Stacey's Belated Yo Yo Build Thread

[StaceyS3]

Bet you wish you'd moved your magnet before you started grinding

Yeah there's a few of them covered in steel fillings as the cars full of tools crap and general mess, gonna take me ages to get it to a decent position to send it off to a body shop lol

I'm not even going to ask why you're welding a safe into the boot of the car..... lol

Also
What did you weld the cage with tig 1.6 or 2.5mm arc rods or was it mig wire?
Argon or no argon?

Haha suppose it does look like a safe...have been thinking and think may do something on the rear seat area instead but idea was to contain the hazardous stuff like fuel and meth incase the worst should happen and also might dampen the noise of the 2 x 044 pumps that'll be buzzing away

Welding wise was just a mig with 0.8mm wire and argoshield which can't remember the % mix off of the top of my head, it's by far not the prettiest welding but it will be functional and hoping paint will cover up some of the more unsightly areas

 

[StaceyS3]

Got a couple of hours on the car yesterday before work

Got the dash bar cut and modded to fit in the now a lot tighter space









Have got to work out the positions of these 2 bits that have had to hack off that hold the dash board trim, fuse box etc and weld or fix them in position



Can anyone think of any reason to NOT weld the dash bar in position before I commit and do so (completely forgotten myself if will hinder doing so as have the memory of a goldfish)

On another note had a bit of a wake up call on the way home from work this morning! So now in need of another daily driver

 

[mattiekane]

id meaby tac them in place just incase lol

poor golf!!

 

[A3-Lee]

What happened mate

 

[StaceyS3]

Tacking them is Definately an option could return from, it's got a bolt each end but have lost some of the other mounting points that used to be used on the sides.
I'd love to weld it in as its only going to add strength but have got a strange felling will regret it if I do so?

The golf is definately RIP and was extremely lucky as could have been a lot worse as was on my way home from work and feel asleep which resulted in driving straight on at a left hand bend. Was also very lucky to catch it as quickly as I did as would have been into either some front gardens or houses I also managed to miss a telegraph pole by a few ft :0

 

[<tuffty/>]

Dude!...

<tuffty/>

 

[superkarl]

That's gnarly!

 

[Lavis89]

Aww man, you got lucky dude. im sure most of us have been there at some point, some just get luckier than others and manage to get away with it. good to see you got off pretty lightly all things considering though.

 

[StaceyS3]

Thanks guys I really do feel so lucky as was doing around 60-70 last I could remember prior to hitting the curb and whilst bouncing along the curb and verge an oncoming car had to take evasive action

Worst bit about it was I was less than a mile from home out of the total of 48 miles but all in all just over the moon that no one was hurt and didn't damage anyone's personal property.

To add to it I went out as soon as I'd woke up to buy 10 lottery tickets as luck was certainly on my side today

 

[Prawn]

Ah man, not cool!

Sorry to hear about the accident, but glad to hear you are ok! fair play to you for admitting the cause. most people would try to cover that up!

Having worked stupid hours in the past myself, I've come very close to falling asleep while driving before too, and it's terrifying.

Glad it's just a car to be replaced, and not yourself, or worse - the S3!

Progress is looking great too. I'm really excited to see it done

 

[A3-Lee]

So that's the reason for the serious cage in the s3 then incase it happens again lol apologys if it's too soon for jokes

 

[StaceyS3]

Thanks guys and no worries lee, you've got to laugh about things in life as once it's happened it's happened, getting down won't change that!

I joked about it myself and got torn apart by a few friends as am renowned for falling asleep in many walks of life including standing up at work, up against the speaker at a hard house event and even mid conversation with someone like a flick of a switch lol

Lesson has been learnt and will be stopping for a quick snooze after my first nightshift

I think following recent events I will be welding the dash bar in place to aid strength on the S3

Any suggestions for the next car? Ideally criteria has got to be diesel and want something with some grunt? Had already planned on getting a B7 A4 3.0tdi this summer and breaking the golf anyways but obviously my hand has been forced sooner.

Would love the B8 3.0tdi as that engines a peach and can hit 300hp with a couple of choice mods such as intercooler, map and a couple of exhaust mods or 350 is possible with a hybrid but unfortunately they're out of my price range

Just need some speed fix back in my life ASAP

 

[<tuffty/>]

...Just need some speed fix back in my life ASAP

Preferably after a kip...

I have been there to be fair... back in the days when I did 12 hour shifts there was the odd occasion on my way home I was close to falling asleep... thankfully not a massive journey home but its a scary enough moment waking up from the 'nodding off' bit let alone the rude awakening you had...

Stay safe dude... I lost a friend many years back to a similar incident to this... one of the reasons I changed career and got out of shift work...

