My Black Magic VR6

[eastwood john 1]

did you sort ya rear bushes on your own ? :-#

[Lukey. 381]

Nah me and my stepdad did it on Sunday, that is definitely not a 1 man job when the beam is still on the car, it requires some heavy manhandling!

[Lukey. 381]

Got the top strip masked off today and shutzed the bottom section, 3M shutz is officially awesome, i may do all the underside area with it too.

Its bizzare to watch too as it comes out like a liquid, then bubbles away as if its boiling and after about a minute sets into a tarry layer of protection

Nice saying i just did it by hand on the ground

Also after ages of scraping got the 2 strips cleaned off and fresh tape on them ready to go back on

[Lukey. 381]

The passenger side wishbone is now powerflexed.

Looking back at the job, taking it off was the easy bit and it didnt want to come off!

Here is the old tired OE bushes

and after lots of drilling, sawing, chiselling and hammering the rear came out

The new bush was quite easy to fit actually, the instructions said this would be difficult and would need to be pressed in, i just greased it and stomped on it, popped on first time

The front was more difficult to try and release, i tried drilling, sawing and cutting and ended up burying a jigsaw blade point first into the back of my hand after it jumped off the metal ring. Dirty car parts, metal filings everywhere and the fact i could see my tendons and/or bone meant i thought it best to go to A+E, so that was end of play for that evening.

Next day i attacked it again and managed to drift it out with some sockets and hammer

little bastard!

New one pressed in by hand in about 3 seconds!

The re installation was a tedious affair aswell, the powerflex kit provides 2 washers to sit on the smiley face shaped grooves in the chassis to provide a flat surface, but due to the tight fit every time I pushed the bush into place it splayed the washers. I tiger sealed them into place and that was the end of that problem.

Getting the wishbone back on involved holding on to the front cross member and kicking the wishbone into place as hard as I could lol

All back installed, I will be fitting new bolts when they arrive as they were on back order

[Lukey. 381]

word of advice about the new bolts.... get new bolts and new plates for the ball joints too

Each side they were so seized that 1 bolt snapped and 2 of the captive nuts came free and just span so had to cut them

[Lukey. 381]

Done the drivers side now too, no pics but mirror the above ones and its the same lol

So i ordered some new ball joint plates and the parts guy was adamant that the number had been superceded and you cant get the old number any more.

Then these turn up

totally not the same. Not even near.

So I ring them back and email them a damn picture, and lo and behold the part number that i gave them in the first place does exist and they have them in stock, DUH!!

So out with the broke and in with the new

[Lukey. 381]

Now to just sort out the knocking, that the 2 obvious culprits are ball joints and rear wheel bearings, so these will be changed on Monday when the parts arrive, hopefully that will sort it out as I have a full geometry alignment booked for Monday afternoon

[michael5556 247]

Where did you get the plates from? Tps? Looks good mate keep it up.

[Lukey. 381]

yea they're from TPS. I didn't get VW rear wheel bearings as they are £50+VAT a side and that was a joke so I got some from Andrew Page

[Lukey. 381]

Found out that the incorrect plates they sent are for a bog standard mk3 and the VR6 uses a different joint altogether

[Lukey. 381]

Just fitted my new ball joints, pushing the joints around just shows how shagged the old ones were. Completely, they gave no resistance at all and had empty slack too

[Lukey. 381]

Had to modify these 2 tools, I would say these were essential items for this job

This afternoon I got a geometry alignment done at a place called track torque in tockwith, finally my steering wheel is straight again and it doesn't constantly pull to the left. Feels properly sorted now and hopefully there wont be anything else for a while as I've had to spend a fair bit on it to sort the suspension out

[Lukey. 381]

got started making my headliner and the associated plastics black, I decided to dye mine rather than recover as they always start to sag eventually.

First coat on the material pieces.

And I've finished the sunroof cover and interior light

I'm quite happy with the result of the light, the other little pieces aren't finished yet.

I'm also getting a flat battery quite quickly, I haven't used the car much in the past maybe 4 weeks and thought it had just drained, I checked the alternator and that's working properly and the battery is a 1yr old Bosch S5 so isn't likely to be the issue either the fault has just appeared, nothing has been changed or added.

