skoda_cat

dunno if this is the worst idea, or if i should just be painting over with grey....

Work’s in the way of getting stuff done sadly and the weather’s on the turn. I’ll use what hours I can though. Power washing didn’t get the red off the lovely new centre console, just chipped some bits off. I’ve done some research that suggests abs is fine with caustic soda so hoping it IS made of abs I’ll try that on the weekend to de paint it. Rain can’t stop that fun. The speaker holes in it are weirdly just slightly bigger than the stock speakers I have and the alpine upgrades could work but are also a tiny bit under. I wonder what size they expect! There’s not actually any sign that they’ve ever had speakers installed. I ordered the windscreen glue finally, having that in hand will mean no meaningful barriers stand in the way of windscreen in other than me. I need to not forget that the gearbox oil still needs changed. I’d write a list on the windscreen but it’s not in yet ;p

I'm such a child, I got a cheap vinyl cutter... it's TINY but length is basically infinite. this guy is just less than a meter long and only JUST fits on the back windscreen. I've already decided to steal Bete Noir's high brake light idea so the back window is going to get a bit crowded. it's ok though I have a reversing camera and will have two wing mirrors. I'm POSSSIBLY going to do that thing where you put your performance stuff on your doors, but like listing all the standard crap that's fitted :P I dunno, that might be a bit too stupid.

Yesterday got a bit scrappy because I was real stressed about cutting up the car and it was hot day in full sun and I suffer a bit from "health". I took myself off to bed with a thumping migraine in the end. It's galling because so much got done really. My friend took me to his favourite paint shop and I picked out a colour which I'm not sure about any more, but whatever. I've got seam sealer for where I've welded, some PROXL stuff to dye plastics back to black which will be used on the scuttle cover and the bed trim, a tin of primer, a tin of the paint we're not sure about, and some lacquer. All this in aid of painting round the window area before the screen goes in so we don't have to remove the screen to paint the whole car. This is because I'm not paying for paint till the car is MOTed so everything is a bit about-face. IF I was sensible I'd prep the whole car whilst it's in bits and get it well painted, but I can't invest that much in it in case it never gets road legal. Anyway, that's the doom loop. I'll chuck some of this paint on one of the old wings to see how it looks and if it's what I really want to go for. The rest of what got done is: Drilled out the spot welds on the rotten scuttle and slit the ends Found out what joys were underneath. Fixed the damage from drilling out the welds by zapping in a bit of weld and flatting it back. There was one thin area which will have really benefited from that. Started trimming both ends of the car and the panel to gradually move them closer to being well aligned friends. The last thing I did which MAY be the mistake is cutting the firewall BELOW the first spot welds because I thought this will be the easiest way to butt weld the most good metal back into the car. What I'd not realised is that by doing that and drilling out those welds (which I already did) I'm separating the firewall from the lower section of the 'triangle' that forms the scuttle. It just means I have to take care about my alignments when I put it back together so I don't fail to bond the scuttle together correctly to keep that triangle which is obviously forming a 'beam' across the car. I'll make sure I weld the new scuttle to the lower scuttle BEFORE seam welding the firewall back together so we get all the stronk we need. This is the really good bit because a) it gets the car almost back to being 'an car' and b) it's the time I'm MOST likely to burn it down. The battery is out and the ECU is disconnected so hopefully electronics survive. Thanks for reading, sorry I got sick and didn't do more, hrmph.

Wellllll I MAY have made a mistake, but it's just tin and I have a welder. But generally I'm pretty close to getting the new panel weldable in. Perhaps tomorrow.

oops.

Are there any products you’d recommend? I have some bitumenous foil backed panels that I can shove in the doors or on the back panel to damp vibrations but I have no ideas about modern underlay. I want a nice foot feel, but yeh less noise would be fine too!

I commute by motorcycle. I also did that when I lived in London in the bad old days before the ULEZ and my snot was black. I have a decent bit of motorway to get to the city now. The trains can smash down parallel to that at 125mph. My bike can do that easily, but if I did that often I'd lose my licence pretty quick so I don't. End result: commute by train is about the same time as commuting by bike, but the bike is far cheaper and really convenient and makes me happy. wheeeeeeeee.

