figured i'd start a small thread on my summer project. overall, the car doesn't need much. the body is in outstanding shape along with the interior. its a barn find in iowa thats been well kept over the years and i'm breathing some new life into it with some basic upgrades to make it a little more fun and to give it a face lift. here's the day i brought it home from central iowa: first mod: installed the OEM wheel that i bought from a friend since the original was long gone. once i got home it was time for a full detail:
with some more time and some elbow grease, it was time for some updates. first, the awful faded bumpers needed to be brought back to life. i used rick's best vinyl and plastic dye from prevette's for this. i soaks deep into the plastic and leaves a beautiful matte-black shine like it did when it was new. before: after: the rear before: in progress: and after: then, it was time for some tunes. PO had an awful radio that i couldn't stand. it was too complex so i threw it out the window. so i found the most basic of basic alpine decks. just a basic AM/FM with AUX and USB. no CD player means its only about 3 inches deep and super light. i also replaced the original door speakers with brand new units from pioneer. nothing fantastic, but acceptable sound from 2 little 4 inch speakers. then it was time to fix the nasty, rotten and rattling exhaust system. took it down to the guys at SCI performance and they hooked me up with a lovely 2.25 in high flow system from tectonics tuning with a mangaflow muffler. its perfect for the little 8v under the hood and it makes every one of those 75 ponies sound amazing. next it was on to the lighting. or lack there of. anyone that has driven behind sealed beam headlights knows how awful they are. how the hell did people survive at night? i considered retrofitting the ellipsoid projectors from my BMW but i can't say i was won over by the look from other scirocco owners. so i sent a message to VW's classic parts division in wolfsburg and they sent back a brand-new set of e-code Hellas. they look the part and perform much better than the DOT lamps. and then it was on to the interior. only one dash light bulb worked in the gauge cluster. and even it was sketchy at best. so rather than replace with regular, crappy wedge bulbs...i decided to go modern with LEDs. nothing crazy, just plain white, crisp, wide-angle LEDs on every fixture. more to come!