HarleyFDMD

Thanks mate, no not as such.. although i am pencilled in with Lee at SRD for mapping in October so it needs to be mostly finished before then!!

Finally got the engine bay painted today! Started by cleaning out the paint booth. After giving it a good sweep out i literally took the jet wash in there and washed everything out.. all the walls, doors and floor. Then cleaned the car down with an air line - genuinely forgot what it looked like 'clean'! Then into the booth, jacked up, wheels off, subframe brackets off and everything masked up. 197 Obsidian black base coat Lacquered! Photos were taken after a 30 minute bake. Really impressed with this Lacquer. Well worth the money

The bay is now officially all prepped ready for paint. Got it all rubbed down over the past couple of evenings and then just went over the areas (mostly on the edges) where i rubbed threw to the bare metal with an etch spot primer just to seal it all up. o

I like that Carbon boot lid a lot! I want one for mine!

Actually made a start on proper body work today! We had been waiting for these 'big kid blocks' to arrive. They are basically just a piece of coloured acrylic with a replaceable velcro sanding strip on one side - very simple but very effective! The acrylic flexes to the shape of the panel giving you a perfect finish. My bonnet looked pretty perfect even to a trained eye.. but as soon as we tackled it with these blocks it showed loads of tiny low spots all over it. This has made me even more excited for the finished product.

Thanks Pete! Yeah it's certainly been a roller coaster! When i look back at the car over previous years all the low points now just add character for me. I'll never sell it so i want everything done to the best of my ability to save me heart ache in the long run

Looks like its going to be really special when it done! Lots of very nice parts! Are you not tempted to go single turbo?

Next step will be to get the bay rubbed down and painted. Hoping it'll be done by this time next week! Like I've mentioned before, I'll be painting the car in Mercedes 197 Obsidian black and i have Spectral Klar lacquer which is supposedly one of the best on the market. Must admit im pretty apprehensive about painting the bay - lots of edges and angles to cover and it needs to be perfect!

Last night i got the steering rack cleaned up with a quick lick of paint, strongflex bushes installed and then back on the car. Everything suspension wise is now bolted up and the wheels are now back on the car. For those eagle eyed people - yes some of the bolts have just been blasted and painted which i know isn't great. Once everything is finished and the cars painted/engine in and running etc i will re visit those areas and replace with brand new zinc plated bolts - but for the mean time im on a tight schedule, i have it pencilled in with SRD for October for the final bits and pieces in the engine bay/first start up/mapping. Id also like one of Paul Cheshires rebuilt steering racks!

Thanks Tyson Do you think its worthy yet to move to the 'Mkiv supra projects' section of the forum? That would be a little milestone complete for me!

Lower wishbones are now blasted, painted and fitted with strongflex bushes Then got them back on the car with brand new bolts. These are super hard work getting back into the alloy part of the subframe!

If i had a £ for every time someone said that i could buy a second set

Got my Subframe back on last night, got the upper wishbones blasted, bushes pressed out and new strongflex bushes installed and back on the car. Also cleaned up my Meister R coilovers and got those refitted. These are about 4 or 5 years old now and pretty much still look brand new with the help of ACF 50

Raptor coated the under side of the bay and inner wing structures before leaving tonight. I'll get the subframe back on in the next couple of days

Got the rest of the front end in raptor epoxy primer today Also got the other half of the subframe blasted, epoxy primed and finished in 2k gloss black. I did the same to the braces and finished them in ford race red

