Martin's Mk2 Golf - Track Car Project - Cage Now Fitted

I thought it was about time I should start a thread on here about my cars. ive got a few pics from the build of my jetta although the pic quailty isnt that great. but will soon be doing plenty of work which i can take pics of so here goes.

 

Back in December 2002 when I was 16 my neighbour bought a 1990 Jetta TX for 600 quid, it had no tax or mot and was looking a bit tatty. He started to strip various bits off the car with the intention of getting it back on the road, however he seemed to give up after a few weeks, and it sat on his drive for a few months, anyway one day we got talking about cars and it turns out that the Jetta was fitted with a cat 2 immobiliser which he had lost the fob for. He told me that if I could manage to get it running then it was mine. Fifteen minutes later and it was parked on my moms drive.
The car was in a bit of a state with the carpets soaking wet and mould on most of the interior. As well as the usual rust problems that you expect on a neglected car of that age there was bits of the exterior trim missing and the bumpers had been sprayed with glitter paint.
As I couldnt actually drive yet I had no rush to get the car on the road so decided to completely strip the car and rebuild it. Replacing doors wings etc and treating the minor rust on the actual shell.


I wanted to keep it looking fairly standard but decided to make a few changes to the back. Filling in the original number plate recess, removing the badges and filling in the holes that left as well as removing the boot lock.


After much searching I managed to get another bumper which wasnt covered in silver paint, then cut a big hole in it for the number plate to sit in.

After many hours filling and sanding the boot was smooth enough

 

After a thin coat of paint.


I Also removed and smoothed over the rear door handles

The wheels were actually from another car and were tatty and scuffed, got them refurbished for 100 quid and they now look great and black

The suspension is cheap Gmax stuff wouldnt buy it for a track car but works just fine on the road.


The most expensive purchase I have ever made, but worth it though these brakes are awesome. Tarox 280mm 6 Pots



Above With the front end on, - wing not quite lined up!!

Below Front end painted

Along with the bodywork I also did a lot of work on the mechanicals, basically stripped cleaned rebuilt or replaced everything apart from the actual bottom end of the engine and the gear box.
As you can imagine this all took a long time with me being at college having no time or money, and the only place I had to do the work was my moms driveway.
Well it wasnt until the beginning of my third year at uni in October 2007 that I got around to taking it for a Mot. Yes it had been on my moms drive for 5 years, and she was threatening to sell it for scrap.
It passed without too much hassle, loose ball joints and headlight alignment. The next day I set off back to Uni on a 165 mile trip, half way there the clutch kindly gave up. So went the rest of the way on a recovery truck. It was dropped off on a street about 5 mins walk from my flat as that was the nearest place without parking restrictions.
As I had forked out for insurance mot and tax I couldnt afford a new clutch, so it sat there for a few months until I got round to fixing it.
Anyway after all the drama and replacing the clutch in the random road where it had been sat for ages, the car has been great. Heres a pic taken once it was on the road again.

Looks wise it hasnt changed much since this was taken apart from the addition of an interesting bonnet which came about by accident

I managed to reverse into a pillar in a multi-storey car park, (full lock on in reverse, front swings round into huge pillar)
The pic above is after I pulled at the wing for a while to get it off the wheel.
This left me with the need for a new door wing and bonnet, wing from gsf door from breakers and bonnet from ebay.

Yes that is a jack Daniels bottle air brushed onto it. Was only 10.50 from ebay, bargain.

sorry about the picture quailty, only had a cheap cam at the time.

