Car happenings this weekend

[ggehrke at gmail.com (GGehrke)]

Got a decent amount done this weekend.  It's all pretty exciting. 
Saturday night I went and met Mark F. in Baltimore to pick up a
ported/polished head, cam, and sway bar and helped him set up his tow
dolly to bring Mark Peele's car back up north.

This morning I got back to work on the Scirocco nice and early.  Big
project for today was gutting the wiring.  The car pretty much vomited
out every inch of wire that was in it.  I meant to take pictures, but
didn't bring my camera.  I started with the headlights and stuff that
I knew 100% I could wire back up successfully.  Then moved to the
basic engine electricals that I knew my Painless kit would account for
and which I could wire back up.  Then I stumbled across my ECU, which
included 2 little control boxes of some sort in the rain tray.  I
don't know quite what they were for, but I cut the wires anyways. 
This is about the point I was in over my head but too far along to
stop.  Eventually got the fuse box out.  I'm nicknaming this project
catharsis because it was such a release of frustration.  I've never
killed a man, but I bet it feels a lot like how I felt sawing through
inch thick wire looms like it was a spine or something gross like
that.

Now I'm on to the planning stage.  I've already got a good idea of
what I want to do, but I'm going to draw up diagrams and place orders
for all the connectors and relays and such that I'm going to need. 
Hopefully my Bentley diagrams are accurate.  I'm a little nervous
about the ECU though because it's a swapped engine so there's no
telling what exaclty everything is. Maybe I'll end up going standalone
EFI sooner than I thought...

Other little projects were to clean the wheels, which were just really
dirty.  I also scraped the brackets off the rear window that attach
the louvers.  Started repairing the front duckbill so I can stick that
and all the trim back on the car.

I might end up having to stay here for at least part of spring break
to work on the car.  There's a LOT to still do.  Exciting stuff
though.  Better electrics, more power, and a whole new suspension
coming any day now.  It's going to be like a whole new car.

Only downside to the weekend is that I had new tires mounted on my BMW
and Firestone scratched my $550/per BBS wheels.  grr.  They're going
to pay to refinish them, but it's still frustrating because I told
them I was going to be a hardass about scratches and it burned most of
my saturday, which should have been used to work on the VW.  And I
changed the BMW's oil, and it came out absolutely black because my
parents let it go almost 3000 miles PAST when the sticker on the
windshield said it was due.

-Grant-