Ok, well Jason being the kind guy he is, sent me on over to a mr. rayveedub from the site that shall not be named who is in balteemore and loves working on engines. It looks like ray is ready and willing to do the headgasket job, possibly do a ring job and other preventative stuff and lastly, sorry in advance kate, he mentioned that he knew a guy who was trying to unload a metal snail on the cheap. What am I getting myself into? AGAIN. So we may be back on track soon. Cross yer fingers. We still have to get roxy up to balteemore without blowing up so that could be an adventure all in itself.
Secondly, as you all know, kate and I are engaged. Well, something strange is afoot at the circle k and there may be a special british celebrity pastor who will be marrying us at a certain dub show in the near future. Buy your tuxedo t-shirts now folks...
And... seeing how there isn't a single pic of roxy on this page, lets reminisce... some good progress, some bad but all a learning experience and lastly, thank you all for the support. Honestly. Not to sound like a sappy douche but it really makes my day knowing there are folks out there reading this page =)
Jason just rang me up and said the VR was losing pressure in one of the cylinders causing the mysterious pressure issue.
Headgasket.
Oh well. Maybe next year folks. Anyone know of a cheap/good (like those two belong together right?) mechanic that can do it in a timely fashion? Trying to make H20 but I won't push it if it cant be done within my budget/timeline of course.
Hey all, just wondering if anyone has a line on a 2-door window seal set? I DEF. need the outer seal for the left side and would love the right too if anyone has both. Also need some Jetta e-codes as NO ONE has any in stock. These are the only pieces I need to finish this bish up.
Jason and I grabbed lunch today and he said the cooling issue should be buttoned up soon. Looks like I'm getting the bug back to get some work finished haha
Well, it's now a week and a day after Roxy died but she is in good hands. I'm teetering on the edge of the fence on showing her or not at H20 this year. I've never done a build of this size before so I'm not sure if a month is enough time to get her all buttoned up before and I don't want to set myself up for being disappointed.
I'm guessing I can put her back together in a week if I really pushed myself and took some time off from work. Buut, the whole reason this car was being built was not for a show but to be fun as well as a learning experience. I'd rather take my time getting EVERYTHING perfect than to skip some steps and show her unfinished.
Jason will be taking a look at her and hopefully will solve her cooling issue as well as buttoning up all the wiring etc etc. He assured me that he would rather take his time than to send her back to me iffy like the first time so kudos to him for having such a high work ethic.
I have to admit, it HAS been nice not thinking about her once this week and getting all worked up.
We also bought a house. I closed on Thursday of last week and now I'm officially a home owner (thanks mom and pops for the help!) It's weird but now all I really care about is sprucing up the house instead of the car. Maybe I can bring a photo album to H20 of the crib instead of Roxy. KIDDING!
Anyways, Kate and I are slowly getting over the Macaroni Death Flu™ and in a few days I expect Roxy to be 100% engine wise. We'll see if there's enough time to go nuts and try to finish her before the 27th o' September =)
Grrr, this is getting frustrating. Although this is all a learning experience, the process of building a car that is this in-depth has proven to be a bit too much for me to take on as a first timer. I remember feeling totally in control last summer when Kate and I were building up Betty. Super easy mods, an alarm, a sub box, basic detailing and a shifter rebuild that forced me to get over my fear of working under a car. All fairly easy and the most adventuresome mod was taking off the valve cover to paint it and replace the seal as I had never seen the guts of an engine before.
I know, laugh it all out. I was a n00b and fully admit it.
And then I got cocky. I thought I could fully handle biting off too many things for the new MK3 project. I was pissing away money just to "do it right" and in doing so I kind of forgot that this was all supposed to be fun. I mean, ok, painting a car is great. Swapping an engine is fun. New interior? Sure! But doing all of them, for the first time, all at once was/is foolhardy and I should have known it but I kept on going and now it's showing it's ugly head.
I'm not complaining at all. This project has been AWESOME to say the least and I have learned a great deal about numerous processes that go into building a car but I should have taken them on in stages and I have no one to blame but myself and my pride. I've missed every single show of the season this year, almost had a damn heart attack because of it and have made this car consume almost every hour of my summer and forgot to just sit back and enjoy it all.