<tuffty/>

 

[StaceyS3]

Thanks dude and sorry to hear about your friend.

I usually lift share with two others which does help but that day I didn't

Following recent events in now considering other options regarding the respray, including DIY, plasti dipping or not doing the exterior at all and suffering the imperfections for at least the year.....gonna do a little research and come back on this one

Think I'll be doing the cage and inside regardless now as most people want ££££ to spray a cage and run a mile, plus not as concerned about the finish.
What would people reconmend with regards to buying a cheap spray gun?

 

[Prawn]

335d? I know it's not VAG, but they seem to be utterly bonkers with a map. Can be had for well under £10k now

 

[A3-Lee]

335d? I know it's not VAG, but they seem to be utterly bonkers with a map. Can be had for well under £10k now

280bhp standard

 

[superkarl]

500lbs torque when mapped aren't they??

 

[Prawn]

Ben Parsons has one, 280bhp / 400lbft standard.

I believe he has a DPF delete and a map, and it recently made 376bhp / 600lbft on the dyno at Devil developments!

 

[mattiekane]

pug 106 Straight 1.5 diesel....feeel the raw 58bhp diesel pooowwwwwaaaaa

 

[Prawn]

Is that the XN or the XRD Mattie?

I towed my mini on a trailer behind a 1.5 XRD 106 once. was hilarious

 

[mattiekane]

have driven a XN...once!! lol i dont have one tho! lol
Audi A4 1.9tdi
suzuki vitara 1.6 offroader
civic saloon
celica GT4
is what i have at the moment

 

[StaceyS3]

The 335d is an absolute animal and seems to outperform the M3's once has got a good map on it :0

Only downside is once again out of my price range

In a couple of years it will probably be at the top of my list of cars to own

At the moment I think it's most likely going to be a B7 at £5k ish then a couple of stage 2 mods and map which will hopefully see the upper side of the 200's

 

[a3_daz]

I feel your pain here, om always nodding off after a night shift, it's a horrible feeling, open the windows and slap yourself a few times does the trick for about 5 minutes then start nodding off again, quite dangerous really but can't be helped sometimes.

 

[StaceyS3]

I feel your pain here, om always nodding off after a night shift, it's a horrible feeling, open the windows and slap yourself a few times does the trick for about 5 minutes then start nodding off again, quite dangerous really but can't be helped sometimes.

Yeah exactly what I do, am my own worst enemy for always trying to push things and myself further and further but now as soon as I feel drowsy with the nodding feeling ill if by myself pull over for a kip and if lift sharing swap with one of the others.

Tried very simular things to keep awake but the funniest one I've tried before is when in winter temps put your hand out the window until completely numb then shove it down your pants lol

 

[Lavis89]

this reminds me actually, i got a mate that owes me a blast in his 335! i removed his dpf for him (cut it up, smashed out the filter and welded the box back together) going to have to get on at him about that...

 

[Westy]

335d? I know it's not VAG, but they seem to be utterly bonkers with a map. Can be had for well under £10k now

This is what I'm looking at now as my main driver. Great cars and tons of toys.

Glad to hear you're ok Stace. Take it easy fella, stop burning the candle at both ends.

 

[JUS3IN]

glad you are ok fella, was the golf diesel? buy a cheap pos blown up s3 and drop the diesel lump in, something ive fancied!-)

 

[StaceyS3]

this reminds me actually, i got a mate that owes me a blast in his 335! i removed his dpf for him (cut it up, smashed out the filter and welded the box back together) going to have to get on at him about that...

Yeah I wouldn't be letting that one slip as I bet it's an experience with that amount of power delivered in the derv kind of way

This is what I'm looking at now as my main driver. Great cars and tons of toys.

Glad to hear you're ok Stace. Take it easy fella, stop burning the candle at both ends.

Think it's a little way off for me at the mo but will definately be looking for one when the price changes.

How's things anyhows mate not heard or seen anything in a while, you a dad yet Mr silver fox? Have you also still got your hybrid derv? May need to get some info out of you as have something simular

Have toned down the work since before the 2nd little one.... No more doing stupid back to back shifts and 100 + hour weeks for me, just need more of a life than that! How's your self employed venture coming along?

glad you are ok fella, was the golf diesel? buy a cheap pos blown up s3 and drop the diesel lump in, something ive fancied!-)

Thanks mate this now I think of it would be an absolute dream of a car for me to have but is so much work and have now already fully stripped the golf to a bare shell ready for disposal, I've come somewhere sort of close though as have now aquired an early Audi A3 8P 2.0 TDI off of a close friend to get me about

It's an all Audi household now with....

