now that spring is here, I decided to roll it out and get to work on it.

I dont really mind the north american headlights, but I really needed to get rid of the ridiculous "clown shoes" bumpers I had on it.

interior was ok for the most part, but the drivers seat bolters were shot and the dashboard was totally destroyed by sun.

I hand stitched in some new vinyl for the drivers seat bolsters and located a great condition dashboard from a junk yard in my area.
you cant even tell the seats been repaired. it looks mint

Previous Owner had it resprayed with what looks to be a maco paint job since it is peeling off in sheets. Therefore, I have devoted some funds to getting it painted again by my father who is a very skilled body man.

of course, something had to be done about the damned Clown Shoes, so we went to work on trimming those down. since I cant afford 500$ for a set of euro bumps, I decided to modify my own.

we took 2.25 inches off the front, and 2.5 off the back. this required cutting the tow hitches all off, flipping the bumper brackets in the front, and flipping the brackets and rebar in the back, busting the clips off the rear, sawzalling and plastic welding etc etc.

here are some pics of that process:
hack the brackets:

weld on the rebar to .75" from body

using painters tape to measure how much to remove from front clown shoe

snip

much better.

now we had to plastic weld them back together.
tip when plastic welding: use a very powerful iron or hot knife. add tons of extra plastic that you can chop up from the bits of plastic you cut off the bumper. try not to introduce air bubbles and take your time. ventilation helps here too. heh.

to reinforce the joint, I used part of the inner bumper skin and welded it in place. the resul is a very strong bond that will not crack and should bne undetectable when the car is finished.

is this any better?

before they were plastic welded on, we had to do a bit of shaping to them to get them to fit right in there new location. the ends of the bumpers were intended to be held in place by brackets and they pushed n the body when they were in there new home. we ground them down and shaped them to fit without rubbing on the body, and that cured the "saggy bumper" issue some people with pulled bumpers have complained about.

so thats all for now. expect more pics as we get the car all sanded down and start the painting proccess.

p.s. I will also have pics of the patching proccess for the body kit parts that need filling in now that the tow hitches are gone. check back tomorrow night

Modified by JonnyPhenomenon at 7:40 AM 5-4-2007

You make me what to chop my bumpers as well.

Got VAG-COM? I do.

more cow bell

now I got a new dash and should be painting by this weekend.

I still can't believe how well your hand-stitched seat repair came out. Should I ever get a bike that needs the seat shaved down I know who to call to recover it!

next on the list is to smooth out a couple dings and get down to sanding.

as for the vinyl, it wasnt very hard really. just time consuming to do it all by hand. when I replace all the velour with suede, Ill have to use a machine. also, my headliner is wrecked and will need replacing too, so thats on my list...

- Scirocco's current mood : Being disassembled
- Rebel's current mood : Waiting anxiously for it's lake pipes

Quote, originally posted by Iroczgirl »

Still trying to save money for some euro bumpers this looks like a really great alternative!

another day and a lot of progress. my father DA'd the entire car today while I was at work. by the time I got here at 5:30 he had thrown in the towel for the day and I went to work on filling holes and fabricating stuff.

since we hacked the bumpers so short we had to cut off the tow hooks, and that left a gaping hole in the body panels.
everything below the black line would show beneath the bumper:

and since the bumpers would be pulled in and raised up, these holes would be a lot more visible from behind.

I couldnt plastic weld the body panels because the plastic was not the "melting" kind. bumpers were TEO, but the body bits are all some other kind. thankfully, this is the kind that the plastic repair stuff sticks to best.

a little bit of that stuff and the hole was patched right up.

I used up all my plastic repair so tomorrow I have to get some more so I can finish filling in the cavity left in the side skirts now that my bumpers are so much higher. whos effing idea was it to put that there anyway? it never looks right...

at least I got the left side done

anyway. tomorrow I get up at 5am and get to work on the car till about noon. then I have to drive home and get ready for work till 9.

why am I still up?

Quote, originally posted by pontiac »

get a nevar lose and lower it on milk bags

I spent a few hours this morning scraping the black vinyl decal stuff off the hatch. this is hard to do with the window in place

we got most of it sanded now. We should be ready to paint on saturday. but I have to work this weekend so I am going to try to work around it.

that reminds me, I have to order a ton of parts...
no pics of todays work yet. left the camera in the shop 45 minutes from here.

Modified by JonnyPhenomenon at 11:20 AM 1-31-2009

ORDER SUMMARY
-------------
QTY: 2
SKU: 4732
ITEM: DOOR HANDLE GASKET small
COST: $3.31 ea
SUBTOTAL: $6.62

QTY: 2
SKU: 4741
ITEM: DOOR HANDLE GASKET large
COST: $3.13 ea
SUBTOTAL: $6.26

QTY: 10
SKU: 124482
ITEM: CLIP (for rain gutter rubbers)
COST: $0.49 ea
SUBTOTAL: $4.90

QTY: 1
SKU: 92153
ITEM: GASKET for hatch popper button.
COST: $5.20 ea
SUBTOTAL: $5.20

QTY: 10
SKU: 95492
ITEM: CLIP (for rocker panel sils)
COST: $0.49 ea
SUBTOTAL: $4.90

QTY: 1
SKU: 137784
ITEM: PACKING (left side view mirror trim)
COST: $10.26 ea
SUBTOTAL: $10.26

QTY: 1
SKU: 137780
ITEM: PACKING (right side view mirror trim)
COST: $10.26 ea
SUBTOTAL: $10.26

QTY: 2
SKU: 171866
ITEM: BRACKET (sun visor retaining hooks)
COST: $3.73 ea
SUBTOTAL: $7.46

