This page is dedicated to showing the details of my body work

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Project Completed in Janurary 2007 (For Sale )

These step-by-step instructions will help you modify your stock grille to remove the emblem and slats for a cleaner look.

First, cut all of the little pieces out (I used tin snips).

 

Then, I broke off all the remaining pieces with some small pliers.

 

Then, I used the Dremel to sand off all the rest.

 

Next, I used Bondo to fill in the two gaps where the logo used to be and sanded it down nice and smooth.

 

Here is the gutter guard mesh I bought from Home Depot for $7 (pack of 5).  They are sold individually as well.

 

Then, the grille was painted and I put a piece of mesh behind it to see what it looked like.  I liked it so I cut a piece to fit and bent it around the back so that it would be held in place when I installed in on the car.  There is no glue or anything for the top grille, it is just held in place.

 

I liked the result, so I did the same thing to the grille on the bottom.  I had to cut the mesh the perfect size to fit in the opening since I could not just wrap it around the back. The lower grille was held in with hot glue and it actually looked good, nice and clean.

 

Project Completed in January 2007

This was the first time I attempted to modify the body of my car.  I did ALL the work myself (except for the paint), as you can see I am in some of the pics.

I basically did the following: installed z3 fenders, filled in all of the dents, filled in the pinstripes and door moldings on the sides of the cars, filled the gap between the fenders and the roof panel, and smoothed out/shaved the trunk and front grille.  I completed all of this work in a week, so it didn't look like this for long hahaha.  Unfortunately, I was really rushed; and since I didn't primer myself I couldn't see the imperfections in the smoothness (there were a lot).

The z3 fenders were difficult to put on since I had to take the mud guards and the bumper off (plus the fenders, of course). The process went smoothly enough; the fenders fit even though I had trouble getting the hood closed.  I drilled out the holes a little to allow for adjustment, and now there is no problem.  Taking off the fenders was pretty easy.  There are a few bolts across the top and some by the doors.  Just take things apart until it comes off lol.

 

Here are some pictures of me doing the work.  It was verrrry cold!

Here are pictures of the finished body work:

This is the car at Maaco. I took off all of the lights just in case.

 

The color:  Daytona Blue Effect off of a 2003 Nissan 350z
The paint job:  Maaco Presidential, 2 year gloss warranty
The price:  $50 for primer of bodywork, $50 for color change, $200 for single stage paint job.

They did a really great job, and it looks great.  The color is exactly what I wanted, and it is glossier than my car was before, even without a clear coat.  Here are some pics straight out of the shop.  I have not installed my mesh grilles yet.

 

Project Completed in January-February 2008

So, a year after my last paint job and round of body work, it was time to do it again!  This time, I removed the side markers, added the Erebuni side skirts and rear bumper, customized a 2002 Corolla front bumper and front lip kit, redid all of my old body work (including the trunk), added a BMW rear lip spoiler, changed my mirrors again, and repaired all of the new dents and rust.

These are my mirrors before I modified them.  I wanted to paint them blue.

 

Remove the lens by taking off one screw (you can actually get to it on these mirrors).

 

Removing a couple of screws releases the LED board.

 

Remove the LEDs and the wires.  Now, they can be painted without any worry about paint on the lens.

 

Sand down the surfaces of the mirrors and the mounting plates smooth.

 

The mounting plates got a nice smooth coat of Krylon plastic paint.

 

I primed the mirrors with a special primer for plastic.  Now, they are ready for paint!

 

They turned out real nice.  I put my own LEDs in the lenses (see page 4 ).

 

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Next was the 49 inch BMW lip spoiler.  I easily pulled the brake light out of the slot.  You might recognize this as a very basic flexible LED strip.  People like to put the white version of these under their head lights.  Anyways, the light was not nearly bright enough.  Since I was going to remove the brake light in the window, I needed this to be as visible as possible.  So, I took the knife and sliced the silicone off around the LEDs so that the light could shine straight forward.  You can see that I've sliced half of them.

 

You can see here that the cut half (left) is a lot brighter now that the silicone is not diffusing the LEDs.  Still not bright enough, though, so I eventually replaced this strip with my own custom light (see page 4 ).

 

Then, I sanded the spoiler and primered it the same way I did the mirrors.  Here I have just laid in on the trunk to see how it fits.  Usually they sell 48 inch spoilers for this car, but that is not long enough.  The 49 inch one is perfect!

