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Oh and Karl/Dave feel free to put up any pics you took as well as any parts i missed out!

Ok thought i would update my gallery with the charger progress rather than the FI VR6 thread. I have accumulated all the parts needed (well near enough!) so yesterday morning Karl and CrazyDave came over to help me fit it! Now the idea of the rotrex is to bolt it to the custom bracket and then bolt that to the block, simple yes? Well it bloody wasnt, absolutely nothing fit like it should and so the majority of the day was taken up by either going out to buy some bolts or tools or customising bolts/brackets/pullies etc but we finally got the charger on the bracket and with the help of an angle grinder got the bracket on the block (well temporarily atleast as we had to put the belt etc on). As well as that we fitted the mocal oil cooler (for the charger) in front of the rad, removed the carbon canister, extended the MAF cable so it can reach to the other side of the front bumper where we will be running the MAF and cone. I was helping as much asi could but i ended up making shed loads of coffee and tea and some bacon sarnies! Well i had to keep them happy didnt i :lol: A bit later on in the day Mic_VR and Mr Beige turned up to have a butchers, i think they were surprised at how little we had managed to do considering in theory it could of taken about 4 hours to finish! The rest of the day consisted of corrado related chat, going out in Dave's turbod vr and taking it in turns to drive karl's car and then they all buggered off home leaving me to try and get more done until tuesday (hopefully!) when karl can come back and help finish it. Anyway today i contiued. The jobs i was set from the guys was to basically try and fit the charger + bracket to the block and work out how the belt goes on etc but instead as the belt etc was off i thought i would change my water pump just in case! I thought i would make the job easier by removing the front bumper and cross member, we agreed this would also help with putting the belt on etc so off it came. I drained the coolant and took the rad off. Then i jacked the engine up which i have done quite a few times now! Undone front and rear mounts and loosened gearbox mount, put the jack + a piece of wood on the corner of the sump and jacked it up until the exhaust touched the bulk head and so the water pump was accessible. I removed the pulley from the pump via 3 6mm allen head bolts, then removed the pump via another 3 6mm allen head bolts and out it came. As you can see its a good job i did change the pump as it was missing 3 blades! Then out with the new pump ready to go, much better in comparison, the blades are much chunkier and are metal i thnk the old one is plastic! It was also quite stiff to turn the pump so it was definately on its way out! New pump plus new O-ring and lots of silicon sealant all went on and it spun very easily! Whilst the front end was all off and the coolant was drained i also decided to change my thermostat as i dont think my old one was opening properly! Removed all the hoses from the housing and undone the bolts, pulled it and whoops! It basically fell apart in my hand :shock: Proper broke! So i will need to go VW in the morning and order a new one to get it for tuesday so if me and karl get the rest of the charger stuff done i can quicky whip the stat back in, put it all back together and fill it with fresh coolant. So anyway as i was pretty stuffed with the stat i carried on with the charger. I had to fit the aircon replacement pulley. This fit just below the alternator but was a bit of a pig to fit, plus after i had fit it i had to re-fit it because it needed spacing out slightly for the belt :roll: I then put the belt in place and put the charger and bracket in place and tried to work out which way the belt goes round! I think i figured it out but will get karl to double check as it may be wrong :lol: I think the charger bracket may need spacing out a bit as its all awfully close! So thats it for now, tomorrow im going down VW to order my new stat housing and get some new G12+ coolant. I think i will be pretty stuck then until i can get the stat housing, i may put the front end back together but i might not bother really as it will be easier/quicker when replacing the stat with it all off. More updates and pics to come! :D

Mine was playing funny with the idel when i started mine up after a couple of weeks without use Michael so i took the idle valve out and cleaned it up, cleaned the TB etc and then tried again, it idled a bit irratically for a bit but after a bit of a thrash it went back to normal. Might be worth doing whilst the bonnet will be up.

Its looking fantastic mate, top work! And didnt i say you would find the rado awesome after driving around in a worse car! I had to take mine to a mates garage wednesday night to get wheel bearing and track rods done and i picked her up tonight and again i was just amazed at how good it drives! For an old car they really do drive as goos if not better than most cars i have driven, fantastic and im fitting the supercharger tomorrow so its going to be even better!! I know what you mean about plastic on the mk2's :shock: you dont realise how much there is until you start cleaning it up and you spend as long on the plastics as you do on the paint, but its worth the effort because imo fresh looking plastics as well as good looking paint really make a mk1/2 look special! Anyway keep up the good work with it mate! If you want a machine polish you know where to come :lol:

Well if you need any help/advice mate just PM me and i will be happy to help out :)

i tried some of that AG extra gloss protection, its really odd, like water almost, does this act like a wax in terms of repelling water etc? Yes mate, although it wont bead up like a wax but the water just runs off it. Its a sealant so can actually offer better protection than a wax. Really good stuff, best used on top of SRP and SRP alone as its really fussy with what it bonds to!