Oh yeh I forgot to say, I took the bonnet off for better access so that’s probably it, the thing will never get back on the road lol. Its the only actual dismantlement I’ve done, heh.

The view from the back seems ok, decent penetration in the main anyway. I played games with my spot rivet drill And with maximum effort the lower panel of the donor scuttle has been removed! I think all that 'yellow' is waxoil or similar. whatever it is it seems to have done a half decent job. certainly seeped into all the seams as gravity allowed. I also repaired another section of the lip where the windscreen attaches and dressed the repairs so they follow the line of the rubber sensibly with no steps. I did intend to split the scuttle from the remains of the firewall on both the donor and recipient but after doing some cleanup, the firewall on the recipient is pretty trash so we're keeping the donor pinch seal intact and cutting lower down the firewall in the truck and butt welding in. That drama will have to wait for another evening, or an excited evening because I get tired sometimes and doing this with a clear head seems the best as I only get one chance to get it right. I'm pretty happy though that the welder is dialled in to punch all the way through without blowing out. It's going to be a good meter or so of weld that's going to be needed to patch this cut and shut together.

Cranked the welder up to HOT and smashed this bracket together to transfer the rotational force of the stretcher into the bench, seems to have helped a LOT, now I can use the thing in the vise and rapidly remove it to put the piece into the vise. It's nice being able to bodge stuff till it functions. Got brave and cut a hole Set the welder back to 'subtle' and started stitching, using my air compressor every couple of zaps to cool the panel back down Welds flatted back and zinc primer smashed on to try and keep it safe. The next project that's been waiting patiently since BEFORE we got this truck. Tomorrow I'll hopefully commit to the section of this donor part that I want to use and liberate it from the structure it's trapped in. I have a spot weld drill which should help get it free. I've not forgotten to restore the drain hole, I plan to run some water into the gutter when it's welded into the truck and see exactly where the water pools and drill there.

MMMM juicy! I rushed to pack up before my lunch break ended and i failed to get a clean picture, doh.

hopefully this melange will do for getting the windscreen in mid air both sides up without snapping off the rear view mirror so I can give it a REALLY good clean and get all the old sealer off the edges. I don't really feel like I've SEEN the glass yet. It went in the van dirty, went in the truck bed dirty, and it's just been cosy in there since. The new seal arrived today, smelling fresh and rubbery. icor.uk is amazing, buy all your window seals there.

I'm thinking some kind of candy blue, but I need to speak to someone local who sells paint.... probably not halfords or b&q :P :P

I think I'm going to go for some of this https://www.carpaintwarehouse.co.uk/product-page/3m-windscreen-sealer-black-310-ml-08509 which suggest it will go in both seams, gasket to glass and gasket to metal work to help occlude water from everywhere. I think this will be a huge help since my lower rail is a little raggedy. I called the guy at https://www.icor.uk/ today to ask if I could add a window pull string to my order but he was confused by the fact I hadn't already received the gasket, turns out one of his staff had accidentally the thing to another customer :/ but the guy is a legend, he's getting me another one sent next day and giving me the string gratis as an apology. I tried to explain that the window can't go in yet because I'm not done welding but he wanted to make everything good from a service perspective. Mistakes happen but this seems over and above frankly. Assuming the seal does show up I can't recommend this guy enough :D I've also found my old keyboard stand in the loft, which I'm going to swaddle up and use as a windscreen stand so i can get about it and give it a good clean up and prep \o/ I also need to move my arse and choose a COLOUR for this thing, because I'll need to spray it around the windscreen before installing it, otherwise the screen will have to come out again for paint which is a bit boring.

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Started exploring: Aaaaand got back to trying to learn metal forming The only place I have to mount the stretcher and shrinker that makes any sense is where my vise is mounted, my benches are a bit full up with lathes, mills, and drill presses. To do metal work I kind of need to move between the shrinker, stretcher, and vise for various tasks. So unbolting each in turn and re fastening each just to use it for 30 seconds is annoying. With the metal forming tools solidly mounted so I can monkey bar my meagre weight on them they do rapidly put shape into metal though and I was able to make this: In principle this would be a cromulent patch to put in where the water drain has rotted out, but I was over eager and the curve is actually too much and working it backwards adds increasing ripple and ugly to it so I'm going to try again when I can get the tooling adequately mounted some place.

