Plastic Surgery

Apart from installing the APR GTC-200 I decided to send Sharkie in for the now customary every 2 years or so front end beautification job. As usual Sharkie's front bumper, grille and bonnet are littered with lots of road gravel rash and love bites aka stone chips. The beautification job this round is more extensive and consists of the following:

1. Repaint Sharkie's bonnet, grille and bumper 
2. Remove current boot lid, drill holes on the new boot lid I bought, paint it and install
3. Realign the rear doors. The rear doors are slightly out of alignment and the bottom edge will contact the side skirts. This problem has been there since day one. Problem does not affect opening/closing of the door but over time the contact will rub off the paint causing rust on the door's bottom edge and rust stains/wear on the top of the sideskirts. Bummer Bolehland CKD build quality.
4. Recondition the headlights.

Badges/emblems for the new boot lid. 

Bought the Nissan round emblem from Japan. The brand new ones avail here are from Taiwan and appear to have less depth and finish quality than the stock 8 year old emblem on Sharkie. Part numbers for both Taiwan and JDM are the same. I did not have time to take a piccie of the Taiwanese emblem as I had to return it immediately to the local supplier to get a refund. Pix of the JDM Nissan round emblem. Quality is top notch!

Picture below of the new boot lid fitted. Says "Made in Japan" on the label. 

Part number of the boot lid. Pardon the dust. Ah.... Ahchoo!!!

Holes to mount the APR GTC-200 drilled. There are 4 holes per side, 8 total. 

The new painter doing Sharkie's current beautification work is an official panel repair workshop for Honda, BMW, Subaru, etc. over BM area and is IMHO very professional. Everything gets removed for the actual painting and no on-the car paint job which can lead to all the overspray sh*t.

I was thinking to replace Sharkie's headlights but Ah Siang (the paint shop boss) suggested reconditioning and re-clear coating the headlights. Many headlight reconditioning jobs while removing the yellowing and blurring on the headlights also remove the protective clear coating hence the reconditioned headlights will start to yellow again in no time. Bout as fast as a week if you frequently park your car under the sun. Trust me as I learned the hard way. 

Picture below of the reconditioned headlights. Pardon the poor picture quality. Was really dark and I was in a hurry so just took a quick pix of the reconditioned headlights in Sharkie's boot. Not as good as brand new but certainly better than before. Problem is some of the yellowing is on the inside surface of the headlight housing and nothing can be done about that. Will do for the time being as a brand new set of headlights will cost 1.4K or more.

Pix of Sharkie sans bumper, grille, bonnet and headlights. 

Just need to finish painting and re-install/install everything back including the APR wing. Soon..