Not updated the blog for a week or so, but that doesn't mean that I've been idle, just too busy to be able to get my thoughts translated into the electronic ether.

Last weekend I spent some time getting the doors prepped ready for painting. The front doors both needed painting, both having been partially prepped. The passenger door was already mostly done with only a few minor blemishes requiring attention but the drivers door needed a fair amount of work. The drivers door has at some time been badly dented and could ideally do with a new door skin, but in a bid to get the bus on the road I decided to see if I could make it a little straighter then it was.

Other commitments have meant that as usual progress has been slow, I've picked up a SACO hydraulic clutch kit which looks like a good quality item - It's pretty much a necessity as I'm sure the standard VW pedal / cable would not be up to the job of operating the Porsche clutch.

I have had someone give me a quote for painting the car which is a reasonable price so I'm gonna get him to paint it for me. As usual my work commitments are meaning I'm getting less time to work on the car and do this kind of stuff myself.

I've decided to remove the old how-to's from the site. The Type 34 Registry has now opened its doors to all without subscription, they have a far wider range of articles so I decided my few tech articles were no longer worth having. I've also added a link to a site called 'The air-cooled multimedia maintenance manual' this covers all aspects of keeping your VW engine in shape. I'm sure for all of you looking for maintenance tips the answer to your questions can be found on one of these two sites.

Getting rid of those articles has freed up a little space so I'm considering adding a forum, I've mailed my ISP to see what kind of scripts I can run. Hopefully I can set something up.

I'm trying to go for a change in direction with the site, I'm hoping to get rid of all the stuff which is just generalising and replace it with stuff specific to tuning Type 34 Ghia's and maybe Type 3's - There's far better sites out there that cover the general aspects of T-34's (well there's one - The Registry) so I've decided to kinda 'specialise' a bit more.

I spent this weekend finishing off painting the IRS for the Ghia. I stripped the paint from it last weekend using a combination of paint stripper and a zip wheel in my grinder. There was only some minor surface rust, so I sanded this back ready for painting.

I decided to paint the suspension myself, rather than getting it powder coated, this was mostly due to the shiny finish that powder coating normally gives, I wanted a low gloss almost satin finish to be more like the original.

I had some paint left over from painting the pan and roll cage on the oval so decided to use this. It comprises of an etch primer and enamel based topcoat. I generally favour this paint for chassis stuff as I can thin it with normal meths and don’t need to buy a special thinners as I do with other brands.

I had a bit of an issue with the primer separating out from the thinners, which I put down to it being old paint, this meant going out to buy some more paint and spending a fair bit of time cleaning the sludge out my spray gun.