1990 Alpine White Mk2 Golf GTI Rebuild

Hi Watercooled, your comment has got me thinking about all the awful insulation tape I removed too haha! And I hear you on the short wires, I had to rejoin a few at the ignition switch and couldn't afford any mistakes if I didn't want to put completely new wires in as it was quite short also after chopping the not so nice bits out! Sounds like a tough time with the stereo there, luckily I was able to use the standard colour coded wiring for my head unit. Cheers for the encouragement also

 

I’ll try and get a couple of posts up today, something interior and something more interesting as the headliner isn’t exactly exciting

The next job that I really wanted to get sorted was repairing the headliner. When I bought the car, like many others half the headliner was hanging down. When I removed the headliner I’d unfortunately damaged it in several places, It’s such a delicate material. I knew I wanted to try and fix what I had and had seen people use PVA glue and newspaper for a paper mache effect. So I had a go and it worked really well honestly! Feels a lot more solid now and will be easier to re-cover in fabric and install without worrying about it falling apart again.

Old liner, previously used adhesive had stuck to it from when it was tucked back on itself when it was attempted to be fixed previous.







This took a long time as the liner was so broken up and distorted, I’m happy with the end result though! Will do the actual recovering in fabric later down the line, thinking of going for a soft black to match the plastic trims for a slightly more modern feel

 

PITA those headliner shells...so fragile,mine was in something like 6 pieces for that reason I had to fiberglass it together in an attempt to fix it and get some more strength into it.
My trimmer swore by a german brand of fabric with a thin foam bonded to it ,it was black and he mentioned it was the same as Mk5 Golf as had used it before on that model,came out really nice and looked more modern,besides I couldn't find the original texture black fabric.
Real important to use sprayable contact glue with the highest heat rating you can buy,also the glue needs to have an extended "tack time" so you can reposition the fabric into all the curves and indents on the shell .
TBO honest I couldn't see me doing this job so left it up to my trimmer....really glad I did as he mentioned it wasn't easy.
Cheers.

 

Next up, decided to refurbish the driveshafts, I had fun doing these to be honest, never seen,one in pieces and now have a good understanding of how they work which is pretty cool.

I guess they had the usual amount of wear you would expect, she’s done 126,000 miles after all so a fair bit of corrosion and caked in oil and dirt, the oil had done them a favour I think In protecting them! First thing was to strip them down and see if anything needed replacing.



Messy but fun, was definitely a learning curve working out how to remove the ball bearings and the cage



This was the right side inner, I did some Googling and figured it should be replaced, don’t recall there was any clicking when turning but while it’s apart I wanted to change it.




Cleaned back the driveshafts for reusing, apart from surface rust they looked solid still.



Primed and painted, it’s rattle can chip resistant, will see how it holds up when it’s back on the road.



Cleaned and painted the outer joints too, hammerite for these guys.







Then reassembled everything. I got the replacement right hand inner joint and all new boots from euros.






All ready to go back on when it’s time

 

There is a whole lot of other cleaning and repairing i did to a lot of other components like the engine brackets, pulleys and mounts, oil filter housing and things like that which I didn't take many pictures of, most of it was a case of removing the rust, prepping and then painting, Ill show most of that as it gets to the going back together stage

With that being said, it was time to drop it off to the painters! I wanted to go with someone local and ended up going with West Hertz Customs based in Dunstable. Really great group of guys and very passionate about what they do. They do all kinds of body work and modifications including on their own cars and I felt very confident they would do the Mk2 justice

I dropped the car off and discussed paint options with them. When I first bought the car, my intention was to change the colour, at the time Bright Metallic Blue was what I had hoped to go for. However over the past couple of years working on the car I had slowly grown to love the original Alpine White and anything other than original, or as close to, was really what I wanted to go for. We discussed the possibility of doing Ibis White which was a bit brighter but in the end all agreed that staying original would be right for it.



Comparison of L90E - Alpine White and LY9C - Ibis White. I think the slightly warmer tone is more fitting for the Mk2 but either would have looked great I'm sure



Sat in it's new home for a few weeks

The best part of the paint shop being close to home is that I was able to drop by as they progressed the car which was awsome! Lots of pictures incoming!! Some are ones I took, some are taken by the painter





First they flattened back the original paint







Areas that I had reworked and where it had some dents were smoothed over

















I can't believe how good it looks in just the primer already! It had been such a long time since starting the body work I had seen it in one colour and there is something magical about the way primer looks, it really shows off the stunning lines of the car, I'm over the moon with it!!