This rating was determined based on the presence of the following words:

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bitch (2x)
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Well, my work here is done. We need to step it up here people! I want XXX by friday!

Rolled over to jason's today to blow off some steam after a crap day on saturday. I'll make this post short as dinner is cooking and I am beat to shit and don't feel like narrating for an hour ;)

[edit] added the obligatory narration this morning[/edit]

After painting the bay and cleaning everything up, I noticed that the wiring harness now stuck out like a sore thumb so I decided to rip it all off and redo it so it looked a tad cleaner (until the next rainstorm I suppose). Upon inspection, most of the loom was falling off anyways so removing it all was a breeze. I picked up some friction tape at Depot which was a 95% match of the factory tape so that was a plus.



Then I made a little nest with the old wrap...




Then I wrapped the downpipe with some heat wrap. Ok, I admit this is mostly for show and being that there will be no turbo this year (thanks for the callback Kinetic *rollseyes*) no one will be looking behind the block but whatevs, maybe it will bring down the engine's ambient temp by a few degrees. Plus, I've always liked the look of wrapped headers so =p to wrap haters out there.


Jason went through 10 cans of brake cleaner cleaning the tranny.






Painted some mounts


Then this piece of shit came over... Nothin better than having a PVW writer's ride stop by... HAAWWT.






Those bolsters are nicer than my MK4's!


Replaced the rear main and checked out the acceptable chain rails while we were in there.




Jason found the specific torque amounts from the bentley and got everything tightened up, bolted up the starter and tranny and then out of nowhere he remembered that he didn't torque the 1/4 turn on all the bolts so he started from scratch and redid everything just so it was right. *swoons*


So long empty bay...


Daddy's home


Strike that pose baby


So fooking hawt. Black and green like peas and carrots =)

I have always loved the front end of the Porsche Speedster and for this project, being how it has a vintage racing feel to it, I wanted to try and replicate the speedster headlight grilles they often used while racing at the track.

Obviously, no one makes one for the lowly MK3 VW platform so I had to make my own. After a trip to the hobby store to pick up some airplane aileron stock, I went home to find out that they were just too flimsy and when they bent, they looked like ass. Off to the parts store I went to pick up some door edge protection trim.

Then it was time for construction... first I made a stencil.


Then I cut out the wire mesh I picked up from Depot


I cut the door trim to length and hot glued the edges together and then sanded smooth at the joints.


Not too shabby.


Nothing beats spraying at 1 in the morning on the golf course!


Viola. Not too bad for under 10 bucks.

Quick update. Kate and I rolled over to Jason's house tonight to blow off some steam and check out the progress. This has probably been one of the worst weeks I've had to deal with mentally in a long time. Without going into emo details, I've had to deal with some issues that I've been battling with for some time and today, for unknown reasons, was a life saver of sorts just because when I am around friends and cars (ok, it was finally being able to spend some quality time with kate I admit), things just sort of seemed to level out. Go figure. Some people pay hundreds to talk to therapists, I spend nothing to be around my boo, cars and true friends...

Got to Jason's and the first thing I really noticed was that he was hella excited to show off his progress. I don't want to embarrass him but it was really fucking cool to see how excited he got to show off what he has done with the car since I was last at his house. He has really taken an interest in this project and it just makes me smile that I'm now not the only one that is obsessed with the craft, fit and finish of how this car comes together. Maybe it's my upbringing in the advertising industry but I've found that it really does pay off in the end when someone spends that extra amount of time being obsessively anal about how something looks and how EVERYTHING works with one another as a whole.

Sure he could just go through the motions and slap the engine back in but, (dare I say it?), he really is an artist when it comes to cars. I know I may be selling him down the river here but he really does give 110% and it shows and I owe him my first born due to his attention to detail with this build. Lord only knows when he crossed the threshold of being just a hired "able wrench" to being a key element of finishing this project.

Anyhoo... I'm rambling. Bring on the pics.

Got bored yesterday, decided to throw these on the whip. Big ole calipers that belong to big ole disks (yeah, they were re-painted... duh)


The heart of it all back together:


More nummy engine shots now that the paint has finally cured to that sexay eggshell finish *swoons*

Jason is on crack!

