J131 GHG 1991 GTI

I’m 24 now so have done a fair bit to it since. My aim has always been to go down the oem+ route, keep the original engine and just improve things.

 

Nice one, like what you’ve done so far.

 

February 2019 marked the end of daily duties for the mk2. I bought a T4 for me and my girlfriend to convert into a camper van. The aim was to have it ready for a July trip to cornwall, so the mk2 just sat on my parents driveway as I was too busy with the van to use it. It briefly came back into daily duties for a couple of months as the T4 in typical vw fashion needed some welding doing.



By October I was fed up of seeing the mk2 sat on the drive in the elements so decided to rent a garage. I found one about a 10 minute drive from my parents that was £100 a month which I didn't think was too bad. It was a very basic ex council garage with no power but it would keep the golf out of the winter weather.



The end of the year brought a right result, the previous owner contacted me saying he'd found the service book while having a clear out. As soon as I could I went and picked it up. It was in really good condition and even had a fair few stamps in the book. I love this kind of thing, so cool.





Finally a quick indicator change to the original amber which I think looks much cleaner.

 

Now that I had a garage I wanted to start tidying up the bits that let the car down. I started with a fairly straight forward job, replacing the rusty fuel tank straps. I got some new replacement stainless steel ones from ebay. I removed and replaced the straps one by one with a jack and piece of wood under the tank to stop anything getting strained too much.
Gave the exhaust a quick polish while the car was in the air too.





Made a start on cleaning up the engine bay. Bought a G60 rocker cover as I've never been a fan of the standard pressed steel one, plus they always leak if they're not perfectly square. Gave the cylinder head and block a paint while I had everything off to replace the water pump as it was squeaking. Had the fan cowling sand blasted, then I gave it a few coats of satin black. Did the same with the fan body its self and then built it back up, ready to fit.









Managed to pick up an eibach rear antiroll bar for £40 which I thought was a bargain, didn't come with a fitting kit though. But that wasn't a worry, the rubbers were there I just had to cut and bend some sheet stainless to go over the centre bushes and used some mikalor clamps to mount it round the beam. If I'm honest I couldn't tell the difference while driving the car but I'm sure it's doing something!



Quick sticker change on the RA centre caps to bring them back to life.

 

Another very common problem on the mk2 gti, a bleeding LCD screen on the mfa. Mine always had a slight bleed in one corner, but one morning in winter when I went down to the garage it had spread across half the screen. I removed the clocks and set about stripping them down to get to the screen. I followed a how to on here or mk2golfoc (can't remember), which was very useful however the clocks were slightly different so the last bit I had to wing it and figure it out.




I put every thing back together, plugged it back in and it worked. What I didn't realise until I drove the car a few weeks later is that the mpg and average speed readout was blank and not working. I've had the clocks out again since this and still can't figure out why it's not working, not the end of the world but a bit annoying as it was fine before I took everything apart.

 

So if I can't see a pulse signal does that mean the speed sensor has packed it in? Guessing I'd have to get one off another set of clocks?

 

Ah ok, might pickup a second hand set of clocks to switch some bits over to determine the fault. Cheers for the info!

 

Expansion tank is quick and easy engine bay improvement. Drained some of the coolant out of the bottom hose till the old tank was empty then its just a matter of removing and refitting the hoses to the new one. Then top back up with coolant. Yes I know the cap is black and these can fail but it's been fine for the last 6 years of my ownership.

 

13th May 2020 was a good day. Was doing my usual browsing for mk2 parts when I came across a fairly tired set of recaros very local to me. They were dirty and looked a bit worn but had no holes and most importantly the electric bases were present. Messaged the seller, went to view them and made sure the motors worked. Then a deal was done and I took them home.



As you can see, not too bad shape just very grubby.
The drivers lower bolster was shot, so I stripped the seat down to uncover the ruined foam. The foam for the mk2 recaros is unavailable, but I bought one for a ford recaro from capital seating. It needed sanding back with a block to get the shape right and some of the foam needs cutting away. It turned out pretty well, it's not perfect but you wouldn't notice it was different unless you knew. While I was replacing the foam I also gave the electric bases a spray in satin black as they were looking tatty in places.



