I'm back!
Actually, I never left. It just takes me forever to type out and then edit these diatribes. It's been taking me even longer now that I'm trying to upload my pictures to Pelican instead of using my Flickr. I digress.
With those huge washers removed, I set the car back on the ground. Toe was [miraculously] at 1/8-3/16" of total toe-in. That's good enough for a rip around the block.
With front suspension travel restored, the car was a total riot to drive. Still low enough to necessitate caution whilst traveling unknown roads, but an absolute ripper.
The next morning, I messaged a local VW enthusiast who sets up meets to see if anything local was happening. He said nada, but he was cruising up to Valparaiso (~130 miles away) to get some fancy wheels put on a client's car and asked if I wanted to cruise along. Valpo happens to be the next town south of where I grew up and my all-time absolute favorite pizza place has a location ~1/2 mile from the shop TJ was heading to. So I packed up an 11mm ratcheting wrench, a fancy multi-bit screwdriver, a pen light, and my laptop and away we went.
On the way back, TJ shot this.
In all, I clocked about 300 miles. The car has developed a bit of a pull to the right under hard braking from freeway speeds (70mph). I'm going to bleed the brakes again before I start getting too worried. And I identified a rattle that's been making me crazy when I drive over a lot of little bumps. I have my Rennline dash delete panel secured with only two rivets, the ignition bezel, and the headlight switch. I need to secure it another one or two places on the passenger side of the car and I think I'm fully rattle-free. Hooray!