So yeah, that's my vent. I've got a solid week of rebuilding to do once the car is running properly and is fully painted and that is being optimistic. It's two weeks away to Bugout and then three weeks after that to H20. So far, I have a room full of parts, an unpainted car and an engine that has a clogged artery somewhere that has put itself in dry dock until the issue is solved.
I've chosen to step back from Roxy for a bit and just trust that if she's gonna be ready, she'll be ready. If she's not, then fuck it. She is in fully capable hands right now so I have nothing to worry about. It's just a car and you can't rush quality and that's the only thing I am going to settle for. If she isn't done, then I will still go to the shows and have a good time instead of losing sleep and worrying so much.
I think that's a good plan for now. Plus, I have more important things to think about, like kate, my friends and my family =)
p.s. on an added note, I changed out my first and last heater core this weekend. I would have never thought I would be able to do something that difficult this time last year and I have all of my friends, especially those who have really lent their time guiding me and explaining how things work along the way (Jason, Will, Scott, Wieder, VR etc etc etc) so thank you guys. It really is awesome that I have such a tight group of friends helping me learn all of this crap.
p.p.s. Due to Roxy taking a dump on the side of the road yesterday, I had to call up Jason to trailer me back to his house in a moments notice. How many people can say they have friends who would stop what they were doing to do THAT for them haha Also, thank you to Macaroni who hiked ALL THE WAY from sterling to the sticks, with the flu, to pick kate and I up at Jason's house. You fooking rule man =) XOXO
p.p.p.s. I put some gas money is in the passenger seat pocket *wink*
Ahhh, the VW heatercore. It's like a mini radiator that is in your dash where hot coolant from the engine flows in and gives you heat when it's cold outside. When it cracks, as is known to happen in MK3 VW's, it pisses coolant and steam all over the interior of the car. Some say that replacing a heatercore is quite possibly the hardest thing one can do in a VW. Some say that it takes hours upon hours of wrench time (hence the cost of upwards to a grand in labor to fix).
I wholeheartedly agree.
Above is a representative diagram of a Volkswagen GTI and it's AC/Heat system. The running joke in VW circles is that all of the german engineers got together one afternoon, chanted some magic spell that lifted the heatercore in mid-air and then built a Volkswagen around it. Totally true.
Anyways, I'm done. I just spent close to 5 hours between two days replacing mine. And I had it easy because my dash was already out of the car. I have close to a dozen cuts on my right arm and a handful of extra screws but the car steers, stops and drives and that's all I'm concerned with. Plus they are just screws and everyone knows that extra screws aren't that bad, it's the bolts you have to worry about.
Well, kate has officially moved in and we are now a two dubber household along with the dog sans white picket fence. It's an odd feeling having your gf er... fiancé live with you. I've never lived with a girl before. Now instead of working on car parts in the kitchen, I have to well... work on them in the kitchen but now, I have to clean up after myself. It's a nice tradeoff.
Anyways, still waiting to paint Roxy's guts *crosses fingers for thursday* so I decided to take a crack at joey-modding the ole MK3 headlights. If they are any easier than MK2 lights, then I'm (kate is humping my elbow as I type this RIGHT NOW wtf)... where was I, oh yeah, well look at these photos and that should explain my experience with modding a MK2 light see figure 1 & 2
figures 1 & 2
So, into the oven they went. 350º for 5 minutes and then with a sharp x-acto blade, I cut out the rubber seal. Took a flathead to pry off the glass and after 30 minutes of struggling and almost cutting into my thigh, I had gotten them both loose without breaking anything.
Then I broke out the glass polish (thanks Dan J Reed)
More pics as soon as everything dries. Oh yeah, and kate made some dope ass cookies while the oven was still hot. Live in GF's rule.