2004 8p A3 2.0 tdi which is soon to be fettled with
2005 B7 A4 avant 2.0 tdi which is now mapped
2002 8l S3 wishful monster lol

 

[Westy]

All good matey. Been a dad for 11 weeks now and love it. Still got the derv and it hit 161k the other week. Still a good strong car.

Work is going pretty damn well too thanks.

Let me know if you want to talk dervs

 

[StaceyS3]

All good matey. Been a dad for 11 weeks now and love it. Still got the derv and it hit 161k the other week. Still a good strong car.

Work is going pretty damn well too thanks.

Let me know if you want to talk dervs

****** hell time flys! Congrats to you and Helen, I must have missed it via your thread and Facebook!

Will definately be seeking some derv advice, will drop you a line soon

 

[StaceyS3]

Been really slacking and very vacant with regards to the updates on this thread

Trying to follow on from where I left the thread after the crash, I broke the golf and scrapped the shell.

I then bought this little gem from a friend for £900! It had a couple of faults including and intake flap fault, EGR, a pebble dashed bumper and a dented/rusty wing. But nothing to serious.







I had a result on a bumper and wing for £140 delivered, refurbished the alloys and last but not least mapped it.
Andrew @ blacksmoke was very helpful as usual and coded out the EGR and intake manifold flap faults to which I also done a EGR delete and has run faultlessly and pulled like a train since





Now onto the interesting A3

I set out repairing the slots in the floor that I had previously cut out to drop the cage through. There was 3 layers in some places which was proving difficult to weld each one and seal it without completely burning it off when welding the next layer down











I revisited the dash bar to which after the misfortune in the golf I decided to weld it in place. I then hacked up the old side mounts for the dash bar to use as a datum to weld on the side parts of the dash mount





Forgot to take a picture of it welded to the A pillar tube but you get the idea

Progress was then come to a grinding halt when I had an accident on a fishing trip with some old friends



Completely stupid accident and entirely my fault from falling from a tree! Me and my old school friends can get a little childish all together unsupervised by the women but even still ...what a numpty!

On a plus side it did result in a lot of this over summer resting the ankle with torn ligaments



TBC

 

[StaceyS3]

It now had got to the point of having to make and fit the seat rails. I used details on the steel gauge from the resident crustations thread. Iirc the box section was 30x30x3mm and plates were 50x80x3mm.

I put the seat in on some blocks to get a rough position of how far back I wanted to go and then aimed to place the bars on the centre hole of each set of mounting holes on the seat side mounts





I measured the hole spacings on the seat and used the steering wheel as a centre line to work from, it is surprisingly closer to the tunnel than what first looks like centre





This is roughly how the seat will end up





With the seats in the next natural step was the harness mounting points. I made a big mistake with this at first, I had read on a forum that can be placed nut side up and just went with it. It was then pointed out by prawn and a couple of others that should be the other way up (which makes complete sense when you think of it)

This was the way I originally put them on and after being corrected cut them out and re welded the other way.



I also had a little mishap during welding these in! I had pulled the fuel lines well clear but little to my knowledge as had a respirator on as well as welding mask, the car under seal had caught light rather than the usual smouldering. I realised it was smokey when I lifted the mask up and didn't think to much of it and went to open up the other end of the tent to let air through and upon my return I saw the flames from under the car :0

The under seal had caught light and spread to the fuel lines, I ran indoors and luckily Chloe had just washed up so grabbed the bowl of water and frantically chucked at the underside of the car. I got away with it and put it out but has made me rethink and pay more attention.

Picture really doesn't look that bad but can assure you was producing some rather large flames



Finished mount welded on (the right way round lol)



Next up was to start prepping for paint and sealing any areas up that were exposed from welding/fabricating and I also applied some filler to any damaged areas where removed a lot of spot welds

I used some hammerite rust remover on anywhere with a sign or surface rust followed by washing the car inside 3 times, which was a very weird sensation

The rust remover left a rather brown mark after cleaning it off but this cleaned off to a certain degree with solvent





Seam sealant was applied on the welds through to the bulkhead followed by good old hammerite direct to rust



Same process was applied to the underneath of the shell and anywhere else out of the internal cabin area

TBC

 

[badger5]

good work

 

[Andrew@A.L.D]

I'm on the look out for a TDI like that. Bargain price too. I was looking to spend £5k on a smoker.

 

[StaceyS3]

good work

Thanks bill, there's more to come which will hopefully get up today, looks like the badger wagon is taking shape nicely again.
All the fabricating work just takes so much more time than most would originally think....plasma cutter would have made it so much quicker

I'm on the look out for a TDI like that. Bargain price too. I was looking to spend £5k on a smoker.

