Ben vs Mk3. Round 2.

[dylan8]

All by hand? No tools? My previous efforts don't even come close to your achievement, ****'s ridiculous!!!!!

About to say the same.
Mine looked nothing like yours and I followed the same steps

[Ben J]

Thanks! Pretty much did it all by hand. I tried using a buffing wheel on a drill for the final stage but it doesn't really make much difference, the polishing is pretty easy when you've sanded it right. I considered using sanding rolls and flapper discs etc to do it faster, but it would be hard to keep the surfaces flat and the final result wouldn't be as good. Honestly I'm impressed too, I've tried metal polishing a few things before (like my vr6 intake manifold) and they haven't come up nearly as nice. Its easy to make something shiny, but to get pretty much a mirror finish when looking straight on takes a lot of time.

Sent from my HTC Wildfire using Tapatalk 2

[Ben J]

A hint of things to come

[ffoff]

Curb feelers?

[Wolfgang]

IKEA Furniture?

[Ben J]

Haha getting closer. Over the last couple weeks I've spent nearly more than twice as much money as my old coilovers cost buying things to redo the boot setup. Should be pretty tidy, keen to get stuck into building it all but am still waiting on a couple little parts, and have been pretty busy with uni

Procrastinating studies (I have an exam at 7 tonight) this morning I quickly carpeted the subbox I built a couple years ago, which I had only hit with cheap spray paint at the time. It looked pretty awful, the before photo I snapped doesn't even show how ratty it looked haha.



I've never tried carpeting a box before and I didn't get the seams as perfect as I had hoped, but still looks 100x better than it did. Might do it again if I still have carpet left over when I've finished it all (I bought 3x1.5 meteres of the stuff )




Was also the first time I've used the little $30 work bench I built not long ago, am not going to let the fact I live in a unit with no garage stop me from doing work

[Ben J]

Got some more work done today which was nice for a change instead of just thinking about it. Figured I'd do a bit of a write up which might help out a little for anyone else who want's to build a false floor etc.

In the new set up I'm running, I'm trying to keep things as clean as possible whilst still displaying the compressors and tank. To do this, I'm hiding everything I use to have on a board above the false floor, under the false floor. Whilst I'm completely redoing everything I figured it was a good time to also relocate the battery to the boot.

Taping cards together is an easy way to get the shape of things like this right without all the guessing. You simply push them up against the edge, tape them togethor, and then pull them out and copy the shape to a piece of poster card. Cut the poster card out and keep trimming away at it until it is a perfect fit. Then you just take this template out, trace around it onto your wood, and cut that out with a jigsaw.




After I got it cut out and cut out the hole for the battery (I want the actual false floor to sit as low as possible, so am mounting the battery as far into the wheel well as I can. As it's not flat, by cutting the hole the battery sits a few inches lower) I then hit it with a few coats of paint, in an attempt to hopefully protect it a little from moisture and such. Even though its obviously mounted inside, everything I've made of MDF and put in the car unprotected has ended up swelling up on the edges and warping a little. I will be making the actual false floor out of exterior plywood to stop this, but all the parts I still am making out of MDF shall be painted. The amplifier, VU4 and assorted fuses where then mounted on top, and as there is no more room (keeping in mind I will still need airlines and wiring for things on there) I will be mounting relays, distribution blocks and such under this panel. Also bent a piece of metal and reinforced the panel where it is attached to keep the battery down, so it should be 100% secured when this panel is fixed to the body of the car.

Makeshift vice to make battery bracket:


Everything fit to the panel It will be very tight when there's air lines and wires going everywhere as well (although I will try and keep these as tidy as possible



Also made some little trim panels to put on the back of the seats.

This is what needs to be covered:


Shapes cut out in thin mdf


back and edges painted, and carpet put on the front


Looks much better. They're not attached to the seats yet, am thinking I'll do that with velcro or something.

Feels good to get into a project like this again, it's been way to long

[Water Boy]

Looking good mate!

[Ben J]

Thanks

Got a little bit done today; got the wiring for the battery relocation sorted out (its very straight forward, but I'll post some photos anyway for anyone who wants to do it)

BASIC BATTERY RELOCATION DIY:
What you will need:
- A drycell/sealed battery which you can use inside your car without ventiallation. Do some research about this. If you don't know what battery you have, chances are it will not be appropriate to relocate into the car. I'm using an Optima Yellowtop.
- A few (maybe 4-5) meters of thick wire, prefrebably 2/0 gauge, although 4 might be okay if you already have it run through the car like I did
- New battery terminals
- Ground strap for battery
- Fuse
-Brackets and whatnot to mount the battery securely.
-Distribution block

Step 1. Disconnect battery

Step 2: Run power cable (0 gauge wire is recommended, I already have 4 gauge run for my sound system so I'm just going to run that for now, and if I have any problems, will change it to thicker wire) from engine bay to wherever you are relocating the battery. I won't go into details about this. It's not hard, I have mine ran through an existing grommet in the firewall, then that lovely side trim throughout the car, which in our mk3's just seems to have been designed to run nice fat cable through

Step 3: Basically, just cut all the wires that are attached to the old positive battery terminal and put them into a distribuion block, with the power cord you just ran to the back.

Make sure to secure this somewhere.

Step 4: Cut the cable which runs from the trannsmission to the negative battery terminal, put an eyelet end thing on it and attach it to the point where a couple other things are grounded under the battery tray. Remove the old cable which ran from this point to the battery, as it no longer has a purpose. Note: if you remove the battery tray, you will need to make some sort of bracket or something to support the power steering reservoir. I haven't taken a photo of this, but its not hard to make something that will work.


Step 5: In the back where you will be mounting the battery, you simply need to find somewhere to run a ground cord for the battery, and just hook up the power wire you ran from the front to the battery, with a fuse as close to the battery as possible.

I'm grounding mine here (have taken it all back to bare metal to get a good connection) as its incredibly close to the battery (the shorter distance the better) and there was already a convenient stud from the spare wheel there (which I've cut down for my boot install).


Obviously you need to secure the battery properly, and how you do this will depend on where you want to put it. The fuse should also be secured to something. This photo just shows how it's all connected up.




On an unrelated note, also started sticker bombing the air tank today with a black and white euro theme going on. Still need to finish the sides, but I think it looks pretty cool

[Ben J]

There are few things in life I like more then receiving a package from shipito with bits and pieces I've bought from all around the US all sent over in one box, so you can imagine my excitement when the FedEx man brought me this this morning



The loot:
Sump, gasket, plug, camber bolts and manual adjust clutch cable (From GAP and ECS)


10mm hub and wheelcentric spacers, standard and extended length conical wheel bolts, BBS RS hex cap tool, Geunuine BBS polished RS center caps and "euro wheel locks" which are some of the best wheel locks around, unlike conventional wheel locks which merely slow a theif down these seem like they would be near impossible to remove without the key (parts from 3 different ebay sellers, ECS and BFI)


And finally, various Alkon (one of the best brand when it comes to PTC) fittings, Parker (also a very good brand) bulk heads, Loctite 565 thread sealant (also basically the best stuff you can use), SMC Water trap, replacement air intake filter for one of the comressors since I broke one, and an Eastman Imperial 3/8 tube bender, to make some sexy hard lines (Parts from Bagriders, and an ebay tool store)


Feels like christmas, if I include this package as having come from 8 different places (came from 8 different sellers) in the last week I've packages from 14 different places, and still have a couple on their way Tax return money didn't last long haha, and I didn't even buy what I intended to with it. Ohwell.