Pearl white coupe revival

[Tractor Dave]

Looking at your pic thats 845h. Comes up as starter harness.

[ottawa coupe]

https://youtu.be/gzXpvde0zUk?si=v2n5ecf2LM6G-Gdo

and i cleaned the other part up more and got the right number off of it. 078 not 378. it's a heatshield for the sensor on the flywheel.

mystery solved, thanks

[ottawa coupe]

So, landscape project stopped for now as it keeps raining and the skidsteer i rented kept sinking in the soup....

Got back on to the coupe this afternoon. Gutted airbag is sorted and back into the dash

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gotta fix up the exhaust and one part of the body and the welder SHOULD be put away for good. Started to attempt banging the bad quarter out. It's now LESS concave that it was. Gonna see what amazon has for stud welders i think. If i work on patience, maybe i'll get it to the point of needing only a mm or so of filler instead of the 10 that was there.

[ottawa coupe]

Exhaust is sorted, at least for the moment. Once i confirm the ears of the flange don't interfere on the car and i sort out the support to the trans. I guess ideally i'd want to find trans brackets from a b5 2.8 5 speed??

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i need to make the last connections for fuel and brake systems in the engine bay then it's mostly tidying up the shell. but it is 92% humidity at the moment so work is done in short bursts, otherwise the car will rust again due to my own sweat lol.

on the fence about the stud welder. amazon's best price is ~$250. but i guess that's a lot cheaper than getting 2 areas pulled/poked straight at a shop?? i also found a cheap set of actual b5 avus wheels locally. seller is on vacation for 2 weeks now though. not the end of the world that i bought the current set of wheels as i needed another set of 5x112 winter storage rollers anyways.

the plan for the rest of the summer is to clean up the engine bay and at least prime it. with a bit of luck i'll do a (better than i did on the test fender!) rattlecan paintjob in the bay and door jambs to get them done. if i succeed in that then the winter can be dedicated 100% to priming/blocking the body and starting reassembly of stuff not affected by an external paint job. ideally i would be able to at least start the car late winter.

next summer i can drive it?!?!

the biggest open questions at this point are seats (don't have any) and i need a front brake solution (again, don't have any...sorta important for the test drive lol).

[ottawa coupe]

of course that fought WAY more than it should (the person responsible for the fuel line holders needs to be shot!) but brake and fuel line connections to the bay are made.

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so now that means i get to take it all apart and start cleaning the engine bay up as well as make my nasty welds look a bit better. and then sanding. good god the sanding.....

[ottawa coupe]

Slight change in plan according to by buddy who actually knows how to paint a car in that i will not be painting the bay anytime soon. his advice is to get everything in primer before i start blocking anything. his recommendation is to get the bay to 300 and then prime it. i am going to add POR15 in the bare metal spots before priming.

so slowly started by emptying the bay. it's gonna be a while sanding i think.... sooooo many nooks n crannies to get.

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one question i have for prep is for areas like this:

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the metal is pitted but solid. what i was thinking i should do is get it all visible, put some converter on it, POR it and then sand/fill as needed and then prime it.

seem about right?

[Antsa]

I think the best way of cleaning the pitted rust areas is sandblasting them. There are these cheap sand blasters that suck the sand directly from from a bag. They are cheap to buy and quite good for small jobs. I have used this for small rusted areas.

I don't have experience in rust converters and how they do their job, but with blasting you should be able to get all back to bare metal and have solid base for paint. Wire wheeling tends to leave rust in the pits.

For the bare metal surfaces I would go for automotive etch primer or epoxy followed by a sanding primer.

Great thread by the way, keep the updates coming

[jbrentd]

Keep up the good work, you are plugging away at it. For the engine bay, are you planning to grind and sand for a show car tucked look? Or just a nice base to start for a respray?

[ottawa coupe]

No showcar for me. I do not possess the skill to do that myself (who am i kidding, i don't have the patience!) And i don't have the wallet to pay someone to do it for me lol.

Right now the goal is just to get a good basic paint coating over rust free metal. To that end i got the drivers side frame rail sanded down and bare spots por'd. I will likely have to pull the subframe to get to the bottom of them but i need to keep it mobile for a couple more weeks. Hope to get the firewall scuffed this week and passenger rail sorted next week. Then the rain tray. Then i believe it'll be an epoxy primer then high build. Then it'll sit while i get the rest of the body sorted.

Slowly but surely. Emphasis on slowly lol

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[Rikki Kitto]

Aren't these cars zinc plated bodywork, and if taken back to bare metal is maybe too much work

[Rikki Kitto]

Also not really necessary apologies in advance if I'm incorrect

[ottawa coupe]

Anyone out there prepped these for racing duties and put them on some scales to see weight distribution? Did it actually handle or did it audisteer?

The reason i ask is i feel i am at a crossroads with my racecar. It's a mk5 r32 with a 3.6 vr6 in it. And it is really not working out for me. On paper is should be a rocketship. 280hp, flappy paddles, awd. But the reallity is it's a damed heavy (3070lbs!) understeery uncontrollable pig that is burning up $500 in rubber a race to turn in really terrible lap times.

I am going to test a couple things but i feel that i am throwing good money after bad on it and i should probably cut my losses.

Wondering if i should pivot on this project, put the 3.6 in it and giv'er. If i were to do it, now is the time to go for it as the shell is empty.

[ottawa coupe]

Well, no real work done on the coupe as i am trying to bend the racecar to my will.

But i did pick up actual b5 avus wheels today lol

20240726_140247.jpg testing the racecar tonight and then making a bunch of decisions based on that. I'll probably start back on this next week

[ottawa coupe]

Well, rolled this project back into the workshop just now. Spent an unholy ampunt of money on the racecar, will find out next week if that was a waste (of course it was, because racecar!!!).

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Still too hot n muggy to do lots of manual labour unless absolutely required so i think i will start emplying some chemical pai t stripper. Especially to the drivers side rear quarter. The car was painted blue, then hit, then bondoed and then repainted blue. Sanding thru all of that is just more than i want to do and i wanna straighten it out more first.

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because the racecar stole all of my money, i seriously doubt i will get beyond primer stage anytime soon.... i suspect i will spend a lot of time this winter dealing with wiring instead as it will be a long time before i can afford to paint.

I still need to find seats too....

[ottawa coupe]

So, chemical stripper is probably a no go as it's not the 100% solution i had hoped. It chewed thru the blue paint job pretty damned quick but barely got thru the oe clearcoat letalone the paint....

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it has however softened it so i need to remove it now regardless....

I am wondering now just how far i should strip the body. This quarter is gonna go to bare metal as will the front fenders to deal with some rot. Given the costs of chemicals and the time involved, i'm wondering it i should say screw it and get this and bring it all down to bare metal in a time efficient manner. Videos suggest it rips thru paint and filler rather quickly!

https://www.eastwood.com/eastwood-contour-sct.html

For cost perspective, the can of paint stripper was $80 and only did the above. The tool is $280 cad to my door.

Sandpaper of course is a lot cheaper but will take weeks to complete....

Decisions...