E36 M3 RallyCross build!

[Laminar]

Off the top of my head, flex will happen where the most compliance exists. So if you have a soft front bolt mount but stiff ear mounts, the front bolt will flex but the ears won't, transferring that front flex force into the metal of the diff cover itself. With a stiffer front mount bushing, it won't allow the up/down flex, so less force will be transmitted to the ears.

My bushings are ECS tuning, 88A hardness. They're stiff enough that the second time I broke my diff mount bolt, I was able to drive 25 miles home by being careful with the gas - the stiffness of the ear bushings was enough to hold the up/down motion of the diff.

[95maxrider]

I'm in the middle of taking my suspension apart before the season starts, and came across a few issues that I could use some advice on.

First- My rear shocks are blown. They are some Bilstein circle track motorsports shocks and are rebuildable, but that will probably take many weeks to get done and cost $500+. To tide me over until I go through with that, I went looking for some off the shelf Bilsteins. Apparently no B6s are available for the M3, only the B8 with shorter bodies for lowered vehicles. Since I'm at stock ride height, I didn't think those would be the best idea for rallycross duty. But I did see that B6s are available for 328s, so I took a leap of faith and placed an order for them. Can anyone think of a reason why they won't work on my M3? I bought them from FCP Euro, so if I blow them, I can get them replaced for free at any time.

Second- I want more front camber, but due to my massive front coilovers and the redrilling of my shock towers to accommodate my Subaru top mounts, my options are somewhat limited. I've been running camber shims the last 6 years, but even with a full stack I'm only getting something like -0.7*. And I have to run a 12mm spacer just to barely get my 17x8.5" summer wheels/tires to fit. So adding more shims may not really work as they would decrease clearance between the tire and the shock. I would prefer to be closer to -1.5 or 2*, but until recently I wasn't aware of a good way to get there. I was informed about using E46 control arms since they're wider and push the bottom of the wheel out further, increasing camber and clearance between the tire and the shock. That led me down a rabbit hole, and I wound up looking at the Turner tubular control arm kit. They too are wider like the ZHP arms, but they also have a spherical outer joint (which is replaceable), plus the ball joints are actually replaceable as well. Total cost, $430. In talking with a sales rep, he believes that at my ride height (about stock?) they would provide about -1* of camber. Combined with my shims, that would get me exactly where I want to be. Ignoring price, can anyone think of any downsides of running these? Having replaceable bearings and ball joints is a pretty significant upgrade over E46 arms, at that alone seems to make them worth the additional cost.

https://www.turnermotorsport.com/p-4...arms-kit-race/

And while I was browsing I came across the Turner monoball FCABs. They're fully sealed and regreasable, so they sound like they can hold up to rallycross duty. I've been running stock rubber FCABs this whole time, since I wasn't sure about delrin/poly stuff when I was originally building the car. I think the price is pretty reasonable at $180, and they should remove a lot of slop from the front suspension. I read/watched some positive reviews of them and it sounds like they're actually pretty good in terms on NVH on the street, so I pulled the trigger on them and plan to install before the first race.

https://www.turnermotorsport.com/p-394374-turner-motorsport-control-arm-monoball-upgrade/

I'll post up a review after I install them.

[95maxrider]

There's nothing like an upcoming race to push me to post up a review of the previous race! But before a review of the first race of the season, I should probably go over the things I did to get the car ready for the season.

We left off with me discovering one of my rear shocks was blown, and the other was leaking a lot of fluid. Time was running out before the race so I ordered and installed a set of Bilstein B6 rear shocks for a 328, since only the shortened B8s are available for the M3. I decided to install some larger OEM bumpstops and new rubber bushings for the Rogue Engineering rear shock mounts.



While I had things apart I also installed new upper and lower springs pads since mine were chewed up. I replaced my 5mm pads with 10mm pads to raise up the rear of the car just a bit. I also wanted to see if I could adjust my rear spring perches, but after soaking in Evaporust for a few days, then many days of PB Blaster, they still wouldn't budge, so I gave up.



Same story in the front. I bought a few different coilover wrenches and was able to get the lower perch loose, but no amount of penetrating oil and whacking with a big hammer could loosen the top perch. Damn galvanic corrosion!



No matter. Taking the advise of my buddy Chris, I decided it might be wise to service my front struts while I was installing the new springs. Turns out this was a good idea, since they had a good amount of water and dirt in them.



