Duder's Beige Brick - ARUNDL - 1981 242 DL +B230FT

[Duder]

Originally Posted by Jon P.

SEM Bluebird Brown for your door cards might work well for matching the seat color. I am about to paint my cards and interior w/ Bluebird Brown and Cordovan Brown, goal is to make it look similar to your car.

Muchas gracias. I'm guessing the color is called Bluebird Brown because of the eponymous school bus manufacturer that used such a color for all of their sumptuous vinyl bench seats, no?

I'll check it out!

[Jon P.]

Here are the cans shown over the stock brown carpet. Carpet is pretty clean besides some cat hairs.

[Duder]

Mini update. Need to revise wiring and adjust them.

[cosbySweater]

Thank you for keeping the coffin hood alive!!!!

[Duder]

You're welcome. It's alive for now, but I do have the grille that matches the TV screen lights, which requires a flathood. If I run that grille on this car it will be with a hood painted beige to match.

[cosbySweater]

Nooooooooooo dont do it!!!! But if you do can i call dibs on the cofin hood lights?

[Duder]

You mean the quad rectangles? I'm planning on using those on my diesel 245 since the lights on that car are in pretty sad shape.

[cosbySweater]

Flat hood the wagon too

[morrisamazon]

The matching brown color (some years ago and discontinued) was SEM 15153 Mocha Coffee.....

[Jon P.]

Pretty sure I have a few pictures of stuff I have painted with the above paints, but I don't want to derail your thread, Duder.

[Stiggy Pop]

Love this car. That interior is going to be amazing!

[petiww]

Gotta love the brown interior.
Good job on the car!

Is it just me or does anyone think this car needs a turbo grille and a chin spoiler?

[Duder]

Originally Posted by morrisamazon

The matching brown color (some years ago and discontinued) was SEM 15153 Mocha Coffee.....

Cool, nice to have that number as a reference. I think some paint shops can custom mix SEM so it may still be possible to get that code.

Originally Posted by Jon P.

Pretty sure I have a few pictures of stuff I have painted with the above paints, but I don't want to derail your thread, Duder.

Derail away! The thread is like 4 years old and I've barely done anything to this car. :-p

Originally Posted by Stiggy Pop

Love this car. That interior is going to be amazing!

Thanks again for the compliments - hope your own beigemobile is doing well.

Originally Posted by petiww

Gotta love the brown interior.
Good job on the car!

Is it just me or does anyone think this car needs a turbo grille and a chin spoiler?

I already have the chin spoiler, just need to clean it up and paint it. And I'd be happy to run a turbo grille with the coffin hood if I could find a decent one. Thanks for the compliments.

[Jon P.]

I would make my own project thread, but it would be boring and filled with many mechanically challenged updates.

Here are your stock 244/245 interior handles painted Cordovan Brown.



And here they are on a manual door card painted Bluebird Brown. Actually a pretty nice contrast.



Using SEM products I have always had phenomenal results, this time was a little different. The material for the armrests paints incredibly well. I painted mine about 2 years ago with SEM black that I purchased from IPD, absolutely no chipping despite hitting very high temps in Texas. The plastic panels and e-brake cover paint equally well using the SEM plastic adhesion promoter spray with no chipping and excellent results as well. However, painted vinyl door cards seem to rub off to some degree. I had to use a coping saw to cut out the larger 6.5" speaker pictured and accidentally rubbed the not-so-smooth coping saw handle against the top of the door card rubbing off sections here and there. May not compare to real world results of daily use, but having to paint the panel again sucks.

[Duder]

Jon P. - thanks for the pics and descriptions of your SEM work. Much appreciated and nice to see what the contrasting colors look like against each other.

Update for the 242: I got my driver's side seat adapters finished, seat installed, rear skinny bumper installed, and TV screens aligned and working. Took the car for a drive for the first time in about a year. I can't describe how great it is with the Recaro and Momo wheel. Driving position is perfect for me, gauge visibility is excellent, and the whole car is more engaging to drive with just these two changes.

I'll get some pics of my seat adapters; they had to be fairly complex since I wanted 1.5" height but they have to be narrower than 1.5" to clear a bump in the Recaro seat pan. I ended up using 1.5" square tubing but cutting one corner out and inverting it, welded back in. This is v1.0 but I'm considering doing some laser-cut adjustable adapters in the future and selling a few if there's any interest. This would conceivably adapt any L-series Recaro to the 240 sliders.

