mcgee, I still need to get the front suspension done and tested, I already have some ideas to change some of it as I'm not 100% confinced it would turn as sharp as I want it to, but I'm not going to waste anytime on it now before I can actually test it.

Don_1200 I bought it form a fellow forum member called rezlo, he is the owner of http://shop.rezlo.com/SA/index.php . It was a special order for a few of his customers, look at their site: http://www.race-technology.com/dash2_2_31.html , looking at +- £500.00 +VAT

Thanks for the kind words guys.

Baie baie nice julle ouens modifi ook alles maar julle doen dit baie profesoineel dit is uitstekend gedoen . Julle laat skoon die ander ouens op die forum soos amateure lyk!!!!! Wanneer het julle bietjie 'n event hier in gauteng ek sal baie graag wil kom kyk???

Thanks GTR31, but we are just normal peeps working from home, just trying our best.

Maybe in the next year or two we will have a event close to Gauteng.

17 September 2011 - Spray Painting II

Having just returned from a 4 day road trip thru the Klein Karoo, I was looking forward to a complete weeks work on Datto, this time was set aside to get the car sprayed in its BRE colour scheme.

Monday:

Arriving home Monday morning, I wasted no time in getting the front suspension back together after the mountings was sprayed on the previous visit, this would enable us to move the car around much easier. Actual work started on getting the car ready for colour, a few spots had to be sanded and primed. First was getting the spots ready, then the sanding started again, the whole car had to be flatted again, this included the dreaded engine bay. Afterwards the door and window openings was masked up and we moved the car outside, there we covered the suspension parts with cling wrap and newspapers before the fixed spots was primed. A few hours later we sanded the primed areas and masked the rest of the car for the white to be sprayed. The rest of the day was used to get the doors, bonnet, boot lid and front apron all ready for colour the next day. I took the time to cover the window frames with cling wrap as this was the last things I wanted to wet sand.

Tuesday:












Up nice and early to get everything in place for the first coat of Nissan Formula White to be sprayed, this kept us busy for more than half the day, the rest of the day was used to spray the doors. Once this was done I really wanted to see how the Nissan Marine Blue will look once sprayed and seeing that we still had a hour or two in hand, i started moving the bonnet, boot lid, front apron and a few other small parts outside. Once the first coat of blue was sprayed, I was convinced I selected the correct blue for the car.

Wednesday:

The whole day was used to flat mask lines, mask up the rest of the white and get the lines for the blue correct, this took me more or less the whole day and was busy till quite late with the doors.

Thursday:
















Finally the day arrived which I was waiting for so long, covering the car in blue paint. Seeing that we do not have a spray booth and all the fancy equipment like professionals, the weather looked good with no wind, we started with the engine bay and the rest of the car, then applied the first coat to the top of the boot lid and bonnet, everything went fine, just finished the second coat on the car, and all of a sudden the wind pick up and covered the car with dust, we continued spraying the engine to eliminate a lot of time consuming sanding, that was the end of it, we decided to stop, let it dry and wet sand it the next day. My father, being on a roll, decided that we can spray in the doorway of the shed, a hour or two after we had the doors hanging 2 at a time, extractor fan rigged and ready to finish them. once all the doors was done, we quickly wet sanded the boot lid, let it dry, warm up and covered it in another 3 coats. Being very disappointed seeing that we would have to redo the car, but seeing the finish result on the bottled, we knew it would be worth it.

Friday:
















Started work at 6am the morning, 2deg Celsius outside. While wet sanding the car in this cold, resulted in fingers acting from pain. At about 10am we were done with sanding and started getting everything ready for spraying. As my father started applying the first coat we knew the sanding was well worth it, the end result was better than we hoped for. I started to remove all the newspaper from the car to see the end result, but my father quickly stopped me just before I wanted to remove the papers from the door and window openings, as we still had to spray the area behind the grill Matt Black, this area was flatted and we had a little time left and decided to spray all the parts which needed to be Matt Black.

Saturday:
























First order of business was to spray the front Matt Black, as I was like a child with new toys to get rid of all the newspaper, to get a better picture my father fitted a front fender, I'm very satisfied with the end results considering the conditions, some of the panels have the occasional particle of dust and a few miggies sampled the paint and is now a part of it, at least I have a few momentums. The rest of the day was used to spray the rest of the parts Black, White and Silver. Later the evening I masked the underside of the car again to give the bottom a final coat of grey paint to cover all the over spray etc., before we settled for a few cold ones.

Sunday:










Spend the better part of 4hours crawling and rolling around under the car with a grey paint brush. Just before 12am I was finished and started assembling the first parts, decided on the rear shock mounts and supports as it would be the easiest and required no other small work before it could be fitted. I must say, this must have been the best feeling since I started with the project, all the hard work, countless hours of work, frustration etc etc, all melted away with each bolt being fastened.

That looks freaking awsome racetech excellent paint job !! Hopefull get myne on the road end of october !! Do you think you can mayby fabricate the same front and rear suspention + diff setup that you have got for the 1400 bakkie??

Thanks,

The easiest for the rear would be to install a complete E30 subframe, the same as we have done to my brothers 1200.

First would be to test the front suspension, but it is quite easy to do yourself. I'll share my cad drawings, but making it for someone else at this point of the game is not on the table, to much man hours required.

Thank you that would help a lot !!!

yes!

love it, especially the 2 tone

Awesome work. I presume the relief in the rear floor allows you to raise the cradle and rear end center, thus lowering the car to an "insane" ride height.

Quote:

The ride height won't be to insane, as it will be a road legal car and towed via a A Frame to events for the time being, we are currently working on 100mm from the ground to the cross member. The biggest reason for the cut out was the diff mounting points and to get the LCA horizontal with the ground.