Rear diff is back together with new seals. Now we need to decide what color to paint it.




Amanda has started painting stripes on the model.






We borrowed an OE refinished rear caliper and decided this is the way to go with ours.




In anticipation of panels showing up Thompson Racing Fabrication took the car out of storage and delivered it to Cherry Classic Cars. We must admit it's nice to get re-acquainted.






Now we just need our wide body kit.

 

Panels did indeed show up from Europe from Cool Wheels in Latvia. Cherry Classic Cars wasted no time in offering them up to the body. As expected with composite reproduction panels it's going to take quite a bit if fettling to get a good fit.

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They also set about fixing the rust on the shell and other minor repairs.

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Before applying primer.

 

The shell is still at the body shop: Cherry Classic Cars in Michigan but we recently went to visit it and to make some decisions about how to put it together.






We also found a kevlar composite trunk lid in Canada




and received some vintage gauges and switches from another quattro aficionado.

 

More wide body progress on the rally build. Front and rear fenders are being wrestled into place by the guys at Cherry Classic Cars:










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Starting to look like a car again.

 

Quick photo update of progress on the wide body build by Cherry Classic Cars.

 

The rally Quattro is still up north at Cherry Classic Cars but it's coming along nicely. We might get it back as early as this month! Meanwhile here are some more updates.

A few weeks ago we were summoned up to CCC to help figure out how to deal with this poor bumper fitment issue:






Should the bumper go behind the quarter panel or should it butt up and why is the quarter panel so far out or the bumper so not wide enough? We feel we have a solution. More later.

While we were up there we discovered that our car has manual, wind up windows! These must have been changed by a previous owner as no Quattros had these from the factory. Gues we don't have to find a spot for the window switches now but, because of the cage, we may only be able to wind down the windows with the doors open!






While we away in the frozen north our fab guy got a little creative with our engine. As a result we now have the world's only five cyclinder, turbo charged shopping cart!




The catalyst for this creativity was the Quattro Squad separating the transmission and giving it a good clean in preparation for either a rebuild or, hopefully, just a reseal.






We also pulled the seats down from the parts shelf and cleaned them up in preparation for selling them. Not so much to generate funds but to create some space. They cleaned up very nicely and are in excellent shape. No tears at all; just a little wear on the driver's seat. I think they would restore quite well but we want to sell them as they are rather than cover things up. We think we could reasonably ask $1000 for them.






Subscribe for more updates soon and to see if the car makes it back here this month.

 

Well, the seats are sold. That has freed up some space on the parts shelf at least.

The shell is still up north at Cherry Classic Cars but we are expecting the call any day now. It's basically just waiting for the primer to dry then it will be ready to drag back down state and start bolting parts on. It was decided to do this in primer as there is probably quite a bit of cutting and grinding and welding to still be done as we basically do not know what we are doing. Once we have it essentially together we'll strip it down again for paint. It's going to look grand in the works shop regardless and will inspire us to refurbish all the dirty parts we have been ignoring. It may even get it's very own space for the build up. Here are some pictures as it sits now courtesy of Scott at Cherry Classic Cars.















Next time you see it it might be in a trailer.

 

QUATTRO RALLY HOMECOMING

It was a big day last Saturday. We dragged the car home from Cherry Classic Cars where it has lived for the last twelve months. It was almost 15 months to the day that we dragged it up there with its first layover being at Thompson Racing Fabrication where it received its ARA legal cage and other modifications.










Finally home. We think this is where we'll build it; in the showroom!







So yes, the car is in primer. This is because we still have quite a bit of cutting, welding and grinding to do. The front bumper bar needs various tabs welding to it and there are lots of brackets and tabs we probably wont use so to protect the shny paint we left it in the can for now. The plan is to almost completely build the car before striping it again and finally painting the shell. This will allow us to make any required modifications as we go and not ruin the paint. As the primer will get dirty easily one rule we are implementing is that nothing gets bolted to the car that is in its final refurbished condition especially anything containing oil. We will see how long that lasts.

There's lots to do and lot's to buy. Mostly an engine. More on that later but for now we are on the quest for one of these 1/18 models that Sunstar just released.





Brace yourselves for an onslaught of updates.

 

So we have had the car back a couple of weeks and there has been plenty of buzz though not, seemingly, much progress. That, of course is not the case with much of the action taking place in online shopping carts as we start to buy the parts we will need.

Most importnatly, an engine. We have the 10V that came with the car and that "ran when parked" as they say. But it's only good for 2-300 horspower max and then you have to ditch the CIS injection and spend gobs of money on it, jst to get 300hp. A slightly more modern 20V engine can easily manage 3-400 horsepower apparently with much more availble if you want to go bankrupt. We think 350 hp will be fine for our purposes so have decided to go that route. We have orderd a stock but tested engine from a quattro guru that is coming with a chipped ecu and a few other niceties that should give us a plu and play 300-350 hp. More on that when it gets here.

So what else: well, we started assembling the iconic Group B dash by pulling out all the gauges and switches we had previously purchased. Then went to eGauges.com for the ones we are missing. VDO Vision Black; in Metric when available.



Before we could order the fuel level gauge we needed to figure out what ohms range the stock sender puts out. The interweb didn't seem to know so we showed it our FLUKE multi-meter. That must hace sacred it because it didn't work. After careful disassembly and cleaning of all the electrical paths we finally determined that it went from 40ohms to 285 ohms so ordered a 33-240 ohm gauge.








We also test fitted our Sparco seat bracket, both in the car and on one of our Corbeau FIA seats but resisted the temptation to test the both in the car, for now.






Then, with a little help from some MRF rally tires we installed the rear diff and subframe.








And yesterday our refurbished rack arrived from Jorgen Automotive so we threw that at the car too.






Next on the list is to refurbish and install the steering column, pedals and shifter. Me should have the front subframe back from powder coating so don't be surprised to see that on the car too soon.

 

This concept of refurbishing parts then bolting them to the unpainted shell is working out well as we have already discovered a few things we need to mod and are accumulating quite a parts list too.

We got our first batch of parts back from powder coating:




And wasted no time attaching some of them to the car. Front sub=frame for instance:





We also received a Sparco battery cut-off for the dash:






Our friend Paull is concurrently building an RS200 replica with a Focus RS crate engine. He brought over his superfluous factory intercooler to see if it might work for our application. Maybe:





We finished the refurb on the steering column but it is going to need a bushing sleeve replaced before being put into actual service. However, this didn’t stop us bolting it up along with the refurbished pedal assembly:








We thought our pedal assembly was in pretty good shape, until we took the over-center spring apart to clean it:





Add that to the parts list. Stll, it didn’t stop us bolting it to the car:




We also spent a bit of time prepping some parts for plating. We are having this lot zinc dichromated so they need sand blasting first. It was suggested filling the cylinder bores with hot glue so they wouldn’t get sand blasted so we gave it a try.








We took the opportunity to test fit the dash as we suspected it would interfere with the steering column. We were not wrong. There’s a reason for that cutout after all:






We plan to continue to assemble the car this coming week so look for an update soon.