My 91 Golf was sold by "The Collingdale Volkswagen Centre" in London. I have the original Key fob inserts which say Ray Thacker on them. I guess he must have been one of the sales guys. I've put them in new frames but the key ring loops are such poor quality they break ! Sharknose told me about Pukka Designs who made new number plates, a rear dealer sticker (Nick kindly did the artwork) and tax disk to match my originals. You could see if they have any info/templates ?
A bit more progress on the car this weekend. The rear beam is pretty much ready to go back on the car but annoyingly I am still waiting on the small plastic clips to hold the brake lines onto the beam. They are still a week or so away so it has been slow going. The new Goodridge hoses did turn up though. After much heaving I also managed to get the pistons out of the front callipers so the brakes are now completely stripped and ready for some fresh paint. After that I ran out of stuff to do on the back of the car so decided to prep the subframe for paint. As @rubjonny pointed out earlier in the thread it appears to be a G60 subframe not a GTI one. I have considered running it as is as well as using the weight that came with it, but after toying with the idea I decided to chop it up and make it into a GTI one as the car was intended to have. first up was removing the carrier for the weight. I intended to go down the quick route and just chop the arms off, but on reflection decided to go all the way and try and get it off as cleanly as I could. I hoped I could carefully grind off some spot welds an lever it free, but it turned out to be a proper mission! VW did a pretty decent job welding these things on… the first one took a bit of experimentation to get off, but the second was much easier. It’s not perfect but after blasting and Powdercoating it should look quite clean. I then traced the GTI ARB bracket shape into the other side of the subframe before carefully cutting out the shapes. I also drilled some small drainage holes where water collects under the ARB. With that finished off it is now ready to go off to paint with a few other bits. If I had to do it again I would just hold out and buy a proper GTI one as this was a fair bit of work. That said its all done now and should be perfect once blasted and painted.
I am assuming it’s just luck of the draw with different case workers. The docs are heavily redacted, literally just dates and localities left in place, but they are all there. Really frustrated that they don’t have anything pre 97 on file anymore as the original dealer was what I wanted to known the most.
I think that's the nail on the head, just depends who you get looking at it, i mean i couldn't have asked a more polite and innocent request! That's odd about the pre-97 stuff, years ago when i did a V888 for my old Fiesta RS Turbo, i got everything from day one in 1990 including the registration stuff with the dealer info!
To be fair to them they said in the covering letter that the documents specific to my vehicle had been “misplaced” and attempts to locate them had been unsuccessful. They then went on to say the film with them on could have been lost in an office reshuffle that took place some years ago… local VW also says they don’t have records that go that far back, so as a very last chance I might try VW UK before resorting to the VW main dealer listing from 1990, and just making an assumption based on the nearest one to Halifax where it was registered. From looking at that the dealer would be Lightcliffe Motors.
Lightcliffe was mentioned when I asked around work today, but they were unsure if that was right time frame, and I think it was them that disappeared. Edit, Yep was them that closed, was talk of it becoming a KFC, but we drove that way Friday and it is a car dealer again. Its at Shelf, that's the name of the place, but not sure if that was a more modern building/relocation looking at the picture
Dissolved in 2017, and may have been around from 2002, but not sure if that is just that site, or as the Halifax dealership.
I think they were at that sight from 2002, but the dealership was selling cars in Halifax from the early 80’s. Found this dealer sticker on a MK1 golf, and the other one on a 88 polo. Pity they have ceased to trade as I would have loved to ask them, but at least I know they were selling cars at the time.
Looks like the dealer sticker in the upper pic is period correct. Nick (Sharknose) told me the font is VW specific. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/VAG...y et al.,the Volkswagen AG motor manufacturer.
Love what you are doing with the MK2! The lightcliffe dealer referenced a few posts up isn't the one that would have stood in the early 90s. That dealer was about a mile down the road and is a co op now, it was my local dealer growing up. Also check out a company called proplates online when you are ready to buy your repro set. I got a set made up for my MK2 and only charged 40 quid the pair. Most other places wanted 60ish
Made some progress on the car today. The little plastic brake line clips arrived so I finished bending the lines and attaching them to the rear beam. After that it was time to get it back onto the car. As I didn’t have a helping hand I decided to lift it off the ground on some wheel stands, and then jack the beam up until the brackets aligned with the holes for the bolts. Surprisingly it went pretty smoothly and the beam lifted up into place almost perfectly. That was where the easy but ended! Haha. It ended up being a bit of a pig to get the bolts through the brackets and into the chassis. From what I could see, the new polybushes leave the brackets sitting ever so slightly inwards, about 5mm each side. This meant that the bolts were incredibly hard to line up with the chassis holes. After about 15 minutes of playing about and pushing the beam to one side and then the other I got them all in and torqued up. next up was reconnecting the brake lines to the bias compensator. As I had to cut the lines to get the beam off, I used the flaring tool with the lines still on the car to reconnect them. They were about 2 inches shorter than before, but I managed to get a decent amount of “S” bend in them so they should still be able to take the flex of the rear beam. With all the lines connected I got a start on the stub axles. I was running 8mm spacers on the rear before I started the restoration, but have never been a fan of the longer bolts and the wheel sitting on less of the hub that comes with spacers. Given everything was off the beam I took the opportunity to fit some stub axle spacers instead. That way I can still get the wheels to sit the same width to the arch as the front, but have the wheels sit all the way in the hub and use the original bolts. I didn’t go crazy on the spacers and went with 10mm to keep it within the spec of the front wheels. The spacers came from Sayner Works and included new hardware so fitting them was really strait forward. Tomorrow I will get going fitting the new hubs/disks while I wait for the callipers to come back from paint. Feels good to be bolting stuff on instead of pulling stuff off! But that is short lived as when I’m finished at the rear the big job starts at the front.
May I ask what the recaros stand you at? I'm dying for a set but the price scares me. I missed out on a mint set with doorcards and split fold rear seat with rear headrests for 1600 because I thought that was extortionate. I've since learnt that was very cheap!! Also if you do track your car down to being lightcliffe supplied, have a look for a lady called Anna bebbington on FB. She's involved with the MK1 owners club. Anyway she has a lightcliffe supplied H reg MK1 cab and she got repro plates and stickers made for it, might be worth looking at hers to see what you think
Asking price for a full set with door cards in good shape seems to be about £2k at the moment. Saw a nice set for sale local to me about 3 months ago for £1200 but they were unsurprisingly snapped up in minutes. Spent £2k on both sets of mine (all together), and after mixing and matching the parts I wanted sold the left overs off for £800. I then paid an auto electrician £45 to wire them into the fuse box. So all things considered I'm in for around £1300. Mine are not split rear bench though, and they don’t have rear headrests either. That said, if you can find a nice set for between £1.5k and £1.8k you are probably doing alright in today’s market.
Both were knackered. You can see in the pic below they had ripped bolsters and full of stains. I literally stripped each seat down, washed all the fabric panels, and mixed and matched the best bits. As one was a Uk set, and the other German, broadly speaking the two passenger seats made for a tidy pair, and the two drivers seats were sold on. Doing it that way was a ton of work but it was the only way I could do it in a budget.
Worth a try asking VW UK but not sure how much info they actually hold - when i first bought my Anni i contacted VW UK for more information and they confirmed it was a genuine Anniversary and the build date and that was about it. It's a nice thing to have in the folder however!
