Kate and I went to the Porsche dealer tonight to check out paint options. We didn't see slate at all but from what the dealer told us (props to him for actually talking to us in the first place), was that slate is a very traditional porsche color that dates back to the 356 days. Kind of cool finding that out.

On the other hand, we did see a large paint sample of the olive which is quite lighter in person than the photo below shows. It is also a very new color (2007) I think and is only used on Cayennes.

The dealer mentioned that for our vintage look (is it even a vintage look anymore?!), an olive green would go well with a brown interior ala traditional british racing themes. Buuut, damn if that slate doesn't look the biz too hahaha

Dark Olive Metallic


Slate Grey Metallic


More slate gray in the sun:

Took a trip to Arlington Iron Works in beautiful Manassas (the armpit of Virginia) to pick up some aluminum pieces for the fuel cell project. Really cool place as I later found out it was also the birthplace of tetanus.

My main man Wayne, doing what he does best. Well, being a surly bastard is what he does best but cutting metal is a close second.

Bring new hood to the "paint booth" and slap on a layer of primer flat black.


Remove 4 screws at top of grille. Then push down 4 tabs at top of grille. Don't try to be gentle, the tabs will break anyways so fuck being slow about it.


Insert new garrishly ugly, yet free headlight, onto car...


Before:




Bam.

Artic Silver Metallic


Dark Olive Metallic


Meteor Grey metallic


Atlas Grey metallic


Slate Grey Metallic


Infinity Diamond Graphite


BMW Titanium Grey Metallic


Aston Martin Meteorite Silver

Looks like we got a paint sponsor! w00t! Now all we need to do is pick a silver haha

Yayz for hookups!

I have no idea what the RSS feed is hosed but if anyone wants to fix it, kate will send you a picture of her nip.

*runs out of post

*edit* Okes, got it fixed so all you RSS nerds can stay up to date. Sorry folks, the nip store is closed.

Jason's Commentary:
Well, it was an interesting weekend. Saturday was shite and rainy so the day was pretty much a loss. Sunday brought brighter and sunnier skies so it was off to the country to visit a buddy who knew a thing or two about rebuilding old broncos. He had offered his services and welder to smooth over a few things on Roxy including the antenna hole (who uses the radio anymore anyways?), the hood spray nozzle holes and finally on a whim, the rear hatch/1/4 panel body line just for the fuck of it.

With a grinding wheel, we ground down to bare metal and then started filling holes up with a MIG welder. The great moment of the day was when I gave the grinder to kate to grind the welds down on the hood to which she instantly refused. Kate didn't want to screw anything up but after telling her (again) that a) it's our car and we can fuck it up if we want but b) anything can be fixed. So yeah, one more tool fear down! Next it's my fear of being under a car. (Don't ask...)

Mental note: when inside the hatch, holding a piece of flat copper to be a base for the roof welding, don't keep leg directly under what is being welded on haha

The roof and hood were filled without a hitch and then it was on to the rear seams. We had to dig the body filler out (which I never knew was body filler from the factory) and scraped down to bare metal. The welder kept getting wind blown as you can see in the following pics but after we got the settings and temp right, it was all business.
Only caught the car on fire twice!
*shakes fist at HIGHLY flamable filler*

Anyhoo, really starting to tinker with Roxy now and things are going to start going really fast soon as we have two rooms worth of shit to install now that it's finally warm out =)


Kate's blog addition and photos:










yeah! grind that crack!


all clean!


fires in the car. fires on the blanket. and blankets melting to the car. whee!


just needs some bondo!


sparks! sparks!


and that's all you get for now!

Hey all, took some suggestions from the loyal readers of the blog and went RSS on yo asses.

New link to sign up for the feed is feed://www.stormdc.com/blog/atom.xml

Hopefully that will help you nerdy smart cats out with the updates (which should be coming in by the boatload soon!)

Bored after work and it was kinda rainy out so I painted the domelight to match the interior. I think I may eventually wire in some brighter LED's down the road but for right now, I'm not really worried about losing the glowing button feature...

