Getting my act together.. Finally

[bunicula]

Well gents (and lady's of course) I hadn't planned on creating a build thread for the bunny but I think it will be a good source of some much needed moral and support.. So here goes!

I guess a good place to start would be a little history of when the build actually started. The last time the car actually saw the road was about 2 years ago now. I had made the trip to H20i and my plan was start working once I got home... And that I did. After a day of rest from the trip
The car looked like this..



Like I mentioned this was 2 years ago now.. This build has since gone from being worked on nearly every day for months on end. To every so often to being completely stagnant. The car has moved shops, been buried behind piles of parts and not even looked at for quite awhile. Until now that is. So what I'm going to try to do is sort of skim through some pics and try to get things up to date. This will be only a tiny fraction of the photos I've taken documenting the process and also skipping over all the ups and esp the downs of how things have transpired to date.

After the motor was out things really moved along well for quite awhile. Wether is was working on the bay, sourcing parts or refurbing parts that would be reused in the build..

The start of cleaning/deleting things in the bay..


Some Filled holes.. Hidden strut mount hardware..


Deleted body line on strut tower.. These were cut, hammered flat and stitch welded.


Removed ill fitting single round rad support.


Cleaned Inner wings


Had some help from a real creep along the way :p


New OEM rad support installed and lots of sanding completed as well


Early aba block getting prepped for paint


Trans got some love as well..


After paint...




I'll end this installment With a couple pics of the engine bay in it's first coat of primer I was so excited that night ahahaha





I hope you all will enjoy following along.. There's still
More to come to get things up to date and once we are I hope to be able to be a bit more detailed as far as my posts go and the work I'm doing is concerned as well.. Cheers everyone

[r32flow]

Looking good. I love how the trans came out. What did you paint it with? It looks really thick.

[veector]

Great attention to detail with the black hardware

trans and block look sweeeet

[gtidaddy]

good to see you got mr creep out of the house and back to where he belongs.

[Cushy]

seconded on the trans paint. that looks amazing

[bunicula]

Thanks guys Trans and block were both painted with evercoat high build primer, sanded, based and cleared.

And as far as getting Doyle out of house, that was a long time ago

[der hare]

Good talking to you today mang. Shizz is looking proper. Excited to hear it running son

[vwjodi]

Good Job Bird... I may need to start a new build thread soon as well. Need motivation.

[BROsiah]

about time you f&*king slacker

i cant wait to see it done

[Nashty Rabbit]

finally got your arse off those two wheelers and back to work on this beauty!



take care,
nash

[bunicula]

Well seeing as I don't know how to quote more than one post at a time in my responses yet (hint hint nashypoos) I'll just say thanks again the sarcasm, ball busting and the love are exactly what I need right now! Maybe we can even get Shannon in here to hate on me alittle to really make it a good build thread

[urogolf]

really diggin this!

[IronTrap]

birdman makin' moves!

[bunicula]

So I thought I would toss up a couple more pics to somewhat illustrate things a bit more.. As mentioned while working on the car itself,I was also gathering parts for build as well..

Custom JE pistons ( .40 over 10.5:1 ) and Pauter rods with arp hardware


Aem wideband ( heard great things about this from mr. Fries)


Mk4 exhaust manifold with filled O2 and emissions ports


And here's "the money shot" I guess..


So returning back to the engine bay side of things.. After the first coat of primer went on there was one little spot that needed some attention.. This was my first real attempt at body work/welding so I was def very pleased with how things turned out.. I had a buddy come by and give me some pointers on how to fix it and it came out really well.


On both side of the bay I had filled the gaps in the body line where the frame rail meets the inner fender.. This was done all with shaping metal and welding in filler pieces. I think what had happen was i had just got one spot a bit hot and it warped alittle right above the body line.. Some gentle hammer/dolly work and another skim coat of plastic and it was looking good..

At this point the whole bay had been scuffed and I had gone around all the seams with new seam seam sealer and was ready for a second coat of primer. That night I laid a nice heavy coat on and headed home for the night.. Little did I know that night was the beginning of the end..

