S4s rolling restoration project

[tomcattom]

Tell me about it. My back, arms and shoulders aren't on speaking terms with me after this weekend. I spent all day Saturday filling a skip with waste left from our kitchen refurb before I spent the day on the car yesterday.

[Chillidoggy]

Tell you what though, I was a bit worried about it staying put, but that Thermal Velocity sticks like shit to a blanket.

[tomcattom]

Yeah, I had read your warning about the glue stength in your project thread @Chillidoggy, but I wasn't prepared for quite how tenacious the adhesive backing was until I'd actually used the material.

 

I went out for a second stab at doing a DIY job on straightening the chassis this evening with a lot more success that I had the first time.

Before - Its certainly taken a good wallop at some point in time.

 

After - I've still got a little finessing to do on it, but its a damn sight better than it was before I started.

 

As for how I did it, well ghetto it may be, but it did the job 😀 Though I have to declare I was on tenterhooks throughout the process.  If you're health and safety concious you might want to look away now 🤐

[tomcattom]

Last bit of work on the chassis this evening. Having straightened the crossmember in the vertical plane earlier in the week, there were a lot of ripples and bends along its length that needed attention, so I had a go a getting it back to something resembling straight.

Before

 

After - The perfectionist in me wants to try and get it looking even better, but I'm at the stage of diminishing returns, but even so its a lot, LOT, better than it was.

 

The final thing I did was straighen out the lip on the front edge of the cross member. Now to start putting things back on the car!

[Barrykearley]

That looks just fine chap - now make a mental note never to take that esprit to kwik fit for tyres 

[Rolls]

On 17/06/2020 at 18:02, Chillidoggy said:

I should have said grease the whole length of the bolts, they’re going through alloy, and we all know what can happen when alloy and steel and a bit of water get together.

I was under the impression copper grease should never be used on Alloys... not 100% but do recall reading that somewhere.

[sailorbob]

Copper is more cathodic than the aluminium or steel so it increases the chance of galvanic corrosion, this is probably what you read. I use an aluminium anti-seize in such instances.

[Chillidoggy]

16 hours ago, Rolls said:

I was under the impression copper grease should never be used on Alloys... not 100% but do recall reading that somewhere.

 Nonsense. I’ve never had any issues with copper grease, and I’ve had that frame out four times over the last 6 years. Unless you’re driving the car in the sea, the chances of corrosion without grease far outweighs any possibility of galvanic action. 

[tomcattom]

Been a mixture of mechanical and cosmetic work this past week or so.

After several trial fits the rad tray is now installed for what I hope will be the final time. The new wiring loom for the fans is all properly clipped up out of the way too. I've still got the A/C hoses to tidy up, but that won't take very long.

 

The tow hook was removed to allow me to stick the Thermal Velocity in place. The nuts inside the frunk were so badly rusted there were no flats to engage a spanner on so I had to grind the welded bolts off from the outside. After de-rusting a friend welded in some new 8.8 grade bolts for me and then I gave it a a couple of coats of black chassis paint and its also gone back on the car.

 

New steering rack gaiters and trackrod ends have been fitted.

 

Then it was onto the costmetics - not something I'm a fan of doing. When I removed the front bumper to make the installation of the Thermal Velocity a little easier a previously repaired crack split open because the fibreglass repair behind it hadn't really bonded to the bumper.

 

My re-repair

My fillering skills need some practise, but given the state of the rest of the bumper it'll pass for now - its one piece again. Then onto paint, my primer didn't feather out as well as I'd hoped.

I was quite pleased with how well I managed to feather the yellow into the surrounding areas for a rattle can job. Not surprisingly the yellow is a slightly different shade to what was there before but the bumper has been repainted at least once from what I could tell when I was sanding it, so it could well be the previous respray was the wrong shade.

The finish has some inevitable orange peel in it but I'll wait until the bumper is back on the car before I attempt to wet sand and polish it, its all a bit flimsy off the car. It really needs a new bumper but I couldn't find an RRIM one anywhere, so this repair is only a stop gap.

Just waiting for some replacement brackets to turn up before it can go back on the car. Oh and a previous painter managed to completely cover the inside of the offiside indicator reflector and bulb in yellow paint so I've got to try and clean that up before it can go back on.

