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Moving along.
20190512_183422.jpg

The bottom of both the hood and trunk are now in rattle can etching primer.
Remember, I decided to ditch the hood latch in favor of using aerocatch fasteners instead...
After cutting the area out so that I could cut the hole properly, I had to tack the old metal back in place.
627008

After a bazillion hours of grinding, and fixing what I fcked up, that looks like this today.
20190512_183430.jpg

It's the wrong side compared to the pic, ( I forgot which one I originally took a pic of)
But it's at my level of acceptance, and I'm now able to go forward w/o worrying about screwing up the top finish. The rear wing holes are drilled in the trunk, as are all of the lift strut mount points. The only thing left to do now is prime everything again. And hope that the final block comes out flat.

I'm gonna use the original gun I bought to try and prime the stuff again, it is the one thing that i think I've changed that is causing me to get such a poor result with the orange peel.

Say farewell to the Gila hole...its slotted for the rubbage pick up.
20190512_192530.jpg
 
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Ok closed it stays...but when this thing boils its balls off in Mississippi summer traffic..I'm blaming all you bitches.
Late to the party again. Mike, why don't you add a fan in the engine bay, maybe low on the firewall on the driver's side, to move air in the bay at low revs in traffic? It seems that that would be at least as effective as a vent under the scoop. I'm supposing that the new computery bits are more than capable of making that work.
Dan
 
Late to the party again. Mike, why don't you add a fan in the engine bay, maybe low on the firewall on the driver's side, to move air in the bay at low revs in traffic? It seems that that would be at least as effective as a vent under the scoop. I'm supposing that the new computery bits are more than capable of making that work.
Dan
Thanks for the suggestion Dan, but don't you think a hole in the hood would be cheaper than a fan?
 
You’re worried about the cost of a fan when building what you’ve built?

I think I may have a low pro radiator fan in my toolbox. I’ll check when I get home. If I do it’s yours to figure out how to make it help your underhood temps.
It's a figurative thing. Why on earth would I SPEND the time trying to figure out where I'd place that fan..SPEND the time hacking the hole, SPEND the time wiring the thing, tie it into my new, spiffy ms3x to trigger, (based on an under hood temp)... that I'd have to SPEND the money buying the sensor to detect, and SPEND the money on the fan to exhaust ....

When I could just cut a hole in the hood and be done?
 
It's a figurative thing. Why on earth would I SPEND the time trying to figure out where I'd place that fan..SPEND the time hacking the hole, SPEND the time wiring the thing, tie it into my new, spiffy ms3x to trigger, (based on an under hood temp)... that I'd have to SPEND the money buying the sensor to detect, and SPEND the money on the fan to exhaust ....

When I could just cut a hole in the hood and be done?
Aesthetics?
 
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Well boys...You shoulda been at work with me yesterday..( or at least been the fly on the wall)

All commissioned retail sales businesses suffer from the same dilemma...Having to walk the line between salespeople when a dispute comes up over whose customer was whose.

Such was the case for me last week. When a Customer calls into our call center inquiring about a car, One of the phone agents takes the call and sets an appointment. Then they'll shoot an email off to a salesperson to ensure that they are aware of the appointment.

What's "supposed" to happen, is when that customer walks in, the salesperson greeting that customer is supposed to ask him a few questions to determine if they were just walking in off the street, or if they had been assigned a salesperson already based on a set appointment.

That didn't happen this week. ( It probably doesn't happen a lot of times, If it doesn't get caught)

Last week I get an email on Monday, confirming a Wednesday appointment. On Wednesday morning, I call the customer to introduce myself. Only as I'm listening to his phone ringing in one ear, I'm hearing an actual phone ringing in the other that's in the store. ( This customer was already here, and had been for almost an hour......and was now sitting at another salesman's desk.)

You can imagine that this didn't sit well with me.

I head directly into the sales office. The offending salesman sees this, and rockets to intercept me on the way in. I tell him that he just stole a set appointment, and that he was now working for half of what he thought he was gonna make.

You can imagine that that didn't sit well with him either.

To keep the drama to a minimum, and in the interest of keeping the story shorter...The manager that had to make the call was on vacation for part of the week. The thief had made the case that the customer just walked in off the street, and I had a screenshot of the email from Monday confirming the appointment in my name.

