The Project Pad

Working on cleaning the interior and putting the rear of the front end together .
New hood release cable


Trying to clean years of whatever dust and stuff is on the bumper . Since the fenders and everything have brand new L90E I need to do a real good cleanup and polish so the bumper , hood, doors etc are not darker .

Haven’t polished the rear of the bumper yet but will get it this weekend .

Didn’t quite finish what I wanted to do but I did get a hand from someone to bleed the clutch so I should be able to take the car in for alignment this week .
Replaced my mis-matched taillight .
And started cleaning up the hood . Rewarding process but time consuming and the entire car needs probably 12 hrs more of detail to look like the leading edge of this hood .






Tested against fenders

holy crap! that is am amazing difference from polishing.

Wow. Yuck lol

Damn, you have patience! Looking good though. Have you looked at a farecla gmop? Might be a quicker option if you don't mind cleaning the mess from the water and compound afterwards.

the german wrote:holy crap! that is am amazing difference from polishing.

I think it was covered In paint overspray or something ? Maybe years of dust .
Either way that’s kind of beat case scenario because it looks bad at first and then I can clean in and realize that there’s nice paint underneath. See a huge difference , it’s a cool process .

carl wrote:Damn, you have patience! Looking good though. Have you looked at a farecla gmop? Might be a quicker option if you don't mind cleaning the mess from the water and compound afterwards.

I have not seen it but maybe I’ll look into it . It really hasn’t been taking too long to get down to the paint and I’m not having to use an aggressive pad (like wool) with the buffing compound- so it saves me from having to do swirl removing . Only part that sucks is then having to go over again with glaze and wax.

The euro look is coming together !

Got the front bumper on.
Got stuck on the rear ... couldn’t figure out how to mount the OE euro bumper to the back...

I did test fit the rear euro bumper (looks so good!!!) and took that opportunity to figure out how far it’ll stick out made my final tip for the exhaust so it’s not coming out at an angle




Only issue is I don’t have turn signals and no idea where to get them either ..




Still really struggling to make nice looking tig welds . As soon as I add more heat and rod the weld just turns bluish gray color not all cool and rainbow like you see on the internets.







Looks wayyy better !

Here’s how I’m stuck on the rear . If I remove the bumper insert and factory bumper shocks . I’m left with three holes with a nut welded on the inside .

The euro bumper insider has two fixed studs in it . Obviously I can’t thread a fixed stud into a fixed nut.
So at first I thought I may need to drill out or remove two of the nuts , put the bumper on the support bar and then install the support bar and bolt on the inside accessing from the trunk .
B U T
Those nuts are not accessible from the trunk ( or anywhere ) they’re inside this frame rail thingy.
So I’m at a loss for now .
Fixed studs

Non/removable nuts


Studs line up with hole perfectly


Nuts are inside this square welded tubing inside the trunk .

Afterthought wrote:Here’s how I’m stuck on the rear . If I remove the bumper insert and factory bumper shocks . I’m left with three holes with a nut welded on the inside .

The euro bumper insider has two fixed studs in it . Obviously I can’t thread a fixed stud into a fixed nut.
So at first I thought I may need to drill out or remove two of the nuts , put the bumper on the support bar and then install the support bar and bolt on the inside accessing from the trunk .
B U T
Those nuts are not accessible from the trunk ( or anywhere ) they’re inside this frame rail thingy.
So I’m at a loss for now .
Fixed studs

Non/removable nuts


Studs line up with hole perfectly


Nuts are inside this square welded tubing inside the trunk .

Could you use some of these (link below), weld them to the car side and then use nuts on the bumper?

https://www.jhpfasteners.com/weld-studs ... -l-en.html




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Pretty weld recipe:

15 CFH + lanthinated tungsten + gas lens. Torch evenly and taste the rainbow.

for the bumper, I would mod the bumper bar before the car. Can you just cut the studs off, drill holes, and bolt into the captured nuts already in the car?

the german wrote:Pretty weld recipe:

15 CFH + lanthinated tungsten + gas lens. Torch evenly and taste the rainbow.

That’s what I had . 15 CFH and 2% lanthanated .Maybe I need to use a different rod or something . I can tell it’s when I add more rod that it turns gray.


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On the bumper , since the European cars do not have bumper shocks it turns out they don’t even have that big square tube running to the bumper .
I really hate to cut anything on the car but it’s the only way that’s going to go on there Properly .
Once the bumper is on the car there is no way to access the bolts between the bumper and support bar because the bumper closes the gap .

The only other possible way I could think of is leave the nuts in the trunk but add an access hole to the bumper and use stock bumper plugs to fill it .
m
Which would be ugly and the plugs wouldn’t fit right ! BecUse the shape is different .

Any way you can make a bracket to use a pinch bolt from below like the newer cars?

audifreakjim wrote:Any way you can make a bracket to use a pinch bolt from below like the newer cars?

Hmm that’s a great idea . Thanks !

I may be able to do something like that . I can’t access from directly below but I may be able to make a bracket off the car and then access from below the lower.

This is how it was done in one of my other cars . Once you posted that it made me think to look. 2 pc bracket like this would work.

. Anything I can do to avoid drilling a hole in the car is a plus .




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audifreakjim wrote:Any way you can make a bracket to use a pinch bolt from below like the newer cars?

Hmm that’s a great idea . Thanks !

I may be able to do something like that . I can’t access from directly below but I may be able to make a bracket off the car and then access from below the lower.

This is how it was done in one of my other cars . Once you posted that it made me think to look. 2 pc bracket like this would work.

. Anything I can do to avoid drilling a hole in the car is a plus .




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Spent a ton of time today feel like I accomplished little but everything is time consuming .

First I took care of the rest of the hood.
Then I polished the spoiler.
Then put the hood on and started the alignment process. I have the hood set in place now where t needs to be but one fender needs to come out just a smidgeon(see pics below) .
Also finished the headlight harness . Now everything works perfect and is properly relayed and grounded .
I used a 3 relay box so I have individual fuse and relay for each high bulb and the lows .

m


Cleaned bottom of hood while I had the opportunity . Replaced washer nozzle tubing with new.











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Looks so good!

Looking great Pat, is it coming to BBQ:

audifreakjim wrote:Looking great Pat, is it coming to BBQ:

I’m not sure yet, that’s a long drive for me and I have a really busy year .
I want to get the car on the road and get it tuned and put it to the test soon and see what else needs attention.


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drive it to BBQ!! I was so happy I made such an epic trip in an old audi. Been a dream for a long time, you won't regret it.

dana wrote:drive it to BBQ!! I was so happy I made such an epic trip in an old audi. Been a dream for a long time, you won't regret it.

I remember talking to you about that . It’s a lot longer drive for you last time I drove to Vegas it took me about 22 hours to go the long way .

But we’ll see I need to get the car to a point where I can be confident in it’s mechanical abilities to go that far through the desert without passing any auto parts stores

Haven’t done much on the car lately, unfortunately .
Road tested the car some .
Started assembling the interior and I’m still somewhat stuck on getting the hood/fenders/hood latch all adjusted properly .

I spent some time to get the gauges laid out but then realized that these nice auto meter gauges are just going to stand out , as in they don’t match the look of the car.

Found some more period correct gauges but of course they don’t come with any sending units so I will now have to backtrack I guess and figure out what sending unit goes with the VDO gauges for oil pressure and water temp. But it will be a more period correct appearance for sure .
Current gauges:


New VDO instrumentation






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