Ger's 2003 Porsche Boxster S - Page 10 - 986 Forum - The Community for Porsche Boxster & Cayman Owners

BruceH · 05-24-2016, 03:33 PM

I would stick with silver. The respray looks great

geraintthomas · 05-24-2016, 04:05 PM

Cheers bud

geraintthomas · 05-25-2016, 11:46 AM

Thanks to Polaris for coming up with the AutoTop Arduino modification, I spent the day doing just that.

Got everything ready. Resistors, transistors, wires, arduino board, etc.

Complete. Looks a mess, but essentially it's something you plug into the switch harness, and the switch plugs into this, so it sits in the middle.

Wired up

And a video showing it working!
https://youtu.be/9JIRxSIefpA

Over the moon with it. This, coupled with the modification to allow me to do this on the move without the handbrake is brilliant. Approaching a roundabout in traffic? No problem - don't have to hold the button, stopping the roof to change gear and continuing the roof. Just one click and I'm done. Also when setting off in the morning, I can just buckle up, click, and start driving

The whole thing cost about £30 including the board and required parts.

geraintthomas · 05-27-2016, 03:09 PM

I've had this week off work, hence why I've had so much time to wire that damn thing up. I found some cans of primer, lacquer and three tins of anthracite from when I had my last car - I bought them to re-spray the wheels anthracite but never did.

And then I thought, f*** it. I'll re-spray the Porsche wheels anthracite to see how they'd look. It may update it quite a bit, and if I don't like it, I'll just re-spray them back to silver. Simple. I've got tones of primer, spray (both anthracite and silver) and tons of lacquer, so I can re-spray them back for free if need be.

In total this took me around 3 hours, from absolute start (getting all the things from the cupboard) to complete and everything tidied away.

Washed and ready to go

Rubbed the curbing and chips back

Primer is primer, no need to photograph.

First coat

Many coats later with lacquer

Also Did the centre caps

And finished.

And on the car

All done with spray cans. Please excuse the car too, it's filthy.

They need another couple of coats of lacquer to make them ping even more. I'll take them off one evening in the week to give them a quick blast of lacquer. I'd do them on the car but it'll probably run as I'd want to coat it quite thick.

What do you guys think? Yay or nay?

grc0456 · 05-27-2016, 03:12 PM

Top notch, Ger! And I like the deck of cards trick, too.

BruceH · 05-27-2016, 03:13 PM

I say "Yay", looks great and like you said, the lacquer will make them look even better!

geraintthomas · 05-27-2016, 03:33 PM

Thanks guys. Yeah I did put about 2-3 coats of lacquer on, but I want to cake on another few layers on soon. I don't have to mask the tyre up or anything, just whip the wheel off and spray a nice few coats on.

Smallblock454 · 05-28-2016, 01:42 AM

Did you spray the rims also from the inside. It doesn't look like so.

Regards, Markus

geraintthomas · 05-28-2016, 02:08 AM

I was going to but realised you wouldn't notice much at all, so I didn't bother. It's no biggie, if I start to notice I'll give them a quick coat of paint.

TrumpyAl · 05-28-2016, 02:26 AM

You could probably call the contrasting drum a feature. I think painting the drums bright red was in fashion for a few months a year or two ago, this is a subtle look that might work quite well!

I think the rims look brilliant and you're clearly a dab hand with a spray can, very impressive tweak.

Why more clear coat, if you're after more gloss, is there enough coats on to just polish what's there? Or even wet sand then polish?

I've painted a lot of rims in VHT wheel paint (polyurethane I think it is) and all it takes to get a mirror finish in them is lightly wet sanding with 2000 grit and hand polishing with Auto Glym super resin polish. (Though I haven't tried this with their new formula)

Coincidentally, I took a pic of mine today, with their third set of tyres just fitted since painting them several years ago

geraintthomas · 05-28-2016, 10:34 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by TrumpyAl

Why more clear coat, if you're after more gloss, is there enough coats on to just polish what's there? Or even wet sand then polish?

You absolute star.

Thanks to you suggesting to wet sand and polish them rather than lacquer them again, they now have come up as if they've been professionally refurbished. I've done a few sets of wheels before but I've never wet sanded them. I've always thought that if it's just spray cans and me doing it, I don't need it. But jesus christ, after doing a small section of one I had to do the rest. They've come up like a mirror! Thank you!

Have a look:

Now the the car's clean, do you guys think it suits the darker wheels?

BRAN · 05-28-2016, 10:52 AM

+1

Gray is always a perfect matching color for black. Looks great.

geraintthomas · 05-28-2016, 12:39 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by BRAN

+1

Gray is always a perfect matching color for black. Looks great.

Many thanks

TrumpyAl · 05-28-2016, 05:42 PM

Holy cow, they look fantastic!

I'm very glad to have helped. This thread has brilliant entertainment and inspiration value, cheers.

geraintthomas · 05-31-2016, 02:42 PM

Awesome

Made a start on the headlights earlier. Bought a dremel and a metal mill bit, and got to work. Didn't have much time to work on it but I got over half way through the first headlight at least.

I'll finish it tomorrow, and will sand & polish it back up to a shine. Should look identical to a facelift headlight then.

The plan after that is the same - to open them up, fit a projector lens inside, and to seal them again. They'd then look like facelift litronics, but made for a fraction of the price.

And then I thought, while I've got them open, what if I change the colour to the inserts? Now this is what I was thinking. The Carrera GT has black inserts with projector lenses. Many cars have black inserts with projectors as the inserts are obsolete and don't need to reflect anything while a projector lens is present. Even the new 991 GT3 RS has black inserts.

As you can see:

And this is someone's retrofit, like I'm going to do (minus the yellow indicator), but with black inserts:

I quite like that. Here's what they look like on black Boxsters:

So that's what I'll be doing. They'll be turned from pre-facelift egg yolk reflector headlights, to facelift modern black insert projector headlights. Very cool!

TrumpyAl · 05-31-2016, 03:59 PM

Yes, dead sexy IMO.
And flat black reflectors help to absorb any stray light splashing around from the projector - they have quite a lot of leakage.

geraintthomas · 05-31-2016, 04:19 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by TrumpyAl

Yes, dead sexy IMO.
And flat black reflectors help to absorb any stray light splashing around from the projector - they have quite a lot of leakage.

A very good point

geraintthomas · 06-01-2016, 02:13 PM

It's not good.

I've finished dremelling, sanding and polishing, and it looks like this:

Not good at all. I didn't have a depth guide so I did it all by hand, and this has made the surface uneven. I can't seem to sand and polish it to a reflective shine at all. So there we are, it's fit for the bin.

At least it was a spare that I bought for this very reason. If I want the projectors, I'll have to do it to my main headlights. Good thing about that is the indicators are already clear. Bad thing is that they're very expensive, and I don't think I'm brave enough to split them open. So it looks like this headlight project may have to be sacked off. I'm gutted

BruceH · 06-01-2016, 02:17 PM

Keep an eye out for nice used, clear indicators. I ended up finding a good deal on new ones(close to used price) and used those for my projectors.

geraintthomas · 06-01-2016, 02:19 PM

Huh?

The indicators are part of the lens, it's all one piece. The clear facelift lights like I've already got on the car are £250 minimum a headlight used price so certainly not cheap.