Casa de Mesa’s M3 color change from blue to blue

[Casa de Mesa]

Shark Blue.

Still don't like the name, but LOVE this color. In person, it feels like this thing is plugged into an electrical socket. The color is so bright! I'm super stoked! The first time seeing this car in person was a bit nerve wracking. When Tony at Vintage Restoration flipped the lights on in the booth, it was definitely "a moment".

A few shots with the car in the paint booth. It looks a little lighter in these photos than it actually looks in person, in part because of the lighting in the booth. In natural light, this color has a lot of depth to it.

These shots are before any final finishing work. Vintage Restoration's painter Brad has been painting cars for somewhere around 30 years. It shows. His work is amazing.

[Tbonem3]

Awesome

[mtpktz]

Shark Blue.

Still don't like the name, but LOVE this color.

Looks great - congrats!

It could be worse - you could use the VW nomenclature of Cornflower Blue..

[cbean]

good stuff . . . thank you for the updates!

[Casa de Mesa]

Awesome

good stuff . . . thank you for the updates!

Thank you!

Looks great - congrats!

It could be worse - you could use the VW nomenclature of Cornflower Blue..

Valid point.

I'm going to get some paint code stickers made up for the shock tower. My wife is among other things, a graphic designer. I will probably have one made that says Shark Blue has the correct paint Porsche code. However, since it's a sticker and easily swapped out, I'm thinking of things like:

SHARKBLAU
SHARKMFBLAU
LOUDAFBLAU

You get the idea... It'll be like the vanity plate game for paint code stickers.

[Casa de Mesa]

And it's home.

Last week, the car was delivered home. Big day! As as said in one of my earlier posts, when I saw the car loaded up and ready to be carted off to the shop, I had a "Holy crap what am I doing?" moment. Here:



Well this was a "Holy crap what have I done?" moment, but in the best possible way! Here:



Got the car unloaded with relative ease and pushed back to a resting spot. From there the work continues. I immediately took a few shots:





Carbon glory.

The weatherstripping around the glass in this picture is not factory. It has since been replaced with a Genuine BMW weatherstripping / gasket.



Door handles and front fender trim next to the Cerakote covered transmission cross member:



Engine bay - I was torn between going gloss or satin in the engine bay. The engine bay is clear coated in satin, with multiple layers. With the matte CSL intake and other "non shiny" stuff in the engine bay, I opted for satin.

I have some minor cleanup work to do before starting the re-assembly process. There is some paint prep dust, small patches of minor overspray., etc. It will cleanup easily. These guys did an incredibly good job of prep work and masking.

BMW paints over some rubber grommets from the factory, like the brake line pass-through grommet in the bottom of the shock tower. They replicated that and also sprayed over the brake line grommet holding the 4 brake lines coming out of the ABS unit. Not sure I like it now... but it *should* be an easy fix. However, I've been having a hard time locating the part number. If anyone knows that part number, I would love to know it!




The IR windshield. I went with the "fully loaded" windshield that is supposed to have the green strip across the top. It doesn't. I actually thought it didn't have the IR coating as in this lighting, it's really hard to see it. The IR blue/purple hue is very faint in person. Perhaps when it's out in direct sunlight it will pop more. (P/N: 51317059703)



The shop called me up one morning and asked if I wanted this hood vent painted body color. I said, "No but could you do it in gloss black?" I figured if I didn't like it, a replacement piece is $38. I like it! All of the trim work will be gloss black - including the shadowline trim and door / window moldings - a la Porsche GT3.




Engine bay cleaned up:



New sound insulation put in. Which incidentally, this replacement insulation is SIGNIFICANTLY more robust than what was on the car. It has an aluminzed backing and much nicer than what was on the car, which in comparison is basically pressed pieces of cardboard. It's a substantial difference.




Pulled the wiring through. Have some overspray on the wheel and tire that I'll have to address. Since these weren't prepped for paint, I'm hoping it comes off easily. Also, in this 2nd photos below, the ABS unit wiring is hooked back up. That's chunking wiring harness connector is a PITA to fish through the mazes of ABS brake lines!








I re-taped all of the wiring in high-temp Tessa tape. It's a fabric tape that is WAY nicer than the electrical tape it's replacing an is made for engine bays. A lot of the existing electrical tape was failing, or was incredibly gunky/dirty looking from the adhesive seeping out of the tape and attracting dirt. I tried to clean up all of the wiring before doing this, as this was a 4+ hour endeavor of "teeny little hell". Happy it's done, but talking about monotonous...

Pictures in this light are hard to capture what it actually looks like. It's pollen season here in NC so the garage doors remain closed, but the lighting suffers for it.

If anyone is interested, here is the fabric Tesa tape on Amazon.





Installed the CSL / slick top sound insulation and side curtain airbags. Sorry about the upside down photos...

This wiring is also a bit of a mess. I have Tesa "felt" tape for this. I'm removing some no-longer needed wiring (sunroof!) and will then re-tape everything with the felt Tesa tape. Love this stuff.

Felt Tesa tape on Amazon.

[PHNX636]

Looks beautiful - Especially with the paintbooth lighting.

[bigjae46]

That looks amazing!


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[racee78]

Looks great, looking forward to seeing continued progress.


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[Sharocks]

Dude this is insane lol

Car looks wild.

Really nice seeing people spend real money on these things!

[antknee]

i'm not gonna lie, when i 1st saw you post about color change, i had my doubts that a subpar (exterior color change, no jams/engine) color change was going to happen. Boy i was wrong. Love how you went the extra mile & outside the box with the color choice. Awesome job, looking forward to it all pieced together.

[RoyalFlushness]

Absolutely nuts work... jeez

[zzyzx85]

amazing work, Casa de Mesa ! Can't wait to see it all put together.

Also, as someone else mentioned, your disassembly (and ongoing reassembly) is great reference for anyone working on their car.

[lvm3sm46]

Was price of this job ever shared? If not are you willing to share?

[Tbonem3]

If you have to ask....