Ups and Downs...

Okay so the brown bunny is officially gone. To a good home I believe. The owner is a VW gear head and plans to restore it.

So last week (maybe two weeks ago) I go out to my GTI and find a note on the windshield, that is never good. As I am picking up the note I glance down and the front of my car and notice the turn signal is hanging there just by it's wires. Guh...What a complete downer. These parts don't just grow on trees. The car is 23 years old. Especially the red line grill in perfect condition. I am not sure how insurance is going to handle the repairs. Let's hope they let me source the parts.

Here's a couple very sad pics.



So now for the up. I found the car I have been searching for. It's been months but the right one finally came around. It's not a VW however. It's an 03 BMW 330i. It has the performance package and only 20k miles. It's a beautiful awesome machine. Here's a couple quick shots.




While the accident was bad finding the BMW was good. You'll probably see pics and updates on both over the next few months.

Has it really been 7 months

Okay lots of changes to talk about.

The brown bunny is on it's way out. Just too much work and not enough time (see baby in picture). I went out and bought this instead.


It's an 84 GTI in pretty pristine shape. 132,000 original miles on the 1.8 liter 8v engine. The things I'll be doing to it are pretty minor overall; convert the rear brakes to disc, add a taller (faster) fifth gear to the transmission, and repaint the entire car. It looks good from 10ft but up close it's, well it's 23 year old paint.

Here's an interior shot. Check out those seats!


Now that I have new daily driver I can actually park this one and start working on it. It should keep me busy this winter. The baby is getting to the point where she can entertain herself in the pack-n-play for a couple hours so that should give me some time to do some actual work.

One more shot for good measure.

Rims, rims, and more rims

I seem to just be collecting parts and not actually getting any work done these days. Maybe that's my plan just collect as much junk as I possibly can. It feels like I am doing something but not really. I did fire the rabbit up and swap out the stock rims for the steelies

There was motivation for the swap. Some guy wanted 13 inch stock rims and he was willing to trade for some sweet gold BBS rims. I simply could not pass these up. They even have new tires on them. I figure there worth around $300 and the rims I traded them for are worth essentially nothing. I was going to give them away. Major score. Gotta love Craigslist.

Lastly grabbed up some new to me tailights that are in perfect shape. Once I get the rear end fixed these will be going on.

Parts, Parts, and More Parts

So I got some cool new stuff over the past couple weeks. I'm pretty excited about them. Let's review shall we.

First up the new steering wheel. Came out of an early (75-77) scirocco. Note the nifty wolfsburg emblem on the horn ring. The wheel itself is brown and the horn ring is black. Currnetly looking for a replacement for the horn ring in brown but can live with it as is.

Picked up some sweet seats out of a cabriolet that the owner recnetly had recovered in...TAN, perfect! and cheap.


Same dude that had the seats had these bumpers too. Not my first choice but the price was right and once I get the body work done they'll work. They are aluminium so no rust, just a little polish and they'll look like new.


New to me steelies. Nice and wide with a low profile. I'll probably paint them white eventually. We'll see. The rust is just on the surface.

Lastly I got this. Know what it is? Take a guess

If you said passenger side axle with rebuilt CV joints give yourself a pat on the back. My boots were shot and that usually means the joints are shot so figured I'd just replace the entire axle, $30 killer deal.

Gutting Cont.

So I continued removing the crap that was covering the floor of the rabbit. A generally smelly and dirty task where things end up looking worse than when you started. I did end up finding a small rust hole in the passenger seat foot well.

This will slow progress on the interior a bit but not too much. It's a hole from the inside out so it should be an easy patch/fix.

Dug into the engine a bit as well. Starting taking bits and pieces apart to clean them up and replace some seals. Another dirty job.


Oh and the seats and catalytic converter totally fell through. Total bummer, but the great thing about VWs is there is always another part around the corner.

Gutting the Rabbit

So I made some progress this weekend. Gutted the interior. Found some interesting stuff, lots of tools, a brand new air freshener, but surprisingly no rust. This made me very happy. This week I'm going to the Couv to pick up some new(er) seats and then to Newberg to get a new catalytic converter and muffler. I know exciting stuff but it will make it so the car can pass DEQ. Some progress pics.

Oh and check out how sweet the door cards are, almost look like new, good times.
Oh and one more thing original manual, sweet.

Brown Bunny

So I went out and bought myself a 78 vw rabbit that happens to be very brown:
and very dented:

I have plans for this bunny. I want to keep it brown, remove the dents and make it fast(er). I guess I'll document the process as best I can. So far I've done nothing but drive it home and park it in the garage.


Riddle me this, why do I park a $600 car in my garage and let my $10K GTI sit outside? The answer is simple really people are actually more likely to steal a $600 rabbit than a GTI.