The rear bench fabric looked a little baggy so I stripped it down to investigate. Turns out the fabric that holds the metal hooks in had completely disintegrated. My girlfriend kindly offered to sew in some new material and I got I second hand bench from dubstock to steal the foam from.



Can see how loose the covers were.



Much better.
The seats didn't come with any door cards so I sourced some separately. With these sourced the seats were ready to fit.



Just need to wire them in now!
Sorry for the amount of photos I'm more of a visual person and I did all this a while ago so cant remember everything in great detail!

 

With the Recaros in I turned my attention to the wiring. The seats came with a rather tatty but original wiring loom which had been cut, I extended the loom with some new cable and added in an inline fuse. With the loom extended I wrapped it in fabric loom tape and routed it under the carpet to each seat. To get power for the seats I ran the loom up under the dash, used an earth point just below the A pillar and for the live I used an empty space in the back of the fuse box which I'm pretty sure is where the Recaros would be wired in from factory. Didn't take a load of photos while doing this but have a couple of random ones.



Also found the factory spec sheet from when the car was built under the carpet.



As these seats were originally a factory option for small bumper cars, the rear bench was carpet lined on the back unlike later cars which got the cheaper looking black board. With the seat back and boot floor in black carpet I thought the foam arch covers looked a bit out of place so sourced a carpet set and fitted them. Looks a lot nicer and a bit more luxury than the cheap foam ones from factory, don't really get why they changed it for the later cars.

 

August 2020, took the van on a 500 mile trip up north to pick up some B-Star RA's. I bought them off Curt, who has a mint bbm big bumper with a super charged vr6 in. Seeing as we were going all that way, made sense to make a weekend out of it. Stayed in a nice little car park next to a lake in the Yorkshire dales for the night before collecting the wheels.



After a good catch up we headed home with the wheels. I love these wheels, I think they're perfect for a big bumper mk2 as the original bbs' get lost in the arches. Would love a set of 7j bbs ra's some day but they don't come up often and are silly money. Will put a pic of them on the car in due course.



Next mod was brakes. Personally I always found the original 8v brakes a bit rubbish, never gave me any confidence. So went on the hunt for some G60 brakes, funnily enough the bloke I bought the car off messaged me saying he had a set with hubs as well. He was only round the corner and the price was decent so I bought them and set about giving them a refurb. As you can see, had seen better days.



Had to drill out a couple of bolts and re tap the holes on the hubs where someone had snapped the bolts for the backing plates. Got my mate to press in new bearings as the old ones felt grim. Then gave the hubs a lick of paint.



Gave the calipers a full rebuild with the kit from Big Red. Stripped them down removing the pistons and seals before sanding them down ready for paint. I was going to paint them red but decided I wanted something a bit more subtle so went with silver which I think looks smart. Fitted new seals, pistons, bleed nipples and sliders. Now ready to be fitted to the car.




Then spent a day fitting the lot to the car, as well as a bigger master cylinder, mtec c-hook discs and braided brake lines from HEL. This is hands down one of the best things I've done to this car, braking feels so much crisper and responsive. Would highly recommend to anyone thinking about it. While everything was off I gave the inner arches a coat of pearl grey to clean them up to.

 

Christmas 2020, my girlfriend surprised me with the Blaupunkt Bremen SQR 46 DAB. I'd had my eye on this stereo for a while as it looks period correct but has all the modern tech. I just couldn't justify spending £400 on a stereo! It was a fairly straight forward install, I just had to switch a couple of wires around on the cars harness. I left out the DAB antenna as I thought it gave away the illusion of it being retro, plus I mainly bluetooth music from my phone.
Overall I'm pretty impressed with it, my only complaint is the feel of some of the buttons and dials. They feel a bit flimsy and cheap, which I think they shouldn't considering how much it costs.



I do need to source some kind of trim for the surround because it looks like something is missing.

 

It was time to sort the engine bay properly, I've tidied up small bits over the years but I wanted to get it to a state that I was happy with. Thought I'd start with a fairly straight forward job, paint the slam panel. It was scratched and had some rust bubbles by the catch. I removed it from the car and inspected the rust which turned out to be a lot worse than I thought, it had rusted through multiple layers.



