1989 Tornado Red 3dr Gti 16v

The car looks ace and good on you for sticking with it and getting all the niggly jobs done, its amazing how much difference they make! Just the sort of thing im wanting to do with mine

 

looking gd so far

 

Haha cheers after the VW parts monkey in Andover told me that all the seat runner parts were obselete i thought you might have gotten them elsewhere. Have since been to a different parts monkey and have got a set. Am thinking that the first guy didnt even bother looking! Cheers, am liking the car.

 

Yeah, tbh the youngest is getting on for 20yrs old, so unless you've got 5k to spend on something to keep in the garage an never drive, you're always going to find problems. Best you can hope for IMO is to get one with as little corrosion as possible. All of the ones I looked at were crusty in some area or other, this one just happened to be the last crusty

I have got myself a mk2 she is a bit of a mess but sold body very little rust and is now saved for the scrap man it was a deal and i find it hard to turn down a mk2 in need..

 

I'm really enjoying this thread - keep up the good work.

 

As am I - I really am hunting for a good Mk2, and i like threads like this, just perfecting them.
You don't have to do things like this with new cars!

Another one saved from the scrappage scheme!

 

Thanks again for the encouragement - it's great to know some of you find my progress of interest, amongst all the 20vt conversions, full restos and other excellent projects that are covered on here

Cheers dude - couldn't agree more about how much nicer the car is to drive once the little things are sorted. I think this, along with cost of repairs is one of the main killers of old cars.. they're not well maintained and people get fed up with the squeaks / knocks / leaks / shoddy gearshift / dodgy steering.. sadly most people just chop them in for something newer rather than getting them sorted.

Mine was pretty horrible to drive when I got it (knackered gearshift, wonky tracking, old cheap tyres, imbalanced wheels, squeaking cambelt tensioner bearing, ticking exhaust...) it's getting much nicer as I slowly get them all sorted

Good luck ironing out the results of 20yrs of apathy and ham-fisted garage chimps on yours

Slack tarts - glad you got it sorted in the end..

Good effort - get some pics up then


Think I might finally have sorted the abysmal cold starting problem that's plagued the car for the last 6 months - as explained in the thread I think the water that's getting in through the driver's door is knackering the immobiliser, which is fine once it's had a bit of current through it and got warm. It's been inside a ziplock bag for the past two days, and the car's started on the nail both times I've tried



Since I don't think I need access to the ignition assy anymore, I tucked the immob. box back ontop of the fusebox (where it had been expertly 'fitted' ) refitted the d/side under-dash trim and ignition surround today, so the car looks a bit less pikey now.

So now it's full steam ahead with getting the car watertight (or as close to it as possible); ordered a window seal and some other bits on thursday, only to get the message that some of them are obsolete. Hopefully the seals are still avalable; going to enquire tomorrow and get a pair if they are...

 

Thread started Project old red

 

Looks a nice original car, good to see all the sensible stuff being done to make it more driveable and easier to live with, havnt been on here for ages what happened to your grey one?

 

Haha that's why im planning to pull the engine out and just sort it properly from scratch. Lots of chopped wires and messiness in my engine bay, but at least everything works. but its far from the condition i would like it to be in!

 

Cheers Paul. The grey one met an untimely end early last year thanks to my over enthusiasm, black ice and a roundabout [:^(] It wasn't as mint as it looked though, and whilst stripping it I found quite a lot of rot. The shell pictured earlier on this page is what's left of it..

Fair play - you're a braver man than I.. I'd love the facilities to strip a car back to a bare shell and sort everything from the bottom up, but for now it's a case of keeping it going and sorting what I can. Hope yours goes well

 

Had use of the ramp tonight, so took the opportunity to p*ss about with the car a bit more.

Having recently roughly centred the rack, I tweaked the track rod ends in an effort to get the steering wheel dead central. Having tightened everything up and dropped it back on the ground, I then decided it looked like it had a load of toe out (which is also suggested by the scrubbing on the inside edges of the tyres), so I wound on a few minutes of toe in, bringing it closer to zero toe at full droop.

The car's needed tracking since I bought it and the tyres need replacing so I figure there's nowt wrong with a bit of fiddling until I can afford to get it done properly.