Yep there may well be the equivalent horsepower to a bugatti sitting on the driveway :lol: will be good if you do come though Dave, as you are a smart bloke so you will definately come in handy :lol: Lots of pics will be taken no doubt and some videos will be good (as long as its not a video of the engine blowing up :( ). The sister thing was started at edition just because i mentioned i have a sister who had my tent. Its a bit worrying really as they all assume my sister is going to be gorgeous so does that mean they think im gorgeous? :lol: unless they want me to dress up and pretend to be 'my sister' :lol:

If they dont come with bumpstops then yeah i would get new bumpstops for them, although they may need cutting down to match the drop (if you are dropping that is) Yep the drop links, these attach to the wishbones, buy complete new drop links. The rear do have top mounts yes so probs a good idea to replace them if you are doing everything else as well. Yes the new wishbones will come with the bushes already in so just whip out the old wishbones and put in the new ones, the ball joints attach on the end of the wishbones. There are neither of these on the rear as the rear has an axle, the only thing you need to change on the rear is the axle bushes but thats a big job as you need to remove the whole axle and you need to press out the old bushes and press in new ones. If you have a chunky wallet and are getting all this done at a garage anyway then i would get them to do the rear axle bushes at the same time, but expect a chunky bill! I would also replace all the bolts as you are replacing these parts if you are not already as its an old car so they may snap, but if they dont (mind didnt as i soaked them all in plus gas the night before and as and when i done them) then they wont be in the best of condition anyway.

I was wondering how long it would take until my sister got mentioned!!! :lol:

I know! I might as well post up a thread in the meets section "Robs Rotrex Fitting Day!" and see how many people turn up :lol: As long as i can get the drive space i dont mind though, shouldnt be a problem a bit later on in the day although first thing in the morning when karl turns up i will imagine everyone will still be in bed :lol:

Jim im pretty sure the pre-wax cleanser will remove the SRP. A lot of pre-wax cleansers are filler heavy like SRP so they will fill swirls as they prepare the surface for the wax. That RS4 is stunning! I would love to own one of those one day!! Great work as always Nathan :D

Yeah echoing what AJ said really, guys who machine polish other people cars have paint depth gauges so they know how much paint they have to play with. The fancy expensive ones tell you how thick the lacquer is and then how thick the paint is (its the lacquer you need to know though!) where as cheap ones just tell you how thick it all is down to the metal. VW and Audi's etc have lots of lacquer and its very hard too so if you are just polishing your corrado then you could polish it loads of times without worrying mate as you are hardly taking any paint off just to remove swirls.

Yes mate you are more then welcome! Good job i have got a big drive really! :lol:

Dave by all means come down mate the more the merrier! :lol: Karl, hmm am i getting excited yet, yeah just about :lol: I might have to take it easy ish when we take it out to test (if we get it running that is :lol:) as its had the wheel bearings and track rods etc done today so the alignment will be out, oh well, its only tyres :lol:

Good question i was wondering about that!

A wax wont remove scratches at all mate as they contain no abrasives, they are purely to sit on top of the paint to look good and give protection. If the stuff you are using is removing scratches (most likely filling them) then its most probably an all-in-one polish/wax which isn't the best to use imo. Using a dedicated polish followed by a dedicated wax will produce better results and give better protection.

Exactly mate, definately worth it imo, like i said new paint doesnt necessarily mean great looking paint, it just means no stone chips! Thats why i get annoyed sometimes at show and shine events because some people with original 10+ year old paint put a lot of time and effort in to caring for their paint but the guy who's just forked out £5k on a paint job wins but if you were to compare them in the sun i bet the show car with brand new paint is more swirly than the 10+ year old paint thats been machine polished. Next time you are out in bright sunlight walk around your car and i bet you will notice ghostly lines appear and disappear in the paint, those are holograms or 'buffer trails' and they are caused from bad machine polishing (usually at bodyshops or by dealers when new) by going too fast to get the car out the door asap and get the money so the polish used isnt broken down properly and is therefore only half way through doing its jobs so these lines are left behind. Here is an example of holograms in my mates bonnet (before i polished it): And after polishing (NOTE: i didnt go for a full de-swirl on his paint which is why there are still some swirls):

I would wait for the UDM mate as they will be coming out soon (rumors are late october) and they will be £100 with backing plates etc and they are 240v.