So I went on the hunt to find a clean original item, most were very rusty but dubstock had a really solid one but the catch holes had been drilled oversized. I bought this one and set about welding the holes up, so I could redrill them the correct size. The welding wasn't pretty but once I'd ground it back, skimmed it with filler and repainted the whole thing it looked spot on. I got re-plated bonnet latch and catch from dubstock also.

 

Carrying on with the engine bay tidy up. With the slam panel removed, it gave me great access to the engine and gearbox. To give me even more access I removed the radiator, in the process I snapped one of the bolts that holds the surrounds onto it. So I got another radiator on order. Got some freshly powder coated cross members off ebay to replace my rusty ones. I then set about painting my gearbox, in an ideal situation I would have liked to remove it but I didn't fancy scrambling around on the floor in the single garage by myself so I painted it in situ.



With that painted amongst other things like the starter motor, engine mount bracket and distributor. I then tackled the mess that was the wiring loom, the loom tape had all turned into dust leaving wires hanging everywhere and the dust went everywhere. I removed all the old stuff, cleaned the wires with brake cleaner and re wrapped the loom. I made sure I labelled all the connections with sticky numbers so not to forget where everything went.




To finish things off I got a vibratechnics front engine mount as the after market ones never seem to last very long and I got a new gearbox mount and bracket.



This is the finished result, I'm very chuffed with it. No its not perfect and theres plenty of other little things to do but I wont be afraid to open my bonnet anymore. I'll add a picture of how it looked when I bought it for comparison!

 

Lovely stuff!

What paint on the calipers?

 

Used this stuff, went on really well. Does take a long time to fully cure but not a problem if you're not in a rush.
https://www.ebay.co.uk/p/675148925

 

July 2021, me and my girlfriend bought our first house. Obviously you can see why I bought it, the garage! Now I don't have to drive 15 minutes, to work on the golf and the garage has power so that will make everything 10x easier. Needs a paint and some work benches but all in good time.



Few of small jobs done on the golf:
As I knew the original dealership that sold the car, I thought it would be a nice touch to get some dealer plates made up. I didn't have the template of the original plate so had to use my imagination a bit, but with the help of my girlfriend and 360-gt we got a design together. They came out spot on, cant recommend 360-gt enough.



Ever since having the blaupunkt radio its looked like something was missing. It needed a surround to look factory in my opinion. I found I generic one on ebay and set about cutting and filing it till it fitted. Turned out well and looks a lot cleaner now.




Finally, to match the brightness of the blaupunkt I bought the crazy leds kit off ebay and set about replacing all the bulbs in the dash. Most of its fairly straight forward and the kit comes with a link to some web instructions. I forgot to take any pics of the process unfortunately but all went well. I didn't like cutting open the heater control but had to be done, soldered it back together after. Here is a pic of the finished result.

 

This is a job I have put off for years. I think in the first year of my ownership I got a bit close with the jet wash and managed to flake off parts of the boot decal. I was gutted at the time so bought a replacement decal, which then ended up sitting in my room for the next 4 years! Could never pluck up the courage to remove the rear glass so just coloured in the missing bits with sharpie.



So thought it was about time I got on with it (Feb 2022). Removed the three nuts holding the boot spoiler onto the glass. I think they look so strange without a spoiler.



With the spoiler off I set about removing the glass, making sure I didn't crack it. I pushed from the inside with my girlfriend on the outside to make sure the glass didn't fall onto the floor. Took a fair amount of force to pop it out at the top but once I had done that it slid out with no effort. I then removed the wiper linkage and jet.
Using a hairdryer to heat up the old decal I pealed it off in one piece. Then using glue and tar remover on a rag I removed any sticky residue left on the paint.



I sprayed the boot lid with soapy water then laid the new decal over the top and moved it into position. It soon came apparent that the decal I had bought from heritage all those years ago wasn't a very good fit. I had to heat it up and stretch it to get it to go where I wanted. With all the air bubbles pushed out I left it over night to settle. The next morning I refitted the glass using a piece of string around the seal to aid me. The seal only just sits over the decal annoyingly, so no doubt over time a gap will appear revealing paint but for now it'll do. With the wiper and spoiler fitted back up thats a job done.



Does anyone know the best place to buy the boot decal for when I eventually re-do this? Needs to fit like oem.