only philosophy i know is harry potter with his stone

Another 5 hours, and the last two wheels are prepped for paint and polishing. Long old job, but have gotten much faster at it. So tomorrow's jobs are paint the wings and the wheels. Then I'll bleed the brakes if its not raining. Nearly there, but this weather really isn't helping

Wish i was this far ahead

How long have you been at yours?

Put it this way, the ratio of it being on the road, and in my garage is 7:1 ,i had it stored for ages, then drove the car for 3 months, it blew an engine, sorted some bits over a period of about 11 months, then had it on the road for another 2 months, then its back in the garage and has been for about 5 months? Guess it will be for another 6 months or so...

Get some pics up of how everything is looking!

This is getting on for 2 1/2 years now since I got the car, and nearly 3 since I started work on the engine. I've never even driven this car, and have been out of a mk2 for best part of a year too. Hope i enjoy driving it

There's not really any decent pictures as nothings gone on. The two wheels I did today look like the one before. I'll update with paint pics tomorrow

Are you fully restoring that other one then Max? And hows the subby design coming along?

Hey mate.

Just to let you know, I just checked, and the inertia switch had worked whilst bouncing off trees, so you're ok there :)

Went on a bit of a painting hype yesterday. Slow going having to wait between coats, but still made some good progress.

Bumpers first. Made a start on these a while back, but they got relegated once the engine was in and running. Yesterday I repainted the chrome strip on the bumpers. Next is textured paint

Then the wings. Has a small bit of rot repaired on the drivers and a large dent filled on the passengers by a body shop a few weeks back. Have been working trying to get them nice and smooth between jobs last few weeks. Also treated and smoothed the rust around the bottom of each wing. Etched and fill primed now. Just need to prime and topcoat next.

Did a few other bits and pieces too, but nothing major. Just preparing her for the road

Ahem...

Been putting in a few hours after work over at the garage to get these bad boys finished. I currently have one in this state, one half polished and two others I'm yet to start. Takes around 2hrs to go through 10 grades of wet and dry on the air sander including twice on the 2000 grit, with an autosol polish between. Looks the dogs imo, one of the parts I'm mostly proud of i think.

One wing is also painted, but I ran out of paint at the weekend, so the other one will be finshed by the end of play on sunday. Bumpers are ready to go back on too once the wing is in place. I hope to get these wheels wrapped in the rubber on saturday, as well as bleeding the brakes, meaining a short test drive too

Edited 16 May, 201214 yr by prankstar2003

Aye, thats the plan

I've had two years to get it to where it is today! Hoping for MOT next friday.Maybe

Woah! You've done an awesome job on them! Shinyest i've seen on here in a long time...

Don't do the recess in black or colourcoded though, think it will ruin the look of them, id say a grey/gunmetal colour.

Too late! The recesses are already coded to the car colour. Bit late to change now! I started by spraying the wheels, and then sanded the paint off, leaving it in the recesses. Ingenious!

And you said i shouldn't polish them myself Max

Always something positive to say

Edited 17 May, 201214 yr by prankstar2003

Try and get hold of a minimop or mop mate.. Hard mop head with autosol will get the swirl marks off . Then a polishing kit ( with blue and red compounds ) should come up mirror shine then mate :)

If theres a competition between me and kiz, its not for the shiniest metal, more the general finish. Kiz's car is fantastic in everyway, but its not the only way to make a car/engine bay look good. Good work on the alternator there, thats a bitch to start with with the pitting etc. Although I can still see some swirl marks

I have a polishing kit with black and white compounds. It was my dads, so I don't know which to use first. Also, the mop jsut tends to smear the stuff in a single place. I'm sure I'm not doing it correctly! Going to 2k and autosol again tonight and see how that goes. I'm definately up for moppin also

I did this with soapy water, worked through the grades with wet and dry (keep it wet as fuck) up to 1500 then used an old mop on a drill and some t-cut

Did I read right that you are using an air sanders on it?

I have the maguires polish, but I'm yet to have a go with it yet. I'm going to use a polishing wheel etc. but I think the black is for harder metals, so I'm after some blue compound now

Don't patronise me by saying I can't take advice one because I'm a teacher and 2 because your younger than me Ben. I have no idea of your age, and frankly its irrelevant to me. I have, and continue to take advice from anyone. Its just that your advice usually takes the form of criticism [some 'problems' you've had with my car include wheels being spaced too much, tyre choice, audio (which you eventually gave advice on) and now the polishing) often with help coming later once the boot has been stuck in. Why not offer advice first, instead of trying to shoot others down, and then following it up with how you would have done it. There is a trend in your posts when reading responses to other peoples problems

For an example

Advice: Try and get hold of a minimop or mop mate.. Hard mop head with autosol will get the swirl marks off . Then a polishing kit ( with blue and red compounds ) should come up mirror shine then mate

Criticsm: they're full of swirls

Just consider the way you word things

Guy, yes I am!

Edited 17 May, 201214 yr by prankstar2003

I'll take the advice Ben, thank you. Hence I'm rethinking the audio build. As i say, its in the wording

I'd fuck the air sander off tbh, your not trying to sand the metal down all your trying to do when polishing is remove the damage from the stage before. Some thing like that would probably be fine on the earlier stages where your taking out damage or pitting but once you start working through the grades I'd personally steer clear of stuff like that

Makes it a breeze though! About an hour and a half each wheel. Try doing it in that time by hand. However, and I do accept Ben's point about the swirls, I think its the air sander thats caused them. Buffing wheel should take them out though.

In the end, its been a quick way of doing the wheels.

Rushing gives poor results tho, you get out what you put in with polishing. I wet and dry mine with them on the car using it as a lathe when doing the lip/dish, but this is only to get the damage out and to make it less work when I then take them off and do the last few grades by hand. I could do the whole lot on the car and it would take half the time and a fraction of the effort, but it wouldn't be as good a finish as I aim for when polishing

That said ratta on retro rides sells polishing kits for angle grinders which he says take out all the hard work, the results he has had are very good but he still hasn't posted any photos of the kit he sells and gives very little detail about them. He just seems to dodge any questions even after months of people asking which seems very strange to me, he also doesn't post up prices of the kits instead asking people to pm him so he can give a price. All this has put me off buying from him so I'll just stick to my tried and tested way

Edited 17 May, 201214 yr by Mclovin

I see your point. But the results are no worse than when I've polished by hand. I'll avoid your mate above the!

You have to look at polishing in the same way as paint really, a lot of it is all in the prep work

Yeah he's a fool to himself cause the results he get do look very good but who buys some thing without any proper info of what it is?

he probably doesn't give much info to stop people finding the polishing mops on ebay for less money