Thanks guys!

Really starting to miss the car now the weather is improving. Somehow the Passat doesn't quite cut it.

Call me a sad git but I've hauled the passenger seat up to my office. Stops it going mouldy in the garage and it's a constant reminder of what I'm working so hard for.

The quarterlights and badges are in the garage - both quite hard to get hold of.

Looks like it'll be Tuesday next week before the next update. The Passat has a dodgy tyre (potholes eff-tee-ell) so I can't go too far and don't fancy driving it on the motorway. Hopefully it'll be good to go on Monday though.

Not sad at all... I had my seats in the garage and they where all started to go mouldy when I got them out to take them to the trimmers!

Got a de-humidifier in there now to get some of the damp out :)

before i put the leather recaro's in my mk3, i was using them as computer seats for a good few weeks

I sit in that one to make telephone calls. Such a comfy seat!

rocco seats are the best

That's the sleep seat. I've had three people fall asleep in that seat on motorway journeys, and they've all said it's because it's so comfortable.

Thankfully I've never fallen asleep in the driver's seat!

No idea what you are on about!

Edited 27 February, 201115 yr by Maxeh

Yep, you're one of the three!

Difference is, you fell asleep going through Brecon! Caroline (fiancee) and her brother both KO'd on motorway trips.

Edited 27 February, 201115 yr by Alex

did youyou get a discount price on those stickers seeing as you bought that many as i want 4-5 ?

They're available separately mate.

rocco seats.. genuinely the best £30 i spent on mine, ever!

Spent a few hours at the workshop earlier, so I've got another quick update tonight.

The car hasn't changed much in the last couple of weeks, it's waiting on the 914 in the last pic before we can really get the bodywork moving. But I've been too busy to get across anyway.

Today I popped in to finish cleaning the glue off the trim, and while I was at it I cleaned up the tailgate. The last time I had the car painted, it looks like they masked around the number plate. The paint was coming off with the fudge wheel in a few places.

You can also see that the old 'Coupe' badge which I removed years ago took a layer of lacquer with it. I think it was glued on. :(

But flaky paint isn't the big worry today. I've been dreading tackling the spot of rust in the boot, for fears that it would turn into a large spot of rust. Well, my car now has a thumb sized hole in the wheel well. :(

It's not good, by any means, but it can be cured. It looks like water's got into the seam and rotted it from the inside, but luckily it's only eaten through one layer of metal. This should be an easy thing to plate, and Perky says it won't even be visible when it's finished, painted and sealed up. It's not as bad as I was expecting it to be.

I'm back at the unit on Tuesday next week to start the bodywork. I'll have lots of pics then.

Back in Cardiff for the weekend so thought I'd finally collect the bits for my tilt/slide sunroof conversion. They've been sat in my parents' garage for just over five years waiting for the next time the car was painted. The time is now...

As you can see, I got halfway through trimming the interior panel just after I bought it. I'll do the rest on Monday.

Edited 5 March, 201115 yr by Alex

Back in Cardiff for the weekend so thought I'd finally collect the bits for my tilt/slide sunroof conversion. They've been sat in my parents' garage for just over five years waiting for the next time the car was painted. The time is now...

As you can see, I got halfway through trimming the interior panel just after I bought it. I'll do the rest on Monday.

amazing stuff dude. remember first seeing this in Max Power :p,and was like sweet!! :) story with the sunroof,whats it out of and how much work is involved in fitting? i'd love to try that in mine. :)

Edited 6 March, 201115 yr by barrys17

Was in Max Power, not Redline fella :-)

Sunroof is a proper 90s mod. Golfs can take sunroofs from the Audi 80, Polos from the Scirocco or Audi Coupe. Not easy parts to find now though.

It's a straight swap though, just strip out the old metal sunroof and all the workings and replace them with the tilt slide stuff. Wanted one for as long as I've had the car. Don't see many Polos with one.

Was in Max Power, not Redline fella :-)

Sunroof is a proper 90s mod. Golfs can take sunroofs from the Audi 80, Polos from the Scirocco or Audi Coupe. Not easy parts to find now though.

It's a straight swap though, just strip out the old metal sunroof and all the workings and replace them with the tilt slide stuff. Wanted one for as long as I've had the car. Don't see many Polos with one.

facepalm. sorry dude,i did mean max power.. thats deadly..definitely gonna keep an eye out for one. there much work involved? best of luck with the project. :)

Edited 6 March, 201115 yr by barrys17

I dunno yet. Will find out on Tuesday :-)

Lots of lessons learned today. Firstly, don't let working on your car get in the way of work, or you end up being behind with everything. Secondly, a Polo sunroof only just fits in the boot of a Z4. It's quite a wide piece of metal.

Thirdly, you can iron headlining! Who knew? The iron stinks of oil vapour now though (the headlining was being stored in a box with the G40 boost return pipes - thanks Mum).

Just as well really, if you look at the last picture it's been screwed up for a while. Tolerant though my parents are, they don't take quite the same car with bits of my car as I do.

The main part of the sunroof panel was partially trimmed anyway, so I decided to start today with an experiment on the smaller piece. My Dad reckoned I was using the wrong glue before, so advised trying carpet tape. Well having had a real ballache with the other panel, this was a breeze. I had the insert done in about 20 minutes, with all of the fabric edges (out of sight anyway) covered up with black duck tape. It's actually neater than it was originally.

Then I got to work on the outer piece. The hard bit had already been done here, so all I had to do was trim the bits I didn't need and tape the flaps down on the inside.

You may be looking at these and thinking they're creased. They are, slightly. Both panels got bent while being stored, but when they're pushed flat the creases disappear so when it's fitted they won't show.