 

Well now Ive had the car for 7 years, and driven it for 2 I love it however as I am now working and driving a fair few miles for work its time to get a more sensible daily driver.
I was planning on turning this into a track toy but it would need a higher spec engine. Ive always dreamed of putting a BAM 20V 1.8T in it.
Unfortunately the car has at some point had a front end collision which bent the chassis leg, it has been pulled back into the right place but it has now started to rot along where it creased so I wouldnt be happy putting anything near 200BHP near it without having the chassis leg replaced.
All things considered I have decided that the best thing to do is get another shell to use for the track car, get it all stripped down an prepped then once its time to start building - get me another car as a daily and strip the bits i need off the jetta.

i wanted a 3 door non sunroof golf. after searching online for ages i put a wanted add on here and soon got a pm from millspeed.

a week or so later and i was the proud owner of this 1984 golf c in mars red.








its a sweet little car, with tax an test till april which is a bonus

thanks to the snow and my lack of a big enough garage all i have managed to do to it so far is give it a good clean. and i must say its solid, has got a few small dents and a few tiny bits of rust but nothing underneath. its had a knock on one of the back arches which was repaired back in 1984 (have got the vag bodywork repair certificate) but apart from that its got no accident damage and has never been welded as far as i can see which is perfect for what i want.

 

nice work dude cant wait to see what the golf turns out to be \;D

 

Jetta looks great...

Whats your plans for the Mk2 then?

 

cheers guys.

for the golf I'm thinking of making it a track only car mainly due to the price of insuring it for the roads.

plans are to strip it completly to a bare shell remove all underseal sound deadening ect and any bits of metal that arent needed. trying to get it as light as possible.

the enging will be a 1.8t BAM code, running on QPENG management.
going for the aluminimum fuel tank setup.
thinking about running a pedal box for the brakes but not decided yet.

oh and i think it'll be changing to white.

 

Finally made some progress with the track car

After buying the golf just before christmas its been parked up on the drive and i didn't really touch it, partly due to being busy but mainly because its been cold and wet outside.

Good news is I moved house at the end of feb which ment it couldnt just sit there any more. I eventually found a garage to rent near work, and got the car moved there.

So i've actually started to do some work on it.

Here's the garage, bit shabby but it has power and is plenty big enough to work in.


First job was getting the interior stripped out and romoving the sound deadening from the floor.



Got the windows out


Engine out


Then spent a day removing the wings, doors, tailgate, exhaust, fuel tank, rear beam and all of the other little bits like brake hoses and fuel lines.

Once absolutely everything was removed from the shell I decided I'd start to Prep the bottom first so rolled it over onto the old back seats and a few tyres.

First impressions were good, with no huge rusty patches. (appologies for the rubbish photos)



The only visible rust is around the rear beam mounts, gave it a good poke with a screwdriver and to my releif its not too deep.


Then started the job of removing all the waxol.



Bit more



Have finished with cleaning the front floorpan and started on the back half, also began removing excess metal, with the wheel well being the biggest bit so far.

Not really taken many photos as I've been working as I've been going as fast as possible due to limited free time.

I know the photo quality isn't good as there from my phone (I'll try to sort out my stuff and find the digital camera), but you can just about make out whats going on

 

I cant believe how good the bodywork is for 24 years old!!

Looks like a great project, and being done the right way

 

Really like your Jetta and the plans for the Golf which looks in great nick underneath, whats the deal with the cheeky CRX in the background of the Jetta pics?

 

Where did I see that Jetta parked up in the last few days whilst on my travels, prob yesterday?

Nice projects mate!

 

That Jetta is absolutely horrendous, I got to the fibreglassed boot picture and cringed a bit...

I hope the Golf turns out nicer!!! []

 

Thanks for the comments.

Mike - you've probably seen it parked at home, on the A38 glouster road.

Lacking motivation - the pictures are quite old, The CRX - its a 1984 mk1, had 3 of them at one point, still got one in a garage, actually doing an engine swap on it over easter weekend.

Jolfa - the Jetta was done how i wanted it a good few years ago, I'm not really too keen on the boot and shaved rear handles myself anymore. but I suppose we live and learn.

The golf will definatly turn out a lot nicer

 

Just a quick update of whats been done over the last two evenings.

Finished cleaning the wax off the main floorpan


I've removed all the threaded studs which hold the pipe clips on and have started to remove the little bits of surface rust off with the wire brush



Started to remove the stone chip from the bottom sill section.


The stuff along these edges is rock hard and a pain to get off

It's grey and hard rather than been yellow and rubbery like that on the rest of the car as can be seen here.


I've cleaned up the area around the beam mounts and its not come up too bad at all, bit of rust remody stuff and it should be fine.


