John’s Mk4 Build Thread

[John Ibele]

I'm continuing to work toward putting the body on for what I hope is the last time, so working on the before-body punchlist items.

First up was the windshield posts. The mounting surfaces of the side posts when mounted on the windshield are definitely not parallel, whereas the mounting surfaces on the car are. Some folks have bent theirs to match the chassis, or at least get them parallel. Without making this a recommendation (you always need to know your limits), I can describe what I did, which has worked out well for me so far.

I set the windshield in the curved foam cradle it was shipped in, which is a really handy caddy until the windshield is in its final home on the car. I leveled the table the windshield was sitting on, and centered the windshield in the cradle. That way I could use the angle gauge directly on the side posts and work toward 0* on each post separately. Here's a picture of the PS post dialed into a 0* angle (or close enough).


Untitled by John Ibele, on Flickr

After taking an initial reading, the next step was bending (or twisting, actually). To do the bending, I taped the posts to keep any incidental contact with any other metal from scratching the chrome. I did all bending below the body line only. And always had the posts captured on each side with either soft wood or metal cushioned with a few thicknesses of tape. Here's a shot of a post in the vise:


Untitled by John Ibele, on Flickr

While I was at it, I figured I would try to hit the distance between the mounting surfaces on the chassis, which for me is 50-3/4". I was able to accomplish some of this with my twist on each side post, with only 1/16" - 1/8" to get in place with a couple of bends after getting the mounting surfaces parallel.

I now have two posts parallel to each other, and the desired distance apart along their length. Warning, this is slow, methodical work, and took several hours. I can't tell you that your chrome won't peel off the brass or that other bad things won't happen. You need to be very careful with the screws holding the side posts in the brass strip, as many others have mentioned. But for me, it worked and worked well. Here's a shot showing both the twist and the kink to get to 50-3/4".


Untitled by John Ibele, on Flickr

While that was going on, my vinegaroon tea was brewing, eventually reaching a nice mahogany color after 7 days or so. I used part of a roll of 0000 steel wool in a pint mason jar filled with white vinegar, and cling wrap perforated with a few holes to keep the excitement level to a minimum. I did need to push the steel wool back down into the vinegar for a few days, and regularly tapped the jar and swirled it around a bit each time I went out into the garage.


Untitled by John Ibele, on Flickr

I waited for the right opportunity, with the wife out and about, to bring the operation into the laundry room, stopping in the kitchen for a few coffee filters. I filtered the stuff 3 times or so ... the first one was very slow, and it went quite a bit faster the additional two times. I'm not sure this makes much of a difference to the leather, but I'm pretty sure that the more it's filtered the whiter your stitching is going to be. That's one of the things I was after using this approach vs. black polish.

I skipped any brushwork, figuring I'd just dip the parts briefly into the vinegaroon until they turned dark gray. Then into warm water with a few heaping spoonfuls of baking soda dumped in, then a long rinse under cold water. Those bright dots are actually the original natural leather, which hasn't seen the vinegaroon yet for some reason.


Untitled by John Ibele, on Flickr

You can see how bright the stitching is, even with the leather already black. They didn't quite stay that way, and I think it may have been from whatever happened when turning them face down in the vinegaroon, or when I swirled them around in the baking soda mix. Wish I could give a more solid direction there (and have that nice bright stitching back) - but still, I think they turned out quite nice. Seat belts were just as easy, and I didn't worry about the belts spending a short time in vinegar and baking soda. With a night to dry out and with some neutral shoe cream I had sitting around, they took a nice shine. That could be the cheapest thing I've done on this car.

Just one word of warning: you'll read that vinegaroon stinks. Mine didn't smell bad while brewing, and even when I poured it out ... initially. But, wet leather that's been soaked in the stuff stinks, and it kept on stinking until it had completely dried out. Once you get them dried out and a bit of shoe cream on them, they'll once again smell like things you'd let near the rest of your car.


Untitled by John Ibele, on Flickr