So it’s been a helluva last week or so, and to say that I’m both mentally and physically exhausted is probably making a vast understatement. But the good news is, the ‘ol bird is finally out of my hands and into the hands of the pros!
Over the past 2-3 weeks, I’ve been really pushing along trying to get the 4000 done and ready to go to the body shop by March 8th. This was a self-imposed deadline I made for myself in hopes of getting it painted and reassembled to make our PCC-ACNA event at VIR in April. I’m still unsure if I will actually be able to get the car together by then, but I will at least go down swinging if not fully successful.
So a few weeks ago, I finally was able to finish rebuilding the rear suspension and remove a few of the “weak links” that were causing me issues in the rear suspension with the axle nuts loosening on track and causing a very loose wheel when rounding the track (and even happened on the street too). Once I was able to get that complete, I went about attempting to get the car running on its new 034 Ic ECU. Unfortunately, after many attempts, many hours on the phone trouble shooting, and many hours tinkering w/ the ECU we were unable to get the car up and running… so unfortunately, the car is still running on foot power vs. real horse power, but not the end of the world.
After I gave up trying to get it running the first time, my cousin and I pushed the car out of the garage so I could start prepping to paint the remainder of the removable parts. I will not lie, I was a little excited to see the car finally out of the garage and primered:
But once she was out of the “paint booth” and into the adjacent bay, it was game time. Since I didn’t have enough saw horses (not to mention space) to paint everything at once, I worked in two stages. First stage was to paint all the doors, as I knew these were going to require a *bit* more work than the other panels (or so I thought).
Started off with roughing everything up and cleaning the metal of any surface rust that has formed in the year plus they’ve been sitting as bare metal:
And then a masking I went so I didn’t get an immense amount of overspray on the non-bare metal areas. The backsides of the panels will be addressed by the body shop, but no sense making their job more difficult by covering everything w/ overspray!
First coat of paint went on nice and easy,
And then a blocking I went. Doors ended up taking 3 coats of primer. I actually got a LOT quicker than I was with the car body (practice makes perfect I guess), and was able to finish the doors off in about a weeks time, working 3-4 hours a night on most nights. There were a few high/low spots, but overall it really wasn’t terrible thankfully. The time I put into getting everything flat w/ the filler really paid off.
And the backsides of the rear doors where I blended the flares:
And the bottom (hard to tell it wasn’t there to begin with at this point!!)
And after the doors were done, I employed the wife to come out on a blistery Sunday afternoon at the beginning of last week and help me mount the doors (so they didn’t get knocked over and damaged after I spent so much effort on them):
She’s taking shape!!!
From this point, we come to the beginning of last week. This was a marathon crunch for me, spending between 6 and 10 hours a day sanding, painting, cleaning, filling, sanding, painting, cleaning, painting and sanding!!! I am grateful I have an EXTREMELY patient wife, as she basically didn’t see me last week so I could meet my March 8th deadline. While I was tired and ready for the car to be gone the week before, I was REALLY ready for it to be gone now… I was drained.
But I still had work to do, so in went the fenders, hood and trunk!
And after a bit of sanding and cleaning, on went the paint!
And then a blocking I went one more time:
Unfortunately, a lot of the stamped metal (untouched by me) had a lot more dips than I had anticipated. The hood was a real PITA (as expected w/ large flat surfaces). Also, the tops of the fenders also had a fair bit of waving going on in it that wasn’t detectable by the eye, but you really felt it when running your hand over it, not to mention SEEING it after the first blocking. So these panels took a fair bit more effort to get flat than I had anticipated
This brought me up to Wed night last week. Again, I was spending from about 5 in the afternoon after work to about 10 at night every night that week working on this. I actually completed the final sand on the hood and trunk at 5am on Thursday! Instead of going to the gym that morning, I woke up and went into the garage and started/finished sanding before work. This is when I knew I had a problem… haha. Well, at least this confirmed I DID have a problem
Once I got all the sanding finished, I seam sealed all the cracks/crevices and began the process of taping off the front fenders and undercoating them to help protect the inside fiberglass. I might have gone slightly overboard with it, but I figured I’d rather be safe than sorry at this point.
