Hump Day Randoms

18 Jan Hump Day Randoms

PG-13 thoughts here, everybody. It’s just the middle of the week, the top of the hump, before we begin the two-day descent down to the weekend.

Let’s start with one of the lifts in our service bay. What’s this E46 doing here? Is it a swap? How many more doors are hiding past the end of the photo? Only time will tell…

In fabrication, we’ve finished our simple mounting system for the 190E’s radiator. The radiator is removed by picking it up out of the body; normally, there are a couple plastic clamps that keep the radiator in place. However, this isn’t the stock radiator, so we needed to find a new method. Enter our way of doing it — the two bent pieces are slotted to hold the radiator in place, while they’re bolted to existing bolt holes on the 190E’s radiator support. From there, an out-of-view clamping system ensures that the radiator is both securely locked in place and incapable of contacting anything else in the engine bay. They’ll be painted black soon, but the unpainted versions tend to show a bit more detail in the fabrication work:

Meanwhile, on top of a box in the office, Al’s 9ff 48mm exhaust valve arrived from Germany! In addition to his Cayenne receiving a front bumper respray, we’re also welding on a new 9ff valve where the previous one kicked the bucket. More on this little bit of fabrication in the coming days. For now, though, we’re still marveling over what is probably the nicest (and one of the more expensive) exhaust valves to roll through the shop.

Speaking of Al and his Cayenne Turbo, the front bumper has finished being painted, and is currently reattached to the car, where it will undergo the final prepping stages to get the paint as perfectly matched as possible.

The Jetta we posted earlier is also more or less done. Buffing and sanding commenced yesterday and finished up today, so it’s just about ready to get back on the road. It’ll serve its owner much better once it’s out of the paint shop, so we’re doing our best to get it back into the wild.

And just for kicks, here’s a shot of Gold Wheels that we’ve edited to make it look like it was taken back in ye olden days. Imagine if Doc Brown went back to the 1800’s in THIS bad boy.

Where we’re going, we don’t need roads.