I have had a nasty sinus infection since last weekend, but I forgot to post this picture.  I sprayed some more paint samples, this is the transmission mounting bracket.  It turned out a little too glossy, but the paint covered the sanding scratches well.   There is a tiny bit of green pearl in here too, but it's hard to see.  I will add a little more next time, but I still want it to be subtle.

More sanding...

Here is something a little more exciting; my powder coated parts came back!  These were done by Allegheny Metal Finishers in Imperial, PA.  They did an excellent job!  The bumper rebars are a little more glossy than I wanted, but that's no big deal. 

All the visible parts were sandblasted and powder coated with primer.  I will do some bodywork on these and then wet paint them with my satin black pearl mixture. 

The OEM stampings are really ugly!  There are defects everwhere, but that's understandable since these were never meant to be visible.

There is a big wrinkle here on the subframe.

In a way it's cool to see how these are stamped, and really makes you appreciate the work required to make the body panels perfect and smooth.

Here is the big reason I didn't have them powdercoated - the spotwelds.  These welds are HUGE and deep, I might be able to block sand them out with only the powdercoat, but I might have to add putty and/or weld.

I also bought another trans for parts.  I want to use the drive flanges and clutch arm off of this one, and I also wanted to pull out all the bolts so I can measure them and order stainless replacements. 

Trannies everywhere!  It's like a Thai strip club.

More sanding.  I'm going to rework the clutch arm too, I might take a break from sanding to do that next week.

Getting closer!

More sanding.  This bearing scraper is pretty handy for the tight corners, it scrapes the texture right off.

I chopped up one of my durablocks to make some smaller blocks.

I picked up some green pearl to add to the satin black I'm using on the engine parts.  Any opinions?  I might have a sprayed sample tomorrow.

More sanding.  This is starting to suck.

Blast from the past!!! Tomorrow is my 10 year anniversary on the vwvortex forums so I was going through some old pictures. 

February 2001; I bought my mk2 golf!  It was a 1988, 1.8l 8v, 5-speed.  I think I paid $1050, it needed a wheel bearing and the right rear corner was dented.  This picture was taken about a month before I turned 16.

I didn't even have a permit yet; I had to ride shotgun!

This must have been spring 2002, I wrecked it in winter 2001/2002 and had to do some bodywork on the left front corner.

Sometime in the summer of 2002, I wrecked it again.  I bought another mk2 as a parts car and combined the two.

Cutting up the shell with Jeff Baker and Luigi DeSocio

Some things never change... dual sawzalls, smiling from ear to ear!  Note the Dan's Competition T-shirt (BMX supply store)

This was in the middle of some bodywork.  Check out the 1964 Ford Galaxie in the background!  It was my great grandmother's car, my dad bought it after she passed and it sat around for a few years.

Note the POS stickers

I painted the whole car in single stage blue acrylic enamel at JD Autobody in Oakmont, PA. Jeff was friends with the owner, Joe, and he let me rent the booth and borrow a spray gun.  I did the jambs and everything, I was pretty happy with it for a first paint job.

The interior was pretty clean and simple

Sweet equalizer, bro!

I made these tweeter pods after reading a how-to article in Minitruckin' magazine.

Sweet system!  I traded Woody a Junior Bacon Cheeseburger for the dented 10" Orion sub haha.

dubtuning.com... blast from the past!  Also notice some tape edge issues.

Where have the years gone!

Another 2-1/2 hours of sanding tonight...

This area was a little easier because I could reach most of it with the DA.  I need to remember what mounts to this bracket (if anything) because it looks like I can cut it off.

Safety first!

Safety first!

For some reason the speakers keep dying on my phone.  My old LG dumbphone died because the speakers quit, and my iPhone suffered the same fate last week.  As an experiment, I'm trying painters tape on iPhone #2. 

Three more hours of sanding...

This is the tiny area I worked on tonight.

Yesterday I packed up my subframes and bumpers, they're going out for sandblasting and primer this week.

I took another shot at the satin black, this time with PPG Omni MTK acrylic urethane.  Everything worked as planned.  This is a little too flat, but I'm happy because it mixed and cured exactly like it should have.  The acrylic enamel was simply the wrong product. 

We dragged out Woody's kart and had some fun!  There is a chance 4 more of these little guys will be racing around the parking lot in the next few weeks...

I decided to do a little more work on the front subframe tonight.  I was going to do this after sandblasting, but figured it would be easier this way.

This is another subframe, but this is what it looked like before I started:

After:

I was messing around with some panel forming and decided to polish up my dinging spoon.  I was straightening a painted aluminum panel so any texture or marks on the tool get imprinted on the soft, painted surface. 
Before:

Now it's a mirror!