Photos Unboxed: Painting The March
It was August 2018, Ireland was enjoying one of the best summers in almost twenty years. All of our friends were away at a festival for the weekend so myself and Flip decided this would be the perfect time to paint the March.
The idea has been in my head for a long time, three years or more. I originally wanted to paint an EP70 starlet but that didn’t workout and I transferred the idea onto the March once I picked this one up as a daily driver. 
We grabbed the last few snaps of the mint panther, rocking its little Watanabes as the sun set in the business park.
There have been many times where I always end up saying “damn I wish I took more photos of that” Luckily this popped into my head and I brought the K11 out for its last ever shoot as a Green machine.
I loved this look, in fact I still kind of miss it, but I had an idea to do something that I felt would be much better. No matter what this car was going to get a livery.
Just after the sunset, we rolled the car into Flips shed, it was already around 9PM, I had spent the last two hours taking photos and we got something to eat. This was going to be a late night.
It didnt take long for us to strip the car, we were only going to sand the exterior with 400 and paint directly over the orignal paint. The door moldings were to be removed and those left a few marks, along with some quick rust treatment. 
We didnt bother fixing any of the dents, we wanted this thing to look like it had just been on a track in Japan so the word mint was at the bottom of the list.
We ended up having the entire gang including my little brother helping on getting this prepped. The idea was to get the car completely finished in four days, well three and a half days as we didnt really get stuck into this until late Friday evening.
It was a small car, and we knew exactly what we wanted to do. A quick job and a selection of stickers.
The shell is actually in really good shape, no real rust only small surface stuff here and there. It had been a great daily up until this point.
It actually looked kind of cool minus the bumpers and rear hatch. Theres not much to paint on this thing!
Flip got the spray booth ready and we rolled her in that night.
We popped it up onto axle stands and took off the wheels. That way we would get as much paint coverage as possible. We were lucky this March was green, the blue we were using was going to go on without an issue and take roughly around two coats.
While the car was in the booth, we got to work sanding down the doors and bumpers and plastic primed the exposed black pieces on the bumper and door handles. Everything was going blue.
The bootlid was a little tricky, it was broken into many years ago when the car lived in Dublin and the rear lock was screwed. We decided to weld that up, along with the wiper hole as this was also snapped off somewhere along the way. I wanted this thing to look super clean and minimal on the rear so we removed the March badges and the Nissan logo.
It didn’t take too long to mask the car. We were only painting the outside on this run and even though it was a quick job we wanted it to look proper so taking the doors off to do the shuts was essential. We didnt finish up until about 2AM and left the March sitting in the booth until the following morning.
First thing Saturday morning, Flip geared up and went in to give the March its first lick of paint. For anyone that has ever watched their car being painted, its incredibly exciting. Ive grown up around Flip and friends who have been painting cars for years, Ive often helped in the paint room but actually seeing my own car get a fresh coat was something else. I cant imagine how ill feel when the 86 gets some fresh paint.
We left the car bake for 30 minutes and Flip went back in to give it a second coat. Damn it looked blue! No going back now.
After about four or five hours, we peeled off the masking and enjoyed this incredible colour. I was worried that the colour might not match but it turned out great. It was even better that it matched the cage!
The paint was dead on the March, it was five different shades of green due to it being in a crash and being stolen. The car had an interesting history. It was nice to see a super fresh coat of blue.
We left the K11 sit for another bit and then we fitted the wheels and pushed it outside. I was very excited and eager to get the rest of the parts painted.
With the shell out of the way, we brought in the bumpers, doors boot lid, mirros and handles, these were all to be painted next. 
A Saturday at the shed means endless distractions. These were the kind of distractions that you are ok with. PJ brought his superb FD3S down for a look. I love those AB Flug wheels.
Road tripping with the FD was Padraig and his stunning Cresta which was recently in a vlog episode. This thing is perfection.
After some tasteful distraftions we got back to the task. I had work Monday morning so we were against the clock to get the daily back together before Sunday night.
Saturday was a success, no real hiccups and the car was back together. Sunday was set aside for applying the livery. This picture insatntly gives away what this car was insired by. The R32 Skyline from the Group A series of the early ninties. Ive always been obsessed with this livery and thought it would be hilarious to apply it to the K11.
Gary had called down from Dublin to lend a hand and as usual a gang started to gather in Flips shed. As much as I enjoy a colleciton of people to hang out with, its a little nervewrecking when there are twenty eyes beaming on your everymove.
I had drawn these stickers up loosely based on the R32 with a small mix from the P11 Primera which raced a few years later. They used to race these K11’s back in the ninties and I started finding pictures from the old March cup. There are heaps of images online from the generation of March which came after the K11 but very limted information on this chassis.
A lot of the stickers were left up to the imagination. I added a few of my favourite companies and shops that tuned and built March’s in Japan like Active auto and B-crews. I changed the numner 12 from the R32 to the number 11 because of the chasiss code.
Having a group of friends helping out was pretty cool as much as it was making me nervous. We were able to line stuff up and discuss the placement of stickers. I had drawn this up on Illustrator almost two years previous and spent about six months gradualy moving stuff around the car on my laptop until I was happy with the spacing. I wanted this to look like the real deal.
It actuallt looked really cool without the side graphics here. I added the two drivers which piloted many of the Calsonic cars over the tears including the founder of Impul, Kazuyoshi Hoshino as a nod to the owner. I let my imagination run wild and imagined him and the other Impul drivers building a K11 Impul/Calsonic machine to have a bit of fun in the March cup.
Its hard to beat that iconic Orange sunstrip and those classic graphics. Even though this is a March, that livery excites me in many ways.
It took us many hours of figuring out where exactly stuff shoud sit on the car but it really worked out well in the end. Gary was a great help and both of us worked around the car measuring and referring to the crude drawing I had put togther.
The car has no straight lines, so running the Calsonic logo with the top line of the door was the only way that looked right. Running it flush with the floor looked crooked. It took a bit of moving about but it eventually sat in a place that worked. You have to wing it with many of the stickers and trust your eye.
Once we had one side done, we took the measurements and copied them to the other side of the car.
Seeing that massive Calsonic logo up the side of the car was one of the best feelings. An idea I had in my head for such a long time was finally becoming a reality. The custom March door number looked the treat also. I had the Calsonic logo sit just a little bit lower than the number as this was exactly how the logo sat on the Skyline.
Im going to leave it with this image, there will be a full photo feature on the car in the next few days. I hope you enjoyed these behind the scenes photos from a hectic weekend where we turned an idea into a reality in record time. This has been the daily for just over a year now. Yep! Both the Vlogs and the articles a year behind, but we are getting there. Stay tuned for more very soon.
– Neil
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