Here's a loyal reader of the roxy blog and fellow down-under(er)'s dub site to check out. Very thorough posts as well as quite informative for the DIY'er out there. Check out his badgeless how-to as well to pass away the time at work. Good on ya! =)
So, with any AIM name, you can now make a free visual timeline about anything ya want. I'm too lazy to fill mine out all the way but maybe I'll do it when we're all done. Fun fun fun!
Well, since nothing really big has happened since painting the door jams, I'll write up a lil' emo post just to pass the time while Kate is unpacking. This week it's been hot. Like africa-hot. And my dumb ass has been working hard to get a few things ready as changes always happen in life. Saturday night was supposed to be the first night of Kate moving in with me (a big change to say the least) so like any blue-blooded bachelor attempting to valiantly say good by to his single ways, I went out and painted the town red friday night. Nothing crazy, just a few much needed exhales.
Saturday morning I started getting these weird surges under my chest on the left side but shrugged it off to a pulled muscle or something from working on the car all week. So around 11am, I started working on Roxy to get all of the glue and gunk out of her trunk area in the 90º heat. Got finished a few hours later, was still rocking the awkward heart surge feeling but like any dumb guy, I overlooked it. The night rolls around... I'm tired and getting worried about my heart still going nutty so I called up my pops and asked what a heart attack felt like (as this is common place in my pops side of the fam.) He explained almost what I was feeling to a T so I put the phone down and rolled over to the local Inova (local ER) with kate to get checked out.
Of course when they took some blood samples I passed out, AGAIN, because I'm a little bitch and a few hours later, they told me they wanted to send me to the hospital because it looked like I was having a heart attack. Fucking hell. I'm too young for this. I started freaking out, the heart pain got worse and I was about to start losing my shit. I REALLY thought I was going to die. Not trying to be over dramatic here or anything but you really start thinking about life when told you could be having a heart attack.
11pm and I am now getting a one way trip in an ambulance sans shoes and shirt and groggy as hell. I get to the hospital where I'm then jabbed with multiple needles, slapped with a bazillion sticky pad things see figure 1) and have test upon test run on me. Then I was told I had to stay there for 24 hours while they make sure I wasn't going to die or something. SUCK. Being 6' 3" and having to sleep on a foam mat on a bed meant for a 5 foot tall girl sucks ass. Hard. Then being woken up every 6 hours to draw blood sucks harder.
figure 1.
Anyhoo, I didn't die. I didn't have a heart attack, although my heart is kind of acting weird lately still so I have to go in for some stress tests soon. Kate is unpacking as I type and after all is said in done, I have learned a few things:
1) stressing out over a car/work/anything enough to cause a heart attack is crazy. I really need to cool it with everything. 2) kate rocks my socks and I'm glad she was there to help me out through all of this. Even though she forgot my shirt and shoes when she picked me up today so I had to walk through the hospital shoeless wearing a paper shirt. Classy =) 3) when are we gonna paint the damn car bubbs? Six weeks to H20! hahaha
Stripped out the interior and prepped the doors and jams to be painted last night. Then we had to get in the booth... without seats. So I got this:
But then the factory alarm started going off. Fark. No doors to turn it off. So we moved the door close to the car, wired the lock up, dis-armed the alarm and got back to business. You've never lived until you try to drive a car up a ramp to a paintbooth while sitting on a bucket. Good times.
Started prepping the doors with laquer thinner.
And started sanding the door jams...
Bubba's inner DaVinci showed itself:
Then we masked:
The colour:
Then we shut Bubba in so he could do his thing:
After baking we let her sit for the night.
The colour looks great and went on without any flaws but last night I got a little nervous about the clear being too glossy and not matching the bay. I was hoping it would cure overnight to be flatter (which it did a bit) but still looks too glossy to me. Hopefully Bubb's can remix the clear % for the body and get it just a bit more flatter. I know I'm being anal about this but I really don't want to have just another car with a shiny fresh paintjob. I want it to be different and unique and as far as I can tell, only a handful of people have done an eggshell finish the right way so far. Time will tell. *crosses fingers*
Special thanks to kate and especially Bubb's for giving up his night to help paint the car! Looks great =)
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Jason and Kate are engaged to be married and like cars. A lot. 