Who had the stronger argument ya spose?

As the week progresses, and after talking with the other desk manager about it, he tells me that he thinks the theif had made the case that I had no record in our CRM of ever reaching out to the customer, and no record of the appointment even being assigned to me. He tells me that he thinks that he thinks that the deciding manager had softened on his decision to force a split.

I go back to my desk,..look through the CRM,....and sure enough....there is no record that I was ever assigned the customer.

Somebody had manipulated the history. ( All except the email with the screenshot of the customer, the date, and my name on the same page). I don't think it's possible at the sales level to do this,..I didn't think anybody could go back into history, and change something,..but somebody was able.
It didn't help my case that the theif was also the deciding managers "pet", and had shown favor to this guy numerous times by handing out opportunities over the last several months. Could this manager have actually gone as far as change history in our CRM to squeeze me out of the deal?

After learning that the DM ( I'm just gonna shorten " deciding manager" to DM) had softened, I firm him back up by shooting him a copy of the screen shot..He responds back,..that..............I'm right.
So,........despite the fact that the DM wasn't gonna be back till Saturday, I take solice in the knowledge that when it gets listed on the board on Saturday,...the sale that the theif was expecting to be 100% his, is now split,.....in half.

Now we're caught up. It's Saturday morning, the DM is back, he's getting all his ducks in a row,..and he's updating the sales board to reflect how many cars have been sold by each one of us.

And there's that half sale in each of our names,..and the theif was in the office bitching.

I figured now would be a good time to walk in.

* As a footnote to the above, I knew this was gonna happen. I'd known it now for a couple of days. I also know that the theif was a hot head, and he would possibly get physical if I pushed him into an altercation. I also knew that I wasn't gonna back down from him either. I was literally able to plan my reaction to his aggression in advance well before it ever happened.
It was like I was......psychic
.

The theif was yelling that the customer was a walk-in,.....I stood there for 5 seconds and said "no, that'd be wrong", planning to produce the screenshot to shut him down, but as expected, he tells me to "shut the phck up!" In front of all three managers.
They have no choice but to shut him down,,...and are telling him to go home. He has to walk by me to leave..

Remember the part where I push him into an altercation?

As he walks by, I tell him Bye-Bye. That's all I had to do. He stops, bristles, turns and walks right up to me. We're......ohhh 10" apart.

* Now,..had I not seen into the future, this probably would've intimidated me, but since I'm psychic I expected it, I closed the gap. I yell "Hit me! I won't even hit you back! It'll be a cheap price to pay to see your ass fired!"

All three managers are now in max alert damage control mode, because of the impending fight in the glass box that is in the middle of a luxury brand automotive store where everybody can see into, and both my name, and the theif's name are being yelled out repeatedly by all three. The theif is about 5 seconds from making the choice to being jobless, and giving me something bloody to remember him by,...but decides to step off and leave.

I so wanted him to hit me.

It's a sad state of affairs that things come down to this. I blame management. The sale shouldn't be split when somebody is caught stealing. It should go completely to the injured party. The only way people are gonna adhere to a rule is if there is a consequence for not following it. Working for free is a pretty stiff fine that only needs to be levied once to change a behavior permanently.
This :poo: is why I quit selling cars and went back to turning wrenches... in spite of the fact that I made more than twice what I make now when I sold cars, and spent half the week in my office with my feet on the desk playing solitaire.

My absolute favorite was the suckup that lied to a customer's face, customer caught him in the lie and walked out. That night, at 8pm, customer is back looking at the same car, suckup is long gone because of a doctor's appointment, and I talk to the customer, talk them OUT of having our car dealer traded to the store in Round Rock, and into giving me a chance if I promise to be 100% up front and transparent with them and treat them right.

I sell them the car, take their Caddy in trade, deliver the car myself instead of having the detail and delivery guy do it, whole nine yards. Suckup raises a fuss about me "stealing" the sale on a customer he :leghump:ing burned, and takes half the commission. He talked to them for all of two minutes that first conversation, and pissed them off so badly that they walked away. The customer was literally there later that night to get the VIN to have another dealership request a dealer trade on it to buy it from them. I worked harder on that deal than any other, he did nothing but piss them off, and he got half my commission.

