After washing up the bird yesterday and getting her back to her deserved glory I decided that I wanted to do something a little more to liven her up some.  So I decided to try my hand at a little painting and do the CETA mod to the rear bumper.  Here are a few shots of the progress and the end result.  I am pleased with the way it came out considering I have never done any auto paint work before.  I am considering making the same changes to the side mirrors and sail panel..

Shot of the bumper as it came with the car.  All the same color as the body.

 

And here we go after spending some time wet sanding it with 400 grit to take the clear off.  And in some cases the original paint as well.  Oops!

 

Here we are after masking everything else off and washing the bumper down with alcohol in order to make sure it was clean of any contaminants.

 

A progress shot after laying down a few coats.  It’s starting to shape up nicely.

 

After letting the paint dry for a little while I removed the masking and we can get a better idea of the finished product.

 

And here is an outside daytime shot the next day to get a better idea of how it looks out in the real world as opposed to a bright garage.

 

 

Since I have bought the car I have been mostly making power upgrades with little thought to the supporting mods.  I decided to do something about that.  Here is the pile of things that just went into beefing up the rear suspension to help keep the ass end planted on the ground, eliminate wheel hop, increase traction and center the rear under the car.

From Founders Performance we have Lower Control Arm relocation brackets, on car adjustable Lower Control Arms with poly/rod ends, on car adjustable Panhard Bar with rod/rod ends, adjustable Torque Arm and from UMI we have a relocation crossmember for the transmission that will take the torque arm off the tail housing.

 

The first thing to come out was the old LCAs.  Here is a side by side of the stock stamped steel ones next to the new tubular adjustables.

 

With that out of the way it was time to put in the relocation brackets which has multiple mounting points to change the angle at which the arms apply force.  The adjustability of these will allow me to move the rear front to back to center it under the car and give the larger tires some room if needed.  The only issue with this is the e-brake bracket wraps around the stock mounting.  Some folks cut part of the e-bracket off but I opted to just bend one leg of it out of the way.  Once that was done the new brackets bolted right in with a little coaxing.  Here is what they look like after it is all back together.

 

Next up was the PHB.  This one was as simple as just removing 2 bolts, swapping the part and bolting it back in.  The adjustability of this one will let me move the rear side to side to center it under the car.  Here is a shot of the new one next to the stock stamped steel.

 

Now that the easy part was done, it was on to replacing the TA and trans crossmember.  The pieces came out fairly easily with the exception of one of the through bolts on the diff that holds in the rear of the TA.  I had to play around with putting load on the suspension and liberal use of a hammer in order to get them out.  Here is the difference between the stock and new torque arms.

 

Here is a comparison of the stock crossmember with the UMI one that relocated the TA mounting point.

 

After everything was removed I went to begin installing the new mounting bracket and found that the new longer bolts I picked up that go through the diff would not fit into the bracket as they were spaced for the stock 14mm bolts and the new ones were 9/16.  After a quick trip to Lowes I drilled the holes out to 9/16 and everything went in smoothly as far as the mounting bracket goes.  Getting the rod ends to line up and mount to the bracket some a little more challenging but after playing with various loads on the rear I was able to get it mounted up as well.  At this point I thought I was well on my way to being done.  I was wrong.  The relocation crossmember was an absolute nightmare to get the TA bolted to.  It comes with these allen keyed button bolts instead of regular hex heads for whatever insane reason.  It was hard enough to just get the TA to fit in the mounting bracket and get the bolts through but tightening them down became a whole other obstacle.  The top two bolts were in a space that it just wasn’t possible to get a ratchet into so I had to become creative once again.  With it being button head bolts I couldn’t just use two wrenches and call it a day.  Instead I had to take my ratchet allen socket, try to hold it in the bolt head while also holding a box wrench on the shank of the allen socket to keep it from turning while using another box wrench to tighten the nut on the other side maybe an eighth of a turn at a time.  It took forever.

Once everything was back together I did some adjusting on the pinion angle and think I have it dialed in pretty close to where I want it.  All I need to do now is center the rear with the LCAs and PHB and the upgrade will be complete.  Here is a shot from the back with everything installed.

 

I went for a quick test drive and the car definitely feels more solid and responsive now.  I could tell from the faint smell of some burnt rubber that a tire was rubbing under harder than average acceleration so I won’t be driving it unless necessary until I have the rear centered.  The real truth will be how it reacts to a hard launch and WOT pulls but I am quite optimistic about the results.