I've also removed the little flappy bits which extend back and down slightly from the floor sections, to reveal the square edge where it rises up for the back seats.


Comments on this please, I've not seen this done before, are they there for air flow or just to protect the fuel assembly?

Couple of shots of the rear arch, no visible rust but we'll see whats under the sealant.



Cut out the wheel well section - just a rough cut for now, will be tidied up before a panel is welded in.


Removed the gear stick assembly mount.


One odd thing with this car is the puncture wound it has - bottom right of above picture, there is no other damage to the rest of the bottom just this rather neat stab hole, which just so happens to enter the inside of the car inside the seat support beam so cant be seen from inside.

Now a Few questions for anybody that might know, or have an opinion.

First one, the square bracket pictured below, in the back corner of the car, with a circular hole in. I remember threads on here discussing a similar item on the mk1, as to whether its a jack stand point and if it can be removed. I intend on removing these - does anybody advise against this?



last one, in the picture below


In the box section there's the recessed bit where the subframe sits with rear wishbone bolt hole

This recess extends towards the rear to allow for the anti roll bar.

But what is the bolt hole for on the flat bit just to the right of the recess?
there is a captive nut and there was bolts screwed into these but not holding anything on

Ideas anybody??

 

Looking good, and I am amazed at how quickly you have gotten the majority of the underseal off! Were you using a wire brush technique?

Ian...

 

There is a range of "underseal" type stuff on the underneath. there is the etch primer on the bare metal

then along each sill there's hard grey stuff that takes ages to remove, its quite thick at the sills and fades out to a really thin layer about half way to the centre, I'm only removing the thick stuff as you can tell if there's any rust under the other as its so thin.

Then there is what I would describe as seam sealer, its yellow and rubbery, this has been sprayed on over most of the rear half, inside all the wheel arches and down the centre exhaust tunnel. this comes off easily with a twisted wire brush cup on the angle grinder for the thick bits, its about 10mm in some areas, and for thinner areas a finer wire brush cup on a drill, this way you avoid removing the primer.

the overspray from the red paint is on top of these two underseals.

there was then a layer of wax covering the entire front floor pan (about 2mm thick), some black some clear, this comes off quite easily with a scraper, if its cold it makes it easier to heat it up a bit with a heat gun, but not too much otherwise it gets soft and you just smear it about. once youve scraped most of it off, use a solvent to clean off the residue (I used white spirits).

you can use a wooden kitchen spatular as a scraper to avoid scratching the primer, and one of those green kitchen scrubbing pads with the white spirits to help get the last lumpy bits off. probably best to wear gloves to do this, dont bother with latex - they melt, nitrile is better.

 

Good work, looks pretty solid under there.

Its good to see such an early mk2 being restored like this, there can't be many left on an A plate now.

 

Not managed to get anything major done recently as I was away for easter and not been too well since, but here's a quick update anyway.

Finished getting the underseal off the one sill,

And the rear beam mount area.

All solid .

Got rid of the brackets from one back corner.


Etch Primered.




Job for tomorrow is to finish removing the rest of the sealant from the floor.



And finish removing unwanted bits.


Got a bit bored of the back of the car so started on the chasis legs.


More tomorrow!!

 

Here's the result of sundays efforts.

Seemed to take forever to get the underseal off, after 2 hours I'd done this.

Felt like giving up, but after some lunch I cracked on


Got the top half done

Then the bottom, apart from the bit right in the corner.

Took the other beam mount off.

Cleaned it up.

Then removed the other square bracket from the corner.

And cleaned that area up.

Found the first rust hole on the car [:^(], not anything to worry about though.

Started removing the underseal from the back pannel.

Its really thick on this bit, got about half of it done before I gave up, My wire brush is nackered, will grab a new one tomorrow.

Not much underseal left on it now

Big pile on the floor from today, plus probably the same again stuck to all the walls and me.

Also got the one chasis leg prepped and primed

Then attacked one of the front seat mounts

And seat rails.


Hopefully get more done next weekend.

 

Good work mate, it really is a v good shell!!