Well you might as well give it a go yourself then mate, its more fun doing it yourself not to mention more rewarding! You could quite easily get someone else to give your car a machine polish and getting it looking great and spend about the same (less in my case and if you take ardandy up on his forum deal!) as getting a porter cable and doing it yourself. But if you get it yourself then when you finally get the car painted and you have practised more, maybe done a few other cars then you can do your new paint because bodyshops machine polish the new paint but far too quickly leaving holograms all over it and they will also wash it before they give it to you so it will already have swirls etc! So its up to you. Wet sanding isn't necessary in any case, you can machine polish over stone chips and scratches and in some cases they will appear reduced by rounding the edge of the scratch/chip off. Wet sanding is only really for the experienced to get rid of deeper scratches and blemishes as well as orange peel in the paint, this is because it removes more lacquer than polishing would. But you still have to machine polish out the sanding scratches and for this you ideally need a rotary polisher and an agressive polish. I have seen a video showing wet sanding followed by polishing with a porter cable and it didnt get them out enough and the area that was wet sanded was hazy, thats because the porter cable doesnt build up enough heat to cut that far down.

Yeah its not hard mate, the Porter Cable is the easiest which is why they are so common, they are random orbital polishers (like a floor polisher) rather than rotary (like an angle grinder). Not only are they easier but also safer because they dont generate as much heat as quickly as a rotary does, but in turn that makes the job longer as the polish works quicker as it gets hot which is why pros use rotary polishers and when done properly can do the job much quicker. There are guides all over the for porter cable, including video tutorials on youtube! Where as there aren't for rotaries so much because they can do the damage! My advice (as well as anyone else who machine polishes) is to go down the scrappy and get a scrap panel to practise on. Dont just practise swirl removal but practise fcuking the paint up (if you can) as well so you know the limitations, but bear in mind that all paints are different ie german paint is bloody solid and takes a more aggresive polish or a harder polishing pad to remove swirls where as japanese paint (mainly honda and lexus) is like butter so you have to use a fine polish and at slower speeds etc else you can risk removing too much. So it might be worth getting a few panels, 1 from a vw/audi/bmw, 1 from a japanese car and so on. I use a rotary polisher mainly because i couldnt afford a porter cable at the time and i got a rotary cheap off ebay, it was risky starting with a rotary but i practised and read about it a lot and soon got the hang of it. Nathan uses a rotary as well. Also worth mentioning that you may want to hold on before buying a porter cable as there is a new version coming out in this country called the Ultimate Detailing Machine which is basically the same thing but improved plus it will come in 240v with english plugs etc so no need for a transformer like you need with a pc.

Hi mate, Get ready for some really geeky stuff! The swirls you see are very thin scratches in the paint/lacquer caused by bad washing techniques ie using a sponge (grit on the paint, sponge has a large flat surface and you push the dirt around!). Basically when the sun shines down on the car its reflected off the hard edge of the scratch and back up in to your eyes so you see the scratch rather than the depth of the paint. If your car has lacquer (corrado's do) then the swirls are in the lacquer. When you machine polish you use an abrasive polish which with the speed and heat build up from the machine cut the lacquer until the swirls are gone. You aren't cutting that much off really but its obviously not good to keep doing it or to do it wrong because if used incorrectly a machine polisher CAN burn through the paint (but tbh you will have to be pretty bad with it!) There are polishes which 'fill' swirls though if you dont want to machine polish it. Autoglym Super Resin Polish is great at filling swirls. Basically the resins in the polish are pushed down into the scratch giving it a flat surface again and therefore not reflecting the sun up to your face, but it doesnt last very long unless you lock the polish in with a sealant, more specifically Autoglym Extra Gloss Protection. This is still temporary though so if you want swirls gone then you need to machine polish it. Couple of diagrams for you (Shamelessly stolen from detailing world): This is an exploded example of the paint. This is how a swirl would look magnified. This is how filling swirls work with a resin polish. And this is cutting the lacquer to remove the swirls. Are you thinking of doing it yourself? Rob.

They do look good actually! Here you go mate LINK

Just a quick one. My mate needs to change his front wheel hub as 2 wheel bolts have snapped inside it (thanks for a garage not tightening them properly :roll:) To change the hub do you have to change the bearing as well? Am i right in thinking the bearing is inside the carrier and then the hub presses on to that and you need a hub puller to remove the hub? Cheers.

Come on Michael get some bloody pics up will ya!!! :lol:

I dont, i think it looks like a bloody peugeot!! :|