I then had to get creative with the edging from a poster to scrape out all of the old grease from the housing. This one wasn't so bad, the other one was much dirtier.



With new grease smeared all over the place, I reassembled with the new 300 lb springs, replacing the old 250 lb springs. Big thanks to Chris for walking me through the process!

Then it was on to the diff. I have been running a stock 3.15 LSD since last fall when my 3.38 started to fail, but I got it rebuilt locally by Mark at Danville Diffs with new bearings, seals, and 3 clutch packs. I took the opportunity to upgrade the diff cover to the HD Dorman unit. It certainly looks quite a bit beefier than the stock piece.



Keep in mind this reassembly is all happening the day before the first race. By the time I had it all ready it was 6 PM and I went for a test drive. Unfortunately, I was greeted by the awful sounds of my 3.38 diff whining and crunching. Apparently my bearings weren't bad, but the ring and pinion sure were! I was in no mood to reinstall the old 3.15, so I said f*ck it, I'm gonna send it as-is and hope it makes it through the race. It whined so loud that I had to drive to and from the race with headphones on....

[95maxrider]

Alright, so on to a late review of the first event of the season. It seems like we got booted from Summit Point, so all events for 2022 are going to be at Panthera. In some ways this is good, as PTC is much more fun than SP, but it's also two hours away instead of one, so it makes for a longer day. Plus, if/when things break you're much farther from civilization. And as someone who actually drives their car to events, this can present challenges.....

So with my super annoying diff whining and grumbling the whole way there (which of course gets louder the faster you go, and I'm doing 80 for most of the drive) my headphones came in handy and saved me from going insane. While installing tires at the venue I decided to inspect the diff real quick and noticed it was leaking some fluid from both the DS axle seal and the front seal. WTF? It never leaked before, and now it's leaking after being fully rebuilt?? Fantastic. I hoped the leaks would be slow, as I didn't bring any extra fluid.

The day starts out well with Eric taking a commanding lead on the first run, with me in second. That's pretty much how things stayed all morning until my last AM run when I made a mistake that cost me dearly. I hadn't been pleased at how slowly I was taking the first corner, so I tried to go a little faster. This was stupid, and led me to go wide, then lock up the brakes as I was facing a wall with 4 cones, which was right in front of a mud pit. Rather than take the 8 second penalty and deal with the mud, I made the (foolish?) decision to back up and go around the cone wall. That's how allergic I am to hitting cones. In the end, the run was 7 seconds slower than it should have been, so maybe it wasn't the worst idea in the world. Eric dominated the morning, laying down the fastest time on five of the six (or was it seven?) runs. My mistake dropped me down into 4th, with Stephen and Josh now ahead of me. I got faster in the afternoon, laying down four fast runs and got myself back into second. But then I started getting slower. My diff got even louder, and I don't know if that got in my head and made me slow down, or if something else was going on, but I was slipping and my lead over Stephen was getting smaller. In the end I just barely held onto 2nd, some 7 seconds back from Eric in first. I was just happy it was over and my car was still in one piece. I also noticed at some point that there was a new noise coming from the engine bay, like a pulley was going bad or something, but I ignored it.



Oh, and Tyler Powers @overheatingslacker got some pics of me in action!







I popped my headphones in for the drive home and hoped I still had enough fluid in my diff. It had been leaking all day, but it was impossible to know how much since I didn't have the special 14mm hex tool to open the fill plug. About halfway home my battery light started to flicker intermittently. The more I drove, the more it stayed on, and I could see my system voltage was dropping down into the 12s on my gauge. But it would recover and stay around 14, then drop back down. I turned everything off in the car that I could, and hoped I could limp it home. I was torn between trying to drive faster to keep the revs up to help the alternator change, and going slow for the sake of the diff. In the end I made it home, frazzled and exhausted. I should also mention that the day before the race I checked the battery in the car and it had almost gone flat, so I trickle charged it back up. But when I unplugged the charger, I could hear an strange whine coming from the battery. With the battery being 4 years old, I figured I would replace it as a preventative measure. It's possible the battery was so bad it was messing with the alternator, but I didn't want to take any chances so I ordered a new alternator to go with the new battery.

