With the new suspension components being installed, meaning the wheel arches had nothing in them, I thought it'll be a perfect time to respray them. I looked into the various underbody kits, but a close friend whose a panel beater by trade suggested against this as it'll just add weight, and his not been happy with the kits in the past, and theres already the OEM underbody guard on here.

He suggested to scrub back the surface with some scotch brite & wire brush, then prime and paint with satin black. Somewhat a similar process to the engine bay. I'll group the photos together below by step, not too much to talk about, but it was very messy cleaning out all the dirt, but primering and paint was seamless as expected. I didn't paint all the way forward on the front arches as you'll see, as the inner guard liner will be covering this section, which will also be hidden behind the bumper. Very happy with how it turned out in the end, again, super fresh!

I'll also include the rear sub frame welding and painting at the end of this post!

The products I'll be using for the arches:

• Scotch brite
• 1k etch primer
• Satin black acrlic paint

Just an example of the amount of dirt I removed from the rear left arch just with a wire brush.. Crazy!

Scrubbing down the arches with scotch brite & wire brush

Lets say I was completely covered in dirt after this..

Primer

Only took photos of the rear in primer it seemed, for some reason..

Colour

Lovely!

Rear subframe

~ 13/5/23

The rear subframe was absolutely minging from all the CV grease which has been splattered over it from various torn boots over the rears, actually pretty disgusting.. The plan will be to run stitch welds over the entire subframe as they have been known to crack for some people. I think it's usually on the K swapped ED/EF's, but as we are here we might as well! Lets remove the steering rack & pressure clean this back first.

Absolutely minging...

Pressure cleaned

Messy process this was, but had to be done. A hoist would have made this a lot easier!

Welding time

I was probably welding this for 1-1.5hr's without realising the time. I just went along every fold of metal doing the stitch welds. I had the welder turned up to get some nice beads. Few fires on the bench cloth too haha. Also ran some around the rear engine mount position as you'll see. There isn't individual sheets here, but this is a known tear point so hopefully this reinforces it a bit.

Painted

A week later I cleaned everything with with a wire wheel and laid down some fresh paint. Looks pretty good! I'll reinstall the steering rack to the subframe once on car as the steering rack has a few things to be done to it first.