Before (gross):


Taking everything apart


As with anything involving paint, prep is everything. Use a strong degreaser, wear latex gloves so the oils on yer mitts don't leave traces on the plastic etc etc


Re-assembly after a matt coat to kill the shine a bit


Voila. Pretty damn nice.


(I ordered some white waterslide transfer sheets and will make the icons to slap on the light buttons this week.)

Also got a new little goodie in the mail. Hopefully my buddy can clean it up a bit with his media blaster since the douche on ebay never told me it was THAT fucked up hahaha

Motherfuck yes... finally won. After 6 lost tries and being outbid in 6 diff. auctions I finally won. No more trying. Ok, now I'm going to bed.

Pics, when it gets here. The baddest ass interior piece to grace a car EVAR.

come onnnnn auctionsniper.com.....

If I don't win this auction, I'm going to beat the dog.

One fucking month of outbids and 6... count them... s-i-x lost bids for this one item.

I better win or I'm going bat shit.

Over a G's worth of views so far in under a week. Thanks for the support folks. Spread the word!

xoxo,
jkrate

Well, this interior job has certainly been chock full of learning experiences. It's all centered around not having any rear seats. No rear seats means no rear seatbelts. (We will also have to deal with finding solutions for no/modified rear door panels as well as rear deck panel but that's another blog entry.)

Sooo, it was my bright idea to remove the rear seatbelts altogether and then cover up the seatbelt hole in the c-pillar panel with fiberglass and then using some thin layers of Bondo to smooth everything out. Well, I spent a whole week of sanding, filling, sanding and then filling again to later realize that although I had a smoothed panel now, I also had a smoothed panel now. i.e. There was no longer the fake vinyl texture anymore. Doh.



Well, that kind of sucked so I decided to possibly cover all of the panels with the denim I used to do the headliner. Yeah, that didn't work either because the MK3 pieces have such severe curves to them, the fabric wouldn't stretch even after shooting it with heat. So, painting it was.

I painted all of the pieces except the c-pillars because I still had no idea what I was going to do with that texture. One night I had an idea of possibly making a mold of the texture with epoxy resin and then somehow pressing the mold on the panel when it had a thin layer of filler or possibly wet paint.

Taped off for the mold...


Pouring the resin


Then once the mold was dry (and it actually worked and made a nice texture in it), I applied a thin layer of filler but it was just too think. Fuck up #42...



I then sprayed the panel with the black paint and dabbed the mold on it and it sort of worked but after obsessing about it in bed for 2 hours instead of sleeping, I admitted to myself that it just looked like shit. Even though it was a "C" if I graded it , I would always know that it looked like ass if I actually put it in the car.

Back to the drawing boards.

Kate and I went back to the fabric store on saturday to find a stretchier denim to cover all of the pillar panels but couldn't find anything. Then we found vinyl but it was either too thick or too shiny. On the way up the stairs, I stopped and asked kate what the original idea of this build was all about and maybe it wasn't supposed to be so "perfect" looking. After all, the inspiration of this build was that of function over form and maybe an all black interior was the wrong idea and would look too factory OEM (if that's such a thing).

Kate suggested that we try a two-tone interior and all of a sudden it seemed like the perfect idea. (Kate rules... period.)

So we found a nice dark dark green fabric that almost had the same exact weave as the denim but it stretched nine ways to tuesday. Score.

After all day of gluing, cursing and washing sticky fingers 143 times, we were done. But I will still go on record to say that the MK3 interior is by far the fucking hardest interior to cover in all of automobile land. Special thanks to kate for helping me wrap the pieces after I struggled on the kitchen floor for damn near an hour before asking her for help. She was pretty much the deciding factor of these pieces looking as fantastic as the do.



The green against the new black sunroof cover,


Higher exposure of the green to show what it would look like when sun hit it. w00t!


*note: only 2 hours after finished and the fucking things already have dog hair on them. I need to shave Carson STAT =)

This whole motorized guage pod mini-project is simply killing my will to live. It's been damn near a month and I have yet to find a viable solution to pop it up. I have been to the end of the internet and have found maybe 2 options; all being way too much for me to spend.

So maybe you all can help...