While I was waiting for parts to arrive I decided I would do the "Big 3" wiring upgrade. Well, really "Big 2" since the battery is in the trunk and I'm not running a new wire all the way back there from the alternator. I pulled the engine->chassis ground and the battery->chassis ground and got to work with some 1/0 wire I had lying around. If I had to guess, I would say that the factory wiring was either 4 or 6 gauge. I got curious to see what it looked like so I cut it open and was unpleasantly surprised to see all the wires coated in something dark:



Yeah, there's no way current was moving along those wires the way it should. It didn't look like normal corrosion to me, does anyone know what this is? This was from the engine/chassis cable, which is near the exhaust manifolds. Could it be heat damage? To be safe, I ordered some spark plug wire insulation stuff to try and protect my new cable. I got busy with my super crimper and made my new cables.



I then started working on replacing the alternator, and discovered the one in the car sounded like a bags of rocks when I spun the shaft, so I'm guessing it was the culprit for the noise I was hearing at the race. Unfortunately the reman unit I got had messed up threads on the shaft, so I'm waiting on a replacement to arrive.

I got around to replacing the air vent in the trunk, which has been letting copious amounts of water and dust into the trunk. The replacement is looking much more promising!



And with that, I'm finally caught up! My 3.38 diff is trash, so Mark located a 3.23 and is getting it ready for me. It should get here by the weekend, so I'll slap it in and cross my finger that this one doesn't suck.

[Laminar]

Yeah, there's no way current was moving along those wires the way it should. It didn't look like normal corrosion to me, does anyone know what this is? This was from the engine/chassis cable, which is near the exhaust manifolds. Could it be heat damage?

It's corrosion of some kind - the internet can't agree on if it's because of insulation breaking down, moisture, heat coming in from outside of the wires, or heat generated by the current going through the wires. Oftentimes you can't even strip the insulation back to get clean wire, the discoloration goes the full length of the cable. I definitely see it on the wiring in my car, though I haven't checked any of the larger big power wires.

[95maxrider]

It's corrosion of some kind - the internet can't agree on if it's because of insulation breaking down, moisture, heat coming in from outside of the wires, or heat generated by the current going through the wires. Oftentimes you can't even strip the insulation back to get clean wire, the discoloration goes the full length of the cable. I definitely see it on the wiring in my car, though I haven't checked any of the larger big power wires.

Yeah, I cut that cable at the mid point, so it definitely ran all the way through the length of the cable. If you still have your stock ground cables, I encourage you to replace them with something bigger and fresh! I've got a stash of EB Flex welding cable in a variety of gauges that frequently comes in handy. It's rated for 105*C (221* F) and is oxygen-free copper.

[95maxrider]

Alright, so we had rally-x #2 this past Sunday, but before I get to that I need to update what happened before that.

While the car was incapacitated in my garage waiting for a new diff to be built, I had some time to do other things that would normally be ignored, like replacing the brake pedal switch. I've been getting warnings on the little computer screen about this thing for over a year, so it was high time I finally resolve the issue.



Took me a long time to realize the engine has to be running so you can press the brake pedal down far enough to push the new switch into place.

I removed the seat to make the job easier, which gave me the opportunity to do a few tasks I had been putting off. First up was redrilling the mounting holes on the seat bracket plates so allow the seat to sit further away from the steering wheel. I'm only 5' 10" and I have to have the seat pushed back all the way to be comfortable. After drilling new holes, the seat now sits 1.75" further rearward, which should allow taller people to drive the car if necessary. While I had everything apart, I decided to clean up those plates and paint them. But before I did that, I decided to make them a little safer. IIRC, my good ol' country buddies were the ones who originally made these brackets back when I had the E28, and the welds for the nuts left a little to be desired.



Now that I have a welder, I figured I could try to make them a little stronger. This was far and away the thickest material I've welded on, and it was really nice not having to worry about blowing through it all the time. I'm sure these welds aren't perfect, but they sure look a lot better than what was there before.



Then I got carried away trimming off excess metal from the plates and smoothing out the edges, until they went from this:



To this:



Hooray, that project is finally done!

While the seat was out, I bolted the b pillar trim to the pillar, as all of the plastic mounting tabs were broken and the only thing that's been holding it in place are the door rubber pieces. It ain't going anywhere now!



I also "rebuilt" the gas pedal bushings.



And insulated the new big ground wire in the engine bay:



I was also waiting on a new alternator to arrive, as the first one I got from FCP Euro had threads that looked like this:



The alternator and rebuilt diff didn't arrive until the afternoon before the race, so I scrambled to get everything back together. Thankfully the charging system seems to work great, and my diff is nice and quiet. Mark at Danville Diffs located a 3.23 to replace my 3.38 and built it back up with new bearings and 3 clutch packs.

