skoda_cat

New door lock cylinders arrived today. I’d hoped they’d be pattern copies of the originals but they’re not. The 1997 ones are a nice weighty lumps of brass and the new ones seem to be made of chocolate coated helium. Actually a plastic shell, if there’s any metal underneath it must be aluminum. There’s no way they’re going to be simple to recode to the original keys and the original keys don’t really want to even go in the new locks. The saving grace is that I can steal the trim piece off the the front of the locks and the mechanism off the back to refurbish the old locks. The rest will get dismantled for curiosity and then sadly landfilled as they feel like complete crap.

Oh I wasn't grumbling at you, just in general at the wheel industry. I think the JR wheels start at 7 inches, sigh. I guess that's only an extra half each on each side if I get the 'poke' right, ET whatever offset...

It's so convenient that the tyres are in mm but the wheels are in inches :D Also the sidewall to sidewall measurement changes depending on stretch, and what's the BEAD size anyway?! It's almost like the trade want to keep it mysterious so normals can't ever understand :P

alloys in a 15 for preference, enough 'big' for 'not standard' but enough 'small' for 'going around corners and not scrubbing in the wheel wells' unsprung mass and tyre sidewall compliance and all that fluff I'm leaning a bit japan racing JR3 or JR19 maybe. no choices made yet.

Nope, it's way wider than the duct on the inside. And of course there's two metal skins forming the bonnet. I'm going to try taping around it to save the paint and slide credit cards down the sides to see if I can release the clips. if all else fails it just goes body colour :D In unrelated news, I've run out of 3d poop cable but this is where we're heading ish: I need to work out how to attach the bezel and obviously it needs to be filled and sanded and painted but to my eye that's looking pretty tidy. sadly this one is slightly not tall enough and a bit too wide so it's not wrapping the stereo so great. More filament tomorrow and I'll have another go.

Did some maths and made a new stereo box thingy... The holes in the box line up with the holes in the dash. I'll make some spacer blocks to take up the extra space. I did consider trying to poop the box with an angled bottom to intersect with that plane properly but who has time really. If this ends up needing some back angle I'll re-evaluate what I've done. as is, it's flat plane with the vertical. And slightly recessed. The front of the stereo comes out a bit and I need to make a bezel for it anyway to hide the metalwork and whatnot. Otherwise I chucked some paint stripper at the strut brace and although it's not got ALL the paint off it's revealed some areas of superficial cosmetic rust, so in the coming days it'll get sanded back treated and painted up nice. Just need the weather to cheer up a bit so I can rust treat, prime, and paint the windscreen opening and smash that milestone in!

This bit: https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/186691344660 How do you get THAT out? I can't see any way to reach the clips to release them :/

I'd be tempted to do that grill in the bonnet but it's beyond me how you get it out. I think it would be a fun accent rather than have it painted body colour when that happens.

Still feel like crap, but such is life. I wanted to do something, so First coat: Second coat: Third coat is the charm No prizes for guessing the trainers :P

Welded up the drilled out spots on the back side drilled out for plug welds First tacks Fire dept violence and alignment grumbly tin Making sure we didn't get it too wrong All other crimes will be dealt with by seam sealer in great big globs The error lol Then a migraine hit and I crawled to bed for a couple of hours sleep, lol. I had intended to go get another bottle of gas for 'whatever needs glued together next' but couldn't. I checked the wiper motor assy still went in and it does, perfectly. This feels like a bit of a milestone. We also test sprayed some of the colour from the can onto an old wing and it looks lush, but you don't get to see.

I’m actually chill about it. I think about what a professional would charge to do this job and this is my first ever go. It’s totally fixable and all under the scuttle anyway. Keeping water out and not being rusty is all we really care about. Thanks for the kind words.

not sure how i arsed this up, must have cut the wrong side of a line somewhere bit of a jigsaw down the back BUT: It's getting cloooossseeerrrrr ****ing with rain all of tomorrow but if the weather forecast holds for Friday I'm taking it off work and getting it welded in. That way if I run out of gas I can bunk to the gas shop and get more. The weekend looks wet anyway.

