An evening of sculpting. I had to sort out the left side of the bumper, the driver side, and understand why the headlight would not fall onto the lines of the body.

When you spend a long time with something, you start to see the details you normally miss. It is like a new car, even one that is only new to you. At first you see nothing, it all looks great, until you get home and cool down a little. And then a scratch here, a scratch there, dust in the paint, something that does not close up right. Which means you lower the emotion and simply spend time with the subject of your study.

Those small lines that were running apart led back to the front bumper. It had taken a hit, and though I restored it, or rather set it back, the form where the impact landed had sunk a little.

And to make that out, it seems I had to take a hit of my own first. Right in the eye. I was moving branches away from one of the cars, and did not notice one snap back and catch me square in the eyeball. The pain was awful, the eye scratched, but you live. A hit to Porsche and a hit to me come down to the same thing: neither shows until you look up close. I hope the morning is undramatic. For now it just hurts.

Once I understood the sag, I laid on a little fiberglass and filler, and everything fell into place at once.

Then we went back to the hood and finished the holes for the pins. Felix took that part on boldly, and the work came out clean. It let me move forward. On 996 there is no room for pins in stock, so I had to weld on two plates for the bolts that go into the pins. A little argon, a little TIG, and it was done. Now the hood sits level, exact. What is left is the gap between the hood and the bumper, where the fiberglass lies and is not perfectly even. I added filler, and tomorrow evening I sand it down, and it will be neat.

While I was at it I ran out the line of the driver headlight on the bumper, and the left and the right came into symmetry. I had to repeat the operation a few times. Piling on a lot of fiberglass and filler at once is a bad idea, it all sets crooked, so patience saved it. And it was rewarded.

From there I went over different sections of the car. I am not making molds on this one, they will go on the lilac Porsche, where the changes in form are absolute and it makes sense. So I left the silver car out in the sun on purpose, to see if anything moved. Nothing sank, but a few things surfaced. It is good that I let the car settle. Usually for a task like this you look for any holes, any sags, any shift in the form, drill it down almost to the metal, and lay in fiberglass. Which is what I did. Over the top I threw a coat of ordinary filler, and tomorrow evening I bring it in. Not much left.

Today I send the rear bumper extension to print, and by the weekend it will be ready. Then what remains is the rear lighting, an OLED bar running the full width, left to right. It will call the turbo version to mind, only continuous, split into a left, a center, and a right OLED. I have done things like this before. It may be that for this task a light panel will be enough, lit indirectly through a diffuser the way BMW and others do it, an effect nearly the same as OLED. But we will see, that is closer to the moment.

The eye still aches. The car stands straighter than I do.

For now, tomorrow evening a little sanding, and today we start printing the extension. And a few photos.