The objective: To pop up the guage pod 2-3 inches slowly and all cool like without spending too much money to do such a silly thing.

The obstacles: Space is at a premium and I know I don't need to but I would like to somehow route the air duct back in there. Also, budget is an issue.

So far I thought a remote antenna would work where the mast would be shortened so the thicker part would be the "arm" that would lift the pod. After seeing how big a linear actuator is, this may be the only viable solution so far.

Antenna:


Actuator:


The problem is that I can't find a small enough actuator. I know if I could find one, it would be fucking cake but the smallest one I have found is 7" closed.

I did find these but they are 5 volt and won't work unless I can find a way to increase the voltage to 12v.

I'm open to anything folks. I've even researched pneumatic actuators from a fucking lego technic kit but it doesn't have the 3" throw I need.

Help!

I want to keep this blog as a strictly car building blog and to leave out the whiny shit for my own personal blog BUT, that being said, I feel as if I should comment on something that happened today.

A fellow dubber posted a thread on a vw messageboard that shall not be named about how the "scene" is becoming filled with haters as of late. I chuckle at this because, well, it's been like that from since I can remember. The funny thing that I noticed was that once kate posted a photo of the PVW article with our stickers in it (see below), the thread turned into one massive hate-fest for jkrate which further proved the original posters message. It's almost laughable at how it worked out the way I knew it would.

And these hateful were coming from people I have NEVER even met before. It's kind of funny how a person can accumulate such negative feelings towards a perfect stranger over NOTHING. I mean, if this was the real world and these cats said these things to my face, someone would walk away with a bloody lip.

Secondly, I noticed a few comments from straglers to the thread, (again, from people I've never met before), who decided to talk even more shit about kate and myself's (poor grammar... sorry) previous car projects. Stating that our MK2 project was boring and "played" and "been done before".

Again... who the fuck asked you? And, this is only going to come off as cocky and I apologise in advance, if these people were actually in the scene longer than 5 minutes, they would know the subtle details that went into the MK2 build. But I will not EVER defend my builds. Ever. If you don't like it, who the fuck cares. It was a project that brought kate and myself closer together as a couple and that is all that matters to me.

I think what I'm trying to say here is two-fold.

1) If you are only in this scene to hate, then get the fuck out. There is no room for you here. This scene survives off of general commradary and mutual support. I build for myself but I also build for attention. I like the comments I get and I feel I have no reason to be ashamed of that. I also build to challenge myself and if each new project doesn't do that for me, then I know I'm not getting anything new out of it.

2) There are other forms of "tuning" other than the VW scene. Don't live in a bubble. Open your eyes. See the beauty of an Oldsmobile flathead or a bluedot on a Bobber taillight. If you are closed off to everything out there, it will be clearly evident in your actions as well as your freshman comments.

As I get more mature in this industry, things become clearer to me. Repetitive styles and fads lead those who are new to the scene. Period. Innovators who really step out of the box are almost ALWAYS the ones who have already gone down the "easy roads" before and decided they wanted to be different.

When you enter into a carshow, does your car get lost in the crowd or does it stand out? It's as simple as that.

*steps off soapbox

Finished up the moonroof cover last night. Bitch and a half to get right. A and B pillars are painted but I decided to spray on a matte coating to dull them down a bit and to match the dash better.

More sanding on the C Pillars tonight before the rain comes. Hopefully I can lay a coat of paint on them before it starts to pour. Only issue I have now is how to match the fake vinyl "crinkle" pattern on the sanded bits so everything matches up.

More pics after tonight.

Oh and it's kind of cute that we have our very own vortex haters now. That's always a good sign that we're reaching maximum name-whoreing levels hahaha

Yeah, take that fairfax county coppers!

Thanks to EVERYONE who is supporting kate and I with this build. It's cats like you all who make me proud to drive the brand of car I do =)

and p.s. Get with the commenting fuckers. It's like I'm just talking to myself here.

Hopefully Jim @ topbeadwelding.com can come through with a masterpiece!

Very exciting =)

It's kind of weird (brace yourself for an actual blog-blog post folks) but when I was spray painting my interior plastic pieces yesterday, my life sort of came around full circle.