5k would get you a very nice and tidy motor, my golf was £1500 and was an absolute shed and very worn out but this A3 is lovely to drive and actually enjoy chucking it about. On the look out for when a cheap hybrid or big turbo pops up for it to liven it up some more

 

[Prawn]

Good to see this moving along again mate

It's a long road but it's going to be awesome when it's done!

 

[StaceyS3]

Think that now brings me pretty much up to the painting stage

I learnt a lot why doing this and as usual part of the learning process had to involve a mistake or two. I'd never painted or had even the slightest knowledge of painting with a spray gun so lots of research was in order.

Grahams81 on vortex and SCN have me some very good advice and was very helpful. (Thanks Graham )
I went with a Sata minijet 4 and set on 2 pack paint from Graham's recommendation and plenty of research. A local paint supplier stocked MIPA and recommended them so that's what I went with.



I also with being 2k paint that was using for the main colour decided to buy an air fed devilbiss mask and 3 stage filter. They're quite expensive but found one on eBay that an old boy had used just once to paint a mini so was like new and got a good price so was over the moon







Compressor wise I've got a 50l 3hp twin cylinder comp that picked up a while ago from one of my old supervisors, this although pretty capable for its size wouldn't be enough to run the gun and mask. I managed to borrow one in the end from a friends dad which was a bonus.
2 pack paint is very dangerous and if not respected can kill you and others as a byproduct is isocyanate (form of cyanide!!!) this to be honest was enough to make me really think everything over I was doing and really take my time when using it.
One compressor is enclosed in my garage and if I used this to feed my mask I would have been stuffed as the garage did fill with fumes being so close. Following this I placed the other comp at the furthest point in the garden right in the corner by the wall. The comp I borrowed was a 2hp single cylinder 90l and surprisingly was having to run flat out to keep up and maintain a decent pressure to the mask.





My thoughts then went onto the car tent. This had been thoroughly cleaned and swept out along side all the car cleaning, but also needed something to help remove the gas's and overspray. I made a panel up with some left over MDF and bough a cheap kitchen extract fan from eBay for just under £30 as proper industrial extract fans were a lot more. This certainly helped, it could have done with more but wasn't prepared to spend that kind of money on it.







The gun itself I kept a small cup on this small smart repair sized gun which along with being accompanied by this UJ allows you to try and get in a all the small nooks and crannies.



Here comes the first mistake....I set my regulator to the pressure recommend by the paint/primer which iirc is 4 bar whilst little did I know the max pressure for the gun was 2 bar, I had no instructions etc and wasn't until I was cleaning it later I saw it faintly etched on it.



Whilst spraying at this pressure it naturally created a lot of over spray and a poor finish. This was only for the first coat as rectified it there after for the further coats.

Here's a few pictures of how it stands after priming











TBC

 

[StaceyS3]

Good to see this moving along again mate

It's a long road but it's going to be awesome when it's done!

Thanks mate, feel like it's getting somewhere now and can see the light at the end of the tunnel!

Am hoping to have it running start of next year and to have time to run in, map and refine it before the weather really pics up for summer time

Once that's all done will be coming to you to try and improve it in a track/racecar manor

 

[StaceyS3]

Priming was now finished which brings me onto painting

This is were a lot of care is needed using the 2k paint! I made sure I done it on a day when kids were out and neighbours weren't about.

The primer had left a very rough finish, weather this was from the over spray or just the way it usually goes? I had no intentions of flattening the whole car down as would take me forever and I was getting impatient plus most of it will not get touched or anybody be going near. In the footwell I thought it is actually a bonus lol. I flattened the cage in the door bar areas and anywhere within the reach of driver/passenger.

By this point I had worked out where I wanted to be with the gun settings and got a bit of a feel and confidence behind me and the paint went on a lot better than the primer with no runs (that I've found anyhow) and could of actually laid the paint on thicker to get a smoother finish.

The shop when purchased had only given me 1l of black and said it would be enough...which later found out it wasn't and ideally would have wanted 1.5-2l, this then meant I had to be selective to where I wanted it thicker/thinner as couldn't get more on the day







One other thing I learnt is I could have done with more lighting as although the 2 LED floodlights give reasonable lighting it wasn't enough when wearing the mask and having the tent completely sealed up. Once it had all dried I noticed one or two spots in not entirely happy with.

One of them spots being the passenger side main hoop has got a nice white stripe on it that missed. I did really underestimate how difficult it is to spray the inside of a caged car and get all angles without touching, leaning on and treading all over wet paint.





I'm intending on touching up a few bits at a date in the near future when have got a decent bit of time and to borrow a second compressor again, plus have got to spray the ally panels for the fuel/battery cell as completely forgot about them whilst doing the car.

TBC

 

[tom2001s3]

Looking good