I've had a speedo cable sitting in the workshop since I bought the car and finally got round to fitting it today. Found I didn't have any stereo keys to remove the head unit, so nipped to the local motor factors and also got some fish and chips for tea

Pulled the dash apart to find the usual butchered stereo wiring, but it was reasonably well wrapped and I hate / am crap at wiring so I left it alone. Pulled out the instrument pack, gave it a clean and replaced one of the bulbs as it wasn't working. Wanted to do the lot but only had one spare, unfortunately.

No pictures of the dash in bits as you all know what it looks like and I couldn't be a*sed tbh.




Pulled out the speedo cable, only to find no apparant way of getting the drive gear off to fit to the new one.. in the end after a look on the forum, ETKA and consultation with the old man I resorted to brute force - which for once appeared to be the correct approach


Drive gear still fitted to old cable:




Drive gear removed, note retaining circlip on end of old cable:




Drive gear and circlip:




Gear cleaned up and fitted to end of new cable:




Cleaned everything up and started refitting the cable to the box, then f*cking disaster struck when I found the thread for the speedo cable retainer bolt into the geabox case was stripped

Pretty confident that this wasn't my doing; was only using a little 1/4" drive socket in the palm of my hand and it took no torque before I noticed the bolt was just spinning in the hole. It's holding at the moment but I'll need to get it helicoiled at some point.. Hope someone can supply the correct coils to fit the queer M7x1.25 thread, and that they're happy to do it in situ as I'm buggered if I'm taking the box off.

Had fun getting the cable grommet into the scuttle on account of the wiring, but got there in the end and put the rest of the dash together.. had a brief moment of dispair when I checked the instrument pack lights to find the indicator light stuck on, but this was fine after I plugged the hazard switch back in

Took it out for a drive in an effort to appease my annoyance at the stripped thread.. the speedo needle is now nice and damped rather than bouncing around at low speed, and it's nice to be able to see the rev counter in the dark.

The steering wheel is now almost aligned and the steering feels less twitchy, centres better and seems to give a bit more feedback, which is nice.

Little things....

 

I`ve had that same thread strip too, but managed to get enough on it, and it never leaked.

Trouble with heli-coiling though is, you have to drill the hole oversize (typically 1.5 -2mm) to accept the coil. Only one place the swarf generated is going to go...

 

Cheers Stu - it's good to know I'm not the only one it's happened to.

I know a good local engineering company; will contact them once I've got some photos of it (p*ssing it down here at the moment). I don't think the swarf should be a problem as the hole into the box can no doubt be blanked / masked off.. what concerns me more is access and sourcing the correct helicoils.

Nowt's going to get done for the forseeable future anyway as I'm skint.

I checked for leaks last night after a drive and it seems alright; the cable is a reasonable fit into the gearbox casing and I greased it too so that should slow the ingress of crap. The old cable was a bit of a swine to get out, which makes me think the retaining bolt thread's been knackered for a long time and letting water in.

I'm hoping the that axial thrust generated by the helical gear on the speedo is pulling it into the box, rather than pushing it out.. would seem a sensible way to design it. That said, they have used a bizarre thread on the retaining bolt for no good reason

 

Things have continued to go pear shaped over the last couple of days


The immobilser has started playing up again. While the damp obviously wasn't helping, the car has been a pain to start again recently even with the immob. still in it's little bag.

Tried to start it today and briefely got a load of clicking from the starter, a'la dead battery. Obviously something's knackered in the immobiliser that's restricting the current during cold starts. Whilst I thought this was just the result of damp, I'm now thinking that that might only have been excerbating an existing problem.

Not sure what to do about it; b*ggered if I'm paying some spotty oik to install a replacement and further butcher my wiring. Spotted a similar immob. on ebay for 35, but I'm tempted just to rip the old one out and not bother to install a replacement, since I hate the bloody things anyway.


Had a crack at checking the camber yesterday; if I've managed to do it right on the wonky ground the car was parked on, I've got -0.85deg on the front passenger side, +0.75deg(!) on the front driver's side, -1.73deg on the rear passenger side, and -1.33deg on the rear driver's side.

Going to have a crack at this in the week; the state it's in sort of makes sense as it had a new lower ball joint on the d/side last year before I bought it, and evidently it wasn't set up properly afterwards. Surprise surprise.


The final insult came earlier as I was (admittedly giving it death) round the ring road and the speedo died. Pulled over and somewhat predictably the gearbox end of the cable had come out of the 'box (thanks to the stripped retaining thread), p*ssing gear oil all over the engine bay and the back of the car

Bodged it back in and nursed it home; box seems alright as I don't think it lost that much oil although it highlights the need to get the thread sorted. Think I'm going to have a b*tch of a job finding a helicoil to suit the f*cking stupid and pointless M7x1.25mm thread in the box. Going to ring the local VW main dealers on Monday and see if they have any ideas, would have thought they'd have seen a few of these in their time as it's a pretty crap design.

