[peglegskier]

Sorry for the shameless Simpsons quote. I bought an '05 IIP 5spd about two weeks ago, and I'm loving every minute of it. I did tons of research on new cars, and the tC kept showing up as the best car for the money. I'm really just amazed with it's features. I've got about 600 miles on her right now. The only mod I've made so far: painting the upper grill a matte silver that matches well with the emblems and rims, and makes the car stand out in a crowd a little better. Future upgrades include tints and springs, as soon as I get some extra money. (The budget's kinda tight, I just bought my first brand new car!)
Ever since the day I picked her up, I thought my Japanese car needed a Japanese name... something that sounds fast and sexy... or maybe just "car with balls of steel" in Japanese. Any suggestions?

 

[WAHCHING]

welcome to the forums, you have any pics of your ride? post them up!!!

 

[Plissken]

Welcome.

 

[phungy]

Welcome! Yes post some pics are you finish painting the grill!

 

[Azrael]

Welcome, and don't worry about the shameless Simpson's quotes. You definitely weren't the first to use them. See here for further evidence of that.

 

[iGod]

welcome to our site.

 

[eddiemoney]

Welcome, i would like to see pics too

 

[peglegskier]

Thanks for the warm welcome. I have tons of pics, but my computer is currently fried (the hard drive mysteriously erased, might have something to do with my pirated wireless internet), and I don't have a way to get pics from my camera to the internet. (I'm using my computer at work to post, just in case you were wondering.) I'm going away for the weekend, but I should be able to post some pics some time next week. I know... waiting is so hard.

 

[peglegskier]

I finally got my computer working again... and got some pics uploaded.
Click the images for larger versions... yay for 4 mega pixel cameras!

Here's a pic with the aluminum (colored) grill:



Here's a closer shot:


Another pic:

 

[Drift Motion]

nice

r u gonna paint the bottom one too?
i reckon it look better wif both painted

is it hard?? i have no experience wif paint, except like school projects......

 

[Eric]

Welcome to the site!

 

[peglegskier]

I was originally planing on painting the lower one also, plus the two little fake side vent thingys, but I liked the way just the top one looked, so I'm probably going to leave it that way, for now. It was fairly easy to do, removing the grill was pretty straight forward, if you search for a topic about grills, I'm sure you can find detailed instructions.

Painting it wasn't hard either. I cleaned the whole grill with "Pre" from Eastwood, it's a general purpose degreaser and surface prep spray. I wanted to use the Krylon paint made specifically to bond to plastics, because I didn't really feel like sanding each individual tiny surface of the grill, but they didn't have an aluminum colored version. Instead, I got a neutral colored "Fusion" paint from krylon to bond to the plastic, then I used Duplicolor's Aluminum auto paint to finish it up. I'm no chemist, but I figure the Krylon will bond to the plastic, and the Duplicolor will bond to the Krylon... seems to be working so far. It's been about a two weeks, 2 car washes, and a 5 hour (each way) road trip, and not a single sign of chipping. THe only down side is that it shows water spots if you don't dry every nook and cranny.

 

[Drift Motion]

icic thx