My Black Magic VR6

[Lukey. 381]

I bought my VR6 in august, it had Morette headlights, a K&N, a scorpion letterbox cat back, manky MOMO race gearknob and steering wheel and 17" BBS RC324 wheels ( I think these are the same as Mk4 anni wheels) I got the original wheels too which was nice. It looked ok if a little rough round the edges with only 80k and RECARO interior and an awful sony headunit.

I have pics but dont have them as of writing this, i will post them up later on.

I wasnt bothered that little stuff needed to be done as I was looking for a little project to give me something to do.

Bit of paint here and there



What looked like a little bit of bubbling to sort out


I already had a BMC CDA so that went straight on and I binned the K&N which looked like it never got cleaned.
The exhaust needs to go next in place of a nice full milltek hopefully, but thats a nice finisher, not top of my priorities atm.

First thing I got the suspension sorted as the handling was, well, attention grabbing. turns out every corner had a snapped spring, pretty much empty shocks and excessively worn top mount bushes all over.


Next i stripped it out, half stripped in the pic


First the drivers side...

Took the arch trims off and |-)



First thing i notice when i lift the carpets, hole in the floor

From underneath


Which then brought my attention to this



Some monkey has jacked it up in the middle of the bleedin car! Splitting the seams and obviously over time water/sh!te ingress has corroded its way through.

Time to investigate.. hammer time, well grinder time..





Hit the rear arch with a rotozip paint annihilator!




 

Edited August 31, 2014 by Lukey.

[Ben Seabrook 4]

Wow mate that is one seriously thorough job !! look forward to seeing the updates it's going to be mint by the time you have finished

[Lukey. 381]

Took the rear window out, worse than i thought





Stripped back to have a cleaner look




To take my mind off the bombshell of all that rot  i went about fixing the flintstones footwell


Plate shaped to fit
Haaaalike a glove


All bits zinc primed, welded up all nice, then fully covered with zinc primer




And the window zinc primed and filled up with fresh metal




Then it was time to attack the rear arch
All nastiness removed



Hello!


Plate fabricated to fill corroded gap











 

[aaronmk2 3]

really good work mate cant wait to see some more

[VR6Nat 9]

wow, thats some great work you have done there!!

As people have said before... i cant wait to see how this turns out, really thorough job done... i know my window seals are hiding stuff im too scared to look at!! should get you on it!!

[Lukey. 381]

Took the rear window out, worse than i thought





Stripped back to have a cleaner look




To take my mind off the bombshell of all that rot  i went about fixing the flintstones footwell


Plate shaped to fit
Haaaalike a glove


All bits zinc primed, welded up all nice, then fully covered with zinc primer




And the window zinc primed and filled up with fresh metal




Then it was time to attack the rear arch
All nastiness removed



Hello!


Plate fabricated to fill corroded gap











 

[vr6stormt 0]

you have been busy...

[Lukey. 381]

While waiting for the car to get in the booth I did a few other jobs just to add a finishing touch here and there

First I made a tidy bracket for the nearside headlight ballast, finished in satin black



Cleaned up a space for the offside ballast to mount nicely


Then noticed how awful the bracket is bent for my CDA


So I tidied that right up with an anvil and a bending press, then mounted it with two of the tensioner bolts instead of just the one, increasing the rigidity of the bracket and the clearance between it and the surrounding area



I then got busy on the centre console, I wanted a gauge mount that looked like it was factory.
I made this with a piece of a smashed toyota bumper,as it already had a natural shape and curve to it, some epoxy and a lot of time sanding and shaping. Just primed in this pricture to get a better idea of the shaping.





Meanwhile, a saab appeared outside, this was for sale from a guy who lives not too far away, as the guy who sprays needed an engine, he said he would be passing one day and one monday morning it was there. Bearing in mind the guy dropped it off to look at, well it was fully stripped out and shelled in an afternoon, next morning he had the shell scrapped. Dont know if hes even paid for it yet!


Finally the car was in the spray booth after being fully prepped for priming the areas we worked on, and to have the door shuts sprayed up fully so the doors can go back on.