You see, when I was 16, my mom bought me a used 1985 Honda CRX Si for a couple grand. It was my first car and even though it was navy blue (I loathe blue cars, probably because of the CRX in fact...) and even though it had water spots ALL over the body, I still loved the shit out of that car.

One day at my pops house, I decided to take apart every piece of the exterior body panels that were gray and paint them all black. I would drive to Track Auto (12 points if you remember that name) and bought up EVERY single can of autobody paint they had. I tied all of the panels from tree limbs in front of the house and did my best to paint each panel.

With a success at hand, I decided to do the same to the interior. Now, as a budding gearhead, I didn't know or rather, didn't have the skillset to remove the dash yet so I did as most 16 year olds did... I masked off the dash and painted it INSIDE THE CAR.

No degreasing, no prep, no nothing. Maybe a spritz of windex at best. And ya know what? It looked fucking dope. Until I touched it hahaha Scratch scratch scratch. Oh well.

Anyhoo, anyone who knows me will know that I am adamantly against painting ANYTHING on a car with a spray can. Based on my love of painting all throughout my teen/young 20's years, I consider myself a pretty damn good painter. I know how to prep etc etc etc and although you can do yer best to paint, it still won't hold to certain surfaces without scratching.

Last night as I was painting my trim pieces after deciding to scrap the idea of covering them with fabric, I was rather hesitant. I really REALLY wanted to cover them but I would have to use a thinner fabric to wrap the odd curves of the pieces and that would just look weird in the car. I'd have vinyl and OEM fabric on the door panels, denim on the new headliner and then ANOTHER fabric for the trim panels. That's just too much. Paint it was.

But yeah, long story short, Krylon Fusion is pretty much the shit. Yeah it scratches off but only after some steady picking at. I think it will hold *crosses fingers.

p.s. Depot can eat a dick for not carrying Krylon. Micheals too. Who the fuck uses rustoleum? Crap!

p.p.s. The clientele at Wal-Mart still amazes kate and myself to this day.

Fuck the vortex. Seriously. The more I find out about how it is solely here to make a buck and sell out it's loyal fanbase, the more I question how it stays in business. Without it's free subscribers, it would be nothing yet it's the subscribers who are constantly lied to on a daily basis.

Meh, kharma's a bitch and kate and I like to hold grudges. Can't wait to see some cats at the shows. Looks like it's time to scrape off some window stickers.

Parting out a jetta suckahs...



Click me for link

The job started with kate and I removing all of the trim panels from Roxy on saturday. After waking up from quite possibly the best nap ever recorded, with bedhair and all, we got started with the gutting job.



So naked...


Best tags evar


I decided that with the rear seatbelts removed anyways, might as well fill up the c-pillar panel to clean up things.

Out with the fiberglass


Little resin with a tiny bit of flex agent


Degreasing the panels


Rough covering


Lil' bit of bondo with some more flex agent


Perfecto.




The before shot. Picking fabric was tough but kate had a great idea of using black denim. It has a cool weave and is a little more unique than fake designer knockoff fabric and the ever so played suede =)


Remove the factory fabric and prepare for the worst job of your life. Scrubbing off the foam padding.
Ugh, I would rather get a root canal than to do that again...


Spray both sides. Spray the fabric and then spray the headliner. Wait 5 minutes! The glue has to dry up a bit and get tacky.


Go slow. There's no rush. Do 2' sections at a time and if the fabric doesn't stretch enough, break out the hair dryer on high heat to loosen everything up. The hair dryer also gets the dried glue sticky again if you have taken too much time.


Once you have everything conformed to the headliner, flip the whole thing over and trim up the edges and inside areas.




Final product after a little bit more hairdrying to get the wrinkles out.

Well, the crack pipe on Roxy broke (after 188k) and she was barfing coolant for two days so I finally gave up and brought her to the local gas station to fix. Yeah, I could have done it myself but due to the bastard in my condo development narcing kate and I out, hardcore repairs are no longer an option under my car port.

