Thanks for the responses guys. If I could find another one of these models at a reasonable price, I'd definitely put the time into making it with widebody styled fenders and try to do the 4G63 conversion. I have an option magazine with that same set up too. It would be very useful as it contains some good reference pics of the engine swap.
Ok. I painted it last night (Tamiya Racing White), wetsanded it very lightly this afternoon and sprayed a few more coats of the white and a couple of coats of clear (Tamiya also). While I waited for it to dry, I assembled the suspension to the chassis. It's typical old style Fujimi quality (has accomodations for an electric motor and batteries) so needless to say it's near garbage in terms of quality and accuracy. Here it is at it's out of box stance:
It did come with spacers to use with the suspension so the pic above is at it's lowest setting. The next pic is with the chassis mounted a little higher on the body. It gives it a real life stock stance in my opinion:
I hope to get it a little bit lower than the pic above. I really don't want to scratch build a new suspension set up so I'll try to fabricate some new mounting points for the chassis and body. Something else I noticed is that it came with some rims that do not have a staggered offset for the rear but it did come with one (1) wide tire. Oh well, no worries. I don't plan on using the rims supplied with the kit. I'm still awaiting pics of the real car so I can finish the paint job and find some matching wheels as well. Here's a few more pics of the progress so far:
