ROLNSLO's Synergy Green SS

[Synergy_9]

Going to make it to mustangs vs camaros this saturday?

[rolnslo]

Not likely. In-laws are visiting this weekend from out of state.

[rolnslo]

Slowly making changes. Will be getting rid of the matte paint protection film on the raised section of the hood and down the center of the roof and then adding black carbon fiber hood spears instead.

[mlee]

Bout time you got back in here with updates...

[rolnslo]

No kidding, right? Been gone way too long.

Work project from hell finally wrapped up after two years...stress levels back to normal now.


Let's see, what else have I done since I was last here...

Busted my Vararam intake when taking it out to clean the filter. Put a huge crack in the rear section so it's back to stock for now.

New 1" drop springs from Eibach (Facebook contest win!), installed by me.

ZL1 wheels - repaired / powder coated gloss black, then I painted the spokes in a Ferrari Titanium silver - turned out to be too dark on such a small aread so I sanded all of the spokes down to metal, then polished them. I do need to go back and re-sand out the deeper scratches I accidentally put in though. Now running Nitto Motivo 275/40 in front and 315/35 in back.

Next up: Sticker changes! Remove the XPEL matte clear paint protection film from the hood and roof, install the new hood spears. After recovering from paying to install a new swimming pool in the backyard later this month, I'll swap out the stock exhaust+muffler delete for something better.

[rolnslo]

3M 1080 Black Carbon Fiber hood spears installed this afternoon. $28 shipped from ebay!

[mlee]

Spears look great...

Vararam is local and should be able to fix you up

[Fish-man]

Originally Posted by rolnslo

ZL1 wheels - repaired / powder coated gloss black, then I painted the spokes in a Ferrari Titanium silver - turned out to be too dark on such a small aread so I sanded all of the spokes down to metal, then polished them. I do need to go back and re-sand out the deeper scratches I accidentally put in though. Now running Nitto Motivo 275/40 in front and 315/35 in back.

Can you give some detail on how you went about polishing the spokes? Did you do any paint stripping or just went straight to sanding?

Looks cool by the way. Any plans on adding the stripe like the original Hotwheels car?

[rolnslo]

I haven't decided on doing the red stripe yet. For now, I painted the CAMARO letters along the edge with SGM paint for a bit of color.

My wheels were probably more work than most. The process was time consuming. In my case, 2 of the wheels had curb rash that I had repaired, which led to having all four wheels powdercoated gloss black. On top of the PC, I had painted the spokes first with 3 coats of the Ferrari paint and then 3 coats of clear - didn't turn out like the picture I had in my head. So, my sanding/polishing process meant I had to get through:

3 layers of clear
3 layers of paint
1 thick layer of powdercoat
1 layer of factory black paint
1 layer of factory primer

Way too much to get through easily. I started with 100 grit sandpaper on a palm sander but gave up after 1 spoke and 2 hours. Broke out the Rockwell Sonicrafter oscillating tool with 20 grit paper - still too slow. Switched to a carbide grit rasp blade and made some real progress on cutting down all of the coatings down to just the factory primer.

Moved on to 20 grit to remove the rest and smooth out some of the places I slipped with the rasp blade, then 120 and 240 grit with the palm sander. Wet sanded with 400 and 800 by hand. Then used a black polishing stick and a cotton wheel. Finally finished with a coat of Mother's Mag and Aluminum Polish.

In the end, this 'project' consumed 6-8 hours every Saturday for a month - one wheel at a time. Wouldn't have done it any other way though. :-)

For someone with just the stock 1LE/ZL1 wheels, the factory paint/primer should come off pretty easily with 100 grit sand paper but you'll probably still need to go through the finer grits to sand out the scratches caused by the heavier grits, followed by the polishing.

[Fish-man]

Thanks for the info. .. wondering if you had considered using a strong tape (3m 425), and tape off the parts you want to preserve and then use aircraft paint stripper to strip the paint... or if anyone on here has done that here?

[rolnslo]

I think I considered using aircraft paint stipper early on but didn't think about it for long once I had the wheels powdercoated. Maybe check in the wheel/tire section and see if someone there has tried it?

[VR Baron]

Looks good! Wondered where you went.

[rolnslo]

I can't believe it's been 5 years since I bought my SS.

75300 miles.

See ya later warranty! I'm pretty sure this is the first vehicle I've owned where I ran out of time instead of miles on the factory warranty.

No major issues and very few minor ones along the way. Miles are flying by now that I have an 80 mile round-trip commute each day for work.

As a 5th anniversary gift, I finally replaced my stock exhaust (muffler delete) with an NPP dual mode catback from a donor '14 SS 1LE. $200 plus an hour in the driveway on a Sunday afternoon = a much improved exhaust note.

Picked up the NPP diffuser for the quad tips on the way into work yesterday and installed this morning.

Not too bad, only took me 5 years to do something about the stock exhaust.

Not sure I'm going to hook up a vacuum line to run the dual mode or not. I'll leave it open for now and then figure out if I want/need the ability to close it.

That's it for now. Another set of new tires is up next and I'm working towards headers and a tune - maybe next year.

Still love my SGM SS!