 

Here is the side profile of the spoiler.  It is just what I wanted, something very subtle and clean.  It looked better after it was painted and after I had installed the new non-extended body kit bumper.  I had the old tail lights on there because they were going to get painted blue on the bottom.

 

Now it is painted and installed with 3M double-sided tape.  Perfect!  Looks great.

 

It's not nearly as bright as the window light I made, but it worked.

 

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Then I moved onto the 2002 Corolla front bumper.  The first thing to modify was the grille that goes in between the head lights.  So, I used the jig saw to cut the grille off of the bumper.   I determined that the grille had to be 5 inches shorter to fit between the lights so I cut out the emblem part of the grille.

 

I made the cut just on either side of the opening for the emblem.  You can see the part I cut out behind the grille.

 

Here is a very preliminary test fit.  It wasn't very helpful, but at least it fit between the lights.

 

After lining up the grille and the bumper I used Epoxy and wood to hold the pieces together.  I was going to fiberglass it, but the Epoxy was strong enough so I decided not to (since I had never done fiberglass before, I didn't was to mess it all up).  I would not recommend doing this since the "strong" Epoxy didn't actually stick the bumper after it was finished.  Use fiberglass!

 

You can see how the grille goes back on.  I should have used fiberglass or something.  I wasn't as rushed as last year, but I still had to go back to school soon.

 

I took the bumper off, which was a pain since I had those HID fog lights on the bumper.  There are a couple of screws on the top 3 bolts under the front, clips on the fenders, and bolts under the fenders to remove to get the bumper off.

 

With the bumper off, I realized why my front end never lined up.  It is hard to see, but the bumper is closer to the car on the right side than on the left.  That is why I never got my head lights to line up and why I had to break the z3 fender in one place to get it to fit.

 

Oh, it looks so sad and forlorn with the front missing!  It looked like my car had wrecked (not good).

 

Now, I don't need my bumper, LED turn signals, custom grille, HIDs or fog lights.

 

With the old bumper off, I tried the new one.

 

The only problem was where the bumper met the fenders.  There was a 1/2 inch part sticking up that needed to be cut off so that the bumper could sit on the car straight. As you can see, the bumper is at an angle now.

 

You can see it better in this picture.  I drew the line and cut off the lip with my jig saw.

 

Now that the lip was removed, I needed a new way to hold the bumper to the fender.  I came up with this crazy contraption.  There is a plastic right angle glued to the bumper.  A Popsicle stick is glued over that to hold it to the bumper better.  Then, I mounted a bolt facing up where it would go into the fender and be secured with a nut.  This alone wasn't strong enough, so I bent a metal bracket to support the plastic right angle.  I used a zip-tie to hold the metal to the right angle, and then I covered everything with lots of Epoxy.  It was very strong!

 

Here is the support bolted to the fender.  That was very hard to do, since I had to tighten the nut when it was up in there, and I had to take off the mud flap before I had a chance of getting pliers up there to tighten the nut.  I do not recommend doing all of this work because there is a much easier way to do it.  Simply drill a hole on the small lip that faces into the car (you are looking at it here) and run a zip-tie through it and through the fender hole.

 

These are the main supports for the bumper.

 

Here are the supports that I made to hold the front license plate inside the lower opening rather than just sitting on the the front of the bumper.  You can see where the bumper mounts on the bottom (on the very edges of the picture).

 

I used these brackets to pull the bumper up against the car.  They ended up doing nothing, though, so this was unnecessary.

 

Here is the Bondoed front bumper ready for primer.

 

After like 4 or 5 coats of primer and sanding in between each coat it was perfectly smooth and finished!  You can see that the slats on the grille did not end up being flat.

 

I also filled the pinstripe dent that was on the sides of the bumper.

 

Since the slats were ugly, I cut them out, Bondoed over the holes, and primered it.  You can see how the license plate mounts.  I filled the holes where it was supposed to mount.  Also, you can see that I primered the chrome strip that goes around the grille since I had to cut it in half.  After repairing the cracks in the front lip, I mounted that.  There is double-sided tape on the front under the license plate.

 

Here you can see the screws in the end of the lip by the wheels that hold it in place.