It was a total catch-22 too. I needed to get her fixed so I could drive her to Jason's house to do the new VR swap but I couldn't drive her without fixing the pipe.

Sooo, 600$ later (I know I know) I now have a brand new thermostat housing and a shiny new pipe that will never break.



Figures... the repair was almost the same price as the car it was on for an engine that will be pulled in 2 months anyways. Oh well, it's only money I guess.

=\

But everyone, including I is acting all f***ing emo today. Meh, what better way to cheer oneself up than to buy car parts.

*heads over to ebay

well, I was gonna use a door popper but that motion is far to quick and violent for what I want. Plus the throw is only about an inch.




I found a remote antenna which has the mast not part of the motor so it can fit into tight spaces buuut I think it's still going to be too large to get the AC vent hose to work so I am scrapping the antenna and just biting the bullet and buying a freaking linear actuator.



Holy run on sentence. Anyways, yeah... this mini project got sort of expensive but at least it will look cool and I guess I can use the actuator later down the road with other projects.

*sigh

I have an electric car antenna that I am going to attempt to use as a linear actuator to lift my gauge pods up with.



Essentially, I'll be mounting the antenna in the dash and I would like to set up a switch that when I press it up, the ant. goes up and stops when I release the switch. Now, on the other side of the switch, it will bring the ant. down when I push it.

Here's where it gets tricky...

The antenna has three wires:

red: switched or 12v constant
black: ground
green: for the remote turn on from the radio


Buuut, all is fine and good when you have the red to + and the black to -. When the green is given power, it extends the antenna BUT when the green is shut off, the antenna goes back down.

Is there a way to wire a relay that will make it so the switch I wire in will work like an "up and down" switch?

i.e. the "up" switch will give power to the green but once released, it will cut off power to both the green and red

and

the "down" switch will be wired so when it is pressed, JUST the red wire will be given power so it will retract the antenna?

I suck at wiring and this shit makes my head hurt.

(2:28 AM 3-7-2007) jrowny: in regards to your post last night about baning jkrew over and over again, you realize that you constantly ban him for the most ridiculous stuff? Every time he's been banned it's because of a few off-topic odd insults or a jab at Stephen. It's an internet forum and no one takes those things seriously anyway. With the exception of a comment in a post praising Larry (great mod btw) he's been very good every since you let him back and he's certainly contributed more than what makes up for that one small comment about Stephen (who has a freaking personal vendetta and a stick up his butt anyway).

(2:30 AM 3-7-2007) jrowny: This place means a lot to him and he means a lot to many of the members on the forum. You should think about it a little more.

Picked up a beater/doner/parts car for a G =)

Block has 55k with a blown auto tranny but has immaculate EVERYTHING w00t!













Decided to gut the rear further so I can recover the panels in the new fabric we got. And let me assure you so you all don't worry, it isn't suede and it sure as heck ain't knockoff gucci or coach *gags* hahaha








Kate tackled the lower glove box install and finally got over her fear of the dremel. Next step is to get her to use the angle grinder with 8" cut off wheel =)











Carson approved!


Test fitting and voila =)

Take a perfect textured cabrio dash


And thern ruin it by removing the vent tube


And then cut a big ass hole in it


And then put some shit in the speaker hole that shouldn't be there.


Hawt.

I just sent this to a fellow dubber from my vw messageboard. He lives in El Paso.

Hey there, this is a totally odd request but I am looking for rear hatch glass for a MK3 golf that doesn't have holes or defrost lines.

Here are some pics:
[url=http://i12.photobucket.com/albums/a246/Willthewheelman/cancun%20cars/PC290282.jpg]http://i12.photobucket.com/alb...2.jpg[/url]
[url=http://i12.photobucket.com/albums/a246/Willthewheelman/cancun%20cars/PC290281.jpg]http://i12.photobucket.com/alb...1.jpg[/url]

Anyhoo, I've been calling around all morning trying to find a VW dealer in juarez or at least a parts place that can get the glass for me as it isn't sold in the states.

The part number is: XXX XX XXXX XX (hell no I'm not telling that ish on my blog haha)

I was wondering if it would be cheaper to get at a junkyard or maybe just a generic glass store? I'm open to any suggestions you have as well.