[95maxrider]

So as usual I'm behind on posting things up, but before I get to that I just wanted to run my desired alignment specs past everyone and see if you had any input. I'm basing this off what I read in The Definitive Alignment Guide for your E36 M3. I'm setting my car up as a cross between a street car and an auto-x setup.

Front
Camber: -1.0* (per side) (this is currently limited due to front coilover size, ride height, and no camber plates. In a perfect world I would probably run -2*)
Toe: 0.10-0.15* total toe out

Rear
Camber: -1.5* to -2* (per side)
Toe: 0.20* total toe in

I'm getting the car aligned on Friday and figured I would see if anyone has any thoughts on my desired specs. Thanks!

[Laminar]

I think your specs look good.

I've found that my car is sensitive to rear toe - at about 1/4" (~0.31*) toe in, it's extremely stable and very resistant to the rear coming out except under the most ham-fisted applications of power. At 1/8" (~0.15*) toe in, it's much more willing to dance around in, say, a slalom or under trail braking.

[aeronaut]

Thinking through this....nit picking...I'd think in a rally car you'd want zero toe up front.
Several reasons, but the one I'm thinking through, is that toe-out increases the "effective" Ackermann angle, which for a rally car you'd want less Ackermann, not more.
Correct?

[95maxrider]

Thinking through this....nit picking...I'd think in a rally car you'd want zero toe up front.
Several reasons, but the one I'm thinking through, is that toe-out increases the "effective" Ackermann angle, which for a rally car you'd want less Ackermann, not more.
Correct?

I wish I knew the answer to that! Keep in mind 99% of the miles put on this car are on the street. That said, my buddy who does stage rally in his BRZ and knows a thing or two about setup runs 0 toe to some slight toe out on his car, but that thing is far more dedicated to racing than my car. Why do you think a rally car needs less Ackermann than say an auto-x car?

[aeronaut]

Less ackerman is better when in oversteer.

[scoobiedoo2029]

theres a rally driving school in new england i believe that has a bunch of e30's, might be worth reaching out and seeing what kind of front end alignments they run as the front suspension in the e30/e36 is basically the same. some of the drift control arm options have adjustable ackerman, i think this is to run desired alignment on center while keeping toe in check at high steering angles.

found it:
https://teamoneil.com/rally-school/

[95maxrider]

Time for a quick non-M3 related project! The M3 has been dutifully racing for the last year with nothing very exciting happening, hence the lack of updates.

I set up my new 80 gallon air compressor (19 CFM at 90 psi), routed all of the PEX piping, set up the air filtration/dryer, and ordered a whole lot of other supplies and completed my first "real" painting project on my mom's Acura TL. I've done stuff with 2K rattle cans before, but now I've got real paint guns, and real high quality primers, paints, and clear coats. Since my mom doesn't exactly have an eye for paint perfection, her car was the perfect test bed for all of my new tools so I could make my mistakes on her car before moving onto my own. I made plenty of mistakes, but was able to correct almost all of them, and in the end I was very happy with how the job turned out.





After the stud welder and puller:



After epoxy primer on all bare metal and then body filler:



After 2K primer and blocking:





After clear base and base coat:



And after clear coat, cutting, and buffing:



Blending into the door and bumper were out of the scope of this project; my mom just wanted it fixed enough so rust wouldn't become an issue in the future. I made a ton of mistakes, but learned from all of them. The rear quarter panel "rust repair" project I did on the M3 three years ago will need to be re-done (properly this time with cutting and welding) as there are some rust bubbles coming through my repair area. Now that I've got the hang of all my new toys/tools I can tackle the M3!

[aeronaut]

Looks good to me!

[Laminar]

Great work! I'll drop my car by next week and you can get that all fixed up, too.

[95maxrider]

Great work! I'll drop my car by next week and you can get that all fixed up, too.

Lol, sounds like a plan.

[benjamine30]

What rear coilover are you using on the e30 with the e28 rear arms ? Thanks

[95maxrider]

What rear coilover are you using on the e30 with the e28 rear arms ? Thanks

Are you in the right thread? I don't have an E30 and I'm not running E28 rear arms.

[95maxrider]

Well the 2023 rallycross season just wrapped up and I was able to pull off a season championship for the super competitive MR class, so I'm pretty pumped about that! The car just keeps chugging along, so there haven't been any updates. Until now..........