Fully clean and masked up



While the car was in the booth the centre console was sprayed and laquered too, cos I couldnt wait
Turned out nice finished in body colour

[bungy 2]

I love seeing other peoples approach to rust problems and their fabricating. Have you any plans for performance?

[Lukey. 381]

My approach to rust is remove it! If you cant remove it, do as much as you can, get as much as you can off and treat the rust as best you can to try and prevent any further rust, my method was to jenolite any traces that couldnt be removed and zinc prime absolutely everything that was worked on.
This whole car anywhere there was rust found this was the action taken.

I have plans yes, but I want to get everything sound first. Im sorting the body out then next will probably be engine strip and rebuild/upgrade at the same time. Being an 80k engine thats 12 years old I dont know its history and dont want to just go crazy whack forced induction on it and blow it up so I want to rebuild it to a new baseline so i know whats going on with it.

I'll probably start off with a Schrick inlet manifold, 268 cams, 6 branch manifold, full milltek and custom remap. I was looking at Storm (i think, Vince?).

Eventually ill probably end up with a big power turbo or supercharger, ive had the run of hot hatches over the years and got this as a car I'll probably never sell, so I want to do it well and do it properly to last.

 

Cheers guys I have actually been working on this for some time, maybe a month, so I have a bit still to post, just havent had any time to post up any of this project of mine. Too busy either working on it or scouring the internet at night sourcing anything I have found i needed along the way.

With the doors back on it was again prepped ready for the booth second time round, this time for colour :-d
Black Magic Pearl Metallic

These pics show how much this project snowballed from just sorting out some outer sill rot to full on everything that needs doing job



Check the lupo GTI wipers too


Now into the booth, solvent cleaned off and fully masked up to be sprayed



The only parts not getting a respray at this point


Love the effect pearl paint has before its dried






Then when dry, as if by magic (see what i did there? ) it dries black


Hmmm, maybe should leave it matt, proper stealth


Nah, a double coat of laquer looks much better, even when booth fresh and not flatted down and polished up yet






When out of the booth I got around to fitting my new projector quad headlights, note the full selection of red saab panels. And birdsh!t effect primer drips all over the front wont be staying


Thats all the pics I have now and almost up to date with the progress im making, Ill have to take some more pics as i get more stuff done.

[J5KE F 0]

Perfection and attention to detail! I hope ur planning to keep this car when uve done..!?

[Lukey. 381]

I plan on this one being a lifer, its paid for and the money its going to get on it getting back to "as new" or even as the boys like to say OEMPlus, as Im integrating some modern tech into her old soul, its not going to be worth selling, or rather its worth more to me than anyone would pay, and if i dont run it for a while id just SORN it.

Ive become quite attatched to the old girl in the process of healing her ailments

[Lukey. 381]

Ive put the 1 series rear wiper on with a longer blade form a mk5 golf, its not quite long enough but ive seen an a4 estate uses a longer aero blade but ive still to measure, ill look into it further when its worn out though, its stopping on till then

Ive also put a new stalk set on, my old ones were very stiff and quite hard to flick up and down, constantly felt like they were going to break off, no pics though, as its just stock stalks, not very interesting.

I have seam sealed everywhere that was welded up now, which was a couple of dirty days crawling around under the car on ramps and stands. Ive slopped this stuff on thick, it sets like chewing gum.

Rear arches

Sills

The floor hole

Not wanting a repeat of the hole I pulled every floor plug, cleaned them up of any perished sealer and/or rust and sealed up again generously.

And the sill fronts, bearing in mind all this will be hidden by the front wings and skirts

The rear diffuser thing had fallen off and its mounts pretty much stumps, so i knocked up and rivetted on a new bracket, even that got zinc primed and satin blacked!

The other end of it got rivetted to an existing hole in the underfloor next to the bumper screw hole with a plate on the top side of the hole in the underfloor for support. This is also pinned into place by the bumper when fastened up.

I pushed on some tight fitting U-nuts onto the original mounting stumps just to make sure

[Lukey. 381]

That was the outside done for now. Excpet the whole flatting the whole car off with 2000 then polishing up so you can shave in it! But thats one of the last things.

Onto the interior

With the headlinder dropping as no pillar trims were in i installed my new aerial as the old one was wrekced and the seal had weathered away to nothing.