 

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Next, I set out to fix the rust that was really bad around both or the rear wheels on the fenders.  At the same time I would mount my Erebuni side skirts.

To mount side skirts, you need to jack the car up and remove the rear wheels so that you can drill holes.  Here are two holes I drilled; I also drilled these holes in the side skirts because they did not come pre-drilled.  You can see that there is rust behind the lower hole.

 

I had to remove the rear bumper to get to all the rust.   Here is the rust on the driver's side after I sanded it down and applied some paint that converts rust to primer.  Yuck!

 

Almost as bad on the other side, too.

 

Then, I filled the holes with Bondo.

 

I made sure to primer up inside the wheel wells, too.  Finally, that hole under the gas tank is gone!  I had to apply several coats of primer with sanding in between each coat to make it super smooth.

 

I applied double-sided tape to the inside of the side skirt to hold it all along the car.  This ended up being unnecessary though.

 

Side skirt is mounted!  There are the two screws on the back after I primered over them.  This wasn't a good idea to do while the car was jacked up because the skirt ends up twisted as you can see, so I had to compensate for that.

 

There is one bolt on the front.  This bolt is where the mud guard screws in, so I only had to drill a matching hole in the side skirt. The other side skirt mounted the same way, and now, the side skirts and rust are completed!

 

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Now, onto the Erebuni rear bumper!  You know how the US version has extended bumpers?  Well, one of the reasons that I got this bumper was because it is not extended.  Of course, I found out that it wouldn't fit without tons of modifications.

I had already removed the rear bumper.  To do this, remove the license plate and the lights.  There are some clips across the top, remove those.  There are bolts under the bumper, take those off.  My bumper used to mount to the quarter panels but they were completely rusted out.  Then the bumper slides off.

Here you can see that I removed the Styrofoam because there would be no room for that behind the shorter bumper.  Also, you can see that I had to cut the rear bumper in half with a circular saw and take an inch out of it.  It still wouldn't fit.  Do you see the 4 parts bumping off of the black bumper?

 

Well, those had to go!  My circular saw took care of those.  Wear eye protection, this stuff hurts when it gets in your eyes (I learned the hard way).

 

I had to attack the rear bumper because it just wasn't fitting anywhere.  The license plate area was made for a Japanese plate, so the hole was completely too big.  Also, the bumper had a recessed area for the plate and the lights, but I had to cut that all out so that I could keep the black bumper underneath.  I guess they don't have bumpers in Japan!  I also had to cut some fiberglass where the bumper goes under the tail lights.

Another problem -- the tail pipe did not line up with the hole in the bumper!  Since the bumper couldn't move I had to move the exhaust.  I cut one of the springy supports holding up the muffler and I zip-tied it to the side to hold in in place where it should go.  This wasn't the final location of the zip-tie but you can see how far over the muffler had to move.

 

Then, I tried putting my tail pipe cover on. It didn't fit so I had to saw off lots of fiberglass as you can see. Now, the tail pipe was done.

 

I put these pieces from the old bumper on the new one.  These hold the bumper onto the sides.

 

Finally, after almost as much work as I went through with the front bumper, I got it on.  Those two holes on the bumper ended up not doing anything, so that was a mistake.  Now, the tail pipe cover is nice and clean!

 

That license plate area was so ugly, since it was much too big for my plate.  That was a challenge to fix.

 

Here is where it bolts underneath the car in the middle.

 

It bolts here under the driver's side quarter panel.

 

However, the rusted-out mount on the passenger side broke, so I had to use a metal strap to hold it there.

 

I drilled some holes and screwed it on top, too.

 

If you didn't notice from the rust pictures, the supports for attaching the rear bumper to the quarter panels were completely rusted out.  So, I screwed some long screws into the bumper where it would normally mount to the fender.  The only thing the screws did was hold the bumper in against the fenders so that it was a smooth transition from the bumper to the fender.  I had to use long screws so that they would push against metal instead of the Bondo I had used to repair the holes.  If that makes any sense.

Then, I Bondoed the rear bumper.  I had to fill the two holes I drilled plus the crack where I sawed the bumper in half.  I also made the opening for the license plate smaller so that it was the exact size of the plate.  I did not use fiberglass (a small mistake) because I had to fix the crack with it mounted to the car.  After this step, I should have taken the bumper off and fiberglassed the back.  I cut one of the plate lights off because I was going to use an LED strip (that was all that would fit).  You can also see how terrible the trunk looks in this picture.

