My Black Magic VR6

[hvr6 88]

unfortunately i have never had the time to go to any shows when they were on no :-(

I got 2 jobs know where you're coming from with having no time!

how you fixed for the 20th August? the Billing meet should be a good one & more of a mega meet than 'show'

[Lukey. 381]

lol im actually off on holiday for the first time in like 2 years for the back end of august.

where is billing?

[hvr6 88]

gutted! it's Northampton :-)

Bug Jam weekend? Santa Pod

whereabouts are you?

[Lukey. 381]

im all the way up north east, so everywhere is massivley far, its like 180miles to there for me, hard to do with SWMBO and a 6yr old whiney girl lol

[hvr6 88]

fair enough!! lol

Billing is really geared up for kids so that's a shame maybe next year then mate, there'd be a few people wanting to bend you ear about your work on this! :-)

[bungy 2]

My 6 year old daughter will be there. They can whine together.

[Lukey. 381]

lol, i could see what they say, no harm in asking, whats actually at billing when its on? things to tell her of what she may be interested in may sway a bit more

[VR6Nat 9]

ALL OF THIS!!!

Leisure facilities available at the park:

Jet Ski's, Go Karts

Indoor Aqua Park for All Ages

Funfair

Indoor Soft Play Area

Climbing Wall

Adventure Golf

Trampolines

Nature Reserves

Miniature Train

Karting

Fishing

Pedalo's

Outdoor Play Areas

Amusement Arcades

Holistic Centre

Tattoo Studio

Hair Salon

Archery

Hydrosphere 'Water Warriors'

Orbing 'Land Warriors'

Marina

[VR6Nat 9]

oh and this... http://thenorthamptonballoonfestival.co.uk

[hvr6 88]

exactly! :-) http://www.vr6oc.com/e107_plugins/forum/forum_viewtopic.php?419993

some stuff we're doing incase you missed the thread :-)

[Lukey. 381]

Fitted a centre sun visor as it is always the place where the sun sits, it is a brilliant addition and helps massively when it's sunny.

I cut 2 lengths of metal 1"x 5" and taped them together then drilled the holes in the relevant locations, I found 1 thickness not sturdy enough to take the unfolding of the hinge without flexing. This I put on top of the headlining in front of the interior light to act as a load spreading base and bracket to screw the visor onto. Then i just poked the visor screw and locating spike through the headliner and screwed it to my drilled strip. It is very solid and doesnt put any strain on the fragile headliner.

And when it's folded away it looks like it was always supposed to be there

[Lukey. 381]

The sun was out all day today so I took the opportunity to give my wheels a proper clean and protect. Excuse the state of the body, its turn will come but today it was just wheels as they hadnt had a coat of sealant for about 6 months!

before

terrible!

after

much better

[VR6Wherry 0]

Wow, i just had a read through this and the effort and time you have put into this is amazing!

Looks great! (H)

[Lukey. 381]

Cheers mate

Got the rest of the car done today, it was a nice day but not sunny so perfect for polishing and waxing, i tried out my new foam lance (which was rubbish and wont be again) and got round the car twice by hand.

First with some poorboys cleanser polish with carnuba blue then with dodo juice blue velvet. I got this new bumper gel for the skirts and valances by Mer and i like it a lot.

I saw so many swirls and minor scratches from the year since i machined it last but i have planned to do it in june so this was just to make it look nice and clean till then

Then i gave the interior a goo going over, hoovered out and carlack68 plastic protected the plastics

I need to get some lamin-x for the front fogs/reflectors/indicators cos the tint spray keeps peeling off after time

[bungy 2]

Results look very impressive...

[golfvr6chris 0]

This is brill! so much hard work gone into it, respect

[grandmstramrod 0]

looks brilliant dude alot of hard work! just need vr6 splitter now!

[Lukey. 381]

nah i dont want a deeper splitter, this one catches enough, the deep one would be destroyed in a week lol

Its just sailed through its MOT, last year i had emissions problems and they were fairly high, though it got through it was a bone of contention this time for me, nervous it might fail this time.

Since the last MOT i have replaced the MAF, coilpack, leads, plugs, fuel pressure regulator, fuel pump and battery. I also gave the whole fuel system a run through using the comma dtox. This time the emissions were so low its practically purifying the town air as i drive

[Lukey. 381]

Replaced the crack pipe and thermostat housing yesterday after finding a sweet smelling puddle under my car over the weekend.

Took 6 hours in total from front off to front back on not including the 40 mile drive i took with some cooling system flush in to clean out all the rust and crap.

