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April 2001. The Cat gets a new hood, driver's side fender, driver's side mirror and front bumper. The front end had been damaged and poorly repaired before she became and artcar, and my shoddy work had come back to haunt me. The paint on the fender & hood was chipped to the point where more primer was showing then paint, and the bondo was cracking & chipping off. The bumper was cracked and broken, hanging from one bolt on the driver's side, and the turn lights on it hadn't worked since 1997.
This picture from Rhode Rally shows some of how battered the front end had gotten. However it was even worse then that after one of the worst winters in a long while. I had been whining about the condition of the front sheetmetal for a while, when I was accepted for the artcar parade in Houston I decided to finally do something about it. An entertaining four hours in a junkyard attained usparts and more parts, stuffed in there are a hood, fender, bumper, and mirror for The Cat, and a radiator overflow tank & front seat for Christa's Ecco. First everything had to be painted, which took a while (in fact the hood ended up being painted professionally). The bumper also had some scratches filled, and the hood had the holes for the new hood ornament drilled.
The fender and bumper were ready a few days later First the bumper was removed, then the fender. While they were off I took the opportunity to fix some faulty wiring. It takes a certain sort of mindset to look at a car in this condition and think 'Oh good, I'm making progress'. When you compare the two bumpers, It's easy to see why I wanted it replaced. Also you can see where I scraped and repainted some rust on the frontend. Comparing the two fenders, this is harder to see, but the old fender is bend at the top, and the old paint & bondo there is cracking and chipping off exposing the rusty metal underneath. Once reassembled, The Cat looks much better. When replacing the text, I managed to fit everything from the old fender onto the top half of the new one. Also I removed the old headlight covers to make new ones. The grill was also repainted silver and reinstalled
This shot shows some of how bad the old hood was. The diagional line is the edge of where I had repainted the hood, this used to be almost invisible but as the paint deteriorated it became very noticable. Also the paint was chipping off (the grey speckles are the primer showing through). A friend ended up surprising me by getting the hood professionally painted. This was great, except that I couldn't install it until the day before we left for Houston. First I ripped the old hood off. Then simply bolted the new hood on. I Installed the hood ornament the next morning, and it looked Impressive.
Because of the last minute installation of the hood, I didn't get a chance to even lay out the tape for the cat's face until Monday. It was Wednesday before I started transcribing quotes, in fact I spent the entire Welcome to Houston party working on the hood. By Thursday afternoon I had the entire cat's face & wiskers done. I was still working on the hood on Saturday, the day of the artcar parade. In fact I went through the pre-parade judging with it only partially done, and finally finished it only about 10-15 minutes before the parade started.
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www.blert.net/thecat/