Thank you for attending, please, take a seat, we're about to begin.
On friday I made a purchase - an "R" front lip, with a crack, in melbourne, for $60 from a forum member.
It wasn't actually anywhere on the "need" list, and a long, long way down the "want" list. But it was cheap, and broken, and therefore will fit with the theme I've developed. I didn't set out to make a car that looks broken, but here we are, flocked up paint on the guard, scratches, blemishes, the works.
So I went to my sister's house to see if one of them wanted to come for a drive to Melbourne-town. The little-little sister did, so off we went. We left around 1:30PM, and didn't get back until just after 8. This is why I hate cities. 3 hours of highway driving, 4 hours of city driving, and we only traveled 400km, and 300km of that was on the highway!
Anyway! Behold! The Lip!
Detail of the crack:
The crack actually runs along in the seam at the top for a couple of centimeters as well, but meant the lip could be bent a little to actually fit on the parcel shelf, which meant the sister didn't have to nurse it all the way home. I didn't include that possibility in the trip description when selling the excursion, it was just going to be a "bonus"...
Once I was home I promptly took it out to the shed and set about fixing the crack, there was some glue on the back where the PO had tried to fix it. I knocked that off, scuffed the back with a bit of sandpaper, cut a piece of fiber glass mat to size, mixed up the resin, and proceeded directly to fiber glassing that mo-fo up.
Because I'd had the lip slightly bent on the parcel shelf for several hours in the heated comfort of the car, the lip kept re-bending itself, ruining my lovely glassing. I ended up making a giant jig out of old brake rotors, bricks and some oil containers. It worked better than anticipated.
I left it until just after lunch sunday, saw that it was no longer tacky, and grabbed the scissors to trim off the little bit of overhang, and instantly regretted it.
Yeah, that bubble on the left is from cutting the fiber glass with the scissors. No matter though, it didn't get to the crack, which is still visible - it was facing down in my jig, so I couldn't see it wasn't mated up properly. Oh well. It's on the bottom of the car, if you're under there and looking at it, I'm probably running you over
Random action shot:
Because the lip uses two existing holes, I mounted those, and propped the rest up with oil containers so I could mark the holes. Except it turns out that even at stock ride height, is too low to get my head, or the jack, or a drill, or anything under the car.
So I invented this technique: (Yes, I invented it. Me, not any of you other people that have done it previously!)
Full lock, drive the jack in behind the bumper, in front of the wheel, and you get all that awesome wheel arch space to move the jack handle!
As an aside, the jack stands probably saved my life today, I didn't have the release on the jack done all the way up, so it was slowly letting the car down. It took me three attempts to work out why I still couldn't remove the passenger side jack stand when I jacked the car up.
Marked holes, Drilled the holes, Bolts in the holes, and BAM! all done!
(This sentence was actually most of the afternoon, lip went on and off a bunch of times making sure the marks and holes were right)
Completion shot; with a coffee cup resting on the coffee table (edit; radiator cowl) I made the other week!
while I wait for files to arrive via the magic powers of my sister's car - the holes are too small for the jigsaw, and too big for the drill.
