Overviews
Excuse the crappy quality, these where taken with a Motorola A1000, the others are worse, taken with my NEC e616v.
Factory Front Bar
Here we can see some paint damage to the front bar, i think that it was resprayed when the lip was attached as the paint here is of noticably crapper quality then the hood and roof, also there is a paint run visible.
Front Lip
Damage to the front lip is pretty extensive, all ocurred prior to my purchase of the car, i have a sneaking suspicion that Adriano was farsighted and couldn't see close obstacles like gutters
It is detached from the driver side and flaps around in the wind, this has caused fracturing of the paint on the factory section just above the join. The fibreglass is cracked in those two most damaged places and the fibreglass has fallen away from underneath the bar to reveal the body filler stuff.
Sideskirts
Here it is clearly evident how terrible the spray job was, the paint has flaked off in areas where the only friction present is air! Also theres a large gash on the passenger side where its been driven to close to a gutter...
Bootlid
These are just the holes from the previous vielside kit, i'm glad adriano got rid of it, i hate the VS FTO kit, in my opinion its ugly as sin (the front bar) and way to common, but thats just me. Holes have been covered with the same plastic clips that hold the carpet down in the boot, except there white, and have been sealed to the bootlid. A couple came loose so i resealed them with roof and gutter sealant. Although you can't see it there are some large depressions and scratches from the previous spoiler and a bit of glue has been left behind (i got most of it off with cut n polish).
So now you've seen the damage, i have to work out what to do, and why some of it's occured. I can only assume that the spray job was of very poor quality (one coat paint, one clearcoat) because of the damage on the sideskirts caused by a bit of air and dust over time. Also i'm unsure why sealant was used around all the pieces where they join to the original kit, its become yellow and cracked and looks horrible.
I have absolutely no idea how the cracking occured around the head and foglight area and as i mentioned i can only assume that this was resprayed at the same time as the front bar (and is hence inferior quality to the factory job).
Paint on the roof, hood, doors and guards is amazing for the cars age, only damage present is light swirl marks visible in the sunshine.
I have since gotten the car raised (3cm driver, 2cm passenger, it was uneven before...) so aslong as i take care and don't attempt rediculous driveway entries theres no chance of scraping. I want to replace the front low profile tyres (5cm wall at bottom) with ones the same as the rear (7.5cm wall at bottom) which will bring me up a further 2.5cm but i don't know if rubbing will occur then.
I'm really at a loss of what to do. My main priority is the front bar, so i'll talk about that. Ultimately i would want a new factory series one bar, plus a new dcautro lip, sprayed white properly. This however would be aproximately $1000 for parts, plus spraypainting and labour, much costly.
I was quoted $400 to repair (albiet without much confidence) the front lip and respray it and the front bar. I figure this will be a sh*t job, and the damage is too severe to the lip to warrent spending 400bux when the cracks will easily reform.
So i'm planning on getting a new d'cautro lip and having the old one removed. Then i'll be getting the stock bar and the lip sprayed at the same time. SSV say $800 for this but I really, really, do not want to go back to SSV for this (thats where adriano had it done) because it looks like they originally did a sh*t job.
Could anyone give me some more ideas on what could be done (for all the areas, not just the bar) as well as some price guides. I'd also love to hear of a good fitter and sprayer in NSW, preferrably with FTO experience, i don't mind paying a bit more if i know its going to be an excellent job.
Oh and lastly, thanks to ImageShack for Free Image Hosting