Been getting on with the front end over the past week. I'll be spending all day on it tomorrow so should have a decent update tomorrow evening. As with this build in general, things snowballed a little further. Decided to rebuild the front subframe as it seemed daft not to while i was in this position. Generally thought it would be a quick(ish) job but i guess that was me being nieve. Passenger side all came apart easy.. driver side not so much! One of the subframe bolts that run from the engine bay and down through the chassis leg sheared off and both bolts in the lower wishbone were seized solid. I was dreading this happening. My rear subframe was the same when i did that. I think lots of people have experienced it now. So anyway i dropped the subframe down and tried cutting the seized wishbone bolts out - I'd already attempted using an air hammer to no avail. Cutting them out was a total nightmare and i decided i was going to sacrifice the wishbone to avoid the risk of damaging the subframe - still pretty annoyed that i had to destroy the wishbone but i had 2 good condition spare wishbones, i didn't however have a spare subframe! i have also got the front end (upto the strut towers) in raptor epoxy primer. I'll get the rest finished tomorrow. Would have been nice to have done it all in one hit but it takes ages rubbing down and degreasing! And then lastly, once i got both halves of the subframe separated i stuck the cast alloy half in our aqua blaster and got it looking brand new again

Speak to Dave Batchelor about his Walton manifold.. funny actually because he used to sing their praises, i saw him recommending walton manifolds to a couple of people... right up until he tried to actually install his! Then the tables turned. I was very close to pulling the trigger on a Walton manifold one evening and thought I'd just run it by Dave first - he told me to stay well clear due to terrible turbo placement. He said the quality was incredible, but the design was crap. I bought an SRD manifold with a 60mm wastegate and its a work of art

Such an odd situation! James rebuilt my engine for me in March Tbh i think it was one of his last jobs from what I've been seeing.

So here are some pictures of the sills in raptor (minus the part that gets painted body colour) Ive actually decided to raptor all of the inner structure behind the wings and I'll do the lower radiator support too as i know this is a common rust area. Fortunately mine only has surface corrosion currently so I'll be wire wheeling all of that off before applying Jenolite, etch primer and then raptor

Yeah you're probably right.. i was just thinking the 6870 would definitely future proof it for further gains. Im going to be at the top end of what the 62mm can produce. If i was to then want more it would mean re doing the intercooler pipe work and the down pipe

So this will now bring me up to date.. This was the last time the car will ever be an NA Before pulling the engine this is how it looks now.. ive removed almost everything (still need to remove the clutch cylinder) and ive started prepping it ready for paint. Hopefully it'll be painted and have the engine in within 2 or 3 weeks

And while all of that was going on my engine got built at long last! I took it to performance@Hart and James did an awesome job.. sad to hear he's now closed - if that's even true? Hope he's doing ok. Once i picked it up i started assembling all the ancillaries, i then bought an SRD manifold along with quite a few other bits.. So that's the engine. 2jzgte vvti Manley rods, CP pistons, whifbitz 269 cams, BC springs and retainers, king bearings, arp hardware, new oem oil and water pump, oem gasket kit, new oem crank pulley, 1000cc fic injectors, ssi intake, srd manifold, precision 6266 (might buy a 6870) turbosmart procomp 60mm gate. Hoping to see an easy 700bhp

I bought new parts.. Brakes are the Renault Megane RS Brembos with Lexus ISF 360mm discs I bought the power house racing spigot rings and centre caps for the Weld RTS wheels... £600 for spigot rings and centre caps! Sickening I also bought a titanium oil catch can.. Polished mechman alternator..

Regarding the inside of my sills, i removed all the grommets and plugs along the underside and top side and blew them all clean using compressed air, fortunately there was nothing too alarming inside, small amount of surface corrosion but that was all. I sanded as much as i could out at the back where the side pods go as you can get your hand in there Then i blasted corroseal using compressed air through the entirety of the sills to neutralise what ever was left. Then once the corroseal had done its thing i used dinitrol as a cavity wax.

So once the car was all solid i set out to keep it solid. I sanded all the sills and behind the side pods down to bare metal on both sides, treated the raw metal with Jenolite and then primed with Raptor Epoxy primer Then after a few days once the primer had properly cured i blocked it down and gave it 2 generous coats of raptor bed liner. Need to get some better pictures of this but its come out really well and im confident this'll last for years! i also purchased brand new oem facelift wings and applied the raptor bed liner to the inside of them