Two Steps Forward...

To be honest I'm surprised it took this long before I encountered a significant hiccup...

Yup, the outside "look" of the vehicle is done...kinda...

I picked up the truck from the shop today and it looks great. The front fenders look fantastic and the paint, fit and finish are top shelf work. Only the small strip of blue vinyl continuing from the doors and going forward to the wheel wells remains to be done.

That was the good news...The bad news was that three "starbursts" were found on the very top of the bedsides. Clearly the result of rocks thrown up at my last RallyCross event by the rapidly spinning RWD they point out an obvious deficiency of the fiberglass in motorsports and if I don't want the bedsides and fenders to be junk in short order a solution needs to be found. In hindsight, as always, the problem can be easily foreseen and I should have headed the problem off and solved it ahead of time...

Thereby the Two Steps Forward, One Step Back reference...

Though it is not likely to impact my progress in terms of time for the project (repairs and resolution to problem estimated to be a less than one week job) it will impact my budget as the costs to repair the fiberglass, repaint those small sections and re-clear both bedsides will be significant. Then a solution to the flying rock problem--likely rubber inner fender liners attached to various points/brackets will be a hit as well. None of the materials in this are going to amount to much but the time involved will be.

In any project as long and involved as this, there are bound to be setbacks. This is the first...but will not be the last...