The Project Pad

Thanks guys! I'm having a lot of fun with this one I like that there is no "map" to follow so I get to figure it all out on my own as I go.

Speaking of figuring things out as I go.... this morning I swapped in the other new rear control arm and installed shock boots and bump stops on the rear strut assemblies. With that all done I put everything back together and took it for a test drive. Front axles are quite unhappy. I think I may have made the axle spacers too tall so I'm going to cut them down by 10mm and try again.

Gosh I need to get my lathe running. Looking great!

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SWEET!!!!!

i was gonna go down there for this car, but for dismemberment not resurrection.

keep the pictures coming please and thank you.

speeding-g60 wrote:SWEET!!!!!

i was gonna go down there for this car, but for dismemberment not resurrection.

keep the pictures coming please and thank you.

I'm glad I got it then! ;-) Don't worry, many more pictures to come!


OK, today's progress: I needed a change of pace from working on just mechanical items, so before tearing into the axle carnage to get the spacers back out for machining, I took some time to work on the door cards. Both of them had peeling vinyl inserts (of course) so that needed to be addressed. I don't want to deal with replacing it for this car so instead I just cleaned up the nasty mess of foam and adhesive and called it a day. Conveniently under neath it is is the same leather texture as the rest of the door so it looks pretty good considering.

Cleaned up:




Installed moisture barriers on the doors, then the door cards. Turned out pretty good!




Aaaand finally, here is the carnage on the front axles. The inner CV joints on both are completely toast; bearing cage on both is shattered.



The spacers are chewed up as well, but I didn't get a picture. I'm going to machine off the ugly side when I shorten them down tomorrow.

Seems like you are right on the hairy edge of what angle they are happy with, or are you assuming that the angle is fine you just made the spacers too thick? Time will tell, but dropping the motor even 1/2" might be a huge help.

lorge1989 wrote:Seems like you are right on the hairy edge of what angle they are happy with, or are you assuming that the angle is fine you just made the spacers too thick? Time will tell, but dropping the motor even 1/2" might be a huge help.

They were definitely too thick. The face of the spacer is all chewed up from the bearing cage and balls digging into it. That said, I am also on the hairy edge at full droop, but in normal territory at static ride height. As you say, time will tell... I can always drop the motor a bit, it's just more complicated now that the front subframe is made.

OK, got the spacers machined down and picked up some 10 mm shorter bolts. I have a set of axles left over from a car I parted out about 6 years ago, so today I pulled them out pulled off the inner CV's, disassembled, cleaned, re-greased them, and swapped them onto the axles that were in the lifted car. Got it all reassembled and took it for a test drive. It works!

...and of course I discovered some more issues to look into:
-tire rubbing noise from the left rear under hard braking
-rear prop shaft is still rubbing on the exhaust


Here is a before & after of the spacers. As you can see, the CV joints did not go out without a fight.. I opened the center bore up to the full 2.5" this time like i had originally deigned them.



both complete:

OK, a bit more progress!

I fixed the exhaust rubbing on the rear prop shaft by just sticking it in the press and flattening it a bit similar to what Audi did underneath the center support bearing.



With that done I took the car out and drove it around some more. I've only driven it around the block, but it seems to run and drive like a normal car!

Upon inspection after driving I found that the rear spring perch is scrapping off the undercoating on the fender well. I used a pry bar to bend the fender well back a bit in that area to make some clearance.




Moving on to some more of the interior bits, the pacing item to installing the rest of the interior is the headliner. The car didn't come with a headliner, but the glass sunroof I bought for my red car on the way home from California with this one did but it was in ROUGH shape. Since the headliner I recovered for the red car came out so well, I did the same for this one.

Stripped all the old nasty foam and adhesive off:




Repaired some cracks:


Here it is all done. Not perfect, but certainly good enough for this car (and better than any original one I have seen).






And finally, I think the difference in height between these two is hilarious.

You make it all look so easy!