Just a warning, this is going to be a mini novel of a post so settle in with a cold one if you really want to read it all.

Sweet christ, I have never been so tired before. Honestly. I thought that the process leading up to this weekend was bad, well, I was way wrong haha

In hindsight, I was essentially a bleeding woman over this whole ordeal and I should really learn to go with the flow but I just chalk my nervousness up to it being my first time and after all is said and done with, everything went FLAWLESSLEY.

Friday I snuck out of work early (god bless summer fridays!) and swung by Bubb's to find out that the paint hadn't arrived yet. Bubba threatened to tear the paint guys head off if it wasn't delivered so I guess that was taken care of. Then it was home to make sure all of my packages from fourseason were there and god bless em, the aluminum crackpipe was waiting by my door. Kate came home and we were off to Jasons.

I'll preface the rest by saying I had gotten two(2) hours of sleep the night before because my dog's little balloon knot was all stopped up and god bless him for trying to unleash the fury but the floodgates were closed shut. I was nervous as hell for leaving him be so all the while I was working on the car, I was also picturing my lil best friend suffering at home. Not a good time indeed.


On the way to Jasons, I jumped out of the car in rushhour to grab kate a flower and fuck if it wasn't the coolest thing I had ever seen on a highway. (Those outer doodads are razor sharp too. Dope!)

We got to Jason's and we quickly started to tear everything out of the car but had to wait because our friend Wieder was 4 hours late returning Jason's cherry picker. (Fucking Wieder!)



The troops were starting to line up so while we were waiting I decided to paint all of the intake manifold pieces.









Wieder finally got his drunk ass over to the house and we went straight to work again. I'll be honest, we were drinking and well, the more we got drunk, the quicker things went. Kate and Jason's wife were inside the house talking about weddings, periods and whatever girls talk about so us boys were sort of left alone to be stupid which really made my nervousness go away.





20 minutes later and the engine was finally pulled.




This is where it got interesting. I was completely content with bagging everything up and spraying in the morning. I don't know why I was ok with that. Maybe I was exhausted or worried about my dog or whatever but Jason kept telling me that if we were going to go to all of this trouble, we might as well do it right. And by doing it right, we would have to pull EVERYTHING in the bay. I know this is just a car thing but THAT is a good friend right there and I really really appreciate him pushing me to go the extra mile at a time when I was ready to half ass it.

I almost pooped myself in thinking of what I had gotten myself into but I agreed and just went with the flow. I really didn't want Jason to have to 1) put up with my car in his garage any longer than needed 2) not be able to put my car back together and 3) see number 1.

This was the time when Wieder decided to pull the brake "boosher" (he was now slurringly drunk as most of us were coming in at a close 2nd in the alcoholic olympics) and being that the boosher was bolted from behind the dash (you guessed it) the dash had to come out too.

30 minutes later and we had this:




All in all, it was a fucking AWESOMNE night. I've been hanging out with this group for close to three years now and I really missed getting stupid with them. I had met them during a really bad time in my life when I was really destructive and it was nice laughing my ass off when I was in a much much better state. After the dash was out, kate and I took off to check on the pooch and call it a night because the next day would be even busier.

Kate and I got to bed around 1am and we slept like a sack of dead babies. The next morning felt like it came too damn soon and around 7am, we were up to start it all over again. Meanwhile, Operation: Poopchute Watch was still going horribly with no movement at all. I called the vet and they told me that if the troops weren't advancing by Sunday we would have to bring Carson in for invasive procedures.

Kate had some homework to do so I lit a candle for Carson's anus and went to Jason's on my own to be later met by my partner in crime. When I first got in the garage we noticed this cool lil dude on the floor who was a casualty of the swap =(


The brake booster was being a pain in the ass so along with Will, Jason and Bubba, we managed to use brute strength to gank it free along with the ABS unit.


I decided to take a breather and take some pics for the MK3 forum to drool over namley being Jason's wife's MK3 cabby with a 20v swap and way too much custom fabbing to list.


After Jason took his time labeling the harness, it was finally out.


Midday, some of the Manassas crew showed up with their homebuilt madness.




One more bunny for good measure...