I guess it worked out allright, that older gentleman and his wife brought me lunch and home-made pies a couple of times before I quit, they LOVED me. :D

I don't miss it Mike, and don't know how you and all the others that do it for a living do it daily. Most people hate car salesman, but I did it for six months and it drove me up the wall (but, for the only time in my life I was 100% debt-free!), I have nothing but respect for the non-sleazeball car salesman out there, it takes a grueling toll on the psyche.
 
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Moving along.
20190512_183422.jpg

The bottom of both the hood and trunk are now in rattle can etching primer.
Remember, I decided to ditch the hood latch in favor of using aerocatch fasteners instead...
After cutting the area out so that I could cut the hole properly, I had to tack the old metal back in place.
627008

After a bazillion hours of grinding, and fixing what I fcked up, that looks like this today.
20190512_183430.jpg

It's the wrong side compared to the pic, ( I forgot which one I originally took a pic of)
But it's at my level of acceptance, and I'm now able to go forward w/o worrying about screwing up the top finish. The rear wing holes are drilled in the trunk, as are all of the lift strut mount points. The only thing left to do now is prime everything again. And hope that the final block comes out flat.

I'm gonna use the original gun I bought to try and prime the stuff again, it is the one thing that i think I've changed that is causing me to get such a poor result with the orange peel.

Say farewell to the Gila hole...its slotted for the rubbage pick up.
20190512_192530.jpg

Why are you angry Dave? Because the G hole trunk is gone,nor because I used rattle can etching primer?
 
The deck lid, it’s sad.
Yeah...there was quite a bit of work in that thing too..just didnt make sense to keep it though. The vents were an open hole into the trunk, the buttload of body work under your paint was failing, and..now there were 4 additional holes on top where the wing was mocked up.
 
Yeah...there was quite a bit of work in that thing too..just didnt make sense to keep it though. The vents were an open hole into the trunk, the buttload of body work under your paint was failing, and..now there were 4 additional holes on top where the wing was mocked up.
Heck, I understand, it's just a little sad.

The monster is going to look cooler than ever with your new mods.

I got attached to the old monster, probably will to the new facelifted monster too.
 
On a different thread I stated that I thought I had solved my orange peel issue as this time around, the primer didn't look like orange peel like it did the first time.

I was wrong.

After letting the stuff dry for several hours, I got out some 320 and started dry blocking the trunk deck. No sooner did I start that the orange peel became obvious. Knowing that I would be in for some serious time using 320, I stepped it up to 220 to get the orange peel knocked down, then switched back to 320 to get rid of the 220 scratches.

Despite being able to do that, the finished product looks weird. It looks like I still need to spend a bunch of time sanding.
Problem is...high spots are starting to peek through. Two Little tiny shiny spots about the size of your little finger nail have now been exposed.

I know I have several courses of action here....none of which I'm excited about.
1 Add another coat of primer...( and add a couple of hours sanding down orange peel)
2 get some guide coat, and see if there really are low spots still remaining.
3 continue sanding what I got to level the thing more, and at the same time further expose the high spots. Then deal with the high spots. ( which opens a freakin can of worms every single time)

Soo..........................yeah.
 
Ok...overnight deliberation works everytime. It's the only way to come to terms with tough decisions.

Good ol Dave actually called me yesterday. At that time, I told him I had the problem licked. In our conversation he mentions that the gun im using has a tip that is really too big for what I need. ( both guns that are relegated to "primer duty" have a 2.0, and a 1.7 tip respectively) this last session was with the smaller tip.
I have a paint gun with a 1.4 tip. It's what I've used in the past. Depending on when I get home tonight, I'll mix up another cup of primer and shoot the trunk again. If it lays out decently, maybe I won't have to sand my brains out to get it smooth.

The only good thing about orange peel, is that it kinda serves the purpose of a guide coat. Getting it flat with no remaining texture has to mean that the paint is also flat I'd have to think. Dave?

Nonetheless, this is a big assed, flat surface that's getting painted in a satin finish black paint.
It has to be perfect...
And I gotta figure out how to put it down w/o texture...there will be no cut-n-buff afterwards to save it if I phck it up.

This is the final step towards being able to put the car back into running status with the retro theme that I've decided to go after.
 
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