Project 83 MK1 cabby, several years in the making!

Sitting here bored at work I thought it was about time I posted up my MK1 Golf cabby project, which has been causing me greif for the last 3 years. Over the last few months the light at the end of the tunnel is now in sight, and things are looking up at long last!

But lets reeeeeewind back to the beginning. A long time ago me & my dad bought this off ebay, trusting to the sellers word that it was '95% complete', oh what suckers we were. It had a spray job which was reasonably good, but some of the masking left a lot to be desired, and parets that would have taken all of 5 seconds to remove were left in place, see exhaust, the sticker round the filler neck & the wiper spindles for example.



1st job was to replace the ruined hood, for whatever reason the guy decided to destroy a perfectly servicable hood by tearing it off down the C pillars, rather than just removing the seals and peeling it back. I also fitted a nice GTI 4 lamp grille and tintop small waistline strips:







A few weeks later some BBS lookalikes were purchased which improved the looks no end.

Unfortunatly yet again I was done over by a seller, he saiud they were VW fitment but they were actually Renault fitment, so the centre bore was about 1-2mm too big. After ages spent trying to source spacers I gave up and sold them to a mate with a Clio!





A little while later I purchased a nice late spec interior and sealed the doorcards off, and fitted some nice wing mirrors, looks like a car now! While I was there I ripped out the last of the nasty blue dash/interior parts, fitted a black dash, console and fitted nice brand new carpets from newton comercial. Oh and yet another hood, this one was recently done by a pro and had a nice black headlining. This also saved us the nail biting job of cutting a big hole in our nice new hood for the rear window







With the interior pretty much sorted I moved onto the exterior, I binned off those horrible body coloured bumpers and fitted some nice oem black ones along with clear indicators.





Next I decided it was a good idea to remove the BBS kit, to see what was lurking underneath. Predictably the kit was held on by a large ammount of self-tapping screws straight into the bodywork, lovely. But at least the guy had sprayed it without the kit on, which was something. Bad news was he used about 16 tons of silicone sealant on the arches which I'm really struggling to remove, and didnt take the kit off when the slam panel was welded up along the middle where the radiator sits. This resulted in a nice melted patch on the kit and lots of rust where the welds had not been treated where they had burned thru the panel. Luckily no serious holes were found and the damage is covered by the front bumper! Back to OEM:

 

Now here is where the story goes rapidly downhill. I decided it would be a good plan to remove the rear beam to refurb it, as well as take off the fuel tank to check for rusticles floating around inside. The filler neck was so bad it snapped in half when I tried to remove it!

Once I had the rear up on axle stands, I found lots of bad news underneath. Yes those are the rear inner arches, left chopped up and rusted with fresh outer arches fitted and painted, left unsealed. Did I mention the previous owner was a total cowboy?





Looking at the rear beam and suspention mountings didn't give me any good news either:





Yep its partially my fault for not checking, and assuming that since new arches were fitted the guy would have the sence to do the inners at the same time and seal them properly! Oh well, water under the bridge now. After months & months trying to find someone to come weld it for me, Oli came to my rescue and started the patching work.











But as some of you may or may not know, Oli (nmt_oli) sadly passed away. I lost interest in the project for a while after this, dispite only knowing him for a few months I counted him as one of my best friends. RIP buddy I feel honoured to have served you my very best cheese toastys. [:^(]

 

Eventually I managed to find another welder prepared to take on the job, and it was finally completed. I'm particularly happy with the repairs to the suspention mounting, its a work of art! I should have spent more time cleaning up welds here & there, but I couldnt be bothered!













After over a year on stands it was back on 4 wheels, woohoo! At the same time I fitted a new beam with rear disc prakes, and I fitted some nice poly bushes. Also I refurbished the rear suspension and fitted a solid rear filler neck, POR15ed up. This stuff seriously is the dogs, cant fault the finish even after applied with a brush!

Here it is as things stand, please excuse the crappy wheels they're just for storage purposes.

 

Ok! A couple of days before christmas I fitted the power plant, which is a std KR lump from a MK2 16v, and it'll be running on OEM managmnet. The gearbox is a refurbed FD unit, so it should go quite nicely!
While I'm here, I might as well go through the engine plans that changed over and over again while the project dragged on excruciatingly slowly

The car was supplied with 2 engines, both in half and in a bit of a state. A MK1 1.6 GTI and 1.8 GTI lump, plus boxes of random bits. Original plan was to rebuild the 1.8 8v lump and drop that in, I lapped in some valves and fitted it up with hydro tappets, only to realise later it was a solid lifter head and as such had no oilways for the hydro tappes b*lcks
Then the plan was to fit the 2.0 8v lump out of my MK2 GTI, since I was going to put a 2.0 16v lump in it later on anyway. Finally a MK1 16v conversion downpipe pretty much fell into my lap, and I managed to persuade a mate of mine to sell me his KR lump for 50.
Heres a pic of the bay as it stands now, yes I know its filthy and has random patches of por15, but the respray never included the engine bay so it didnt match the outside anyway I have to say fitting a MK1 engine on your own with the bonnet still on is a complete ball ache, get a mate to help you and remove the bonnet for the love of god



Oh and heres my MK1 conversion downpipe, in case anyone fancies doing it themselves. Top half is MK2 GTI, bottom half is MK1 GTI, with some jiggery in the middle!

 

small progress update, wiring is 90% done! I unwrapped the std cabby engine loom and binned all the rubbish I dont need, then offered up the 16v isv & ignition controller loom, plus the cold start bits. Only had to extend the wiring to the over-run cutoff valve & idle switch the rest was pretty much spot on. I even managed to fit the wires thru the stock scuttle tray wiring holes/grommets too which was a bonus, no need to cut any holes.

Now all I need to do is finish building up the engine so I can finalise the wiring lengths, solder it up then re-wrap it all!

 

Just been cleaning up bits & bobs, have to say POR-15 is the nuts!
Used metal ready to de-rust all the bits, this stuff is ace. Dump summat rusty in there, come back a few hours later and it comes out rust free! Works especially well on bolts, the threads come out perfecto.

Some bits take longer than others depending on how crusty they are, and sometimes there are stubborn deposits that need filing down then a second treatment. The best bit is it leaves a etched coating which is perfect to paint over

Considering I then just slapped on the POR paint with a brush willy-nilly some of it came out pretty nice

 

looking nice
are you going to put a gti chin spoiler and wheel arches on

 

sure am, going to be 83 tintop GTI spec when done, red trim for grille will be going on eventually as well

biggest ballache is going to be getting that silicone shat off the arches, I have a feeling its sikaflex and if so there aint no easy way to remove it. Yay.

 

i no this sounds daft but have you tried wd 40 and a plastic scraper
like the ones you get for spreading body filler or a old credit card

 

sounds perfectly reasonable, was certainly one of the things on my list to try

 

I havent no, i hope no-one is trying to sell it out from under me

 

that ebay one aint far off, even has the bodykit mine used to have!

 

yeah now & again I do have time to work on my own cars

 

This Sunday I cracked on with it a bit more. I fitted all the fuel system and lines to the engine bay, cleaned up my brake cross bar and fitted the MC/servo. As you can see engine is looking more complete too and the wiring loom is about 90% done & wrapped

The brake cross bar was completly caked in thick sticky grease, real nasty stuff. Even carb cleaner struggled to remove it! Eventually I won and it looks alot better now