This past weekend, Leo, Sarah and I drove all the way up to York, PA. for V.A.G. Fair. This VW show hosts around 400 VWs where they are ranked and evaluated (judged) based on their year, model, equipment and care. This was a great opportunity to enter the Cabriolet and to get into the “game” of competing…

The above photo can give you an idea of the setup . The photo below shows my pump’d crew:

These are a few shots of some of the “competitors”:

Well, long-story-short: after more than 3 hours we learned that the judges simply forgot (or didn’t have the time) to stop by our car…sigh. Unfortunately (or fortunately for the organizers) they didn’t expect this amount of cars and they were short on judges…

Oh well, we’ll try next time, probably we’ll enter H20 International, but who knows, is almost 2 months away.

Fortunately Sarah didn’t seem to care if the car was judged or not; she found ways to keep herself busy and entertained for when Leo wasn’t carrying her on his shoulders or me exposing her the benefits of centrifugal and centripetal forces.

Location of York Fairgrounds:

Let me try to put together in one single post the highlights of July. Here we go:

Sarah spent a day in the pool with her uncles and aunts…

I tried on a “Snuggie” and I pet a cat…

We went to pick up blueberries…

Sarah went back to the pool, this time more prepared…

Leo and I went to see “hot” VWs at Waterfest ‘09 on New Brunswick, NJ…

It was the first “real” trip for the Cabriolet; 400 miles in one day…

We celebrated my birthday with unhealthy food and Sarah blew my birthday candles…

I took several profile shots of the Cabriolet…

And Bert-O didn’t seem to care…

Phew! I guess that the above information can give a better idea of what happened during the “missing” month. Now I need to write something for the next (or current) month.

Today I installed the wheels (195/45/R16 Et35) which made me to realize that the car is now too low, I couldn’t remove the jack once the car was set back on the floor, during next week I will *fine-tune* the height, right now I’m just tired and sore. But here’s how currently looks:

Also I need to install a 10mm (or a 5mm) spacer to the front tires… **sigh**

Last night I finished to install the coilovers to the Cabriolet. During the week I started with the rear ones (which were a pain to remove the old ones)

Yesterday I swapped The front ones, which were surprisingly easy, mainly because of the amount of WD-40 I used …

And of course my cheat-page (Bentley’s Service Manual).

Now I have to figure how low I want go …

A better angle  with the now installed stalks and switch from a ‘98 Jetta and a steering column of a ‘87 Rabbit

Is getting there…slowly.

One of the first “mods” I wanted to do was to swap the ugly-looking-with-non-working-airbag steering wheel…

Unfortunately this is not a simple “remove-n-replace” mod, the steering “airbag” column needed to be replaced by a sans airbag column to fit a more “standard” wheel (standard at least on the late 80’s) along with newer stalks, in this case I’m using a set of MK3 stalks. A more descriptive post of this mod can be found here.

Because this mod also involves the swap of the ignition bracket, I follow this instructions to swap my ignition cylinder…

Now I have a lot of wiring to figure out…

Got the center caps from a wheel repair shop in San Diego, they had over 12! these were leftovers from clients who left them at the shop after getting new caps.

Now putting the pieces together …

Total spent: $80 (shipping included) not bad at all.

You can see on the photo above that a few bolts are missing, I removed them so I can “see” how tight they are…and they are tight, very tight.

As expected.. the battery of the Cabriolet died, well, is not dead persé, just got –fully– discharged… in spite of that I decided to replace a couple of “electrical” items that were broken, one Xenon ballast and one relay (seat belt warning light).

Also I removed the “knee bar” to re-route some loose cables that were plugged into the fusebox:

Obviously I haven’t finish …

With the last rainy days we had, everything around the house is blooming and becoming greener…

I even have the chance to “see” broccoli grow:

Sarah, in the other hand is making out the best of the season by “stealing” my power-washer:

Good times definitely.

During the last 2 weeks I was finally able to complete the whole audio system of the Cabriolet with a newer unit (Alpine 9887). My “old-skool” units went back to their original boxes due to its outdated voltage outputs, maybe one day I will install them on Sarah’s “Power-wheels”, we’ll see, in the meantime they are back into the attic.

Unfortunately, during the “tuning” of the system (which takes aound 30 mins. using Alpine’s Imprint system) the battery died and currently the car needs a battery “booster” in order to start…

Hopefully I will find a cheap battery charger so I can properly charge the battery before taking the car to the State inspection.

Also, during this time I was able to replace the stock horns for my “old-skool” FIAMM air horns. ;) 

So what’s next?

- Refinishing all the badges.

- Recondition (deep cleaning) all the seats.

- Replace steering column and its bearings.

- Replace steering wheel (Remove and properly discard the old airbag).

- Replace both stalks (this will be interesting because I have to swap the ignition switch, rewire the hazard lights’ switch and rewire the whole stalks).

- Clean / recondition the top.

- Wash the carpet.

- Check / replace brakes (discs, calipers, pads, drums).

- Repair a couple of rock chips from the windshield.

- Take the car to the paint shop for a deep polishing and minor detailing.

- Service door locks.

- Replace door pins.

- Replace one faulty HID ballast.

Phew! I’m sure there’s more to do, but this what I can now remember.