Roxy was ready to be power washed so we pushed her outside while I bagged and masked everything up.


(Special note to 602 Matt, don't hate on the socks and camo mang, it was my "getting' dirty gear"!)


Fucking hell Bubba is a big boy ;)


This is when Kate's pop's power washer came in wonderfully. He was gracious enough to let kate borrow it for the weekend and if you know any dads set of tools, they are incredibly hard to part with so again, THANKS Poppa H!

Bubbs started washing but the hose was too long to get enough pressure so instead of potentially killing the motor, we stopped it immediately to get closer to the faucet.




Now we were ready to rock.


After all was said and done, we were finally ready to paint. While we were waiting for Scott and Kate to get back with food, we set up the "paintbooth". And by "paintbooth" I mean "totally awesome-yet-highly-not-healthy paintbooth" consisting of a tent, two tarps, a few fans and some filters. I'll tell ya what though, if you see me at a show, you will see that with this booth and Bubba's skill, the paint is FLAWLESS.







At this point it was getting close to 6pm. 7 hours after I told Bubba when the car would be ready to spray. His old lady was certainly going to give it to him if we didn't hurry up so the pressure was really intense at this point. The booth had to be finished, the car had to be masked and scuffed and the paint had to be mixed. All the while, M-Town was in the next bay trying to fix a busted wheel bearing.

A little JKREW history but back in the day I used to throw parties and this was so similar to the last hour before the doors opened that it really reminded me of the butterflies one got getting everything ready for a crowd of unruly ravers outside the warehouse. Bubba was mixing paint, the radio was on and I was rushing to get stuff masked. I overheard Bubba tell one of the guys that he wondered if he could crank the radio and after it was turned to 11, the butterflies all came rushing back.



The music was blaring Janes Addiction and we finally sealed Bubbs in to do his thing. All the while I felt like Kate was inside a delivery room giving birth. I really couldn't help myself from pacing outside and trying to resist the urge to sneak a peak.

This was all the while everyone else was outside without a care in the world. Meanwhile I was having kittens haha



The master coming out for a break in between color and clear.



After all was said and done with, Bubba was finished and rushed home to take a verbal beating from the missus, patch things up and still have a nice dinner so that was a good thing. Kate and I left everything sit for the night while the worklights baked the bay and that was that. We still have a SHITLOAD of work to do but I suppose this was the hardest part of the project. I know putting back together will be a bigger bitch but I am quite confident that Jason can lead the way with this phase of the project.

I had a fucking blast this weekend. Drank some beers, learned how VW's are put together, killed some braincells but most importantly, hung out with friends who really live for this type of lifestyle as mush as kate and I do.

And lastly, the paintjob... I present to ya Roxy's new bay in glorious Tea Green with custom one of a kind eggshell clearcoat finish =)

Real quick update...

Awww, like a little groundhog coming out to see his shadow... "^%&#ing gearhead kids and their 19 thousand packages a day..."


Finally a good pic of the paint color. Sexy sexy sexy Tea Green. (Don't hate on it being a Honda folks.)


What a bunch of assholes. We were meant to be ;)


My excellent masking abilities rule.






There's a Jason under that car somewhere...


Yeah, that's what G12 and G13 looks like when mixed. Oops.


Stay tuned!

Well, it's been a really hectic week. My brain has been 19 different places all at the same time and I can feel that something really big is going to happen soon. I love it. God I'm burnt out. Work has been stepped up all of a sudden so not only do I have to perform and be at the top of my game from 8-6pm, I have been leaving work, going straight to Bubb's to make sure things are taken care of, get home and walk the dog and immediately start working on car parts until I lose daylight. Then I cook dinner, eat, and then start all of my freelance work until midnight, finally ending the day to ease into a deep sleep all to get up 7 hours later to repeat the whole process again.

I haven't seen Kate at all this week and it sucks. I can't even spend quality time with her tomorrow as we are dropping the car off to get the engine pulled. All I want to do is nap with her (yeah, we nap A LOT. It's our therapy so shush...)


****************

Bubba ordered all of the paint supplies today. One whole gallon of color! Man, if it wasn't for him hooking me with cost, this whole ordeal wouldn't be possible so I gotta give props to that big black teddy bear of a man. (Ladies, he's single too! so get on it and give a brotha a call!)