 

I figured out how to mount the plate so that I could still light it up.  I used a 1 inch drill bit to drill down the two top bumps so that the plate would sit closer to the top.  I left the bottom bumps on there so that the plate would angle a little so that the light on top would light up the plate.  When I drilled the holes, the threads for the bolts to hold the plate on got too big.  I just put some large drywall anchors into the holes and the screws that came with them held the plate on very nicely.  No more rusty bolts holding the plate on!

 

Now, it is primered and sanded perfectly smooth.  I ended up cutting the other plate light out so that I could wire my own light.

 

For the plate light I used a stripe of white LEDs that stuck to the bumper above the plate.

 

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Then I moved up to the trunk in between the tail lights.  Since I was in such a hurry last year my Bondo job did not last, as you can see in these next two pictures (and you can also see how well the license plate fit in the bumper):

Originally, I was going to repair it.  I started by sanding down the paint.  However, since it was flaking off everywhere there was no way I would be able to use the stock middle piece.

 

I ripped off the stock piece and was finally able to remove the altezza tail light LED from the trunk.

 

I went through a lot of sand paper to remove the remaining paint and Bondo on the trunk.  When I smoothed out the trunk before, I didn't even have time to sand off the paint before I Bondoed, so I had to sand off the stock paint, too.  Eventually I had the metal exposed everywhere and I was ready to start building my trunk again.

 

I decided to use the altezza tail light because it was perfectly smooth.  The stock middle piece had several grooves along it and the word "Corolla" etched in, so that is why I had so much trouble with it.  I mounted the light on there with different screws that could hold it on (since the ones that came with it broke).  With the piece tight on the trunk I sanded the surface rough and cloudy so that stuff could stick to it.

 

Then I put some nice and even Bondo over the edges.

 

Ha, take that!  Now it is so much better than my trunk had even been.

 

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Now to finish the work.  I wanted to repair all of my previous body work and fill any new dents.

(Isn't it strange that now that my car is blue I'm wearing a beige jacket?????  If you recall, I had wore a blue jacket while my car was still beige.)

Now that the body was in pretty good shape I wanted to sand the entire car and get as much paint off as I could.  This would also make the new paint stick better and be smoother.

Then the car went to Maaco for the Presidential paint job for $200 plus tax on sale.   Now it is painted!

 

The color is World Rally Blue Pearl from the latest Subaru Sport models.  It is my favorite color! (obviously).  It doesn't get ANY bluer than this.  I ended up disliking the first blue color because it turned darker as it cured.

 

I installed the mesh in the grilles.  This time I used zip-ties to hold it in the lower grille since the hot glue didn't work very well last time.  Too bad the upper mesh was held in with hot glue.  I had my bumper light turn signals temporarily zip-tied in the fog light holes.  I reinstalled my tail pipe cover.  I installed the mirrors and the lip spoiler.  It looked pretty good I admit lol.

Project Completed in August 2009

I was finally going to replace the heavy stock hood with a nice carbon fiber one!  No more rusty gold color under there.

 

First, take off the windshield washer nozzles and hoses by unclipping them.

 

If you don't have someone to help you, you should put towels under the corners of the hood to avoid damaging anything and to hold the heavy hood in place when you unbolt it.

 

Take off the 4 bolts (2 on each side) and gently rest the hood on the towels.  The rod up front was the only thing holding the hood up at this point.

 

Put the hood somewhere (I put mine in the garage attic, boy was that hard!)  Leave the towels there for the new hood.

 

I painted the nozzles black to match the hood (they used to be blue).

 

Install the hood.  Mine came with 4 new bolts.  For some reason, my hood wouldn't close any more than this.

 

Ah, here's why.  There was a metal thing sticking up there getting in the way.  The new hood didn't have holes for these but the stock hood did.  If you look above at the picture with the red towel you can see the metal thing next to the hinge.

 

I drilled holes on each side of the hood so that the metal could slip into there.  As it turns out, those two brackets are there to prevent the hood from decapitating you in an accident.  So, they had to stay lol and the hood needed to be drilled.

 

Reinstall the nozzles.  The hood came with pre-drilled holes but I had to make them a little bigger.  Also, there were no holes to clip up the hoses so I put a piece of tape there.

