I decided that the Christmas present I'll give myself is to see my roadster stand on its own four wheels for the first time. Funny how it suddenly looks like a car once the wheels are on even though I know exactly what I'm building.
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One of the reasons why I wanted it on its own wheels is to lower the car as much as possible to make it easier for me to step in and out of the frame when working inside the engine compartment. After much consideration I've decided to spray paint the engine compartment aluminum panels to matte black to match the powder-coated frame itself. I'm experimenting with the possibilities of working on the paint job without removing everything from the engine bay; by detaching parts only from the panels to be painted.
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Based on what I've read, I understand that aluminum is a "slippery" metal and doesn't adhere well to paint. There are dozen threads on painting the aluminum panels in the engine bay and I'm going through each one of them to further learn what it takes. The general consensus seems to be that if one sands it down and apply a layer of self etching primer to the panels before painting, the paint job should stay. I'll swing back to this as I get closer to actually doing it.

Unfortunately not everything went according to plan. When I tried to turn my rear wheels it felt surprisingly difficult. I thought it must be the new diff or something that needs a "break-in", so I kept turning it. Little did I know, my wilwood e-brake was scraping against the wheel well! It scraped off a bunch of paint and my heart dropped an inch when I saw it. Shiny perfect new wheels? Gone. Just like that. I should have checked for clearance issues for both main calipers and the e-brake calipers. I had assumed that if the main calipers clear the wheels, then the e-brake calipers will too. This was a terrible assumption.

So now I'm in search of a solution. I've started a separate thread here just to talk about this issue. I'll keep majority of the discussions there and post any final decisions here.
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Last but not least, I've emailed FFR about purchasing a power-steering rack. Haven't heard back from them yet (which is completely expected during holiday season, no blame to FFR here) but I'm excited to get that installed.