QTY: 1
SKU: 136403
ITEM: ESCUTCHEON (platic trim that covers the screws that hole the mirrors on)
COST: $3.59 ea
SUBTOTAL: $3.59

QTY: 1
SKU: 136404
ITEM: ESCUTCHEON (platic trim that covers the screws that hole the mirrors on)
COST: $3.59 ea
SUBTOTAL: $3.59

QTY: 1
SKU: 53321
ITEM: GRILL EMBLEM (Chrome. because I like it better than black)
COST: $17.86 ea
SUBTOTAL: $17.86

QTY: 6
SKU: 49937
ITEM: GROMMET (rubber bits that hold the hatch emblems on.)
COST: $0.64 ea
SUBTOTAL: $3.84

QTY: 1
SKU: 49923
ITEM: LOCK KNOB (the button that makes the back seat lay forward)
COST: $3.68 ea
SUBTOTAL: $3.68

QTY: 1
SKU: 109335
ITEM: ESCUTCHEON (actually part of the sunroof.)
COST: $9.47 ea
SUBTOTAL: $9.47

ORDER TOTALS
------------
SALES TAX: $0.00
SHIPPING: $11.50 (UPS Ground)

GRAND TOTAL: $109.39

then I ordered a new roofmount antenna kit from http://www.germanautoparts.com for 65$. now I am broke.

thanks

I was scanning through the pics, and I realised that I was going to have to cut my muffler shorter now that it sticks out farther than my bumpers..

You have no idea how good it feels to have THAT as my problem. I never thoguht I would see the day that my muffler was "too long" compared to those stupid bumpers. lol.

anyway, sleep now. will post updates tomorrow.

check out these bumpers!

and heres Me.

boy howdy!

it's taken me 2mos (working a couple hours a night after work when possible) to reach this point:

go pops, go!

Quote, originally posted by TBerk »

If you get it gone you'll wish you hadn't.

Quote, originally posted by punchbug »

But 8Vs are pretty bulletproof, so just keeping the oil happy usually suffices.

Quote, originally posted by Throttlepimp »

That's a great job on those bumpers, can't wait to see the whole thing.

I agree.

Are you going to paint Red again?

I was determined to see my car painted in time for the summer, and wouldnt you know it, its gonna happen

My father had primed the car yesterday and it needed to set up overnight to be sanded today. he uses a high build primer and layed it on really thick in a few areas where it needed it.

I showed up at 5pm and took the late shift. I stayed up till 1am sanding out all the door jams, pulling out the dash and other interior bits so I could run a new antenna wire. and effectively destroying my headliner in the proccess
(anyone know where I can get a new liner? I might just make one.)

we made mad progress today I tell ya. Got up at 5:30am, had a cup of coffeee and went straight to work.

I sanded all the bumpers , side skirts, mirrors and other loose bits. my father did all the delicate sanding on the rest of the car.

by noon we had the car completely sanded and ready for paint. My father said this was the fastest hes done a car in years. LOL.

unfortunately, I wont be able to be there for the painting proccess. I have to work from 8am to midnight tomorrow and I will miss it. on the bright side tho, I will also miss all the masking, wet sanding, masking, wet sanding, masking, wet sanding and buffing that will happen between layers of paint and clear

sanding rrrreaaly friggin sucks.

I have to work all weekend too, so by monday the car should be read for me to get up there and put it all back together. hopefully by then worldimpex will have delivered all my parts. they can be really slow.

if the car is painted by tomorrow, he is going to send me a picture. rest assured, I will be posting it

+1 on the sanding sucks comment....and lucky you, gettin' to miss out on all that.

bet you feel real bad 'bout that too.

Quote, originally posted by TBerk »

If you get it gone you'll wish you hadn't.

Quote, originally posted by punchbug »

But 8Vs are pretty bulletproof, so just keeping the oil happy usually suffices.

hell yes.
700$ worth of tornado red, clear, sealer, primer and reducer.

yeah man, I am - totally - heart broken.

Quote, originally posted by TBerk »

If you get it gone you'll wish you hadn't.

Quote, originally posted by punchbug »

But 8Vs are pretty bulletproof, so just keeping the oil happy usually suffices.

i didnt get to miss sanding mine about eleventy billion times

Waw, can't wait to see the car painted! Way to go!!

- Scirocco's current mood : Being disassembled
- Rebel's current mood : Waiting anxiously for it's lake pipes

high five from one Mainer Scirocco owner to another.
-----------------------
I forgot to mention, when we were cleaning up the shop after we finished sanding the car today, my father hit the bench with the air hose, and my "16v" hatch emblem popped up and got sucked out of the building by the exhaust fan. I looked and looked for it, but its gone forever. now I need to get another one of those

I was just about to mask it up for painting too.

I wish I had got a good side view pic of the bumpers before so I could compare em to the after pics directly.

does anyone here have a tornado red rocco with NA bumpers on it who could take a pic from this exact angle?



Modified by JonnyPhenomenon at 8:18 PM 5-3-2007

On sunday, my fiances bridal shower was at my parents house.

at the same time as the Taledega race.

so I brought up my lcd projector and we ran 200 feet of coax from the satelite dish to the garage and watched the race in there while we worked on the car

Quote, originally posted by JonnyPhenomenon »

thanks man I wish I had got a good side view pic of the bumpers before so I could compare em to the after pics directly. does anyone here have a tornado red rocco with NA bumpers on it who could take a pic from this exact angle? Modified by JonnyPhenomenon at 8:18 PM 5-3-2007

I can take a picture tomorrow evening if no one has one before.

Got VAG-COM? I do.

more cow bell

here's one but it's not a close up

Got VAG-COM? I do.

more cow bell