I also got this little ditty when I got home today from a serious, honest to goodness genius going by the SN of FaelinGL on the site that we won't mention. Seriously, check it out and if you are a MK4 driver, you better know who he is already. He is the madman who created a visual LED tach for the MK4 gauge cluster and all of his work can be seen here. I'm not going to lie, he is BRILLIANT and after going to him with a unique idea for the MK3 overhead light, he helped me develop the first ever project of it's kind and I got it in the mail today =)

Oooh, what's dis?


w00t!






Yesss. Pics to come...


Then I got started on this monstrosity. Yes, I have a box of car parts on my kitchen floor. Yes, I agree that this is horribly white trash. Yes, I agree that I am starting to foster a problem with this build by having said box of car parts reside on my kitchen floor for more than 24 hours. (Bill, I promise I'm being good!)



So, after putting off cleaning the parts, I parked my ass down on the floor with a toothbrush, a box of Q-tips™ and cleaned for 3 straight hours.


That's some redneck ingenuity right thur folks ;)


Anyways, thats all for now... tomorrow kate and I will drop off Roxy at Jason's so he can pull her old heart and friday will begin the long, yet fast-paced process of cleaning and then painting her bay.

(I do have to mention one thing though... midday today, I get a call from Jason and he is checking in on what time I will be dropping off the car on Thursday. I sort of sit back and just take it in that one of my friends is taking time out of his schedule to double check that I am on track of time to drop off the car. I'm not sure that what I just typed can be understood by the readers of this blog but I just thought it was really fucking cool that a friend of mine really gave a shit about this project as much as I did. Friends like that are quite rare these days.)

Anyways, I can't wait. This saturday for the first time in 12 years, Roxy will have fresh paint. Not one single soul has done what Bubba and I are planning to do and I can nearly contain myself to see how it turns out. Stay tuned folks =)

JKREW: it's gonna be a lot of work making the engine pieces look new again
kate: what happened to everything looking aged? I don't want anything chromed.
JKREW: I don't want shiny either. I just want black but it's gonna suck cleaning them up
kate: I can help
JKREW: well, I want to paint everything black/grey and then sand the edges so it looks weathered
kate: ok
JKREW: that ok?
I want yer opinions here
kate: well I agree with cleaning it up and what not but let's not go over board
JKREW: k
I just want people to know that we actually spent time thinking about what to do with the pieces as opposed to just putting them back together
kate: and definitely no chrome or alluminum
I understand (:
JKREW: I think there is a fine line between an "aged" look and just plain overlooked and dirty
all this talk of engines gets me all hot and bothered. Lets do it!
kate: no I agree, with the bay cleaned up and painted and the visible parts of the engine degreased and cleaned up and repainted, it will look good
haha YES!

You know the last 20 minutes of the show where they play a shot of Foose where he's talking to the camera with bags under his eyes and he can barely talk because he's so tired and burnt? I now know that feeling and I'm not even close to finishing this project build.

I will be the first to admit, I am in WAY over my head right now. It's not that I'm staying up 24 hour stretches or deadlifting engines. It's just the constant process of thinking 12 steps ahead thats killing me. It's the minute details that go into certain areas of this build that you really need to be on top of or there will be wasted time and with so many important dates looming in the horizon, wasted time is not a good thing. And it's silly to say but it's true... all of this fucking constant thinking (fine... OBSESSING... happy mom?) is kicking my ass.

Just to vent as well as make a list to help me think, this is just a taste of what's going on right now...

- I have an engine at my friends house that needs to be painted
– I have to sand, prep and paint a box full of engine accessories to go onto said engine
- I have to make sure Bubba orders paint, clear and retardent
- I hope to god I get my parts from fourseason this week
- Thursday I have to drop Roxy off at jasons so he can pull the engine in Dara
- Friday I have to go to Jason's to get the engine bay prepped for paint AND then put the damn engine back together
- I also have to go to Manassas to get the wheels mounted in the tires (that is if my valve stems come in the mail in time)
- Saturday Bubba is coming over to paint the bay so I have to prep Jason's garage for paint
- Then I have to make sure painting goes fine without any glitches

That's just this week, then I have to continue prepping the car for paint, call the glass guy to remove the glass, source a windshield, get the bodyguy to do the exhaust cutout, roof and hatch... THEN I have to put the fucking thing back together!