Remember a few years ago when I did a very amateur attempt at "rust repair" on the rear quarter panel of the M3? Well, that work had started to fail and rust bubbles were popping through. Here's a reminder of what it looked like back then before I did my janky repairs:





And here's what it looked like before I started the project a month or so ago:





I knew that I was going to need fresh metal to do this properly, and thankfully since then I taught myself how to "weld" and "paint". I bought a replacement section for the outer part of the fender, but I needed something for the inner section too, so I found a car being parted out locally and went to chop out what I could.



There were some other rusty areas that I wanted to repair at the same time:

Under the DS tail light:



And around the trim on the trunk:



Thankfully I now also have a big media blasting tank, so I can get rid of rust correctly.

I started by taking it down to bare metal to see how far out the previous damage extended. I think I counted something like 9 layers of primer/paint on this panel! The original paint, the hack repair done before I bought the car from when it was t-boned, and then my first hack job.



Lots of filler down here too



Oooh boy



The inside of the wheel well was all crumpled up from the accident. Welding this was going to be a real challenge.



So I started by cutting off the outer panel, and was greeted by an unholy mess on the back side of the inner panel.







I then cut out as much of the inner panel as I could, and blasted the rest with coal slag to prepare it for welding and eventual paint.



This is where I want to note that according to my measurements, this inner sheet was something like 24-25 gauge sheet metal, and the metal remaining on the car was even thinner due it parts of it having started to rust. As someone who barely knows how to weld, this presented another challenge.

I eventually got it welded up as best I could. Some of the areas that were tucked up in the body were so hard to access and the metal so thin that I just couldn't get them to weld. Not to mention I was trying to get the shape of my crumpled inner panel to match up with the one I cut from the other car. I eventually had to put my OCD aside and just accept it wasn't going to be perfect.



I then used my Mastercoat silver primer on the panel. I am DONE with POR15, as it is JUNK! Mastercoat is an industrial coating and has excellent results in various salt spray tests and is used on a lot of old muscle car restorations. From what I've seen and read, it performs better than my SPI Epoxy Primer, which itself is known as a top of the line primer and is great at preventing rust. The prep work needed for Mastercoat is also much simpler than that mess you have to go through for POR15. It's pretty damn thick and had no problem sealing up pinholes and other gaps between panels.

[95maxrider]

I decided to cut out some more gnarly looking metal and replace it with fresher stuff...







And I did my best to tie the inner metal into what I started calling the "middle" metal around the door arch. It was originally one piece from the factory, but there was no way I could replicate that.



I coated the inside out the outer sheet with more Mastercoat



And then spent a LONG time test fitting the damn thing. I started the test fit going from left to right, but it wasn't until I got everything on the left dialed in that I realized I should have gone from right to left! The gap with the door was all messed up, so I had to re-do a whole lot of work in order to get the door gap corrected.



But eventually, I got it done. I didn't put any gap (usually 1/16" IIRC) between the panels, as I didn't want to risk blowing through to gap. I am a complete amateur after all. This also led me to keep the settings a little low on the welder. It would have been one thing if I had access to the back of the panel and could use a copper heat sink, but I didn't, and so I welded it up with basically no gap and slightly cold weld settings. Sure enough, I didn't blow through it once, but the lack of gap did cause some warpage when the pieces couldn't expand properly when they heated up. I did blow each weld off with my air gun to keep the temps down though. I did a few rosette welds along the door curvature where the two pieces met, but for the most part there was a big gap between them that I later filled with glass filler.



Then I pulled the car out to strip off the rest of the paint. I got some paint stripping discs for my angle grinder and got busy! I discovered some previously unknown body work and a lot of filler up around the window...



So here's the rust under the DS tail light after peeling away some paint:



Stripped



And blasted with coal slag. Bye bye rust, and hello hole!



And the same for the trunk rust:





All clean!

[95maxrider]

With the car back in the garage it was time to break out the welder again and get rid of the holes in the trunk lid from the old spoiler. It wasn't a factory spoiler, and I think the E36 looks damn good without one, so I wanted to get rid of it. When I removed it I also saw it wasn't sealed up with anything, so it was probably letting some water into the trunk.



Access inside the trunk was decent on one side, but inaccessible on the other, so the welds weren't great. But I eventually got them good enough.



And I found out why there was so much filler under the rear window:



I wonder if those are remnants from previous stud welding/pulling? The metal around the holes seems awfully smooth for that.