Not everyones thing the sharkfin, (I prefer aero ) but i like it, its been body coloured and ive run an aerial amplification lead to the head unit down the nearside fastened to the aerial wire then down the A-pillar. In blue as thats the colour of the aerial power in the ISO connector

The crimp connectors i used were really good, they are heatshrink covers with glue that melts when you heat them up to fasten everything together good and proper.

I wanted to keep the original connector on the aerial for ease of swapping back should it ever arise, so I made my own adapter out of maplins bits. Gaffer taped up to make sure they wont work loose.

Driver side interior installed, with pillar trims body coloured and polished up

The drivers footwell took AGES!

Tell a lie, heres a pic with stalks, old or new? i dunno

Gearknob and gaiter installed in the car

And no lock door handles installed, with armour plates, both body coloured

Next up will be obviously installing the other side interior, give the seats a thorough clean havent decided what order im going to do things yet, see how i feel

[bungy 2]

Any more info on your aerial setup and in particular the amplification part. I've fitted a shark fin but it is not as good as the oem for reception?

[Lukey. 381]

is your shark fin amplified? if it is it should have an extra wire like the red one on mine. and are you using the oem head unit or aftermarket?

If the aerial has the amplifier lead then you can run an amplify cable to it regardelss of if youre using the oem head unit or aftermarket and

If you are using the oem head unit then youll need to run a cable just to an ignition live as it only needs a 12v feed and the aerial power will be tucked away unlabeled in the stock loom.

If you are using an aftermarket head unit you can run a cable to either the blue wire (antenna power) or the blue and white wire (remote turn on) either of these work fine as some stereo looms dont have the solid blue antenna power.

For instance my alpine has the solid blue and blue/white cables but my brothers pioneer only has blue/white.

They both do the same thing, give 12v when the radio is switched on

[Lukey. 381]

Ive pretty much got all of the interior in now, along with the momo pitstop handbrake and gaiter and the new golf GTI pedals. The body coloured pillar trims look totally awesome all polished up! I also ran a power wire from the interior light to the footwells as i fancy putting in sub lighting at some point.

I was all ready to put my seats back in when i picked them up and theyve got p!ss wet through where they were sat, not noticeable to the eye but when i picked them up they were wet where they were sat. Lets say i got a little bit annoyed.. Ah well every cloud has a silver lining, i got to buy some more car cleaning stuff.

I got some chemical guys fabric cleaner and ill give all the seats a good vacuum to an inch of their life then attack them with the cleaner. Might even do my headliner, as im pretty sure its supposed to be nearer white than khaki coloured.

I got my 2 new front window seals, finally, after ordering a set weeks ago, every time they arrived the monkey packers had bent them in half so had to be returned. I also have 2 new sets of sideskirts.

My arch trims are still in primer, my interior door pull handles are looking a bit sorry so ive put them on the pile of things to get body coloured now too.

When everythings done the last job will be flat the whole car down and polish it up.

There will be plenty ive forgotten that will come up as im going along

[Lukey. 381]

Got the second window seal in 100% condition from the dealers, finally after about 7 bent up ones, after a lot of fitting, pushing, hitting etc its on.

The VR is now weather tight again!

and got the passenger body coloured handle and armour plate on aswell. With the handle back on i could build the door back up

Minus the door pull trim as they were still drying when the pic was taken

The GTI pedals

The complete centre console now

The MOMO pit stop handbrake and gaiter

The C pillar trims in, looking nice i think anyway

The B pillars, i sprayed the belt runners satin black, as i thought they may get marked much easier so this will mark less and if need be will spray back up more easily

I decided to put the cold air feed tubing for the BMC, i first connected it up to the filter as intended, but it took ALL induction noise away, and i love the induction noise so i just cut it down a bit to still act as a cold air feed but not connected up. I jubilee clipped it to an existing hole in the inner wing

The grille was cut up and the bottom shaped something like, the bottom girlles will be replaced with bonrath-esque intakes when i can be arsed

Didnt like the bright silver, so i satin blacked the inside of the tubing to stand out less, looks much better i think

When putting the wing back on i noticed the earthing strap for the bonnet was on its last fibres, so i made one, trouble was i only had bright blue loop connectors and bright blue cable, but installed on the car, I like it

The sprayed door pull trims are now installed and look awesome but my camera went flat so no pics yet.