And this isn't even starting to touch on all of the details that will make the car the finale I am envisioning in my head =\

I'm not trying to bitch here moreso just vent because the good easily outweigh the bad. I love how this is coming together and I love how much I am learning from this. I know next time it will be easier but as my first real-deal build, it's really kicking this rookies ass.

Who knows, maybe in ten years when I go back to this blog, Kate and I will be laughing our asses off =)

Anyways, I couldn't do this without all of the support from the readers of the blog, kate. all my friends lending hands as well as the new and old sponsors. Thank you all soooo much for keeping me level with this and when this is all said and done, the first three beers are on me :thumbup:

Bring it on.



Sincerely,
JKREW & Kate

As you all know, Kate and I are teets deep in a VR swap and after yanking the engine apart like a Red Rider BB gun on xmas morning, we have realized that ya just can't re-use certain things. We also realized that a clutch with 180k on the ticker is two seconds away from dying so to the internet we went!

After checking out a thread on that site that won't be mentioned, we went on over to http://www.fourseasontuning.com/ and spoke with a cool cat named James. James is in the middle of building up a sexay lil' Corrado project so he knew just exactly what we needed, answered all of my n00b questions and even was smart enough to suggest certain things that I overlooked.

The prices are even 20-40% cheaper than the dealer price I get at the local VW dealer so you can't beat that. In a few days we will be receiving a new clutch, install kit, seals, metal crack pipe (yay!), water pump etc etc etc to slap on the new motor.



So yeah, here is a a shameless plug once again, if you need OEM or performance parts for your dub or audi, new or old, head on over to http://www.fourseasontuning.com/ and ask for James! Even if you don't see what you need, don't hesitate to ask because he seriously has it all *wink*

Rolled back over to Jason's today to try and clean up the block for paint. While the engine was on the stand, we sprayed the piss out of it with greased Lightning and did our best to wire brush off the crap/oil/dirt/spider webs and after a few hours of ruining clothes and nasal passages, we called it a day...











Decided to get started on the wheels tonight as well. After prepping them on friday afternoon, I wiped them all clean and applied a nice coat of zinc spray which is a great rust deterrent as well as a primer for metallic paint.


On with the vintage Mercedes racing silver... ooooh snap

We need to make a tire bag and already have the fabric. We/I just suck at sewing. Anyone wanna help?



xoxo,
krew & kate

Jason (turbo_pumpkin) sent me a phonecam pic yesterday around 5pm of a pic of Roxy's new heart hanging on a cherry picker and I nearly pooped myself. He must have had some extra time and even managed to yank it out in 30 mins (good lord).

Kate and I woke up this morning after a lazy bout of rolling around and finally headed out to pick up some painting supplies i.e. high-temp paint, masking tape and 300 grit paper so we could make the engine schwanky. We got to Jason's house and after a few minutes of hanging out, we got straight to work. Jason helped us get the engine on the stand and Kate and I got to work.

The new baby:


Jason got the engine on the stand and then told us to strip it bare for cleaning and paint. You want us to do what?!


I'll just come out and say it. I can do just about anything with a car EXCEPT working on an engine. I can do a tune-up and change the oil, maybe install an exhaust or valve cover gasket but the task at hand was rather daunting. Kate was showing no fear whatsoever (maybe she was good at hiding it) but after laughing at what we were getting ourselves into, we got straight to work.



Kate was NO JOKE today. We made a deal where I would get the socket bolts and she would get the allen bolts. If we got stuck with something, we could just ask Jason who was outside doing a valve cover seal on a friend's boss's Passat.


I love this gal =)


After just an hour and a half of work, we had the entire block stripped of just about everything except the downpipe and heatshield. The one downfall of the day was after taking off the oil cooler, the fucking thing barfed oil all over my New Balances. Stupid engine! Now we need to go get a new water pump, all new gaskets and a few other things before we start putting the goodies back on including a 2.9 clone and a few other niceties. (Wish we were adding a damn turbo but oh well =\ Kinetic is a no-show after calling them a bazillion times so I guess we will just have to wait for more cash to be saved up.)