I did a few rounds of proper cleaning of the metal with the SPI waterbourne wax and grease remover, and laid down a few coats of epoxy primer. This helped highlight some damaged areas that I couldn't see before, like this one by the tail light:



In my excitement/nervousness to spray the epoxy, I forgot to tack rag the surface before spraying, so I had a lot of debris in it and I had to waste a lot of time smoothing it out before moving on. I eventually laid down some of the 3M Platinum body filler and got things level.





Since I had gone through to bare metal in a number of places, I laid down another coat or two of epoxy before moving onto the 2K. Once again, I had globby areas like the ones shown below in some spots, and as a newbie, I'm not sure what to make of them. Did I just get my overlap wrong in that pass? Was I moving too slow with the gun? Most areas turned out okay. I'm using an LPH400 at 26 psi for epoxy and clear, and 20 psi for base.



Can anyone hazard a guess as to what I'm doing to cause that?

During the paint phase I was under a huge time crunch to get the whole job finished before the final race of the year, so I didn't sand certain steps nearly as well as I should have, and it came back to bite me. I eventually was able to get things smooth enough for the base coat, but it could have been even better if I had more time. I sprayed thinned epoxy as sealer over the 2K, and while it sprayed better/smoother than regular epoxy, I got a few areas of the globby stuff like shown above, so I had to smooth out all of the sealer before spraying base. I took it up to 600 grit, but I think 800 or 1000 would have been even better if I had the time. Thankfully I sprayed two coats of sealer (instead of the recommended one) so I didn't sand through in any areas to metal or 2K.



Thankfully the base went on great, with only one small run where I got my overlap wrong. I did two coverage coats, and then I tried my hand at a drop coat to cover/hide any mottling/striping. I had plenty of that when I did my hack job three years ago with rattle cans, but this came out perfect!



I used the SPI Production Clear and sprayed 4 coats, but it didn't go down as smooth as I was hoping, especially on the horizontal surface of the trunk. There's a lot of orange peel in the finish, and I need to spend a lot of time cutting and buffing it. I thought I was spraying it on wet enough, but I guess I wasn't. How can I fix that in real-time as I'm spraying? If I see my first coat isn't smooth/wet enough, can I immediately lay down another layer on top? Do I need to treat horizontal surfaces different than vertical ones?

In the end, I think I can save it with cutting and buffing, but I'm embarrassed by the initial finish. But I got it done the afternoon before the race, so I'll take the win where I can get it.







Even with the poor finish, it sure has great shine and depth to it! I'm not sure how people can blend this stuff with older clear coat, even if it's in good condition and shiny, because it just looks so good. Granted, that wasn't the goal on this car, since the paint/CC is shot on the two PS doors, but I'm just curious. This job is to tide me over for a few years until I can respray the whole car in the factory Estoril Blue, like this:



Drool....

[Laminar]

Great work! I have a lot of the same rust patterns that you had, plus my clearcoat is burning off from sitting out in the sun all summer. Your final product looks extremely nice.

[95maxrider]

I figured I would wrap up the paint process with pics of the cutting and buffing results. This was my process:


Assilex 1500 dry
Buflex 2500 dry
Trizact 8000 dry
ACA 3D 510 on a foam pad
ACA 3D 520 on a foam pad


For whatever reason, the orange peel/finish on the top of the trunk was horrible, while the finish on the vertical panels was acceptable. I'm not sure if it had something to do with the top of the trunk getting sprayed last in the process, or the flow from the fans behind me, but it was bad. But since I sprayed four coats of clear I figured I could sand it down pretty close to flat. Although I had done a little cutting and buffing on my first project, this was the first time I was able to take my time and really do it until I was happy. And in the end, I was very happy!


Trunk before:









Trunk after:








Rear quarter before:





and after:





C pillar before:





and after:





I've owned this car for 8 years now, and its primary purpose has been racing in rallycross, so the appearance has never been a top priority. It didn't help that so much of the paint was trashed, so I never thought it would be worth the effort to do more than hit it with the power washer. But with it looking so good in the back, and with the contrast so great with the other panels, I thought I would finally detail the whole car. The paint on the passenger side is some junky respray, while I think the paint on the driver's side is original. In the end, I was able to bring back a lot of shine, and the new paint doesn't stick out so bad.





















So that wraps up this project. I made a lot of mistakes, and learned a lot from them, so my next painting project will be ever better

[Laminar]

That looks amazing, great work! It's way too nice to rallycross now.