Hi All. I have been lurking on the forum for a number of years, and have owned a few GTi's in the past of various variants. At the start of lockdown, I made an impulse purchase of a MK2 GTI 8V. I have owned a MK2 8V before and absolutely loved it, so when a reasonably priced one popped up 2 Miles away I had to buy it. Given we were in a lock down I thought a project would be a good idea, and before I knew it the car was sitting on my drive. My previous 8V GTI was a high spec, low owner, low miles example and needed nothing doing to it. It was one of the best cars I have owned and regretted selling it back in 2015 (which is probably what prompted the impulse purchase of my current one). The Old MK2: By contrast, my current one is a poverty spec, high miler, 11 owner, 5 shades of red, no service history example! The two cars couldn't be further apart, and the journey so far has been a lot of fun (and frustration) getting it sorted. A lot of what I have done so far is very basic cosmetic and mechanical stuff, however this winter I am going to start to strip it all down and get stuck into the running gear and engine. I'm going to need a lot of help from the good folks on this forum getting it back up and running in as new condition, so I thought I'd start this thread so all of you can follow the journey. Below is the current car on the day it arrived. Looking nice from far but far from nice! I Will post updates over the coming days of the work to date, and next month I will begin the strip down...
Love it! Amazing too that it was only 2 miles away, must have made it even more tempting to get....... I was the same selling my first 25th Anniversary in 2015... mistake! So this year bought another, but not the same colour like you
Yes Its staying OEM. If anything I'm looking to restore it as best I can with a few subtle upgrades. No huge modifications or engine swaps are planned.
After getting the car home with the seller's words "Everything works" ringing in my ears, the reality of an 11 owner no history car started to sell in... First off after popping the hood to check the fluids it became apparent that the latch wouldn't hold after I close the bonnet. Turns out that the spring had failed behind the grill which means the catch wasn't returning. The bonnet could have flown up at any point during the drive home so I was lucky it was only a 2 mile drive back to mine. I rummaged in my spares drawers and found a suitable spring to replace the broken one and the latch sprung back as it should. With the Grill off to fix the bonnet latch, I decided to clean up the foggy spot lights and tidy up the wiring to the lights. I also cleaned up behind the grill and gave it a fresh coat of waxoyl. Grill back on with clean lights and OE Hella decals fitted. A few days later the first of the new bits started coming in. First up a few items to tidy up the drivers footwell. The existing pedals were showing every mile of the vehicle's life and were desperately needed refreshing... Amazing what some fresh pedal covers can do for the inside of a car. I then turned my attention to the crusty sun roof deflector. It had the common rust around the edges due to leaking seals and blocked drains. Quick blast with a wire wheel and sandpaper cleaned it all off, and then a fresh coat of primer and satin black paint got it looking like new again. After that, I turned my attention to the door cards. They were very soft along the bottom from years of water ingress. The shape and fabric had held up well, but because they were soft they didn't clip into the retaining clips along the bottom of the door. This meant that the door cards flapped about every time opened and closed the doors. I decided to try and repair them with fiberglass and try and get them back as good as new. I started out by spacing the bottom edge back out to where it would have originally needed to be to clip into the retaining clips firmly. I then bought a DIY fiberglass kit from Halfords and layered the material inside the soft bottom edge. This technique worked really well, and I ended up coating the whole bottom edge of both cards, as well as the area behind the armrest that often pushes through. The end result was rock solid door cards that now clip into the doors firmly. I also purchased a cheap steam cleaner off of Amazon and gave the interior a good clean. I have never steam cleaned anything before and I was really impressed with the results. The below pic you can see the cleaned area on the right hand side of the card vs the dirty side on the left. I also used it to clean the under bonnet insulation. And after... So that was the first few days of ownership... More updates to come.
