Pearl white coupe revival

[ottawa coupe]

And then there were 2 lol

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Now on to the door cards. I need to repair some cracks in the black cabrio cards as well as the insert is peeling away. The blue coupe cards are fine, except blue. I was thinking about getting some more houndstooth fabric for the inserts. But now the question is do i get synthetic leather too and redo the blue doorcards instead.... i have to get leather for the rear cards anyways as they are blue. Kinda wanna get the extra leather as i expect to screw up and may have to use a different doorcard anyways....

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[ottawa coupe]

This is gonna be a decent place to sit methinks

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[ottawa coupe]

Welp, no turning back now..... the last of the blue upholstery is off....

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i've cut the plywood for the rear seat delete, in order to make access underneath (you know, the battery) easier, i think i'll need to cut it in half, so more attachment points will be needed now too.

in the interests of time, i will skip the houndstooth in the door cards. Mainly due to no time to go find it. I only need to fix the one insert on the front too.

[ottawa coupe]

Well, down to needing to only paint 2 pieces of blue plastic black, the rear speaker trays/parcel shelf trims....

The issue i had was the cabrio center console had holes in it for the roof control....and something else that i forget. Trimming the divider between the two would result in a hole too big for the diff lock button. I found that the button for a urs4 came in a larger assembly, found a cheap one on ebay, and voila, trimmed the hole about 5mm longer and now i can use the full cabrio console. Just gotta sort the button wiring now. Luckily the connector for the button is the same as the cruise control, which i'll never get working so sourcing that is done. Small wins.

20260619_170641.jpg gonna try and get this to the paint shop in a coupla weeks to see what they say regarding time and cost. Still need to deal with ac fabrication.

[ottawa coupe]

Not the worst first time doing upholstery.

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Gotta get more material for the main part of the cards. But so far so good.

[ottawa coupe]

Still gotta wrap the corners but....

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I am sticking with my initial assessment: not awful, especially for a first attempt at this stuff. I have enough material to do the rear cards again if the little details bug me enough. Not convinced with the "carpet" for the seat delete cover. It seems more like black felt than carpet. I will keep looking before i glue that down.

Taking the first week of july off, i may try and get this down to a paint shop for a quote.

[ottawa coupe]

got a ballpark quote. it's painful. 5 figures is a certainty. but i gotta bear in mind that the cost of the materials here now is insane. The painter's schedule will fit in nicely with both my summer plans and small details i gotta work out yet. it'll go in sometime around mid september which means it'll be home in plenty of time before the snow comes and i'll be able to (finally) do the final assembly over the winter. next spring should be pretty good!

[struikie]

Five figures.... ouch...

JW

[ottawa coupe]

Ya, it's friggin insane. He just did a pickup and his MATERIALS cost $6500..... and it wasn't a crazy colour or anything....

I priced pearl white. Just the paint was $3000. And that was back at the beginning of this ordeal, 3 years on i am sure it's another $1000.....

I'll never buy another car that needs bodywork or paint. Unless a rattlecan job suits it lol

Oh, and the bodyshop at the audi dealer here is widely considered the best in the area. They said at least 20k.... and they were booking 18 months in advance....

I have come to terms with it from tbe perspective that i am 3 years in to this, many tbousands of dollars. It would be a shame to finish it up with a crap paint job. And when even a crap job (diy in my garage) costs thousands in materials..... there's just no winning on this stuff now in these parts.

[david1980]

Last paint job I heard about was in NY up near the PA border and that was $5k for outside, engine bay and underside.

[ottawa coupe]

Been a while since i did anything relating to this car, been busy with dad duties with the kids off for the summer. Decided to use this project as an excuse to get myself a tig weldwr so i can hopefully properly weld aluminum and plumb the ac system nicely. Got the welder last week and started playing around. I am reminded why aluminum sucks so much lol. But it's been sucking more than i think it should. In chatting with friends who know this stuff i got to the bottom of it tonight. My supposed bottle of 100% argon is argon/co2 mix for mild steel. No wonder every attempt so far has been terrible.

So, gonna rectify that situation tomorrow n hopefully have some success afterwards.

Goin to the uk for the first time in 20 years next week, when i get back, hopefully i'll get the welding done and start breaking it down in prep for paint (still no decision on colour lol)

[ottawa coupe]

Amazing what happens when you have the right gas.

From this

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To this

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Makes me realize though that the issues i had with the cooling ports was 95% the gas and not the cast aluminum. No matter, the result was better in that case anyways.

Leaving for the uk today, will get serious with the setup when i get back and knock out the ac.

The next obstacle though now is to find a colour palette thelat is representative of the actual finish and finally decide on a colour for this damned thing! Still aiming to send it away for paint sometime in september.

[Tractor Dave]

Have a nice time in the UK. Where are you going?

[ottawa coupe]

Down near Arundel, then up around cambridge, then london (apparently because i want to melt my credit card lol).

That is of course if our flight stops getting delayed damnit!

Lol, been at the airport 4 hours.....still waiting. After a 3 hour delay posted before we left the house.... this is off to a greeeeaaaat start

[Tractor Dave]

Have a nice time