15 hours in and I am beat. Been sanding these bitches down since wednesday. I'm not into tooting my own horn or anything but it's a wonder how easy it is to refinish wheels. These wheels were BUSTED and now look 9.5/10. Imagine what I could do if I knew how to tig haha

Anyways, they aren't close to being done by Bugout on Sunday but I'll give it the college try. They're all wetsanded for paint but it's been too humid to spray outside so I lost a night of curing time tonight =\ Then I need to paint tomorrow, put them back together, lower my coils, paint my rear rotors and THEN put the new seats in, new carpet and clean everything up for the show.

Not gonna happen but at least I'll be pretty much ready for H20 in a week. Then it's on to my moms project, another week of personal art projects that need to be finished stat let alone everything else including prepping Kate's car for H20 too.

Wheeeeee...

I swear, the frequency and non-funny videos will definitely come to a slow trickle in the very near future. This is just like when you learn what sex is and know you can do it anytime you want. I give our video making career a month tops haha

email me at kate@ohkate.com with your address and I will promptly (sort of) mail off stickers to you.

So I heard about this new thing called youtube...

God bless you, you wonderfully glorious company. Once, I was a man with a CEL. A man with a horrible glowing amber light that constantly reminded me that my life was incomplete. For you, with your awesomely awesome programming was far superior albeit incomplete in making my life perfect.

The dreaded CEL. Mocking me 2.2 feet away from my eyes. Telling me that I was not perfect. Alerting me of the days that were counting down until my emissions test date. Reminding me daily that my life was missing something.

And that something was your new software.

Today, I am a new man. Today I am void of said CEL. I have seen the top of the mountain and what I have seen is good.

God bless you C2. No longer do I have a wonky idle. No longer do I stall when coming off the throttle and drop it in neutral because now RPMS hang high in what seems like an eternity while waiting for me to shift into a higher gear.

Alas! No more bucking! The wife today let out a glorious "WOOHOO!" when I let off the gas and she did not spill her Robeks™ smoothie because the car finally didn't decide to buck forward with the force of an unmerited donkey punch.

All is well now with my VR. It is quite literally perfect. And I have no one to thank but you. (And Matt because he is the dogs bollocks.)

With all due sincerity,
jkrew & kate aka jkrate







p.s. Lovely photos courtesy of Kate as always...

If I posted video blogs or whatever the f they are called, would you all watch them? A buddy of mine was all like "OMG AWESOME NEXT BIG THING" and I'm like "NO WAI DUDE. WASTE OF TIME. PLUS I NO HAVE CAMCORDER."

Meh, a whore is a whore and I guess I can work it on video too.

I mean, there's always a chance of seeing Kate's nip or something. Or not.

Man, I have a LAUNDRY LIST of crap to do too.

Sooo, to fit the wheels, I had to roll my first set of fenders. New 512's are on the way this week and hopefully they will get here in time so I can paint the wheels and what not. I drove to Jason's house at 9 in the morning and when I got there, it was incredibly bizarre because I hadn't been back in Roxy since she left last year on August 29th. Totally weird and almost to the day.

Then:


Now:


And 13 years of crap got removed...


Doing his thing.


And I decided to tap my kickass shifter while I was there.


When I got home, we drove out to the country to take Carson swimming for the first time at an equine therapy center and I saw this lil' number. One day =)


Then it was off to Baltimore to deliver a dimple dash to a buddy and after seeing a Food Network show where the Charm City Cake dude went to a BBQ place called Chaps, we decided to check it out. Not a great idea to eat BBQ and chili dogs at 8pm at night at a 24/7 BBQ joint that is outside a gentleman's club hahaha


Later that night, Kate decided to finish up the seats while I made the padding. Man I love that woman.


Upholstery padding was $40 a yard and god only knows why that was such an expensive venture to me seeing as how I'm broke as f*** because of everything else on this car. So I said to myself "hey jkrew, you have that super awesome space age foam mattress topper in storage, just cut that bitch up!" And well, there you go. Can't beat free crap.




The aftermath.


Not 100% happy with how they came out but these are more function than form at this point. I don't plan to show the car with them on and the only purpose they have is to protect my ass from long trips. I do have to admit though, they are extremely well made (thanks boo) and are comfortable as hell haha


Sunday was low-key. I decided to finish up my rear door panels.


And drilled a hole in my finger.


So while I was sitting on my awesome new seat pads last night in the kitchen, I started talking to Kate about how I feel I'm getting sloppy with Roxy. I'm not 100% satisfied with a lot of the projects I'm doing on her and am wondering if the more I continue, the worse she will look. Kate suggested taking a break and that is the furthest thing from my mind. I just want Roxy to be done so I can have a clean house again. Kind of a catch-22.

This summer was soooo much better than last summer because I didn't worry about a car at all. Not once. Not once. I didn't stress about finishing projects or ruin weekends working on cars. And when I did work on cars, it was part time and casual and now I feel the stress of H20 looming over my head.

I don't want to do this half assed but I don't want to keep her unfinished that much longer. Summer's almost over and I know I won't be working on her over the winter due to me not having a garage so I guess we'll see how it goes. The shitty thing is, I don't want to re-do the rear door panels but I will probably end up doing so just so I'm 100% happy.

*sigh

Wheeeeeeee. And only gave myself one scar!

