George - 16v 1990 - Restomod

[stretch. 0]

Bit of history on my Corrado,

 

I'm 10th owner (My girlfriend is now he 11th!),

 

Registered 31st March 1990, it's a 1990, 1.8 16v on 163350 miles (As of today!) and we're cracking on with a full style restomod.

 

So far, since I've owned it (March 2010), I've had to have a fair bit of work done.

 

- Gearbox Rebuilt

- Head rebuilt after HGF

- New Rad

- Clutch master and slave replaced

- New rear calipers

- Complete new brakelines

- New alternator

 

And numerous other bits and pieces over the last couple of years, but now's the time, while the cars off the road, to really crack on with the work.

 

The car's been laid up since September (Had to get a z4 itch out of the way!) so started at the beginning.

 

Changed the rear pads, unstuck the rear calipers and cleaned off the standing rust.

 

Got the mk4 coolant tank to go on, and need to replace the top radiator hose after a pinprick hole.

 

The anti roll bar needs re-attaching

 

Handbrake mounting needs welding, as the handle has ripped the metal from mounting.

 

Umpteen different bodywork bits.

 

-- Nice little list. Good thing this car has sentimental value.

 

 

 

I'll be splitting this up into a fair few posts, and this could well be one of the slowest moving builds!

 

Here we go!

[James. 9]

 

I'll be splitting this up into a fair few posts, and this could well be one of the slowest moving builds!

 

No shame in that.

Not usually a fan of modern wheels but those don't look half bad.

Look forward to the next installment.

[stretch. 0]

Part 1 - Dials.

 

Odd place to start, but after snapping cartilage from working on the corrado, I've had to take a bit of a lighter set of tasks.

 

I like the corrado dials, but they really date the car. Nothing much I can do about the analog speedo, But I'm damn well gonna try.

 

 

Dials look a bit crazy without the fronts... and sadly I snapped the tacho needle trying to pry it off..

 

 

This should help anyone looking to custom create their own dial facings for the early 'rado's.

 

 

And what I am to have them looking like.

 

All the white area's will be back lit, there's room in the dials to mount a few ribbon led's, or maybe even set up a nice pcb to mount some SMD's to.

 

Also, going to be re-working the bottom row of warning lights, so they'll be back lit icons, like on more modern cars.

 

The plan is to print them on transparency film, like the type used in overhead projectors, any portions I want a different colour for, I can change with coloured film.

[Liamvr6 10]

Looks like a nice project car

[Sean_Jaymo 0]

Interesting!

[stretch. 0]

Thanks guys,

 

I've received the transparency film through, so I'm going to finish up the design and see if I can get one printed out tonight as a trial.

 

Bloody ballache finding a decent film, as overhead projectors seem to have gone out of fashion since I left primary school!

 

Ended up buying a box of 50, that are suitable for inkjet printing.

 

Then next will be a case of wiring in some LED's, (thinking indigo or a darker red at the moment) and away we go!*

 

*Or not as my experiments so often turn out...

 

-- Edit --

 

Okay, just tried printing the dials...

 

Word of advice: Find out which way your printer feeds paper through, then try and remember which side of the transparency paper is the side that you print to, otherwise you may cause your printer to smoulder.

 

Going to pinch the brothers printer tomorrow after work, and try again. Looks promising though!

Edited May 24, 2013 by stretch.

[GrahamU 6]

Looks great.

 

What did you use to design the new faces?

[stretch. 0]

Thanks, just used Photoshop, some people who've done the same to other cars have used illustrator, but I stuck with what I;'m comfortable with.

 

The first successful print was unsuccessful!

 

It printed and dried perfectly, but the size was slightly out, and the colour was patchy and semi transparent at best, I'm going to try and fix the size issue, then try multiple overprinting.

 

---------- Post added at 11:36 AM ---------- Previous post was at 11:58 AM ----------

 

7 Complete overprints seems to be the right kind of amount for the printer I'm using to get the opacity level I want,

Edited May 27, 2013 by stretch.

[stretch. 0]

Okay, well the dials are pretty much finished now, after going through about 7 different designs, 3 black ink cartridges and umpteen sheets of PHP paper.

 

The visible front should be printed in reverse, I tinted it 3 times in total.

 

Next, I printed a black and white copy onto some decent quality paper stock, I overprinted this twice to get a true black colour.

 

The two were then.carefully joined together, with an additional blank transparency behind to protect the paper. and the gaps for the odometer, screws and needles was then cut out.

 

A word of caution here, do not use more spray mount than necessary, otherwise the ink on the paper and the visible transparency will bleed.

 

These cut outs were then used as stencils on a sheet on electro luminescent paper to provide the backlighting.

 

I'll add some finished shots later.

 

in the meantime, anyone know where I can pick up some new needles from? I've lost one...

[_Meth 0]

Any pics of this finished? Have been meaning to get onto the same thing with my dials for months now but never got round to it!