It was quite scary taking the engine apart just because I wasn't really used to forcing things loose but Jason kept reminding me it wasn't made of glass and sometimes, things just work better with a rubber mallet. It was a HUGE learning experience for both of us and all the while I had zero doubts of kates wrenching abilities. A strange trait to admire but it really did make me grow fonder of her throughout this whole ordeal.

The best part about the day was just seeing how things worked together on an engine. How certain areas of the lower intake manny was ground down so one could get to a bolt etc. Hopefully in the future we can possibly start working on the engines internals together but for right now, we have more than enough on our plate =)

It was about 6 o' clock so we decided to call it a day for now and go check out a local car show and then go feed the pooch.





We got to the show just as this little number was rolling up... original and numbered GT500. Mmmm, one day =)




Also saw this nice cut off switch application. Now I have some inspiration on how to install the one I got for Roxy a few months back. Really REALLY nice ride complete with a pristine 454 and a 150 shot bottle in the trunk.

Man I just want to start painting. Its really hard walking out to my car in the morning and having to see poor Roxy just sitting there looking like crap. I want to drive her so badly now haha

Anyways, took kate to Bubb's last night to work on the jams and rear hatch a bit. Plus I wanted to show kate what was involved in a paint job and how much time it took for prep work. She sanded like a champ =)











Then I got bored and started to fill the euro hatch plinth (the doodad that fits over the rear plate.) Being that it's a euro hatch and I don't have the euro key (ha!), there's really no point in having a rear lock. So shave away I went.


I know, it looks like ass now. Hopefully I can make it work =)

Don't feel like going into details but here are some pics. Really hoping to get her painted soon so I can finish this fucking project.

Hey, if you read the blog (thank you obviously), can you try to mention it once this week or something? I'd love to get more readers around here for an upcoming possible messageboard. I dunno, maybe it would be fun to have a forum around here to kick around ideas or somethin'?

This is going to be somewhat pic intensive so bear with me on this post. I wanted to shave the rear bumper for a few reasons:

1) I don't think anyone has ever done it before
2) I am planning on running dual exhausts, one being a stealth OEM exhaust out the rear and the other being a side-exit straight pipe for when I want to be loud and obnoxious
3) I think it really cleans up the rear (which has a bumper that really dates the car in my opinion)

This was a fairly straight forward plastic weld/shave job but this time, I wasn't just covering something, I was building up contours from nothing. Kinda cool and challenging.

Here's the basic un-touched bumper with some spare bumper lip I cut from my Jetta donor bumper from way back when.


View of tow-hook cover I chose to shave as well (who gets towed nowadays?)


My sweet-ass straight cuts. (Yeah it sucks but it was with a one-handed cut off wheel thankyouverymuch)


Carson looked at my cuts and laughed heartely


Cut out some pieces of scrap plastic as best ya can and test fit


After fitting perfectly, I started to plastic weld the rear of the piece to the bumper (wearing a full face mask mind you)


View of the other piece tack welded into place




Took a break for some lovin'


Then it was time to break out the fusor, which if yer a first timer, is flexible plastic epoxy...


All gooped up




Tow hook view...


After an hour of 60 gritting the bumper, everything is 99% flush and ready for some skimcoat but it got too dark so more updates tomorrow. Not too shabby for a measely three foot working area out on my back deck. Man I can only imagine what I will be able to do with an actual garage hahahahaha

Hey folks, some of you have noticed the subtle redesign of the blog. It was done because some cats were having issues with the margins in IE7 (damn you gates!!!) so everything should be hunky dorey now. Feel free to drop me a line with some bugs.

I also changed the side nav a bit and added some "highlighted entries" (see fig. 1) for all you new folks to check out if you missed them so far. These are entries that kate and I are especially fond of so check em out if ya haven't done so already.

fig. 1



On a sponsorship note... one final last ditch attempt at emailing the folks at Kinetic was tried on friday so we will see. The possibility of going turbo this year is slim to none but you never know so keep yer fingers crossed =)

Have a good weekend y'all!