And undercoating:
And final product:
While the front fenders dried, I then began the process of killing off the waves on the bumpers. Unfortunately, 30+ year old bumpers don’t lay as flat as they used to once upon a time, not to mention these things lived a VERY hard life before I got them. In order to rectify this, I decided to glue the skins to the bumper support on the front bumper, plus affixing the “stiffeners” on the front and rear bumpers so they stay as flat as possible.
The waviness of the front bumper cover:
So after a few clamps, a big piece of angle iron, some 3m adhesive and a heat gun, I was able to get everything buttoned up in short order:
This brought me to about 115am. I had been going hard since about 5ish without really stopping for very long. I wouldn’t have gotten as far as I did w/o the help of Wiley, and a couple other friends, who graciously came over to help me that night with a few things.
Wiley came over and spent about 3ish hours with me trying to get the car started again. We got it close (got the timing zero’d in, etc), but just couldn’t get it running. Made multiple phone calls and tried many different things (thanks to Nate, Derek and Marc!!!), but time wasn’t on our side and I decided to leave it to when the car came home. It wasn’t a game stopper that the car didn’t run for the body shop, and I had a ton of other stuff to handle Thursday night that needed to get done. I believe the car is too rich at this point, but the computer I’m using isn’t capable of exporting the logs to excel, so I can’t read them to look for abnormalities right now. Will tinker with it over the next week or so and see if I can see anything glaringly wrong. The plugs were fouling in about 1-2 min of rough idling (where the car wouldn’t rev at all), so I have a feeling there’s an issue w/ too much fuel at this point.
Friday morning came fast, but I was up at 7am and out in the garage again cleaning up and prepping the car for assembly. By 1030ish, I had the fenders on the car, the rear bumpers installed and the car ready to come out of the garage for the first time assembled………. With a surprise
I have had that CF SQ in my position for over 2 years at this point. I’ve been REALLY itching to use it, but wanted to wait until I had the car finished. I have to say, it REALLY completes the look of the car… and will do so even more once I get paint on the car!
So here are some final shots as she sat… hood installed for the very first time on a car!
To say I was over the moon is PROBABLY an understatement. This has been something I’ve been waiting for since I started this project over 2 years ago.
From there, it was loading onto the trailer (strong battery plus good starter motor = up onto the trailer she goes!):
And off to the body shop she went!
This picture might look a little familiar:
This is what it looked like pre-paint about a year and a half ago when I dropped it off the first time:
And here she rests, waiting to go into her booth. I stripped the doors off the car to make life easier for the shop, and will probably go back to help them reassemble the car and mask things as necessary.
And the doors, hoods, etc waiting in the car’s booth for the next few weeks:
Apparently I picked a great time to send the car in, as things are slow at the shop right now, so I might see the car back in as fast as 2 weeks!! I’d be happy to see it back in a month, but we’ll see how it works out. I just want them to take their time and get it handled right. The shop manager promised to take a few pictures and send me updates from time to time, but I might make a venture out at the end of the week just to check in on the ‘ol girl. It was a very joyful moment for me, I won’t lie to you. On the drive back home I could just feel myself decompress from the hell I put myself through over the past few weeks. It is one more thing off my check list, and I can’t WAIT to start using my car again!
Oh, and I know a few of you are probably going to be asking me what color… and I’m going to hold out on you for a bit longer
. It’s in the VAG family, and will be an Audi or Porsche color. I actually wasn’t able to make my mind up when I dropped the car off on Friday, and sent my final choice in on Sunday to the shop. Needless to say, I’m very excited to see what it looks like once I’m done!
So that’s about it for now… pics show the progress, but don’t even touch on the hours invested at this point! Now it’s in the hands of the pros, and I eagerly await its completion! Though I will admit, it was a very strange feeling handing the car off to someone else at this point. I’ve been in 100% control of everything done to the car, and it’s weird for me to hand over the reins, even though it’s the right thing to do in order to get the quality paint job I’m looking for.
So that’s it for now! I will update when I have updates to give. Until then, I will enjoy having an empty garage for once!
