Finally painting my Integra

[90Teg]

1st a photo from when I purchased this 1990 Acura Integra, except I’d replaced the windshield. Broken from hail damage. You can just make out some of the 75+ dents in the hood, in this photo. Fortunately, the rest of the car only had about 15 dents from hail. I don’t know how that happened, but I didn’t have much filling after replacing the hood. Maybe the rest of the car was under a tree.

I struggled to buy a hood for a long time. OEM metal hoods are hard to get, so are used ones. I work out in the middle of nowhere, so I’d have to have it shipped to, out in the middle of nowhere.

The other option was carbon-fiber. I liked the idea of reducing the weight, but $700 for a hood was not what I wanted to spend….so I did, while visiting my sister’s house in a real city.

Now I’m back at work and spent a lot of time sanding, doing some minor filling. The masking took a lot of time and I painted the trim, 1st. I couldn’t take the car all apart. I don’t have the space or time for that.

I love this little car. I travel across I-10 in Texas a lot. It gets 29.7 miles to the gallon at 80mph, but it really likes to run at about 83 to 85 mph. It will do 85 to 105 in the length of a tandem trailer (only once). I’ll never spend the money for a 1969 911S, but this Integra is the next best thing as far as I’m concerned.

So far besides the windshield, alloy wheels, spoiler and hood, I put in a 2″ exhaust and a somewhat quite muffler. It kind of sounds like a TR-4. There were a few electrical bugs and I had to vacuum the AC and refill it. Plus a K&N short ram and high output coil. That’s about it.

A new car would be near 30k, so I might as well spend 10k on this one, but I really won’t have to for a long time. By the time I finish painting it, I’ll have about $3000 into it, including the $500 purchase price. I’ve put about 16k miles on it in 2.5 years, and it’s currently at 146k miles. I’ll keep it for the next 20 years.

Comments appreciated.

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