Front off was as easy a job as it looked, which was nice

This pic cracks me up

And with everything exposed got on with it

First i removed the coolant pipes and expansion tank, some of which had seen better days

I had to just guess if the level was right in this tank you cant see through it at all

The oil cooler pipes were the worst, but id thought of this already and got the replacements ready to install all at once

All the coolant pipes were full of this

The other pipes were still in good condition though so i thoroughly cleaned them back to like new inside.

With the thermostat housing and crack pipe off it was easy to see where the leaks were coming from

I lost the seal that came off with the housing but it was totally split in 2 and had been pushed out past the edge of the housing between it and the block. The black grime collecting where it was leaking most.

The other side had lost a big piece of the edge plastic, god knows where that is i couldnt find it, probably wedged deep in a channel in the block somewhere

The block ports were in surprisingly good condition and didnt need any corrosion removing, just a quick sand with some 600 to take off some residue and they were shiny clean surfaces again

I then assembled my brand new thermostat housing, thermostat, plugs, seals etc and new stainless crack pipe, the only thing i re used was the 2 sensors, as theres nothing wrong with them.

I also silicone greased all the seals and put a thin bead of coolant system gasket around each mating surface, just to be sure.

You can also see my new vibra technics engine mount in this pic, fast road, had all 3 done, its so much better!

I put the front back on, checked all electrics, lights, bonnet catches still worked and left the sealant to set over night, in the morning i fitted my new see through expansion tank (Genuine VW for a VR6!) and filled her up with coolant. And actually knew exactly how much was in !!

No leaks! as yet, touch wood!!

[nathanvr 0]

Strong work!! hopefully see it at tatton park or Harewood house this year??

[Lukey. 381]

I was getting a bit bored of the standard chrome badges, especially when ive repainted the VR6 badges a diffeernt colour, next to the chrome logos they looked odd. I fancied some carbon fibre badges.

So I got a set of badges in good condition from a breakers, cleaned and roughed them up with 1200 and painted them gloss black, I also did the backing of the rear badge and the big ring that goes round the front badge. I also laquered the ring and the backing of the rear badge so theyd look nice and shiny.

I got an off cut of di-noc and set about wrapping both badges. about an hour later i ended up with these.

And got the front grille re assembled and back on the car

I kind of like that from a distance it just looks black too, so its a small detail that people really have to notice.

[Lukey. 381]

Got the new rear badge on now too

And resprayed the sunroof seal with black texture paint as it had gone all white and looked rubbish

I did a full paint correction as the laquer finish had dulled a bit, which involved doing the whole car with menzerna intensive polish, then menzerna final finish polish, which left it looking so much better, scratch free, deep and glossy.

I then finished off with the protection in the shape of chemical guys jetseal and dodo juice blue velvet over the top, as i wanted the protection from the synthetic sealant but the lovely warm glossy finish of the wax, it also brings out the blues in the paint nicely.

But as always it rained before i got the chance to take some pics of it so theres a bit of dust on the paint in these pics :-(

The light was a bit funny too, in brighter sunlight it looks way better, it also looks mich better in person than on a camera, the pics really dont do it justice.

And i resprayed the rear VR6 badge in the same rose quartz that the front one is finished in, i think it looks good just by itself too.

[hvr6 88]

nice work :-)

[Lukey. 381]

Finally got round to sorting my heater lights out, the standard light is rubbish and only just lights up the centre dial so after i saw what some others did to change their colour scheme i used the same idea but with a green light wire as i wanted it to be the same green.

First try ended up like this, "green" light wire bought cheap from china off ebay installed in the heater facia

inverter mounted to the back of the white shroud

i removed these green bits of plastic and replaced them with clear parts from a scrapped mk3 as i wanted the heater knobs to shine white not green

I modified the light spider so it would still carry the light to the little markers on the knobs so they would shine white

it ended up this colour, not green at all

Try no.2 i bought some neon wire from a UK seller off ebay, this time it was clearly advertised as lime green.

Installed this one and bingo lime green

A perfect match for the rest of the green in the car

But now i wasnt to happy with the dark yellow of the knobs, so off i went to maplin and got some super white LEDs, which the man told me were 12v ready to go, 3 bangs and a nasty burning smell later, back to maplin, they replaced them as it was their mistake and gave me some 300ohm resistors so they would work with 12v.

Mounting the LEDs took a little modification

And finally the result i wanted :-D

The LEDs arent as dazzlingly bright as they appear on the camera, theyre just a nice white.

[Pearsy47 1]

that mod is wicked !!!!! really like what you done with the car ! might have to do the same lol