[tomcattom]

Progress has been somewhat pedestrian of late for two reasons, the indicator reflectors (more on that in a moment) and because I had to partly repaint my previous bumper repair 🙁 After completing the previous paint efforts I went to move the bumper back out to the garage and as soon as I lifted it another of the previous fibreglass repairs decided to let got and another crack opened up so I had to repair and repaint it again 🤬 Its not perfect, but its passable until I can source a replacement bumper.

 

As for the front indicators, a previous painter had evidently seen fit to not bother masking them up and consequently they had yellow paint all over them and all my efforts to clean the paint off took the silver coating off with it. I tried a chrome spray paint and it was frankly rubbish so I ended up sending them away to a company called VMC in Chertsey to have a vacuum metalised chrome finish applied. It wasn't cheap, but it was cheaper than buying a new pair of indicators and the reflective finish is a big improvment on the factory finish too.

 

Having got them back today I immediately set about replacing the side light bulb holders because they wouldn't stay put in the hole and also replaced the waterproof boot which necessitated cutting the holders off anyway.

 

The indicators have now been refitted to the bumper along with newly manufactured stainless fittings to secure the lower valance because the originals were a mess/missing and also the various required jacknuts.

 

While the bumper has been on hold waiting for the indicators to return I've done a few other small bits and pieces. I replaced the four fittings in the front corners of the body shell that the bumper corners secure to because again they were either absent or not in very good shape, so stainless replacements have gone in their place. Accessing the brackets in front of the head lamp pods were an utter sod to get at.

 

I've also fitted the boot infill panel and replaced the shabby heat reflective covering in that area too.

 

And finally I've set up the new wastegate actuator.

 

Hopefully tomorrow I'll be able to get teh bumper back on the car and then I can finish tackling the front end rebuild in earnest.

[stephenwhyte]

There must be a reason but I’m not seeing your latest photos? Same for everyone or just me?

[LOTUSMAN33]

Same here Stephen, I wonder if it’s the upgrade system or the image type Tom used? 

[tomcattom]

Photos have been taken on the same phone and uploaded from the same place as all my other posts. I can see the photos still so I guess the update could have had something to do with it.

 

[tomcattom]

The photos have stopped displaying on my PC but worked fine from my phone last night. @Bibs any idea what's up?

[Bibs]

If I view the image directly it's not showing either...

https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/fife/ABSRlIpkObX87lnMnr2rVba4vGW_B-zEKRKaXYsvvXFZ5tL1UYoWVK4B3nKCQJXTG-skTfXmsdT2sDpu5OgUI3bCcl_PfQjtLKGKplFGc61lJ9aHJQoSX7mihBuKr1FbO4WyoFESbfbMneCQ7JdrSH7IXQkjqpaxGIYghnI9-GVRgRdYeRy6EX2Zxau8X2wv1aWbJoNnnZPg7iiSeV2GJd7SgEKv9_nkI434if4xUiEOgoWa9Bg4hSvLyPzU7H4QgzK6cjQnxc6-6WkhxiA8RYYW50dTnaIkXzJUuewJfqtGKxzGTyRlThKneWlwUEBlqsRC4hCPUNL0_QSAq7M6QUE_Tpj0B8CKCros7koGrEVB4geZez2jhDLfPV1IQZdd894XXCBiVnCLDrBi3J92kladeC812-f7Z400gOmDFXPDABZPx0VwyelMGSPHYEx5qIQ4fBEtGblofjCk0HwC9OpeJdLNClXxHrteZaNErfrpeS290HU6JtDfm6ZLe4cWakw6fQ8YxCU1yCLQR7QjysVWh3RKP1YZL7DyM8T_XU8IBwomE696wYVM2P4VtmlurH4LOwkUH5eiADlKbdaxLULa-NhqSanh9ViPWSoHCaCWiXoc-QlZlVNfnZpTejQcr6-pEwAYpk0lZCM1wsWVipDUK1WSOr7acyV1ZT-vtIchIXSmzcdGmPFBPmiwOCrIQa7dCs20gQAM_3vKqRU32RztlaW5dLQcnY1kDGnp2g=s1448-w1448-h1086-no?authuser=0

^ That's the link to one of the images. 

