESTIMATE SWEET, SWEET FIRE. Once I felt I took enough time off customizing my car I went back to work on those control arms. I set them on fucking fire. With the grooves cut in the shackles you could hear the audible ‘pop’ when the corrosion finally gave out. Hit it with a wire dremel attachment and cleaned her up all pretty. Fucking mint.

Crappy stencil made for the grilles

Crappy stencil made for DIY fog light covers (uninstalled as of yet)

Rough fitment. Later on I took the old fog light and covered it with duct tape and heated/reshaped it much better

Wrapped and back in the housing

Better reshaping with a few layers of black so it’ll take a rock or two without looking messed up

Bar none the hardest part of vinyl wrapping…tuck jobs. I bet in Thailand they’re fucking AMAZING at this. I ended up taking apart the entire headlight housing (not as scary as it sounds) so I could disconnect the blue parts (which were being wrapped) from the black trim (which I then hit with trim restorer to make it look new-ish).

Ok that’s more like it…you can still see some of the fuckup on the bottom right side but I actually re-re-rewrapped it when I figured out the correct way to get the light ripped apart. I can confidently say that I can vinyl wrap a car with no issues at all now since every fuckin` thing i’ve wrapped so far were weird rounded shapes with no flat fucking planes.

Lights installed, ego massaged.

Ball joints are a fuck to get out. Here’s sub’s recommendation if it’s stuck in the knuckle.

violence
fire
fire and violence
getting a large ratchet that cups over the ball joint and allows the threading through the end of the ratchet where you’d normally hook it to the wrench. Put the nut on as tight as you can and it’ll do one of two things.

A. It will pop right off since you’re pulling the ball joint out of the stuck knuckle via turning the nut…or (which I did…)
B. Put the ratchet as far up as you can so it’s cupping around the knuckle firmly but the ball joint is still in the middle - BUT there is a chance like mine that the thread will just spin around and around if you ripped off the rubber shit - NEVER FEAR! Beat the living fuck out of it in every direction (since you now have leverage via the ratchet) and you will see it finally start to pop the fuck out. I am not nice to the suspension/chassis of my cars so this did not come as much of a surprise… but it was frustrating enough it made me take a day or two off to focus on something else.

As she sits today. I’m enjoying fixing my car a lot and am in the process of fixing my garage up to be straight up geared toward my stupid money sink.

The woman’s finished headlight wraps. I’ll take a flick of the finished product in a few here. When I get stressed the fuck out I learn new skills so this is what i’ve accomplished in the last few months instead of melting the fuck down and going all ‘Michael Douglas in Falling Down’. If anyone wants any tips or whatever I’m happy to help - imports seem to be my comfort zone but I want to eventually get an old Caddy and restore one of those too!