The next day I headed to the shop after work
Ready to start sanding again.. I started on the firewall and it was looking really good.. Moved along to the passenger side of the bay and noticed that something seemed alittle strange along the strut tower seam.. Then this happend



Dosnt look so bad but it happened almost everywhere I had seam sealed the day before.. I was so bummed out... At that point I had so much time and effort into it it litterally felt like I got kicked right in the yam sack.. After a few days of staying as far away from
The shop as i could I went back and started scraping away all the seam sealer taking along with it all the bodywork in those areas with it. Now don't get me wrong, I'm a pretty resilient dude but this was such a huge setback for me.. I finished scrapping, sanded all the hard edges down and that's pretty much the last time I worked on the car.. As it sits now it's still
In the same state I left it 2 years ago.. BUT your boy has a fresh tube of seam sealer and a quart of primer just waiting..

[Cushy]

nice stash. 8v?

[bunicula]

nice stash. 8v?

Yup.. 2.1L ABA

[rabbitnothopper]

hmm wow interesting pistons

hey would that mk4 exhaust manifold fit a stock 1.7L 8v? with the stock downpipe?

[Markg813]

subscribed Love the motor/trans.

[bunicula]

hmm wow interesting pistons

hey would that mk4 exhaust manifold fit a stock 1.7L 8v? with the stock downpipe?

Not sure bud.. I know you would at least need a duel downpipe..

[rabbidmk1]

I'm not a body work expert but is seam sealer the correct material for those body lines? I would imagine it would continue to flex and mess up the body work again and again.???
We welded those seams and body soldered those areas on my rabbit to make sure that didnt happen. Either way your work looks great! Can't wait to see it complete.

[simon_C]

yeah you should never put a rigid filler (bondo) over a flexible seam sealer, youll just get lifting and cracking till the end of time.

[bunicula]

Thanks for the input guys! There was no filler put over the seam sealer though. Just primer. For whatever reason it just didn't adhere and lifted. The towers are welded on the inside seam but I wanted to retain the factory line in the bay.

[simon_C]

seam sealer is just rubber, you ever try to spraypaint a tire? it doesnt work so great.

[super 74]

I forget which seam sealer we used in my car. Looks smooth as silk. I think it was wurth. Yes its paintable. With primer of course.

Sent from my SGH-T959V using Tapatalk 2

[tobiwonkonobi]

[bunicula]

Moving right along... As mentioned the car has made a big move to a new shop in the last 6 months. When we first moved in it was pretty much stuffed in a corner of a separate storage bay we also have next door. A big part of my motivation is that my oldest friend moved back to CT after almost 15 years.. He has a mk2 build that is pretty much in the same state ad mine is. We offered to let him keep his car at the shop I just had to make room for it.. In doing so I also made room for mine

In his new spot waiting for a new roomate!


Picked up my first batch of powder coated parts and am very pleased with the finish.


Started mocking up some things on the block to help get a bolt count for new hardware


Polished 4 window dist with TT adaptor and polished crank vent delete plate


And finally something I'm super excited about.. My good buddie made me this awesome pan/pickup. His prototype is on our friend tobis car and he has had great luck with it.. This will be going in
for powder with my next batch for sure

So that pretty much brings us up to speed.. Posts from now on will be recent progress

[OLD-GTI]

oh you fancy!

[Jacob Matthew]

Sick! Where in CT?

[Dozier]

Oh wow. This is awesome so far.

[bunicula]

Another quick little update.. Stopped by my carb guys shop today to drop off a couple parts for him and was pleasantly surprised to see him working on my stuff.. I bought these as NOS italian Webers.. For all I know they could be from the 60's/70's So I decided to have them rebuilt.. I couldnt believe how good the one he had started working on looked!!




And just for giggles A shot of the bunnies new neighbor, it's been a long time coming

[der hare]

Fuggin love this dude. Glad to see you back at it

[deathhare.]

[urogolf]

do not click this ----> http://www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct=j...9B4nTO3EOLmSWw

[Rocketdub442]

Great build. Carbs are the only way to go! Following this for sure.

[rlsib16]

Birddddd

good to see the progress. bums me out since it reminds me that i havent made me way up to CT to hang out and bs in awhile. gotta change that this summer