Cleaning the beetle chassis

So the chassis of the beetle needed a much needed cleaning which Kelvin, Fred, Devin, and  I did. We just double checked to make sure there was no way for water to get into the engine and washed away!! We also made sure to not get all of the tar off, and did our best to get the underside but we will flip the chasis on it's side if needed.

Taking the vinyl seat covers off the ford seats

The vinyl seat covers on the ford needed to get removed so Mike, Jarrett, Nicole, Fred, and I (with the help of Mr.G, Roberto, and Javi) took them. The process was a bit tricky if it was your first time, but adapt and overcome, and you'll be fine. So first and foremost, you need to take the seats out. For us, the back seats were already taken out, but the front seats were attached with 12x 1/2" bolts to the underbody. The bolts are covered with plastic covers, and to take them out you need wedge them out using flathead screwdrivers. If you want to, you can either take the seatbelts out by unscrewing the 2x 3/4" screws and pulling them out from the seat. The vinyls are head down by bull rings, which you can take out by using needle-nose pliers. You would wedge the pliers under the bull ring, clamp it, pull and twist and they should come out.

Working on the Outer CV Joint, Front Driver's Side, 1999 Audi S6 Avant

So today me and Kelvin started the rebuild of the front driver side axle in Mr.Gamarra's 1999 Audi S6 Avant. What we were able to do was open the outer CV-joint by taking off 2 rings that kept it on the axle, using a flathead screwdriver to pry it off. After that we had to research the next steps, which were to put the axle on a vice grip and use use a steak (basically a metal wedge) and hammer on the inner ball race to knock the CV-joint off a round clip on the axle and fully pull it off. 

Before:

After:

Remember that this is packed with axle grease, so safety gloves are a must! We used rags to clean as much grease as we could until we could see what was inside. Inside the joint was a ball cage, 6 ball bearings and another peice, the name of which I forgot and will be editted in as soon as I know. We marked an arbitrary position '1' with black marker so we could remember the positioning of the ball bearings inside the inner ball race. We put the 6 ball bearings inside 6 respectively labelled cups (going clockwise from our marked 1 positioning.) Then we used zip ties to mark which side faces up on the ball cage and the number one position marked previously not only to indicate the side facing up position, but as a back up mark for our '1' position, since we would be cleaning these parts in the parts washer. For those of you that don't know, parts washer fluid washes away permanent marker.