Hey guys, got a few pictures in the intro thread, but they're 6 months old so I decided to throw some new ones up.

In the last few days I've got my SL/E rear bar test fitted, needs a little adjustment and unfortunately I'm not going to get away with using spacers where the cars been damaged by a minor hit+run while parked like I'd hoped. Going to need some backyard panelbeating to get the beaverpanel straight again, then refit the bar.
Have also polished up my SL/E wheels and fitted them, will be getting whitewalled in a few weeks once I've got some mates on the bandwagon. If anyones interested my mates got a quote from a guy in Sydney who'll do discounts if the walls are done in bulk. $100 for 1 person, does discounts for 4 or more, so if you're interested PM me.

Pulled the side strips off too. Also gave the roof a quick cut with Mr Buff cutting compound to clear up the white spots. It looks really good, but I think I'm going to need to find an ROB and do the whole bloody car now.

Planning on pulling the tailgate off and buying a brand new one in a few weeks time, with any luck after the paints had a cut and polish it'll look brand new. I don't think it's had much in the way of cutting before, so with any luck there'll be plenty of material left.

Have my front splits in, but I plan on redoing the passenger side as the glue hadn't set properly after I did them. I was in a hurry to get it finished before Cruise 4 Charity, which I ended up missing anyway. Got my sub box finished structurally, but I'll probably only have it until mid Sept. After that there's a good chance the SPL bug will catch and I'll be having a go at a ported box for my 2 Alpine type S 12"s. Rear splits I'll be having a crack at some fibreglass, seeing as the dodgy cardboard sh*t that was originally in the boot has been torn up by misc. things that've been in the boot over the years. Also have an 85 amp alternator that I'm trying to throw in, but there's a fitting on the air con compressor that fouls up on the new alt. It's about 3 or 4 mm longer than the old alt

Anyway, too much writing, not enough pics!






Gonna remove the pin stripe once I deal with the alternator issue.

Captain Kermit wrote:

but there's a fitting on the air con compressor that fouls up on the new alt. It's about 3 or 4 mm longer than the old alt

.... grinder lol thats wat id so if its only 3-4mm ive done it b4 it just depends on the room u have and how much u can actuly take off.


nice pics its comin along nicley

mate, that is looking really nice.
good to see it cleaning up ok too.
It's amazing what abit of polish can do to old paint aye


i was helping wagonz fit his rear bar, when he changed it, and we kinda ended up doing abit of stretching, and abit of spacers, and its ok, but yours must be abit more out of alignment.

good luck with it, keep the updates coming.

stitch wrote:

Captain Kermit wrote: but there's a fitting on the air con compressor that fouls up on the new alt. It's about 3 or 4 mm longer than the old alt .... grinder lol thats wat id so if its only 3-4mm ive done it b4 it just depends on the room u have and how much u can actuly take off. nice pics its comin along nicley

Thought about it but it's in a prick of a spot. Don't want to just grind away at the cannister as I'm not sure what it does, and don't want to grind away at the alt because I'd have to take a fair chunk out.

Put the alternator in on Sunday arvo, but it wasn't charging. Called a mate up and after checking everything over, decided to give a new regulator a try. Put the new regulator on yesterday, tightened everything up, started the car and it still wasn't charging. Then I saw sparks come out of the engine bay, smoking and sh*t everywhere. Mate hadn't seen them the first time, he turned around and saw them, I ran around the engine bay and pulled the negative terminal off with wiring glowing red hot and plastic smoke all over the shop.

Turns out my mate left a spanner on a bolt of the alt which was touching the positive pole of the alt. The casing of an alt is one big ground, so I had a nice big spanner making quite a nice short. It melted through the 8g battery-alt wire, which then melted to my battery-chassis earth, causing even more issues.

After that smoke show, my mate went home and make up some more cable with some 4g that I had lying around, slapped it all together again, checked for spanners and fired her up. It worked this time.

Scariest part of all is my mate's a 3rd year apprentice auto elec .

Grabbed some pics of the remains of the old 8g wiring. and the melted section of 0g battery-chassis.




On the plus side, the subs are in and hooked up, not tuned properly yet but they make a bit of noise. Can't wait to get a decent amp for the speakers though, headunit is terrible.



My distribution block's threads got stripped as well so I bought a triangular shaped bracket made for strengthening right angled joins and tapped a thread into it to hold power on. Probably won't be permanent, but it'll do for now.

wow, sounds kinda similar to wagenz horn wire shorting out, both you guys wann try and burn your commodores down aye

glad you saved it before it got worse though.
and looking good, i assume we're gonna see some trimming done on that box aswell?

nice pics and nice work.

keep it up.

Got my statesman door pods in primer today, gonna rub them back tomorrow and hit them with some colour. Starting to get a little annoyed though, can't find a soft sanding block anywhere, I make do by wrapping whatever sandpaper I want to use around one of those weird sponge things that have sandpaper kind of glued onto them. I think they're called sanding blocks. Pointless invention, everyone should just buy a soft block and whatever sandpaper they need.


And while I'm here, has anybody painted speaker grill mesh before? I don't want the paint to chip away easily, but I'm scared that if I try to do anything more than a light coat of black acrylic over them the little holes will get clogged up, and I'm not up for spending hours with a sewing pin poking the paint out of the holes.

since the grills are metal i would try a light dusting of etch primer and then a light coat of coulor. just a sugestion. the etch primer will give greter adhesion to the metal to withstand chipping.

FN.10.UD wrote:

since the grills are metal i would try a light dusting of etch primer and then a light coat of coulor. just a sugestion. the etch primer will give greter adhesion to the metal to withstand chipping.

They're already painted grey from the factory, good idea though. I might be able to get them annodised, but I don't know what metal they're made of and it'd probably be too shiny for my liking anyway.