Transforming the Fusion "5" I got last year, into "My Car"...(a more positive thread than my first).

1894 Views 30 Replies 3 Participants Last post by Doc-Z, 17 d ago

Doc-Z

Discussion Starter · Feb 22, 2022

I was reading over the thread I started on here and it was full of negativity. I wanted to post something which was more positive and show some of the mods I did to the car. I'm not very good at taking pictures or videos of my projects as I do them, but I hope this thread inspires someone to customize their stuff, their car or add to the car community as a whole.

Truth be told, I have my favorite cars (most of which are Pontiac's), but I can definitly see how someone would love a Honda CRX, Chevrolet Cavalier, Monte Carlo or a Porsche 911 Targa. I don't believe "a car is just a car". At least, I don't want "just a car". Life is too short to sit in a boring 💩 📦 to get me from point "A" to point...whaever.

This thread is about making your car an extension of you. Your car is a starting point. It's a Yellow, Silver, Orange, Black, Red..it's a canvas that you can drive. You get to choose what you do to it. Some people like to go fast, throw their cars through the twisties, or park and show it off....

Anyway, this is what I've done to My Fusion "5". This is the ver first pic I took of the car when it was finally delivered!!!

Before I got to driving it, I wanted to take care of any issues the carmight have had, before I got to driving it. The first thing I needed to address was possible rust issues. These cars are notorious for rust issues in the rockers, in front of the rear wheel. This car looks really nice, but it had this issue. The underside was really scaly witht eh rust problem. This is the good side. I wound up having to cut some of the subframe out and I re-welded in some rectangle bar that I had to halve. Because the holes were below the side skirt, I didn't do much to the rocker. I just cleaned up the rust, welded and sealed / coated this side.

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The drivers side was a bigger problem. there was a small rust bubble peeking out from behind the side skirt. After checking it out, a chunk of the car fell off. I wound up having to fabricate a small patch and welded it back in. I literally touched this and it crumbled in my hand. I will readily admit. I am NOT a welder. I'm a Chiropractor who has to grind his welds....a LOT!

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Hey! You can see the front wheel for my GTO in the lower right corner!!!! After a TON of cleaning with a an electric wire brush, a dremel and rust removal wheel, I got it all cleaned off. I thien made this patch panel fom some scrap sheet metal. On the right aspect, there is a slightly different lines to the body panel. This took some massaging to get it to line up right.

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Like I said, 👆 I'm a grinder...not a welder! After some grinding 👇 a coat of primer.

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Doc-Z

Discussion Starter · #21 · 9 mo ago

Cloud Sky Plant Sculpture People in nature

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Alas, I had to drive home. That whole "Monday morning work" thing is kind of a drag. It rained most of the way back and I didn't get many pictures.

Well... except this one:

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It was a very long drive, but I hoped you enjoyed this as much as I did taking the pictures.

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Doc-Z

Discussion Starter · #22 · 9 mo ago

Another update....

When I bought the car, the door handles didn't match. The drivers side was painted orange (body color) but the passenger side looked like someone wanted to paint it...but sanded it down and forgot to finish it. It was one thing that kinda irked me about the car. I didn't notice it in the pictures of the car, when I went to buy it. When I saw it, I was...well...irked! Also the drivers side interior door handle had a patch of chrome missing from it. I ordered new handles and put them on yesterday and today. I also added some sound deadener to the inside of the doors. That quieted down the road noise some, but I'm going to pull the interior tonight after work and see if I can get more of that down.

I also added some 70mm switchback rings around the fog lights. When I bought the car, the fog lights didn't work. When I checked the bulbs, they were fine. Rather than try to seek out that solution, I bought the LED rings.

Here is the door handle that...I don't know. It looks like it was sanded down and prepped for primer and paint (which never happened).

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👆👆👆 Comparo. of the two handles, after removing the old one. Taking this apart wasn't hard, just a little awkward.
👇👇👇 ...and the new handle installed.

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Since I had it apart, I swapped out the interior door handle as well, The chrome was peeling. It looks bad, but the chrome shards were pretty sharp. I snagged my finger more than once.

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Here are the 70mm white and amber LED switchback rings I ordered in August of 2020. I would have installed these sooner, but I misplaced them (they were in a box with interior parts for my GTO). I was looking for them, but figured they got put somewhere. I found these last week and installed them right away.

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Here's a side by side of my 2007 G5 (what I'm calling the GT-oh?) and my2006 GTO.

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Here's something else I thought was kind of cool. I modified a triple A-Pillar gauge pod for the G5 and I also made a triple gauge pod in the center console for the GTO. It's kind of hard to see them, but here are the two pods in each car.

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Sir 500mph

· #23 · 9 mo ago

Those fogs are gorgeous. Can you throw some pics of those lit up? How do you have the switchback wired?

