It's update time again. I had two weeks off over Easter so I tried to spend as much time on the car as possible. The aim was to finish off the painting. The shell was actually painted last September but winter meant that I couldn't really finish things off and I had to do a lot of fettling to get everything to fit.

Anyway, on with the show. As I say, the target was to finish off the painting. This entailed quite a lot of work to be honest; just menial, laborious stuff like sanding, so it was a bit dull. As with the rest of the paint work, this is very much being done for a purpose. The finish is far from perfect, but it's good enough for the job and, once there's a few stickers on it, you won't really notice the imperfections anyway.

Started with some quite easy stuff, painting the rear spoiler and rear bumper. With these finished and fitted, the rear end was looking better already. Much better than the yellow/red "Noddy" look in pictures above anyway:



I stripped down the front end and spent a lot of time working on the front wings, firstly to get them to clear the doors when they opened, and also modifying the wheel arch profile to suit my car's odd wheel base length. Cutting the arches wasn't all that fun, but they came out ok. I also painted the bonnet. This hasn't come out all that well to be honest. There was a slight reaction in the paint, so it looks like it has little pin-*****s all over the place. Very odd but, again, with some stickers on it, who cares. Anyway, refitted with catches and washer jets back in:



You can also see that I painted the jacking points red, just because really. The roof vent was also painted and fitted with the obligatory sticker. I don't really like the position of this to be honest, but I didn't want to mess about drilling new holes for it and filling the old ones. You can also just about see one of my favourite features - a genuine Ford aerial blanking cap!



Then we'll just skip to the end shall we?! Wings were finally finished after making side repeater holes, reprofiling arches and doing various other things. Front bumper was painted (and then promptly fell off the stands so had to be painted again) and then the whole lot put on, along with the door mirrors. The panels aren't sitting quite right currently, I need to move the bonnet back a touch so it lines up with the bumper better and I'm waiting for the ally bolts for everything to turn up, but you get the idea. You can also see the vents in the back of the wings too:











The side skirts have been painted but aren't refitted yet. That's a job for the weekend. The headlights are also still missing thanks to the drama with the front bumper. When it all fell over, one of the stands smacked into a headlight casing that was drying near it, promptly taking a couple of big chunks out of the gel coat - bummer. This is going to need a little filler to repair it and I ran out of time to do that. Oh, and I need to fit all the bits of trim to the front bumper too, as it's just the bare shell currently.

Next on the list is to have the gearbox rebuilt with some new gears and my Quaife diff, then the exhaust and engine ancillaries can all go back on, which should help to bring the front end down a little bit. Quite a lot of weight has been lost from the front of the car, so some suspension adjustment will be essential, and I may end up changing the front springs, depending on how it all works out.

Until next time.