Can't wait for vids of this beast off roading!

hey kirk, did you switch hosting sites for your pictures? i used to be able to see them at work and now i can't with these past 2 posts. I'm going into picture withdrawals.

Because me coupe isn't getting a paintjob till after carlisle now, i think i may have time to attempt the headliner as well. It's a pita to get those curves around the visor indents.

Hey Cory, not sure what the problem is; they show up for me when I look at them so maybe it's your browser? I have found there are a few keys to getting it to work well:

1. Get it REALLY clean; zero leftover adhesive residue or foam, especially in the tight corners
2. Get a nice stretchy fabric
3. Use the strongest spray adhesive you can find (I use Locktite 300). Spray both the headliner and the fabric, let it tack for a minute before laying it down.
4. Get a second person to help you. This is a must.
5. Work in thirds; I do the middle third first, then the back, and end with the front

The tight curved bits in the front are by far the hardest part. The fabric I used this time was a little thicker and not quite as stretchy as what I used on my red car, and it didn't turn out quite as well. There is some bridging in the tightest corners where the fabric isn't staying stuck down. If you look at the pictures in my thread for the red car I think you can see more detail on how I did it. Just let me know if you have any other questions and I can help you out.

funny the pictures are showing at work again haha. must be IT is messing with me or something.

I agree with the stretchy fabric being a must. When i did it first i pressure washed the old foam off and let it dry (that worked quite well), i didn't have any cracks to repair. I then put down a stretchy foam cloth stuff about 1/4" thick. Then i put down the suede. The faux suede wasn't remotely stretchy so that's where i had my issues. I think for this coupe i'll find some nice stretchy black foam backed fabric. No reason to go crazy for the rallyx car. Brunhilde will get suede though.

I tried using the foam backed headliner fabric on the last one but I couldn't get it to go in the deep corners without wrinkling. I'm super impressed if you can get it to work!

Today was a nice day in Seattle, and I found a roof basket for cheap on CL that was located on the Washington peninsula across the water from Seattle. That made for the perfect excuse to take a two hour ferry cruise to enjoy the rare nice weather out on the Puget Sound. At $8.25 for a two-way ticket, even if the CL guy had flaked it still would have been worth the ride.





And of course, here it is! Half the price of new and it has a patina to match the rest of the car

Cory- I take it back: I don't think it looks too big for the car in person, just in photos










And a bonus for the night- I got back home from the ferry ride before 7 which meant I still had over an hour of daylight to get all the original trim from my red coupe out of the attic. I washed it all with soap and water in preparation for dying it black to match the headliner. I'm really glad I was careful and saved all of this stuff since this car only came with a few random pieces of the interior trim, most of which is broken.

Man, I am really impressed with how well this trim dye works! I got the ceiling pieces mostly all done, all that is left are the hatch pieces and lights but I'm waiting on another can of dye before I can do those.

Painted bits:


I seriously can't believe how well the sun visors came out. I was kind of expecting them to look like crap but instead they just look like they were made this way.



The seat belts were all crusty and nasty so I took them out and ran them through the wash. They came out like new and fresh smelling, and they actually retract smoothly now like they are supposed to.


And I installed the headliner and trim pieces I have painted. Still need to finish up the lights so I can put the handles in.

Nice Work!

Which dye are you using? I'm getting ready to do a dashboard for my coupe.

I got a blue one with a couple very small cracks - I'm filling them in with vinyl repair and dying the whole thing satin black with VHT dye:

I'm also curious.

Does the finished product seem scratch resistant?

Here is the stuff I'm using: Color Coat made by SEM

http://www.amazon.com/SEM-15013-Landau-Black-Color/dp/B00B3HXS8A?ie=UTF8&psc=1&redirect=true&ref_=oh_aui_detailpage_o00_s00

I bought the first two cans of it from Wesco Autobody Supply on the suggestions of they guys there who said it was the best product for the job. In terms of scratch resistance, I think it will be pretty good once cured. It is definitely possible to scratch it off if you try, but it's also only a few days old so it should harden up more over the next week as it fully cures. The part I was most nervous about was the seat belt height sliders, but they seem to be working great and are not scratched at all from running them up and down.