Back to work today so I drove the 242 again. Realized I want this car to be my DD when it's "finished." Front fender looks mismatched in this pic but it's not; I did a test buff & polish on the fender and hood. Came out great and darkens up the color a lot.



Next on the list:
-Finish passenger side Recaro adapters
-Prep B230FT for swap: cleanup, new gaskets, oil seals, swap accessories
-Order/scrounge remaining parts for swap: clutch disc, injectors, coil pack for wasted spark, plugs, 2.4 instrument cluster, G80 tone-ring diff, radiator, oil cooler hoses, turbine hsg/manifold hardware, flame trap bits, AGM battery, assorted wiring.
-Pressure wash engine bay
-Do the swap

Simple as that.

[Alex Buchka]

I can dig it. Let's go on a junkyard run and get you some parts

[Duder]

WTYM. I am down whenever you are. Ecology 50% off day here we come. Whenever that may be; I can't find the schedule on their site.

[petiww]

If you want to DD that thing with the e-codes, I suggest you to put a thin plexi sheet in front of the glasses. I'm sure I'll do it on mine, because even here those headlights are not that common.

[Duder]

Originally Posted by petiww

If you want to DD that thing with the e-codes, I suggest you to put a thin plexi sheet in front of the glasses. I'm sure I'll do it on mine, because even here those headlights are not that common.

Good idea; thanks for the suggestion. It should be fairly easy to mount some sheets within the plastic trim frames for the headlights.

BTW I always enjoy watching the Magyar Nagydíj. Have you been to the Hungaroring?

[12david34]

Originally Posted by petiww

If you want to DD that thing with the e-codes, I suggest you to put a thin plexi sheet in front of the glasses. I'm sure I'll do it on mine, because even here those headlights are not that common.

btw nice work on the car, i dig it!

[12david34]

Originally Posted by Jon P.

I would make my own project thread, but it would be boring and filled with many mechanically challenged updates.

Here are your stock 244/245 interior handles painted Cordovan Brown.



And here they are on a manual door card painted Bluebird Brown. Actually a pretty nice contrast.



Using SEM products I have always had phenomenal results, this time was a little different. The material for the armrests paints incredibly well. I painted mine about 2 years ago with SEM black that I purchased from IPD, absolutely no chipping despite hitting very high temps in Texas. The plastic panels and e-brake cover paint equally well using the SEM plastic adhesion promoter spray with no chipping and excellent results as well. However, painted vinyl door cards seem to rub off to some degree. I had to use a coping saw to cut out the larger 6.5" speaker pictured and accidentally rubbed the not-so-smooth coping saw handle against the top of the door card rubbing off sections here and there. May not compare to real world results of daily use, but having to paint the panel again sucks.

THIS is AWESOME ! great idea

[petiww]

Originally Posted by Duder

BTW I always enjoy watching the Magyar Nagydíj. Have you been to the Hungaroring?

Good to hear!

Yes, we've been there with my buddies, on a big VW Golf meeting. We even did some laps on the ring itself. Sadly my buddy wasn't going too fast with his car when he could, he thought the (brand new) tires will worn out too fast...
But the cruise was awesome after that: http://www.autoblog.hu/media/2014/08/img_2323.jpg

[Duder]

Tires are meant to be used

Nice collection of Golfs. I like the little green Mk1 in the foreground.

[petiww]

Originally Posted by Duder

Tires are meant to be used

Nice collection of Golfs. I like the little green Mk1 in the foreground.

Thats what I said to him.
Then after the whole meeting he rushed through Budapest like we stole that car, I don't really know whats wrong with him sometimes...

But yes, there was a HUGE amount of Golfs mostly from Hungary on the ring (around 300), and these were just the cherry on top: http://autopult.hu/galeria/1309/vwta...o_9_medium.jpg
Some of them were quite tastefully modded, which I really like, and the stock&old ones.

But most VW-s here are ghetto fabbed smoky tdi sh!tboxes, and thats why I don't exactly like the Hungarian VW community...

[Duder]

Pulled this lump out of the corner tonight and started cleaning it up. It begins.