The headlight surrounds, which were translucent smoked when bought, were first sprayed black from the inside of the surround but it looked wrong so they are now body coloured too, the moulded words in between the dip and main housings have been smoothed flat too. The arch trims have also been sprayed up.

When messing about with the air filter area i noticed a bloody great tear in the elbow pipe that connects between the MAF and throttle body, so theres a bonrath power rohrs on its way to fix that problem, same price as a stock VW replacement too.

The seats are now at home to avoid them getting any more soaked/dirty/ruined and ill be cleaning them up on saturday so hopefully they'll have plenty of time to dry out.

I sorted out my boot light which was an annoyance since i bought the car as it didnt work. It turned out to be the swicth in the boot latch. I took the whole lot to bits and cleaned them all up as they were covered in crap, so werent making good electrical contact, and put it all back together, now its working, yay!

Radio is gonna be the very last job i think. Alpine 9866R waiting in its box to be installed.

Looks like the finish date is getting closer!! not much more to do i dont think.

[euanm1979 0]

is that rear spoiler standard mate?

[Lukey. 381]

no its a zender spoiler, ive tried to find one and they seem rare as rocking horse poop

[euanm1979 0]

thought as much, i was toying with the idea of gettin a new spoiler but most of them seem a bit over the top, needing sumthin a bit more subtle

[Lukey. 381]

know what you mean, i saw this didnt have a standard spoiler and had my eye on one on the bay. But then when i saw this in person i actually like it better than the standard one and its not obnoxious, it goes really well

[Lukey. 381]

Ive been busy for the past week flatting down the resprayed parts (everywhere except the roof and tailgate) with 2000grit and polishing the car up using the following method;

Sand the car flat with 2000grit where resprayed

Then applied using porter cable 7424 DA

Lake Country CCS Green pad with 3M Fast Cut

Lake Country CCS Blue pad with Menzerna Final Finish PO85RD

Lake Country CCS Black pad with Poorboys Blackhole Glaze

Lake Country CCS Black pad with Chemical Guys JetSeal 109

Then putting everything back together.

I havent taken any pics as Ive literally not stopped long enough, Im so desperate to get this finished now, but dont want to rush it and cut corners, these final steps are so frustrating as its starting to really look like i could get in and drive it, it still needs the chassis undersealing and the sills lancing with wax before its complete.

I only have 1 pic that i took on my phone for a little teaser when it started looking like a car again

[Lukey. 381]

gutted, an hour after i had it home after having the underside work tetrashultz sealed, the interior wasnt even in yet, i was lining up the headlights and purely my own fault as ive been so used to leaving it in gear and handbrake off, i took my foot off the clutch and the car lurched forwards, into a brick wall, the leading edge of the bumper above the front number plate is chipped up to fook. Luckily i can get it sorted out and put right, but it put a right dampener on getting it back.

No one else can really notice it but i know its there so I want it putting right, after the time ive spent on it I want it all right.

Also I got my HEL braided hoses on as the original hoses (and as it turns out they were original, old as the car!) were looking a bit weathered. This being the "sh!t happens" rebuild, all of the orignal line fittings were totally seized on and nothing was getting them off while still connected. I has to cut all the brake lines and crack the fitting bolts off with a surface drive socket. All four calipers consequently now have new brake line and fittings running to them, which isnt a bad thing.

The car is now waiting for a full brake fluid change and bleed, which as I had the lines dissconnected at the pump needs VAGCOM according to my mechanic mate whos doing it.

I need to get my BBS RC 17s refurbed too, ive gone for a company called aerocoat in great yarmouth and their aeromax shadow chrome finish which has to be seen to be appreciated, thats gonna happen the first week of april all being well, ive got a track day to attend in this car on 3rd of april so has to wait till after then as i want my decent tyres on the 17s for the day, not gonna do that on my original wheels and the cheap woosung ditchfinder tyres they have just so theyre legal!

[bungy 2]

Some really impressive progress and nice to see it evolve into something really special.