[Sean_Jaymo 0]

Probably best finding the needles from another set of clocks. I think that some 90's audis had light up needles that fitted if you wanted illuminated needles? I'll have a look for where I saw it!

[Sean_Jaymo 0]

Have a look at this thread for inspiration! Click

[stretch. 0]

This is now the third time I’ve had to write out this post. Thanks to my stupid mac updating everything, then the forum logging me out! GRRRRR!

 

Right.

 

I’ve been slacking on the updates, even though there has been a fair bit of work done on the car.

 

First of all, a few shots I had on my computer of the lit dials:

 

 

 

They look nice, but I’m not 100% happy with the execution, but it was an admirable first try.

 

Sadly, the fuel/temp gauge stopped working after I dropped the dials, and with that, I also cracked the plastic case, awesome.

 

Then, the wheel fell off.

 

Not figuratively, literally.

 

 

Gutted. This was the only decent wing on the whole bloody car!

 

Sadly, due to a forthcoming holiday, I just didn’t have the time, or dosh, to fix the car to take on my roadtrip to Germany.

 

So I took the next best thing. A 2008 Laguna 2.0 DCI Sport Tourer (fancy word for an estate if you ask me!). To be fair, it performed really well, even cracked 130 mph on the autobahn, so it did me proud. And returned a 10 day average of 47 MPG. Coupled with the €1.27/l for diesel, we weren’t too upset at the situation. And it meant my girlfriend could take the big suitcase!

 

 

Highlight of the trip! Wolfsburg felt like a waste of time, and we decided against visiting Osnabruck, wouldn’t feel right without the corrado! SO that’s on the cards for next time!

 

Right, so back from Germany, time to get back to work on the corrado.

 

I managed to finally find an early corrado that was being broken, so I pinched a wing, a wheel arch liner (which was scrap sadly!) and a set of dials, so I could try and sort mine out!

 

While I was waiting for those to turn up, I decided to make a start on the heater matrix. So I studied up, read the guide on how to do it (without removing the dash) backwards and forwards about 100 times, which didn’t take long, as it’s only about 6 bullet points (warning sign!)

 

 

After 8 Hours, I have this:

 

 

Not too bad, for a ham fisted person like me! Except, scraped knuckles and the worry of remembering where the bajillion fixings went back wasn’t my only issue.

 

Oh no.

 

 

The hot air exchanger box (air box, interior air box, heater box, stupid ****ing flappy thing) control cog had disappeared somewhere. Which is odd, as I remember everything working, albeit that was over a year prior to this point when I last had working heaters.

 

I managed to get a replacement heater box from Luke at Obsessive Compulsive Dubs Disorder (OCDD).

 

So while Luke was getting that sorted, I decided to allocate a little pot of money to tarting the car up, and sorting out the mangled wing.

 

And off to the garage (Arran Motors in Leeds, can’t recommend them enough!) it goes! As usual with these things, I then spend twice the amount I was expecting, by just thinking, ooh yeah, I might as well do that as I have to do x and y anyway if I want to do Z.

 

Eventually I stopped myself.

 

[*] New springs

[*] N/S wing fitted and painted

[*] O/S wing straightened and repainted

[*] Rear arches cut out, and remade, and painted

[*] Full 4 x wheel tracking

[*] Set of secondhand Lenso DTM Wheels (Anyone got a centre cap and nut spare?)

[*] Both doors de dinged, straightened and painted.

 

Had change from £1300 surprisingly, and I still have 1.5 tins of paint left over. Which is enough to respray the car a few more times. But I told them not to worry about finishing off the heater matrix, as that would be like admitting defeat. And I’m a northern man. And we just don’t do that. We’re manly men, with manly jobs in IT working in comfy offices with free tea and coffee and cakes. Manly.

 

And besides, I’d convinced myself that putting it back together after 3 weeks would be “fun”.

 

Here’s a pic of the car after the respray,

 

 

Just need to find another centre cap and nut now, as one of the local rapscallions has had away with one.

 

Anyway, while I was sorting out the heater matrix, I did a few other little things, like the window roller bushes (Thanks for them – 8V Matt), and new pedal rubbers, replacement rear heated screen button, and replaced the clips for one of the trim pieces that surround the boot hatch.

 

Productive ey?

 

And that kind of brings us up to today. Well, Friday.

 

When the car cut out after going over a bumpy road. Restarted it and continued my journey absolutely fine.

 

Then yesterday, it did the same, except now it won’t idle.

 

And so today I started hunting down the issue, I fixed the battery back in place properly, and started going through the motions. Figured I’d check the idle stabilization valve, as it looks as old as the car.

 

Even trying gently to get the connector off, the ISV disintegrated in my hands. So I’m guessing that may be part of the issue.

 

But then I also spotted a broken wire and spade connector lurking beneath the ISV.

 

So, looks like I’ve got a bit more work to do!