5715 Is finally painted

It looks incredible. Now for the easy, fun part of the restoration!

It looks very nice.   It was worth the wait.

Mike, Looks Great!, What color is it?  Who did the paint job?

Agreed.  Reminds me of the color of Mike Dailey's.

Thanks!

The color is Cadillac Infrared Tintcoat. I was looking for a color for over a year. When we went to buy a Caddy CT4-V last year for my wife I saw the color. That was it.

Being a nut-n-bolt person, choosing a color was the most anxiety evoking decision for this project. After all the car projects I have been involved with this is MY first fancy paint job. My custom car friends talked me into it. I hope the rest of the build comes out as good as the paint.

Bright trim? Charcoal trim? A little of both?

I vote for brushed or charcoal trim. No mix; one or the other. Look into Cerakote. It's awesome for trim pieces. It isn't thick like powder coat and it's much harder, which makes reassembly easier. What kind of wheels are you going to use? That's another stressful decision! Hopefully, you've already made it!

I'm leaning towards charcoal. I like the charcoal wheel centers in the attached photo of the wheels. Matching trim should look nice.

I bought the wheel tire combo first thing so we could get the flares positioned correctly for the ride height. You kind of have to build the car around the wheel-tire package for everything to work out. The wheels are 18x9 front and 20x12 in the rear. The rear lower control arms are parallel to the ground which seems about right for a street car with the tire size we went with. We added a slight rake.

Notice the deep back spacing of the front wheels. We built custom longer front control arms to minimize the scrub radius.

I will check out the Cerakote product. Thanks.

Mike

I vote for bright trim. Works really well with red. I would do a mock up of a piece before I'd commit to it.

@racecarmike posted:

Notice the deep back spacing of the front wheels. We built custom longer front control arms to minimize the scrub radius.

Hi Mike,

Can you elaborate on the front control arms?
I'm thinking about something similar for one of my project cars...

Personally, I don't like the way high scrub radius cars steer. I have never proven conclusively that lap times for low scrub cars are better than cars with a high scrub radius. Nobody designs a modern car from scratch with a high scrub radius (maybe dirt cars). It's usually the outcome of someone installing wider wheels with stock backspacing. It's not easy to redesign the front control arms. If racing, some classes don't allow different control arms. Moderate scrub is usually not an issue driving on a smooth track with limited steering input.

It's a bigger issue with street cars. In extreme cases the tires tuck into the fenders front and back at lock. Cars like that feel like they are "hunting" around from road irregularities. Probably not too noticeable on very smooth roads.

We built custom longer front upper control arms that are fully adjustable. I designed the arms around the stock ball joints. The new arms allow for increased caster and easy camber adjustment. We offset the lower ball joint forward enough so with increased caster the spindle is in about the stock (per original to this car) location. We modified the stock front lower arms to be longer and offset the ball joint. The modified front suspension and rear suspension (rear camber still needs work) were installed and rough aligned prior to installing the flares. We were able to streamline the shape of the front flares a bit because we don't have excessive front to back tire swing caused by high scrub. We did not alter the suspension mounting points.

Very cool!

If you happen to have any photos of the control arms, I'd love to see 'em.

I only have a photo of the prototype we made. The final arms are on the car. They look almost the same but there is no gap on either side of the upper ball joint and they look a bit nicer. We evaluated a few different designs including modifying the stock uppers. Designing around the stock ball joint makes everything challenging. I would build them differently if we used other ball joints. These have enough adjustment so they are OK.

5715 is finally buffed and ready to pick up from the body shop.

It's a very modern color and looking car, personally I think the charcoal trim would be best.