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Old March 14th 2012, 02:24
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owdlvr owdlvr is offline
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Join Date: Sep 2008
Location: Canada - West Coast
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Alright, I can't find a photo of it but I think we can all agree how your "first car" effects your automotive choices for years to come. The first car that I bought happened to be a 1989 Audi 90 quattro, a car which I still think has the best factory dashboard of any car out there. Even 23 years later the dash is still timeless. One of the best features, for me at least, was the night-time illumination. It was this warm red/orange. To this day I can't buy a car with a dash that lights up green. In my Audi Rally car I used Stewart Warner Gauges and their red LED lighting. It was good, but quite red. When I built the '69 Beetle I needed a way to get the dash to light up my preferred red, but with a mix of bulb types due to the VW speedo and Porsche tach. Anyone who has ever used the rubber "boots" that ship with aftermarket gauges knows they go white within a few weeks of use. Some testing resulted in a simple solution...


Two coats of Tamiya clear acrylic will give you an even light in the color you choose, keep going with the coats to get the color deeper and deeper. The clear Tamiya paints are available in a whole load of colors, so anything is possible. At night, my Bug lights up pretty well even across all the different gauges I have.

Finished up the wiring for the rally lights tonight. Everything was setup waterproof, but a lot of the wires were visible, so I went nuts with the techflex. Chances are it will get all nasty and I'll be cutting it off in a year...but until then it looks fantastic! :P The wiring is virtually invisible, except for the one loop coming from under the apron up to the light bar.


I've got a replacement lens/reflector coming for the broken unit, but looking at this photo it seems I might need to pickup some high wattage bulbs to replace the yellow H4's in the factory lights!


Some buddies dropped by, so we were able to toss the pop-out window into the driver's side. What a pain these stupid things are to install, eh? I do have the hinge cover, I just don't have the correct screws to install it :P


Also this evening, I worked further on the hood lock/latch setup. Last night I had the lock working, made some adjustments and promptly locked the hood shut with no possibility of getting it open. After popping out the spare tire access port, I got the hood open. A few more tries tonight and I ended up with a perfectly working hood latch and lock system. I popped an emergency pull cable in, routed into the front fender. When my buddies showed up I was demonstrating for Scott, who bought my '69, what a factory lock system actually works like (non existent on his '69!). Went to open the hood and the handle in the glovebox broke. ARRRGGG!

That's it. %$#! the factory lock, I'm just going to install a set of these to ensure the hood doesn't fly up.
or

-Dave
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'71 Type 1 - Rally Project
'58 Type 1 - I bought an early!?!
'73 Type 1 - Proper Germanlook project
'68 Type 1 - Interm German 'look' project
'75 Type 1 - Family Heirloom
'93 Chevy 3500 pickup - Cummins Swap

Last edited by owdlvr; March 14th 2012 at 02:52.
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