CamT's build thread

Cody F

Supporter
Winner winner chicken dinner! My wife makes awesome chocolate chip cookies, there's a fresh batch waiting for you if you're ever in San Diego! I'll look into setting it up so it's available for sale.
Chocolate chip cookies are definitely worth a 3000 mile trek.... And sounds great. I've been following Toxic Camaro's build on Instagram for a few years now, even back when he had the 5th gen camaro. It's good to see you guys show up at the same shows / meets.
 
Cam

Very nice book. Here is my sign...…...it actually worked.

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:cool:
 

For anyone interested in purchasing a copy of my book you can do so here:


It's 24 pages, with fairly high quality printing. The pages are decently heavy stock and have a matte finish. List price is $7/copy (my profit is set to $0) and I'm assuming they'll charge some type of S&H fee on top of the $7.
 
So I took the car out for another run through the canyons this weekend, bumping the suspension to 2F/3R felt great! The ride out to the canyons was definitely harsher but once the twisties hit it felt just fine. I imagine you'll want to go stiffer for really high speed stuff but since I'm not bombing through the canyons this is probably as stiff as I'll take it. With the front lift raised there's just enough room to slip my hands under the fenders to adjust the front shocks.

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On the way home I also discovered my camera and rear wing are perfectly arranged such that I can't see the light bar on our local patrol cars ... it made for some tense moments! :oops:

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Cody F

Supporter
For anyone interested in purchasing a copy of my book you can do so here:


It's 24 pages, with fairly high quality printing. The pages are decently heavy stock and have a matte finish. List price is $7/copy (my profit is set to $0) and I'm assuming they'll charge some type of S&H fee on top of the $7.
You should have put some profit in there! :p Thanks for the link! Looking forward to adding your book to my stockpile of SL-C related... things
 
I had another fun time in the canyons; the 2f/3r shock settings seem to be pretty good for the casual pace I'm taking. With the Labor Day weekend coming up I wanted to take advantage of the time off work by getting the car repainted. The green just didn't work for me - I had expected it to be much more metallic and darker. I totally messed it up when I sprayed the topcoat as the final layer - you're not supposed to use that when you're using DYC's performance series. Lesson learned for next time!

Here's how she looked on the last ride out:

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The plastidip's been on the car for about a year/2000 miles. It's never been washed beyond the occasional DipCoat spray. I have to say I've been really impressed with the product and it's been really resilient to rock chips, much moreso than the little bit of clear coat I have applied to the front bumper.

I had primered the car and machine sanded it to 320 grit/400 by hand. It's not generally recommended that you plastidip on a primered surface at this rough a finish - and I can understand why. At 320 machine/400 hand the surface has enough texture that the dip really wants to hang on. It made for a more challenging time removing the dip. Luckily I'd sprayed enough dip that it still came off as a (mostly) large sheet. On the few areas where I'd clear coated and dipped over it, the dip removed MUCH easier. It's almost worth it to primer then shoot a layer of clear coat just so it's easier to remove the dip. I don't have much time to play with the car this weekend so getting a better finish will have to be for another time.

Pro tip: tape your fingers, you'll save yourself from some blisters!

Pre-removal:

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Roll the edges to help you get started. The dip held up impressively well at the edges.

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After:

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Blister free!

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A short video of this evening's activities:

 
Pulling it off a primed surface would be tough enough, but a sanding it to 360 after would def make it tougher. While I don't have experience with this product, I do have history with peelable coatings of probable similar chemistry in the industrial market.

This may assist removal - Wet with water a test spot on the car and cover with a cup or any device that will allow the water to dwell on the surface. After say 30-60 minutes has passed, peel that spot and compare to others. In many cases the peel will be much easier, if that works ad some surfactant (dish soap) to the water and it should be faster acting and easier yet (wet the whole car).

Hope that tip isn't coming too late.
 
Thanks Mesa, appreciate the tip! It actually wasn't all that difficult to remove the dip but yeah, the difference between sanded primer vs clearcoat was night/day. I could have stripped the car in less than an hour if I'd clear coated everything. I put about 2 hours in last night and was able to strip the doors, rear clam, and one side pod and disassemble 2 door assemblies in that time. Still not bad from a time standpoint, but my puny arms and hands were glad for the overnight break. I can see why Fonzie (owner of dipyourcar.com) is so buff - he's probably torn dip off thousands of cars over the years.

Removing the dip while everything's dry keeps the process really clean, I just have a few large pieces to pick up and a broom to sweep up some of the smaller pieces. I'm really impressed with how strong the dip is - I struggled to tear it "strategically" to make smaller sections and defaulted to using a razor blade.
 
If you think cars can be difficult to peel - try Offshore Oil Rigs or better yet ....... Aircraft Carriers. o_O
(no, they don't get peeled by hand)
 
I"m sure you likely already know this, but off chance you don't... If you have any corners or bottom of bumper where the dip isn't not as thick, Goo Gone is supposedly the same thing as DYC's dip remover. I have no clue how Goo Gone would do on primered surface though.
 
I have a bottle of dip dissolver ... that stuff is pretty magical. There’s one spot on the car that’s really hard to paint and my dip was pretty thin. A few squirts of dip dissolver and it was a non issue.
 
Do the time zone conversion, looks like 11:05 pacific to me.

Bingo!

I was pretty proud of myself for getting this large piece off my hood in one piece. My technique got better with practice, as did my muscles!

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And here's what a very large pile of plastidip looks like:

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All told, it took me about 4-5 hours to strip the car. That includes removing the hood, rear clam, disassembling my doors, and stripping the plastidip. I had originally wanted to re-dip the car with the entire car still together but my OCD got the better of me and it's not really doable if you want a nice looking finish. I'll provide additional deets once I get to writing up another blog entry.

Prepping however, took about a full day. I wanted to have an easier time the next time I strip the dip so I went over the car with a sanding block and 1000 grit in hopes of getting the primer slicker to promote dip removal when the time comes. Cleaning and masking took up the rest of the time (there's a lot of masking!).

It's the calm before the storm:

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You're not wasting any time Cam! I can relate to not dipping on vehicle, I always felt the need to do the same on the busa. Prepping it the worse part of it painting or dipping, but the out come is always worth it
 
Labor Day is over and we are still waiting for pics of the new paint job..... where do I apply for my refund?

Lol - you got me, refunds available at the door!

Here’s a teaser pic, I wanted to get the car all together before showing more of the in-process stuff. Now that the family is back my garage time shrinks once again.

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