I went for a 2 hour drive on Saturday to try and give it a big charge, and yesterday I started it fine and just moved it up the drive, came to it this morning and it was flat again, it had just enough in it to disarm the alarm and open the locks.

Just hasn't stopped pissing it down for me to have a go with the multimeter trying to source if there is a parasitic drain or it really has drained every last drop of power out of it.

[Pearsy47 1]

im really liking that look good i was going to dy the headliner but thought f**k that but now on my 4th headlinner got some proper stuff this time ! how did you do the sunroof strip ?? cos i tried but nothing happened

[Lukey. 381]

I removed it from the sun blind, ill screw and glue it back on. Also sprayed my centre visor

Really happy with the colour match with the visors and oh shit handles

The headliner seems to have dried really patchy, though it says on the tin it will do that and you have to lay down 1 coat then even it out when its dried, weird stuff its gone really sticky when its drying, says it takes 72 hours to fully dry and colour lock so may be a while before I get it back in if it takes 3 days between and it pisses down every day

[Lukey. 381]

So, I got bored and got the hairdryer out and I've put 2 or 3 more coats on and its looking pretty uniform and a darker shade of black now, and all the parts are the same shade. I've re-assembled the sun blind too.

This is how I fixed the plastic part back in, tiny little screws and cup washers with dots of super glue on them.

1 on the top the bloody screw snapped so I hot glued on it but its solid with all the other screws in place anyway.

And in a moment of total OCD I painted the tops of them all with black nail varnish.

This is the stuff I used, don't know how they got Jessie J to do the picture.

[Pearsy47 1]

mate thats looking wicked !! i can t believe how well you done the sunroof bit i just use the old trusty hot glue gun !!! lol can t wait to see it all in !

[Lukey. 381]

I got impatient and put the sunroof blind back in, couldn't wait any more I needed to see what it looked like haha, I tell you it was a tense moment trying to get it past the silver cross brace without shaving any paint off the freshly painted plastic bit lol

[Pearsy47 1]

I got impatient and put the sunroof blind back in' date=' couldn't wait any more I needed to see what it looked like haha, I tell you it was a tense moment trying to get it past the silver cross brace without shaving any paint off the freshly painted plastic bit lol

[/quote']

lol i know that point to well !!! lol did you get the grab handles of fleebay ? i need some too lol when you thinking of putting the whole lot back ??

[Lukey. 381]

If its dry I'll have a go tomorrow, don't want watermarks before its even go e in lol

I got the black handles and visors from someone off here

[Lukey. 381]

I've fitted the headliner now, but the handles didn't sit right like the others at the back, found that they have little spacers in them for if you have a sunroof.

Got some of these spacers and some other trim clips form a scrapper that broke when I removed the trims, and sprayed them up and glued them into the rear handles, they sit nice now.

Just waiting for the rain to stop again, so in the meanwhile I'm doing any other bits that needed doing.

I've taken the rear cards out and glueing some foam in places and round wires to stop annoying rattles etc.

And the rear view mirror button fell off the windscreen so I've had to glue it back on, got some special loctite rear view mirror glue specifically for this so hopefully it'll not come off again

[hvr6 88]

headliner looking good.... this rain needs to piss off!!

[Lukey. 381]

Tell me about it, I want to finish this up already

[Lukey. 381]

Headliner finished and anything that was wrong in the process sorted now too, all back in and fitted.

That sunroof finishing strip around the perimeter was a bastard to get back on but looks good now it is.

And the plastics that were white to begin with look pretty good too, they match the black visors and handles perfectly, that was a white centre sun visor.

The gold coloured screws for the sun visors bugged me somewhat though, but the old black nail varnish sorted them out.

[Lukey. 381]

Rear view mirror update, what a bunch of locshite! It lasted while there was no mirror attached to it, soon as the mirror was on it was like 2 seconds and fell off, total crap, 6 fcukin quid aswell for a tiny vial of it.

I've tiger sealed it on now, I'll see how that's gonna hold up after its cured overnight.

The original adhesive I scraped off the screen and button looked and felt a lot like it, so I'm hopeful