Never ending quest of badassery

[mrkrinkle]

Spent the night pulling the shift tower and Dieselgeek SS out of the car. Then went crazy and sanded and polished it. Along with the O2J trans brace, shifter bracket and a few other odds and ends. The better I make the metal look before its plated, the better the gold will look in the end. Too bad I'm a perfectionist when it comes to that stuff.

Also so ordered a 240 amp Billet Tech alternator. Hopefully those 240 amps will be able to keep up with everything I've added. Killed 3 alternators and two batteries last summer. The stock 90 amp unit could barely just keep up with my stereo..

Also dropped 80 -AN fittings and my turbine housing off at Inthermo earlier in the day, should have all that back on Friday. Then I polish allllllllllll weekend long. Hooray!

[BenVAG]

How this hasn't got alot more attention and love is beyond me. Car is dope and I'll be sure to follow you on insta, the attention to detail here is admirable!

[Thooooom]

im sure i recognise this from the interwebs. ive had my eye on those new CCW's, they look incredible, great choice.

[AiredE39]

That air ride setup setup in the back is just insane...i like that two tank stack and then the pressure gauge across the front of the top one. You sir have motivated me to go with hard lines, another item to the list.

Btw that sucks that you had to drill holes to fit the airlift bags, that sucks but i liked your fix of getting those cover/strength plates.

Overall, amazing car. love mk4s.

[mrkrinkle]

Thanks dude!


Polish polish polish sand sand sand polish polish sand sand polish polish
Polish polish polish sand sand sand polish polish sand sand polish polish



ARP all of the hardware



Need to find better looking washers that continue the flange of the bolt.

[mrkrinkle]

holy shi t what a long day.. Woke up at about 8am, made my way an hour south to pick up all the stripped anodized -AN fittings and my compressor housing from the stripper. Was really happy to see the powder came off super easy and looks great. However about 20 of the 80 fittings weren't stripped all the way, didn't say anything and figured it wouldn't be too difficult to remove myself.

this was probably the worst of the not so stripped fittings.



However most looked like this:



Made my way an hour north to my shop and started polishing. I will never wish what I did today on my worst enemy. Standing in one spot for 9 hours polishing tiny things sucks a big one. But man, did they turn out fantastic. Once they get plated the gold is going to be nuts.

These fittings took the longest to polish. All 4 of them weren't stripped all the way so I took a fine wire wheel to all of them to strip the rest of the anodize, and then polished. These fittings were cast, so from the get go they were rough. Took about 30 minutes a peice to get perfect. Polished all of the casting roughness and the seams from the molds. The one on the left wasn't even finished.



Don't know why I didn't take more pictures of the process. But anyways about 9-10 after I started I finished. Off to the plater on Monday! Will be dropping a bunch of peices for powder on Monday too.

Pictures really don't do them justice. Yeah you can still see some lines in the metal, those won't go away without sanding. Didn't want to do that as it could have degraded the quality and be difficult to work with.



And everything done.



Came home to a couple packages on the doorstep. Time to start measuring, and melting some aluminum!

This will make measuring all the hardware I want to swap to ARP stuff so easy. Every hole is threaded, no guess work. Don't want to order the wrong bolts when they cost $2-3+ each. That's before they're plated too..



And all my V-bands, their flanges and a bunch of various bends 2.5" aluminum.



On a side note hopefully I'll be starting a new job come next week doing sales for arguably the Midwest largest and best performance shop. Hooray!

[mikey G]

looking good dude! Love the attention to detail your showing this thing.

[FrancoGT1]

ur car is cool and everything but tell us about the red and black e30 m3s

[dillon7]

Nice build! Looking great. Sell me the black m3 though

[mrkrinkle]

Haha I've mentioned them a few times in the past. Wonder of the red one is building a built S14. Car is mint inside and out. He paid like 5K for it a few years ago in running form... Anyways he bought a house and it needs a little work so the M3 has just sat there for a couple years now.

Black one he a family of squirrels living in it for about a year. So the interior smells lovely. Owner is more or less just storing it there, but it's awaiting an S52 swap, and a whooooole lot of bodywork. I end up using the spoiler for my coat rack most the time LOL.

[dillon7]

Haha I've mentioned them a few times in the past. Wonder of the red one is building a built S14. Car is mint inside and out. He paid like 5K for it a few years ago in running form... Anyways he bought a house and it needs a little work so the M3 has just sat there for a couple years now.

Black one he a family of squirrels living in it for about a year. So the interior smells lovely. Owner is more or less just storing it there, but it's awaiting an S52 swap, and a whooooole lot of bodywork. I end up using the spoiler for my coat rack most the time LOL.

hm interesting. I've been searching for an m3 lowkey for a while now preferably one without a motor and needs a little work which is why the black one caught my attention. If he would consider selling it let me know because I will definitely make him an offer.

[mrkrinkle]

I'll pass the word on!

[mrkrinkle]

I picked up the modified compressor housing, diverter valve and throttle body. Everything looks absolutely stellar. The kid who welded this stuff has some serious skills.. You all should have seen his shop at home! He's building some crazy single and twin turbo classic Fords.. Was blown away by his fab work..

However, I gave him the throttle body pretty much bare except for the butterfly valve and its corresponding plastic gear. Now that gear makes an electrical connection with the plastic cap via these tiny little metal brushes that must tell the ECU it's placement. Well some of those "hairs" got a little bent. I tried my best to straighten them but I'm worried they have to be perfect in order to function properly. Has anybody ever had throttle bodies apart before? Is there anyway I can take that gear out and replace it with a new one? Or are those gears interchangeable? I have my stock throttle body laying around I can take apart and use. The TB I'm using is a passat as it doesn't have the vaccum bung on it like the GTI/Jetta ones do. I could probably test it on my roommates car (B6 A4 1.8T) if nobody can confirm one way or the other.

Anyways, onto the pictures









This weld isn't the prettiest, but he told me the TB kept fighting him since the metal was so contaminated with oil. This TBT probably has a good 175K on it, so I didn't complain too much.



This won't look bad gold plated...



Also decided on a color for everything. Really excited for this! Can't really tell the shimmer it has from this picture, so hit up my Instagram for the video where it shows a lot better.


That's all for tonight!

[mrkrinkle]

Got a picture from the plater tonight. They were worried that the mirror polished aluminum would get a little hazy after the nickel plate and may have required another round of polishing after the nickel. That didn't happen with anything, so I gave the go ahead to gold plate everything.

Little teaser, hopefully I'll be able to pick everything up tomorrow!

[mrkrinkle]

Ran to the plater on my lunch break to grab all this.. Its going to be wayyyy more expensive than I had originally planned.. fuck. $800 for the first of 4 runs.... All 80 -AN fittings were originally quoted at a single run, maybe just over. All this ended up being more than two full runs. 99 pieces total.