Say anything you like, call me names, laugh at me, congratulate me, it's all cool I'm just learning and having 'fun' fsvo. I just want to actually get it MOTed and on the road this year... which DOES require me to stop ARSING ABOUT. That said, most of quality work is in the prep. In that vein I got the new bottle on the welder, ripped a bit of tin, set it up with my new butt welding clamps and tacked it together. Then I tried to remove the clamps... I'd set the metal up tight on the clamps and the tacks whilst cooling pulled the edges together and pinched them, lol. I got them out with violence. They do a decent job though, this is MUCH better than my other craphouse attempts. It all gives me chance to get the welder dialled in a bit better. Bit of skim filler on that kind of work and it'll be golden. I've cleaned up the donor bit of tin, but not done any derusting of it yet... perhaps tomorrow.

smelly old seatbelts drying in the sun: obligatory forbidden juice: NUTSERTS NUTSERTS!!!!! I've wanted a go on these for AGES, and wow they're very very easy to use I might be in love. Grinding off the backs of the old snapped studs and twisting them out with mole grips was a CHORE. Also jamming a 12mm drill bit through this was about the limits of my drill press. I think I need to get a drill sharpening machine :/ Other things I had to learn, sanding belts have a direction to run in because of the seam, lol... it went FLYING!

So I'm probably going to pick up a fresh bottle of gas today, I'm not SURE the old one is actually empty but why get caught short for the sake of a few quid. I'll weigh the new one when I get it so I can have an idea of what's going on in it. So there's a real risk of some metalwork this weekend and some overkeen windscreen insertion attempts. Does the forum have any good advice about what best to do at this point? shove it in and hope? Spooge silicone or 'something else' into strategic places? smash the windscreen and cry? I would LOVE anyone else's experience with this as this will be my first windscreen and I'm clueless and HATE WATER LEAKS hahahahah. I know about the wire round the rubber business to ease it in, it's just the felicia specifics I need... I think.... tell me I'm wrong, I have no shame and don't want to arse this up :P A couple of hours pass and then: Heh the new bottle weighs less than the empty one so I don't think the bottles are very standardised...

Yeh, copy and extend is not going to work. I've redesigned the print to attach in the same place but meet up with the front edge where the fag lighter stuff was. If that nonsense is recessed like that you'll never be able to see it from a driving position. I have to say this is much harder without the dash IN the car for context... but like to achieve that I'd have to stop procrastinating and get the windscreen done :P

That's a great idea and there's none on ebay, sob. The other bonus of a car console is that it protects the screws that make it easy to steal the stereo out of a truck, hahahaha.

In other news I've been terrified that I need a really perfect finish on this scuttle weld, but I don't do i? It gets covered by that plastic vanity plate right?

Weather's not been very kind, so I turned myself to the interior problem. I found the original case that the stereo cage goes in and copied it into freecad, made it a bit taller so hopefully the double din cage i have on order will fit snug. I very much like how the original design just has two screws on the bottom so despite the radio cage and stereo lock in you can steal the whole lot just by undoing two screws under the dash. nice work Skoda. I'm intending to put bolts down from inside so that even if you drop the nuts off the bottom you still can't get the bolts out without first removing the stereo. I think this is good enough for a first experiment, but I suspect I'm going to want to bring the unit further forwards in the end. The original cage is just shoved in there to show it's at least the right width :P Obviously I have to cut the dash and get rid of the fag lighter and ash tray. I can put a 12V outlet in the glove box or something for anything that needs charged.

They look very squished and cracked. The HBoL says 3 Nm for the bolts so yeh, barely snugged! Could I just make some out of rubber? I have no clue what shape or profile they expect to be :/ Dunno where I’d be with out all the help in this thread. Thanks.