So, all in all, I feel like torching the bloody car again today

 

Just drill and tap it out. Ive done it before. Its a right pain in the ****. You can rest safely in the knowledge that at some stage the 020 box diff pin will self machine itself through the casing at some stage anyway!!!

 

i'd of thought deako's idea is better than helicoil and obviously much cheaper, put the money saved towards the planned better tyres so you can properly give it death

 

Cheers gents.

I had considered tapping the hole out but M8x1.0 is probably a bit fine for alloy, and whilst I could probably get away with M8x1.25, the hole's already a bit big for that. Plus I'm a tart for doing things 'right' and don't want to have to drill the hole out in the cable bracket

Also this seems to be a fairly common problem, and the stonger helicoil should prevent such nastyness happening again in the future.

Thanks for the encouragement about the diff pin, Deako

Rang the local VW garage on Monday; who apparently farm such work out to the company I'd already contacted. Chased them up and they have inserts of the correct size and seem willing to do the work for a reasonable fee, so I'll probably swing by later in the week and let them have a look.

Also found some Uniroyal Rainsport 2's for a decent price, so will get a pair of them ordered shortly.


Managed to get in the workshop last night so attacked the camber and toe, which took a while.

Found the (splendidly old skool) camber gauge was a little out so re-zeroed that with the help of a bit of steel box section, a magnetic hook and a plumb line.






Broadly speaking camber was alright apart from the driver's side front, which was reading around +0.75 deg!

As suspected the bottom ball joint had been fitted to the wishbone at the innermost extremity of the mounting slots, so first thing was to push it to the outside of the wishbone. True to form there wasn't a hint of grease on the bolts, but they came out OK and went back covered in swathes of copper grease




Unfortunately the adjustment of the ball joint didn't make a whole lot of difference, so I off came the wheel to get to the hub / strut bolts. These were a bit of a pain to get off (again no grease) but I got there in the end with breaker bars and the windy gun.

Cleaned, greased and refitted the bolts, pushing the top of the hub to it's most inboard point as I was a bit paranoid that I wasn't going to get enough movement to get the desired camber. Got the wheel back on, and had about -1deg of camber (a bit much; aiming for the VW recommended value of -0.67deg). Also daubed a bit of waxoyl on the exposed metal on the inner wing where the wheel had previously rubbed due to the wonky steering.




Briefly considered having the wheel off again and playing with the hub some more, but had a load more to do and felt a bit rough, so took the lazy way out and played with the bottom balljoint again instead - moving it back to it's original position got the camber bang on



Next, moved onto the tracking using the string method as described here. Bodged up a rig using axle stands, cable ties and fishing line, datumed against the sills of the car.

The LH front was bang on, but predictably the RH now had loads of toe in after the camber adjustment. Got the car in the air and wound the track rod in a bit; found that 1mm adjustment at the rod alters the toe at the outside of a 14" rim by about 3.5mm.

Had a few problems with the car moving as it was raised and lowered on the ramp, so eventually reset the whole lot and checked it again, to find it pretty much spot on at zero toe. The only concerning this is that the driver's front sits a bit more inboard than passenger side; so at some point in the future I probably want to pull the bottom ball joint to the outside of the wishbone and re-adjust the camber on the hub / strut bolts. At least the rest of the geometry is pretty much as it should be now, though

 

Excellent skillz!!!

 

Cheers dude

Took the car to the engineers today to give them a look at the stripped thread in the 'box housing.

I'd told them on the phone that the thread was oddly M7x1.25, for which they said they could get the inserts. Evidently they weren't listening / didn't believe me as I was told today that this thread didn't exist and the original thread would have been M7x1.0.

They got a thread gauge on the bolt, and I was momentarily relieved to eat humble pie when they found it to be the more common M7x1.0, as they'd claimed..

Anyway I get home and whip the bolt out of my spare 'box, and surprise surprise it's a coarser thread to the one in the car. So it appears that at some point in the past some t*sser has lost the original bolt (probably when the clutch was done) and forced in the wrong size M7x1.0 bolt; knackering the thread

Longer, LH bolt is the proper one, note the damage to the threads on the wrong bolt:







Arses.