Given the car is a poverty spec GTI with fish bowl glass and very few options I decided to look into upgrading some of the specifications. After doing some googling I found some catalogues online, and a few things jumped out at me. The car had a terrible early 200's radio in it and the OEM radios in the German catalogue jumped out at me. Mostly because I like how the diagonal textures on the buttons matched the diagonal stripes on the GTI steering wheel. Little details like that really make a car, so I decided to try and track a MK2 Delta radio down. (the Recaro interior is a whole nother story that we will get to shortly). So a few weeks later this arrived... On closer inspection however, I noticed that some of the buttons had collapsed and didn't pop out like they should. With no other options and no experience in radio repair, I decided to try strip the radio and see if the issue could be repaired. It appears that over time the small rubber "button pushes" inside the clear section had cracked and broken, meaning that there was no longer the bounce back needed to push the buttons out again. After looking at the best way to fix this I decided to try to use black silicone to recreate the old broken rubber bits. I used a pin and black silicone to carefully rebuild each one of them. The finished result wasn't as pretty as I hoped but it did the trick. I then put it all back together and also managed to track down a cassette holder and original surround to go with it. The surround was tricky to find but I really wanted it as it matches the surround of the climate controls that sit below the radio. The wiring inside the dash had been chopped to match the new radio, so I had to source new radio plugs, and then get an auto electrician to create an original loom for the radio, but the end result was perfect, and the radio now has buttons that match the steering wheel horn push. Probably the most ridiculous reason to chase down an OEM radio but that's what I get my kicks from haha. More updates on the way...
Ever since buying the car the brakes have been terrible. The pedal was really soft and would go almost all the way to the floor. Bleeding the system improved it slightly but I knew the brakes would need looking at before I got the car properly back on the road. One morning I went into the garage and saw a huge puddle of brake fluid under the car, and knew it was time to try and sort it out. Removing the brake fluid reservoir revealed this horror show. The rubber grommets that seal off the reservoir had perished years ago, and the brake fluid had been leaking all over the master cylinder and booster. The corrosion was so bad that even new grommets were not able to make a proper seal between the master cylinder and the reservoir. I knew that in the coming months I was going to pull the whole engine out, so decided to try and get it working as it stood, and would replace the whole system at the point I rebuilt/refreshed the motor. The next step was to try and create a smooth surface for fresh grommets to seal up against. I used a file to carefully flat back the surface where the grommets sit in the master cylinder. I then used fine sandpaper the get the surface as smooth as possible. I then fitted some fresh OEM grommets and despite the horrific state of the master cylinder, they sealed up nice and tight. I fitted the reservoir and topped up the brake fluid and 6 months later the system has leaked a drop of fluid and the pedal is nice and firm. That said I will be replacing the whole system in the near future, but this repair has allowed me to enjoy the car over the summer, and if I didn't know the whole area was corroded I wouldn't even plan on a rebuild simply because it has all been working so well. The 11 owner no history legacy of the car was definitely starting to sink in at this point, and the list of things that needed sorting out was growing by the day. ..
Clear glass in all the windows (like a fish bowl) as opposed to the green tint you see on most GTI's.
Thanks! A lot of folks get bored with the OEM thing but I really enjoy building old cars as true to original as possible.
Stellar work. Love the attitude with the stereo, well done. Nowt wrong with clear glass, or a blanket canvas to start with, being a lower spec car owner.
It's great to see this GTI getting some TLC. You are doing a really thorough job! Yeah the 90G 8 valve's were really low on standard spec. No PAS, CL, electric windows or alloys. More like the spec of an early MK1 GTI! JX is a Halifax reg. This car might have been sold by Hayselden originally? - you could get some 'period correct' plates made up if that's your thing. Looking forward to more updates!
Love the attention to detail with the stereo and that cassette holder is indeed the icing on the cake - it's these little touches that will really enhance the spec of the car!
That’s exactly what I would like to do. Because the car came with no history I don’t know the original dealer, however the plates do suggest it was originally from the Huddersfield / Halifax area. Last week I submitted a V888 application to the DVLA, so hopefully they are able to supply old V5’s and original purchase info. Once I get that original dealer plates are definitely on the list of things to do.
Thanks! Luckily these cars are like Lego so retrofitting upgrades if fairly strait forward. I have a few more things on the list to track down as well.