Realising the best before date on the windscreen glue is in two weeks time I figured I'd better pick my socks up, so in between clouds and during my lunch break I went hard at the mess: There's dampening material down the engine side of the firewall which is going to need some serious protection when it's welding time. I think I'll use some of my steel sheet and slide a big panel down behind the damping so we don't instantly go on fire and I'll get a hose on standby. Anyway, this is the as yet closest test fit I achieved before the rain came: It's getting cloooossseeerrrrr

I took the cover off and looked at the state of it and I’m much less enthused already ;p The black bit on the centre console IS painted, so I have more stripping fun to do, tee hee.

4x100 ET38? on a 175 wide? I think I need to go poke stuff with a tape measure. Thinking in three dimensions isn't my strong suit.

Hrm, I've been looking though the ranges the crazy thinking machine suggested but out of the stuff it says will keep the speedo fine: 195/50R15 (seems to be popular but is only a 15 sob) 195/40R16 (national.co.uk will only sling me nankangs in this) And anything in 17s which doesn't throw out the speedo isn't available at all! I think I'll go look at other tyre shops. I don't even yet know my pcd and offsets yet, tum te tum.

I was considering some nice wheels to give the thing a nice look when it's 'finished' but I realised the ones I was looking at were 14s, which is the same size as it on it now. That's not going to have the look I want so we need to go bigggggeeerrrrr. What I don't know or trust is that the stuff that's on it now is correct. Is there a source for what the total radius of wheel/tyre combo we're supposed to run to get an accurate speedo reading? I've been learning about what 205/55/16 actually MEANS so I need to make sure I'm eyeing up a combo that will not screw up the speedo, not TRASH my ride characteristics and actually have an available range of tyres for the future. One of the make it up from the contents of the internet machines suggest we want 165/70/R13 or 174/60/R14 for a total diameter of 561 mm or 566 mm for each. It's currently got 185/65R14 on which seems to be 596 mm! the rotten steel wheels that came with it are 175/65/R14 or 583 mm. I'm off to make a spreadsheet, I guess.

Oops, got a strut brace. I don’t know if trucks NEED them but I keep hearing that they have them and mine doesn’t, so one’s in the mail. I hope it fits and I can corner at mad speeds in years to come \o/

Sadly I have no others than the doors from this pickup and the ones I've bought to replace them because they smell :D

That would make sense, the one that's in there is hot glued in :D I can always 3d poop something if I want to. It's still weird that the holes don't want to line up with either of the 13cm speakers I have. You'd think it would use the same speakers as the doors. but clearly not.

Hmm, I didn’t think that piece was painted. I’m not sure sun is much of a risk in Scotland either ;p I’ll have a look.

I've been experimenting with vinyl since it's been raining off and on. This took 4 goes to get done and I still had to manually transfer two 'i' dots and one of the four inverted commas. I was ready to lob the machine into the sea by the time I finally succeeded. The centre console is probably as done as it's getting It also looks like the issue of speaker sizing is moot, I guess the holes are just something to do with heater circulation or something.

Yeh, it's the real colour of the plastic. I've just slathered it in paint dissolver waited an hour and then pointedly thrashed it with the high pressure wiggly guy on the pressure washer. It makes a really angry noise and most of the paint comes off. There's probably a plastic primer on there and then the red top coat. something 'whiteish' is under the red anyway. I was really nervous that the paint dissolver would eat the plastic but I suspect it COMES in a PP bottle so I can keep rubbing that into it till all the gunk is gone. I just wish I could work out what size speakers are supposed to go in it, I'd love to be able to use all 4 outputs from the stereo.

I mean, it's as least as good as any of the other beat to hell panels in this truck already. more to do but not today.

mistakes are being made I don't THINK I'm eating into the plastic, but either way I think it's not coming CLEAN but I can spray it grey from base rather than over the red. It's embossed PP and i looked up benzyl alcohol and it SAYS it's tolerant to it.