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Doc-Z

Discussion Starter · #24 · 8 mo ago (Edited)

@Sir 500mph I'll post some pictures today, but will have more after this weekend. My girlfriend and I are going to the Pontiac Adventures weekend in the Wisconsin Dells. I'm pretty sure I'll have a TON of pictures on my phone from the cruises and such.

I got these on Amazon and I'm not 100% happy with them.

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They were very easy to install, but I've only had these on the car for a few weeks. It rained 2 times since and some of the LED's are already failing on one of them. The other side, the switchback stopped working completely.

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Sir 500mph

· #25 · 8 mo ago

Oh, you have them connected to the DRLs, I was confused for a moment lol. I was thinking of doing Mirage Fogs, but I might have to do rings too. I wonder if I can find Pale Yellow/Amber

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Doc-Z

Discussion Starter · #26 · 8 mo ago

A few pictures from the weekend! I had to do a webinar on Saurday. I stopped for coffee on the way to the office and popped off a few pics.

UGH..that rust spot on the hood is really getting noticeable :-(

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Doc-Z

Discussion Starter · #27 · 2 mo ago

April 2023 update:

I still haven't gotten around to installing the stainless steel brake lines, or the cams. The Fusion "5" has been giving me a TON of issues, as has EVERY other car I have owned in the past decade. I've been trying to get my GTO closer to 'done', but that has been slow going. Every time I do something, I get a setback and have to re-do what I've been working on.

For example, I was going to use and entire Friday to work on the GTO. Prior to this, I had sold a 2006 GTO parts car to a friend. Another (mutual) friend of ours was looking for a GTO with a title and a firewall. The car I sold, had everything this guy needed. I put the two in touch and that was that...

...until I found out the first friend never titled the car in his name. We also came to find out, the parts car had a different VIN than was listed on th title. So, I had to rectify the situation (being the car was still in my name and at my address). Long story short, my entire Friday was consumed by this parts car - and then I had to deliver it back to Wisconsin the following Sunday.

Here's the car delivered back to Wisconsin:

Anyway, here's a recent pic of the Fusion "5"...

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Sir 500mph

· #28 · 1 mo ago

Glad to hear Im not the only one having life keep me from working on my cars xD
Everytime I see how clean ur '5' is, it makes me feel worse about my rust lol

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Doc-Z

Discussion Starter · #29 · 1 mo ago

Sir 500mph said:
Glad to hear Im not the only one having life keep me from working on my cars xD
Everytime I see how clean ur '5' is, it makes me feel worse about my rust lol

I'll be climbing under my car pretty soon for the exhaust. It's REALLY rusty underneath. I tried to fix some of it, but it wasn't worth it.

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Sir 500mph

· #30 · 28 d ago

Doc-Z said:
It's REALLY rusty underneath. I tried to fix some of it, but it wasn't worth it.

Mines pretty bad too, one of the Tiburon guys recommended using POR15 for the undercoat after cleaning everything up. Apparently its pretty durable when its fully cured

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Doc-Z

Discussion Starter · #31 · 17 d ago

It's durable, but you need to scale off a LOT of the rust first. I already put a hole in my floorboards, so this car is pretty much rusted beyond saving :-(. At this point, I'm just trying to piece it together.

I've used Por-15 before. It's pretty good stuff. If you do decide to use it, make sure you wear long sleeved gloves. If it gets on your skin, you only have a few moments to wash it off. Otherwise it will be a part of your life for about 9 days to 2 weeks. The qiuicker you get it off your skin, the better. I prefer to use Kerosene to clean it off, but brake cleaner on a rag or paper towel will also clean it off / remove it.

If you spill any on your concrete floor, DON'T WORRY!!! Let it dry and it will pop off (as long as it isn't too thin).

Once it is on the car, if any part is exposed to the sun, the UV light will degrade it. They recommend top coating any surfaces that will see sunlight.

This is my rear subframe on my 2006 GTO. It was pretty rusted where it was all welded together. It's a pretty common occurence when you heat metal. Even if it's coated or painted, the properties of the metal changes and it more prone to rust. I don't want ANY rust, so I used an old 💩ty Dremel and a grinding attachment to remove most of the this scaly rust:

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After most of it was removed, I used Rustoleum Rust Dissolver Gel and sprayed it all over the rusted areas. I used a paint brush to work it into all the areas. This stiff doesn't touch heavy rust, but once most of the rust is gone, this stuff really gets into the metal and cleans the Ba-JEEZIS out of the rust:

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Then I cleaned everything off and removed all the grease. Once it was cleaned, I used Por-15 as a base coat to help seal any microscopic bits of rust into the coating. Once that was completed, Isanded it down and painted it with Eastwood Chassis Black.

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This is how it looked under the car when I finished with it:

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and the most current pic:

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