Anyways, that's my story. Thanks for taking the case!

Please lemme know how much I owe ya for the glass as well as your troubles =)

Thanks for helping out a crazy dubber!

-Jason Kress
301.996.XXXX

P.s. I found a junker off of google and spoke with the owner for close to 20 minutes. He said the cost would be near 180 for the glass but I'm wondering if I can find it cheaper through whomever.

Here is the link to his junkyard in juarez:
[url=http://www.XXXXXX]http://www.XXXXXX[/url]

********************
This is the reply I got:
********************

you are definatly talking to the right guy

i sell auto parts from the us into mexico via the mexican ebay ;)

and i actually know the Acosta's, one of the owner's kids is in my dub club, we get discounts on some parts.

right now im in el paso, i live in juarez and work on both sides of the border. i'll be in jrz in about an hour, i'll go over to acosta's and see what i can do 'bout ur glass.

there are no sane dubbers my friend....

This is the best story fo the week. I cut and pasted this from my blog:

So in my quest to spend yet more of my money on senseless items that hold no monetary value whatsoever, I have started a quest.
My quest is for this:





It's rear hatch glass for a MK3 golf and it has no holes for spoilers AND has no defrost lines because well, they don't get frost in mexico. Duh.

Now, this part has never seen it's way onto american soil. EVAR. The bad thing is, it's only sold in mexico.

Sooo, with a part number in hand, I started calling. First I called my buddy cort who is in texass. He suggested calling El Paso to find a VW dealer. From there I got a number for a dealer in Juarez Mexico. No dice.

Then I googled junk yards in Juarez and finally I was in business. I got a number for a nice family-run business and after a quick "buenos diaz, hablamos engles?" I was matched up with a nice gentleman by the name of Abraham Acosta. We spoke broken english vs. broken spanish for close to 20 minutes. (I knew dating a guatemalen for 8 years would pay off eventually!)

He had my part. Now all I need to do is send some cash his way via money gram and I will have my part. Done deal.

Yeah, us dubbers are crazy fuckers.
Perfecto indeed.

So because I'm a faggy art school nerd, I wanted to make a custom badge for the dub in porsche lettering.



I had to hand draw the lettering as the font is porsche-exclusive etc etc...

Here are some pics of how it's coming along. Basically I'm making a reverse resin cast mold. Once I get it fixed, I'll remove it from the rubber mold, spray it black and slap it on the ass of the car.

Made some progress this weekend. Took out the rear seats last night while it was blizzarding hahaha



Then kate and I went to the junkyard today to get a buddy a full set of plaid MK3 seats for his new project. $260 bones for a full interior including a *borrowed... wink* cluster, rear door cards, door handles, cluster surround, speaker grilles, rear door air pump and a new/used camshaft position sensor doodad to fix my damn CEL *crosses fingers*. Hooray!

God I love this woman. Wrenching on dubs in a snow filled junkyard hahaha


Then today I spent about an hour taking out the seatbelts and seat brace, also measured the sparetire well for the incoming fuel cell *double wink*. My bitch ass ex-roommate stole my 3/8's socket wrench so a trip to sears was in order to pick up a schnazzy new chrome jobby and some new hex t-handles. Man I love new tools haha.

Totally sick this weekend so why not breathe in some nummy resin fumes and call it a day right?

This is pretty self explanitory so here goes...

Buy some PVC and lay next to completely un-enthusiastic dog:


Perfect fit:




Cut two guage holders:


Trace out the speaker grille on cardstock and then trace onto foam-core (this will be the base):




Go down to the car and half-assed attempt to fit the guages together to the foamcore using duct tape




After you get it all looking right, go back inside and hot glue as much as you can to the foamcore and then remove all the ghetto tape and twigs and what not


Yeshamesh... thats nishe:




Most people say polar fleece is good but for sm,aller jobs, I like a soft and stretchy pair of undies. The dog doesn't.




Stretch and staple...




Time for resin! 7 drops of hardener per tablespoon of resin. Work outside with protection. That **** is nastay.


Viola for now...