That makes me think that's it's not here that's the issue if I can't see it there. If that's a Google Drive file, I do know that they're having some significant issues currently so it may only be temporary. In the meantime, you can upload the images directly to TLF.

[tomcattom]

Has the update changed the way the images are handled @Bibs. I normally paste the link from google photos into the post and then the forum seems to automatically upload the image to the AWS S3 location, but it doesn't seem to have done that this time, its just left the google link. Also, how do I edit the post to try and correct the images, or am I goint to have to create a duplicate post?

[Bibs]

You can only edit for an hour.

Yes, after the photobucket screw up the forum software hosts the image in an Amazon bucket so they're never going to be lost again.

https://medium.com/@AxelUnlimited/how-photobucket-broke-the-internet-and-why-you-should-care-4a244bda6b7e

In this instance, Google photos didn't, and still won't allow anyone/thing to view the image so the forum software can't move it to our Amazon hosting. 

[tomcattom]

Test to see if I can get photos working again.

Wastegate being setup:

[Bibs]

Google must have sorted it's act out now. I've tried to re-embed the ones above and they aren't working still so I'll remove that whole post if you don't mind doing it again. 

[tomcattom]

Something has definitely changed, because the way I used to attach images now doesn't result in them being uploaded to S3 storage. Not sure if its the forum update or just a conincidence and Google changed something on their end and the forum software can't copy them now.

Only way I can seem to get it to work is to download all the images to my local machine and then attach them to the post, which is a bit of long winded process 🙁

[Bibs]

The image you just posted is in our Amazon bucket, this is the url...

https://content.invisioncic.com/l328829/monthly_2020_08/IMG_20200819_194810.thumb.jpg.8297cfddff1dab4c455829a8fd7be655.jpg

[tomcattom]

Yeah, got it working by downloading the image to my PC and then attaching it to the post, was the only way I could get it to end up using the s3 URL instead of the Google one. I used to be able to just copy the link from Google Photos and the forum software seemed to automatically upload the image to the S3 bucket for me but that doesn't seem to want to work now

I'm just downloading all the photos to redo that previous post using the extra step.

[tomcattom]

Progress has been somewhat pedestrian of late for two reasons, the indicator reflectors (more on that in a moment) and because I had to partly repaint my previous bumper repair 🙁 After completing the previous paint efforts I went to move the bumper back out to the garage and as soon as I lifted it another of the previous fibreglass repairs decided to let got and another crack opened up so I had to repair and repaint it again 🤬 Its not perfect, but its passable until I can source a replacement bumper.

 

As for the front indicators, a previous painter had evidently seen fit to not bother masking them up and consequently they had yellow paint all over them and all my efforts to clean the paint off took the silver coating off with it. I tried a chrome spray paint and it was frankly rubbish so I ended up sending them away to a company called VMC in Chertsey to have a vacuum metalised chrome finish applied. It wasn't cheap, but it was cheaper than buying a new pair of indicators and the reflective finish is a big improvment on the factory finish too

 

Having got them back today I immediately set about replacing the side light bulb holders because they wouldn't stay put in the hole and also replaced the waterproof boot which necessitated cutting the holders off anyway.

 

The indicators have now been refitted to the bumper along with newly manufactured stainless fittings to secure the lower valance because the originals were a mess/missing and also the various required jacknuts.

 

While the bumper has been on hold waiting for the indicators to return I've done a few other small bits and pieces. I replaced the four fittings in the front corners of the body shell that the bumper corners secure to because again they were either absent or not in very good shape, so stainless replacements have gone in their place. Accessing the brackets in front of the head lamp pods were an utter sod to get at.

 

I've also fitted the boot infill panel and replaced the shabby heat reflective covering in that area too.

 

And finally I've set up the new wastegate actuator.

 

Hopefully tomorrow I'll be able to get the bumper back on the car and then I can finish tackling the front end rebuild in earnest.

[Bibs]

Gotcha. I'll fiddle with the settings and log a support ticket with IPS if required 👍

[Chillidoggy]

Impressive stuff, Tom. I’m interested in getting the front indicators re-chromed, but drew a blank on who can do it. In any case I never bothered removing the front bumper, after taking one look at it, and realising what a complete ball ache it would be.