Magilla Gorilla: Downtime (Part 2)

Here’s the much delayed Part 2. Another rundown of what I’ve been working on. All this stuff occurred prior to hitting the track last weekend, and I’d like to think it made a difference. Some performance items and some just general inspection/bling/well being of the car.

Valve covers: I painted the new valve covers a lovely shade of candy pink. They turned out great and look a lot like Yashio Factory pink. Here’s the recipe for the secret sauce:
Sand thoroughly with 240 grit
Sand thoroughly with 400 grit
Three coats of primer
Two coats of base silver metallic
Four coats of candy pink

Subframe Spacers: The subframe spacers were a cinch to install…or things were just going really smoothly that evening. Either way, they got rid of the hop I was experiencing when I initiated. Lots of bang for the buck. No installation pics since I was fighting daylight, so here’s a picture of the instructions:
These are the full ring style instead of the split-ring style which meant I had to drop the subframe below the stud height to mount them. To accomplish that, I put a jack under the diff, then loosened the rear mounts a bit for more play, then removed the front mounting studs which lowered the subframe and resulted in…
…under car bling. I also removed the steel square dangly block things from the rear mounts. No idea what they are for but they seemed superfluous and are really heavy!

Intercooler Clean-up: I had polish. I had downtime. I pulled the intercooler piping with the plan of shining it up. That done, I turned my attention to the intercooler core. I pulled it off, straightened many bent fins, and hit it with some polish.
Since the bumper was off, I got rid of the awful mesh that filled the openings and spent some time during re-installation properly trimming it for fitment to the intercooler and piping. Still a garbage bumper but a little better looking and functioning.
And a look at it with everything back together. Among shining up stuff, I got to have a closer look at all the parts, install them in the correct manner, and address some unnoticed issues like rusty failing clamps and areas of rubbing.

That wraps up the downtime projects!