Polishing Project STurdteen with KBD Body Kits – Part 1

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I visited my good friends at GSWerks in Palmdale, CA which is about 30 minutes away from my favorite SoCal native track, Willow Springs International Raceway. The owner, Dan, introduced me to his “painter guy” Rob who agreed to take on the seemingly impossible task of doing this job in one day (I was in a rush because I had a competition coming up).

Let me start off by saying that Dan and Rob are the hugest life savers – they not only were able to do this in a day, but they helped me finish a lot more work on my car that needed to be done. GSWerks has been the go-to fab shop for many local drifters, so I knew I was in good hands.

 

They started off by skinning the replacement quarter panel. Rob was even kind enough to reference my personal blog and brand Not A Kitchen with this lovely drawing. Even though I can’t see it anymore, it’s comforting knowing that this artwork is forever in my S13 now.

Before they cut up the replacement QP, they discovered that it had previously been skinned and replaced on the car that it came off of. So I essentially got a skin of a skin. A hand-me-down of three generations, rather than two. 

Then they went to town on my chassis. Lots of marking, cutting, and grinding involved. Things were getting a little intense.

 

Here's the chassis after the “butt fungus” had been removed. Now we are awaiting for the replacement QP to be put into place.
Here's another angle – you can see they had to cut into the taillight assembly as well. 
Here's Rob prepping the new QP. There was a lot of “shaping” involved before placing it onto the car.
I recall the morning of, Rob and Dan went out for breakfast. I was a little concerned that the new old QP hadn’t been put on yet, but they just shrugged me off. I went to run some errands and by the time I came back, I encountered the replacement QP in place. I swear they use some type of magic.

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