And last but not least, a UPS van turned up first thing with my Polo Performance Parts rear strut brace. This will be painted body colour before it goes on the car.

I'm going to Perkins Automotive tomorrow morning to trial fit everything and start on the bodywork, so expect a nice big update!

Mixed week so far.

Spent Tuesday afternoon at Perkins Automotive trying to fit the tilt/slide conversion. What a NIGHTMARE.

On the original one you just screw the runners down, rest the roof on top and fix it in place. The new one has to be assembled off the car and slides into the roof whole, tilted upwards. Then you have to wind it flat to adjust it. Get it wrong and it jams, then the cables all pop out of the runners and you have to take it back off.

So it turned into a waste of a day. I put the standard one back in for now, mainly to keep all the screws together, and the bodywork hasn't progressed because I was in the way. No pictures, as the car hasn't changed.

But it's not all bad news. On Monday night I put a bid in on a set of wheels, and I lost. Why's that good news? Well the winner was a timewaster, so the seller offered me the wheels for my maximum bid. And they were in West London, not far from Windsor where I've been working today.

So I picked them up this evening. Gotta love having a Passat as a daily - all four laid flat, with room for my luggage too.

They're Watanabe RS-8 split rims. 14x6.5 and, from what I can tell, ET35 (though the seller said he thought they were ET25, so I may be measuring wrong), and they weigh only 5kg per corner which is pretty damned light! They'd just come out of storage, hence the dust.

The previous owner had them refurbished and it's not a bad job, but I'm not into the black centres. They'll either be sprayed silver or grey (to match the bodywork) before they go on the car. What do you reckon?

I'm swaying towards grey, mainly because the dishes have been painted silver and aren't polished. If I paint the centres silver there's a chance they won't match, and if they do match it could look cheap. I don't have the cash to have them polished this year.

They're doubly cool for me because they're a present from my fiancee. Love her!

More next week. Got a busy run up to the weekend, and then there's Ultimate Dubs.

Edited 10 March, 201115 yr by Alex

I think silver centres will look the balls. Even if it doesn't match bang on i very much doubt it will look cheap. I don't like polished rims really and so these get a huge thumbs up from me.

Fitted one of those tilt and slides to Rich's old GT. We tried to fit it whole and it didn't work, as you said fiddly as fook and kept on coming apart and couldn't get it to work properly.

A quick flick through the haynes for the scirocco that the sunroof originally came from and followed the fitment as in there (whcih showed you how to do it without fitting it complete) and it went in the polo in no joke 20-30 mins very maximum and worked a treat.

Edited 10 March, 201115 yr by demolover

Interesting - would it be possible for you to scan the Scirocco guide? Or even just take a couple of pics?

PM EnthusiastOwned, if he hasnt sold it i dare say he could help out.

PM EnthusiastOwned, if he hasnt sold it i dare say he could help out.

I'm such a scatterbrain today. PM'd him earlier, forgot to come back and say so but thanks for the tip dude!

Yesterday marked 11 years since I first collected the car. It's subtle, but it's come such a long way since!

Popped into Perkins again this afternoon as I was passing and had my wheels in the boot. Would've been rude not to try them on!

They fit over the brake calipers up front, bolts inside the rim don't catch. I know some people have had issues with wheels clearing the calipers on the 256mm setup.

Fitment up front - poking slightly with the car jacked up, should be about perfect when it's on the ground.

The rear is still tucked under. I'm going to see what it looks like with the tyres on before I decide what to do here.

I'm actually starting to like the black centres...

Short and sweet today, I was only there an hour or so. Can't wait to get the car back!

Edited 11 March, 201115 yr by Alex

Another day at Perkins Automotive today, and some progress to report!

For me, personally, not a massively productive session though. I decided to have another go at fitting the tilt/slide sunroof, this time following the guide in the Audi Coupe Haynes manual I borrowed from big_burt last weekend.

The Haynes method is much easier. Instead of building it off the car then slotting it into the roof, you fit the guide rails with the trim panel, hinge and drip tray in place then bolt the metal panel to them. I spent another two hours getting it all in, and it tilts properly but won't slide. Unfortunately while trying to get it to work last week I managed to bend all of the cables out of shape and as soon as it sticks the whole lot just jams.

Enough is enough. I'm sick of it. I don't want to end up with a sunroof jammed open, and ordering another set of cables will delay the already delayed bodywork restoration so I've stripped it all out. If someone fancies buying it off me, it'll be going cheap and includes a retrimmed trim panel (in the proper black and grey headlining) but you'll need to either change the cables or bend the existing ones back into shape. PM me if you're interested.

So, after three hours I'd put the original sliding roof back in, albeit without the panel itself. That's being prepped for paint.

Today hasn't been a write-off though, Adam's started on the rest of the bodywork. Beginning with removing the arch liners, which uncovered stash of mud and sand behind the driver's side wing big enough to fill a plant pot!

Adam then started attacking the rust with a sander...

Back to solid metal.

This uncovered what should have been a plate welded into the wing aerial hole. Turns out it was filled with a conker-sized blob of fibreglass. Nice.

More grinding on the tailgate, sorting one of the badge holes and the metal around the number plate lights. You can see my car's latest stablemate in the background, another forced induction hot hatch from about 20 years ago. It's got quite a bit more rot than mine, I'm amazed it's still in one piece! I haven't seen one in the metal for ages!

The a pillar is now rust free too. The one halfway up the pillar turned out to be worse than the one in the corner, it has two pin-sized rust holes to fix.

Work is continuing through the week, Adam's going to weld up the wing aerial hole tomorrow and block the dents in the swage line. The boot is being sorted soon too, then it'll go into primer early next week. I can't get back until early next week, but I'll be getting updates via picture message so I'll post the latest photos on here when I get them.