 

Done!  This hood uses the stock hood latch perfectly so there is no need for ugly hood pins.

 

Project Completed in January-February 2009

This time I just needed to replace the front bumper and repair the front lip and rear bumper.  I hit a curb causing the lip to crack a little and some lady rear-ended me at a stop light so the rear bumper broke in half.

I removed the body kit and front bumper and put the stock parts back on.  I was going to modify the side skirts also but I chickened out lol.

 

I wanted the same front bumper but this time I would do it right.  Instead of cutting the grille off and shortening it to fit between the head lights (and leave a nasty gap) I cut the bumper out in front of the head lights so that I could fabricate a fitting for the head lights with fiberglass.  I immediately cut out the slats on the grille and fiberglassed the holes.  Again I had to fill the two holes where the license plate mounts were.

 

Then I Bondoed around the headlights after fiberglassing new parts.

 

Here you can see that the bumper fits with the head lights perfectly.  I still have touch-up to do, but you get the idea.

 

No more gaps around the head lights!  I was so excited and proud of myself for finally breaking out some fiberglass lol.

 

I never ever liked the OEM 2002 fog lights for this bumper.  I also didn't like the way my projector fog lights and LED turn signals sat in the openings.  So, I got the idea from onicorolla to custom-fit these 2004 JDM Altis fog lights onto my bumper.  I really loved the look on his car so I decided to do it to mine. 

 

This was by far the best fog light harness that I had received (and that was three).  They came with a nice OEM switch that fit into the center dash panel between the seats.  I wired these almost the same; but instead of running the turn-on wire to that fuse under the hood I ran it to the power going into the radio.  See the white wire coming from the switch?  That was the only wire that needed to be run through the fender from the switch to the fogs.

 

This was where the switch fit.  Perfect!  I was able to remove all of the switches from the driver's-side vent panel.

 

Then I fit the fog lights into the bumper by cutting all of the plastic in the way.  It looked awesome!  I was so happy lol.

 

This closeup shows how the new fog light sits in the hole.  It fit to the curves of the bumper pretty well.  You can see where the bumper used to be.

 

This shows where I needed to cut the plastic on the back.  The fog lights point in like this: /\ instead of || but it looks good haha.

 

Now that the fog light is out you can see how much bigger the hole had to be.

 

Here is the Bondo and fiberglass that was needed to contour the fog light to the bumper and hold it in place.  The fog light fit perfectly in place.

 

This is the back of the bumper after the Bondo and fiberglass was finished.  I had the fog lights in place when I laid fiberglass (the brown stuff) over the back to form a mold that would tightly hold onto the fog light.  There was also a hole in each side to which the fog lights could screw.  You can also see the final finish around the head light and grille area.

 

Here's the fog light, filled pin stripe, and head light area from this angle.  I had also cut off the lip on the sides of the bumper again.

 

Here is the smoothed out grille.  I had several holes to patch after I cut out the slats.  I also filled the small step that ran all along the entire grille (the red part) so that it was smooth.

 

The rear bumper and front lip needed repairs, so I sanded them all down and repaired the Bondo on the front and I fiberglassed the backs.

 

This shows the fiberglass on the rear bumper and front lip.  I used fiberglass mat and Bondo fiberglass resin jelly.  Now they were very strong.

 

Then I primered, sanded, primered, sanded until it was all very smooth.  It was ready to go to Maaco to get the same Subaru blue color.

 

When I got the parts back the next day I installed mesh just as before.  But this time I painted the mesh with chrome spray paint so that it would stay shiny forever.  The mesh installed with paperclips attached to the back of the bumper that hooked through the mesh and held it in place.  This was much better than hot glue lol.  I installed the head lights with the 6000K HIDs and the fog lights with the 5000K HIDs (I wasn't using the 8000K HIDs anymore; I guess that it was a good thing they sent me the wrong kit the second time!)  I also mounted the license plate behind the lower grille but in front of the mesh.  Finally, I clipped the chrome grille strip in place.  It was as awesome as I had hoped!

The 5000K fog lights became my new DRLs.

 

The turn signals ended up in the outer head light spots after I dropped some of those really bright 921 18 watt bulbs in there.  It actually worked very nicely as the signal.

 

That is all for now.  If you have any questions or comments let me know in my guestbook!  Don't forget to rate!