Man, haven't updated in a week or two! Been kind of crazy around here so here's a quick recap of whats been going on...

1. Kate got a new Cabrio which also spit a bad secondary air code so we've been attempting to fix it for a week to no avail.

2. I got a bug up my ass to try and solve all of Roxys CEL's which included:
- bad speed sensor
- bad cam position sensor
- mystery short code
Sooo, I have been spending a week taking apart the engine bay and cleaning up the wiring harness to find the short. No luck. I went to the junkyard and grabbed all the other sensors I needed (see fig. 1)

(fig. 1)


That seemed to fix EVERY light except for the mystery light sooo I called up C2 and asked and they were like "Ohh, yeah, about that fault code. Um, send us the chip back and we'll send you a new one which will fix it. Our bad."

WTF.

Anyhoo, got new plates... (see fig. 2)

(fig. 2)


Then, after my hellish week with work ended (60+ hours mind you), Kate and I took a break and ran to the beach for a .5 day excursion just so I could unwind a bit. We knew it is going to get a lot worse in terms of work this month and next so we needed to take the break when we could get it. My mom has a cancer non-profit that has a yearly project for me to design and that bitch is due in a month. It took me 40+ hours of straight work last year and this year it's not gonna be any better. Add all of Roxy's stuff that needs to be done and that equates to another ulcer that I don't need.

I plan to drink a bit come September 27th haha

Sooooo, what else? I was sick of not having any music in the car so I have been mentally devising a plan to add some speaker locations for the past 3 months but still keep them somewhat hidden as to not affect the look I'm going for. It has been a total pain in the ass because although I can fit speakers in my door panels in a new location, it will completely throw off the look. I could buy kickpanel speakers but that will look hokey. So, the only location I can slap em in is the rear 1/4 buuuuuut, I took all of the body panels out. See why this has been an issue?

So I decided to make new panels =)
I spent some time perfecting a template and then traced it out onto .040 aluminum just like the doors:


I wasn't happy with the first two so I kept going until I got it right. The design had a bend in it and seeing how I'm making these in my dining room, I really don't have the money or space for a real metal break.


So I made my own:


Viola:


Then I bought a sewing machine. I felt so domestic haha


And Carson helped us trace out some material for seat pads...




It took a whole night for Kate to get used to the machine again (home ec paid off right?!) and the next night she was ready to get crackin'.


It's been two whole weeks since my vinyl plotter came in and I hadn't even touched it. That's how busy I was with work =( So I spent a few minutes last night and tried to get it to play nice with my Mac. Behold! My first vinyl sticker!


And lastly, Kate started her first project for Lucy. Ghetto-textured side molding =) I taught her how to prep and paint and I'm sure she will have a full write up on her own blog on this site soon ;)

Maybe it's the Newcastle, maybe it's me being burnt the fuck out due to a massive workload this month... I dunno, but I am in a total slump with Roxy. I don't want to work on her let alone look at her lately.

So I started re-reading the good-ole blog and reminiscing with Kate over the pics and how green we were in the world of car modding back in the day. How we were just BF and GF back then. How taking off a valve cover on an 8v was the extent of my mechanical prowess. There's a fine line between being cocky and boastful and being dignified and proud and I think I'm still on the right side of the divide thank goodness=)

Anyways, I'm inspired again. H2O is quickly coming up and I have we have a boatload of deliverables due in the next 6 weeks. A massive site deisgn for work (new website that will be competing with cars.com), a 2008 calendar and magazine for my mom and her non-profit project as well as a pants load of other goods around the house. *ugh

I will definately need a few beers come September 27th and I hope to be sharing them with the lot of you =)

Here's to progress....

Twice!

We were going to baltimore to go see freaking massive 6' wingspan bats...



and decided to take a detour to the breaker to see what they had and found 3 cabby 3.5's! And a few VR's! Wheeee.

So I grabbed what I could and we decided we would come back the next day. And god bless Kate, even though she too a few tries to wake up, we were on the highway by 8am on a sunday morning haha

So just to prove that we are the shit, behold our booty. This took 2 hours TOTAL to gank and I only ended up bleeding on 4 parts of my body. *high fives self

He didn't want to run Roxy. Something about a "break in period" haha

*winks*

uncledonald: http://a364.ac-images.myspacecdn.com/images01/52/l_8ba0a8076a97fc77094d2a82c8f62633.jpg
JKREW: jesus christ
that makes me sad on so many levels
uncledonald: yikes
me too
JKREW: I hate florida
uncledonald: those kids are barely house-trained
JKREW: BAHAHAHAHA That is pretty much the funniest thing you have ever said

Very sad news reached the Italian design community today. Andrea Pininfarina (51), the dynamic and driven CEO of the world famous Italian car design company which designs Ferraris, Fiats and the Ford Focus, was killed in a traffic accident this morning near Turin, Italy.

First reports indicate that he was on his way to work on his Vespa scooter, when he was hit by a car. He is survived by his wife and three children.

http://digg.com/motorsport/jkrate_VW_project_buildup_blog

Raising the bar for attention whores worldwide.

Yeah, this pretty much sums it up nicely...

Need to finish up a few details and I think these are done. For some reason Roxy picked up best interior yesterday at Vag Fair. Hopefully these things will make sure that never happens again haha