Look great!
Have a run down list of what all was done, without having to read through 25 pages?
YES!
This thread makes me want to learn how to fiberglass so I can fix my own car instead of paying $$$$ to get it fixed.
Great work man, well done!
OOF. Um…I’ll try:
- Bought molds said to be made from OEM focus RS sheetmetal and OEM bumpers. Paid arm & leg to get these from British Columbia
- Molds arrive.
- Make set of front fenders
- test fit with headlights and OEM RS bumper from previous purchase. Realize fender molds are shit.
- make rear quarters hoping to find out they are of better quality than front. Thanks God…They are good!
- splice arch from shitty molded fender to stock fender in hopes of building a fender that fits well enough to build a new mold. Get about 80% there and find OEM sheetmetal fenders for $550. Buy them
- remove glass and trim from rear of car. Cut it open and panel-bond and rivet molded fiberglass quarterpanels in. Spent WEEKS getting the bodywork 100% right
- Remove trim/grab handle from hatch, shave ford emblem by welding a scrap of plate on the hatch and using fusor on the trim
- build inner wheelwell flanges to connect new quarter arches to existing inner fender area. They were bonded/riveted to the arch, and welded to the unibody
- High-build prime the rear quarters, and block them out flat
- Seal, paint, and clear entire car.
- Start wetsanding, realize I didn’t have the gun setup properly and the clear was dry-sprayed. FUCK Re-sand entire car down to primer again. This takes over 30hrs of work by hand.
- repaint entire car, fighting paint-lift the entire way. Put 4 heavy coats of clear on to be able to wetsand and buff later
- make molds of OEM RS sheetmetal front fenders after verifying fitment
- modify RS wing to work with stock 3rd brakelight. Paint it, then mold it. Realize this was the wrong direction to do this, paint is ruined. Finish mold, repaint wing.
- modify rear door rub strips from a wagon model to fit RS rear quarters/arches
- paint fenders and all trip peices.
- replace nearly EVERY suspension component on the car
- make brackets to mount bumper to fenders
- put car together after all paint has cured
- wetsand and buff entire car to a paintjob worth looking at.
There are still some other details that I have not addressed yet, I’ll continue updating here as I further work on the car.
Also, with that list…insert a lot of swearing in and between all of the bullet points. there was a lot of swearing involved with this build. A LOT. Like enough to def go to hell a few times over. I still don’t think you know how much swearing was involved…take what you think is a lot of swearing, and multiply it by 18.234523
Yup, that about “sums it up”
Edit: Oh yeah, all of the smaller trim pieces like lights, bumper gill inserts, front splitter, foglight bezels, etc. were all painstakingly tracked down on ebay and forums, purchased one by one as they popped up available. I collected parts for over a year before even beggining the process of converting the car to an RS and starting the build thread. I’ve been WORKING on the car for about 1.5yrs now.
There.
We should park out cars together to see the differences
looks awesome.great job!
WOW and YIKES!
Lots of fab work and trial and error, trim to fit type of work.
Now do a rwd V8 swap.
Sweet mother of god…
Thanks for all the kudos everyone…
funny story, my dad tracked down the person who owned our '74 challenger in new jersey for almost two decades and the guy wanted some pics of what we’ve done since aquiring it…flipping through my photobucket and seeing just how much INSANE crap I’ve cranked out in 2yrs was both gratifying and horrifying…I don’t know how to feel about it lol
Car looks great. Well done on this project.
Just ditch the euro plate please, dubbin so hard.
Car looks awesome!!! I can’t wait to see it.
Alright, so moving on to some smaller details of the build now that the major components are taken care of…
after MONTHS AND MONTHS of trying to track down OEM focus RS foglights, I decided to research some other options. I bought some Projector foglights on ebay to give them a shot… They came in yesterday so I held one up in the bumper to see how they’d look
I think they’ll work out nicely, especially for my replica bumpers because those won’t have the mounting embossments on the back for OEM fogs. These ones come with mounting brackets, I think I’ll whip up something to mount them to the radiator support.
Very nice
Newest part. Got these on ebay for something like $31 shipped. they are ABS plastic, appear to be made with a vacuum form…great quality and no crappy seams/cuts/forming marks. Can’t wait to cut some holes.
Mocked them up and hopped in the back of my truck to snap a pic
are those on some special edition focus, or are you just in the mood for some rice?
I always forget the mk2 existed… it looks so good.