A little bit of chippin', a little bit of rustin', and a little bit of filler. Now the suspension pieces are ready for paint.

These parts were in pretty good condition.

You'd think you could paint all the black pieces from one car at once, but we can't. It's always in batches of whatever we can get done in one day.

The parts can't sit or they will start to rust. Maybe in CA or some western State it takes a little longer to rust because of less humidity, but not here.
These parts were blasted in the morning and their surfaces were prepared for primer by lunch time.

Only a few parts on these race cars are ever powder coated. We only use powder coat as a primer anyway.

The parts are awaiting the final satin black.

Disassembly of the front suspension components reveals the coatings-plating and all the hardware.

Sometimes you can't tell what color the plating is until you actually remove it to see the surfaces underneath bolt heads and washers.

Sometimes the parts are marked, but most of the time they can only be used on one side or the other.
In this case, someone that's not at Gunnar anymore, decided to outsmart himself. I guess this side is a LEFT RIGHT front because it's not a rear! So it has to be a right left (front), right?

This bracket was originally yellow cad.

Notice this castellated nut and cotter pin- they are yellow (original).

Same side, different view.

This side didn't do so good.

Sometimes this is all you get. How could you figure out what color this would be? Hard to see through all the dirt and corrosion, but because we have a perfect opposite side we will document and etch it in stone (at least for the "R's").

Now here's a left tie rod...unless we can't see the R on the other side of the tape.

You can still buy these ball joints new, so we do.

Notice more yellow plating. The bolt head is exposed to road use and the shank is in the middle of the eyelet, which protects it, thus showing the yellow plating.

The rack needs a total rebuild.

You can tell the fire got hot enough to melt some of the rubber donuts (Guibo).

Disassembly, clean, crack check, repaint, re-plate and about a day later this part will look and work like new.

The rubber bellows are still available from Porsche.

The lower control arms are in perfect shape, just need cleaning and painting.

We will replace the rubber bushings with soft Delron.

We re-plate the bolts that are phosphate. We already gave a description of how we do this in a previous update.

As the rack comes apart you can see all the parts and the colors.

More gold here. It's normal to call these parts gold plated, but they are actually yellow.

Wow!

Okay, maybe more than a day later.

You'd never know these parts were anything but new.

Even the data tag survived the fire.

More close ups.

Same.

Sweet!

Yellow looks good on black.

The whole suspension goes up in one fail swoop!

We couldn't find the tie rod end for the left side until yesterday so it's off to the plater to catch up with its friends.