Day 12 ~ Post-Olympic Miscellaneous

  Finally the TV is not burning constantly. It's kind of hard to buckle down working extra projects when the Olympics are on I must admit. Now that they're done for a year and a half, we're good to go.
  I spent a good while today rummaging through all of the facebook albums on the Smyth Performance page, reading the various comments and seeing if I could make enough sense of the scope to press forward. It's a bit difficult for me to know what's next exactly, because some of the parts I have are installed over/on/after some of the parts I do not yet have. No matter, I still have plenty I can work on. I went through my trailer full of spare Jetta parts I've been collecting and cleaned up the extra K-member I'll be using in the rear. I was going to separate the spindles for the rear wheels, but ran into trouble on the tie-rod bolt. After fussing with it for a while I decided to move on.
  The rear subframe height adjustment still had to be made, so I knocked that out as per my last post's idea. A word of caution though: if you take the rear lower mounting bracket off, make sure you don't clean it. You will need to see the original placement indicated by the dust rings. There is room for play on all four bolts, but you don't want to throw out any adjustment, so I recommend just replacing it exactly where it was when you're done with it. The subframe's lower tie-rod will likely be putting some pressure on the bracket one way or another, so keep it turned out of the way just a bit so you can remount the bracket before slipping the through-bolt in there.
  On to the lower X-brace. I had to cut off a little mounting stud from the right side rail just in front of the rear mount bracket (formerly used with the fuel-line plastic retainer). Both sides have a nice little plastic plug that pops out so you can slip the 14mm bolt down through it and have room for some adjustment. Go ahead and get the nut started on that bolt with the x-brace arm. I tightened it up a little just to get it flush with the bottom surface, but loose enough to be able to still position it just right. You're going to have to drill 3 times per side, so it's handy to have the bolt hold it in place once you've got it lined up and in the center bracket. I did not end up drilling yet as it was getting too late, and I was short on hardware to put in the holes anyway. Somewhere along the way I'm out 16 washers, and one of the lock nuts I have is the wrong thread pitch, so a trip to Lowe's tomorrow should remedy that. I need to pick up a better drill bit set too, so no biggie...just frustrated my effort today to get more accomplished.

  All in all, there's not a whole lot to see of the progress, but I was able to get a better understanding of some of the next steps, and I have a few more parts staged for installation. I have much higher hopes for this week than last for progress on the G3F, so stay tuned. My 240k mile services are due on my TDI (non-donor daily-driver . . . for now), so most of that will go pretty quick. I already have the oil/filter change done, and the fuel filter, air filter, and cabin air filter arrived, so they'll be going on tomorrow. The only thing that may really hold me up an extra day is the timing belt. It will be my first time, and it's not really an easy one anyway, but I gotta do it. So not worth skipping the timing belt ; )