Btw- I think the stuff you got will work well for the dash. The dash is vinyl, the rest of the trim is ABS or PC.

I've been traveling for the last two weeks, but did get a Saturday + a few evenings to work on the car.

On the administrative side, California finally issued me a title for it which means I was then able to apply for a Washington title and get it registered so I can finally drive it on the street. Woohoo!

OK, first up was finishing up the interior (at least as far as I have parts to do now). I got the hatch trim and grab handles/lights all dyed black and installed in the car. All lights are operational, which is important for my plan to be able to sleep in the thing. I'm really happy with how the whole grab handle/light assembly came out. It was worth the effort of completely disassembling them for the color change.




When I went to install the sunroof control panel I discovered it is too small! Maybe it came out of a 90 or something?


I also got the rear door cards & speakers installed. At this point the only interior trim I'm missing is a rear seat back and the carpet pieces that cover the rear strut towers. Anyone have some they want to part with? I'm not picky about color!

With that done, I started work on accessorizing the exterior. I wanted to mount a shovel, ax, and off road light on the basket. In looking around for bar mounts/clamps, the cheapest I found were about $10 each on Amazon/eBay. Since I planed to use ~10 of them that was way out of budget, so I found a cheaper alternative: electrical conduit clamps. Paint them black and they work great! Used these to attach Quick Fist shovel and axe mounts to the basket.


Next up is lighting. I considered going with one of the fancy new LED light bars that have become popular for trucks, but decided they are too modern looking and wouldnt really fit the aesthetic of the vehicle. Instead I went with five 27 W round LED lights plus two square LED driving lights to go in the bumper for fog lights.


For mounting, I used more of the conduit clamps and welded them to the bolt-on brackets that came with the lights so I could mount them to the basket.


I wired the fog lights in to the factory fog light connectors so that was simple enough, but for the off-road lights I really needed a separate circuit so they can be controlled independently of the fogs and headlights. And of course since I like things that look OEM/factory integrated, I decided to use another OEM fog light switch on the dash to control them. Luckily I had a switch + pigtail in my parts stash. I got this handy little sealed fuse/relay box out of an old SAAB at the junkyard. Just need to make a mounting plate for it to attach to the (now unused) ABS pump bracket.


And finally, mud flaps! I got the "large" size universal ones from RallyArmor. I did a little massaging of the front wheel arch with a deadblow hammer to make some more room, then used a combination of existing fender liner screws + plastic "christmas tree" clips to attach them. I like it.




And finally, here it is all together! I also swapped out the B4 underheadlight trim for the factory B3 one; I think it looks a bit less ghetto fabulous this way.

Nice work! I'm using a larger version of that Saab fuse/relay panel. Works well, and easy to move things around when/if needed.

That thing is SO MUCH RADNESS!!!

So damn awesome.
You should post this to /r/battlewagon!

Thanks guys! I'm rather thrilled with how well it has all come together so far.

DE80q wrote:Nice work! I'm using a larger version of that Saab fuse/relay panel. Works well, and easy to move things around when/if needed.

It's amazing how hard it is to find an OEM fuse/relay box this small; I must have looked at 200 cars trying to find this one. Ultimately I was clued in to the SAAB one from another project thread where someone used one. Works great! This one only has space for two relays, which is perfect. I'll likely use the second relay for rally lights on the bumper when I get to that point.

LeafBox wrote:So damn awesome.
You should post this to /r/battlewagon!

Thanks for cluing me in to this- just checked it out and there is some cool stuff on there! Loads and loads of lifted Subarus! I'm going to have to spend some more time and see if there are any ideas I can mine from there. As far as posting, I think reddit is too big of an audience for my taste. I enjoy the small size and relative obscurity of ProjectPad

Oh my. I just love it. So mean and effective.