This is Dink. I bought her a month ago and am very pleased with the find. She has just got back from a 3,500km trip around Europe. And she got round without a single problem!! Hurrah. We even took her round the Nurburgring, but with her skinny wheels and blanmanchey suspension and rubbish brakes we only managed a 15/16 min lap!! Here are some pics of her on the trip: 1st shot in Vouvray, where we did some wine tasting (Loire Valley) Some random town we drove through, in desperate need of a powernap under the trees. We'd been up for about 30hours getting over on the early morning ferry to Calais. This was in Milau, went to see the amazing viaduct!! The viaduct..... We visited Monaco for a couple of days... We drove through Italy and stopped of at a lake for a cooling swim then ended up staying for the night, Here is a pic before drove through the Mont Blanc tunnel. The next few pictures of her show the accident she had, someone broke off her passanger wing mirror [:^(] but kindly left it on the bonnet for us Thia was outside our apartment in Les Gets where we did some extreme mountain biking! Les Gates and the surrounding mountains. My trusty steed... This was in the campsite just after we had taken her round the ring, so she was relaxing after all the scary corners and carousels! After the Ring we headed straight for Bruges, we watched the film In Bruges and throught it looked like a great place to vist so we stayed for a day on the way home. It's F00king Bruges!!! and finally her tucked up on the ferry homeward bound. After getting her back, we gave her a well deserved clean and also treated her to some new chrome side strips and removed her front fogs. Have also this week ordered some new wheels and suspension, and will be giving her some bigger brakes soon too.
That's cool! I really fancy a European adventure like this. Out of interest how much did it all cost, petrol and ferry etc?
ferry was quite cheap, 57 as booked early and chose silly o'clock sailings (but if you arriv earlier and there's room you can jump onto another sailing) through P&O. Toll's were quite expensive, at least 150 spent on those. Petrol would have been over 300, she was only doing about 35mpg. And petrol prices are about the same over there as here, except for Switzerland which was about 1 a litre. The best out of all of the countries.
As I last posted new wheels and suspension where ordered for Dink. They arrived in good time, so a couple of weeks ago we fitted them in the wettest conditions Cornwall could throw at us I took some pics too... First up we tackled the rear suspenion, The old units had started to leak - look like they had been on the car from new - 25yrs old. And replaced with, genuine topmounts, genuine bumpstops, Bilstein dampers and Apex -40mm springs. The fronts were in better condition, once off the car it was a case of stripping the old unit so that we could fit the new damper inserts into the strut body - if you have not done this job before then be preparded for the damper fluid to spill out of the old units once you take them apart - they are not sealed like the new dampers and if unprepared like myself i got a face full. Whilst the fronts were off it was time to tackle the brakes, I decided that vented discs were a must and I wanted brakes that have more bit whilst not feel so wooden. Hotgolf G60 brake bracket adapters were used to up the disc size. To get them to seat properly abit of fileing is required to remove the rust from the caliper carriers and the hub. The splash guard needed a chunk taking out of it to fit around the brackets. The caliper carriers needed a little bit of material and rust shaving. The hub itself needed material shaving off. you can see the flat spots. It took a bit of time to get it all seated squarely. Once on, it was a case of fitting new genuine MK1 GTi front pads, genuine G60 discs and then bolting the caliper back up - there was no need to rebleed just simply hang the caliper out of the way as you work. As i worked on each side i fitted the suspension too and set the camber. The new wheels and some spare locking wheel bolts went on at the same time. The car looks a little bit more desirable now, so a we installed a CAT 1 Toad AI606. The alarm was a simple and neat install with all the wiring, control boxes nicely hidden out of the way. It has been on now, for over a week no false alarms Dink has had her treats So we washed and polished her at the weekend to finsh her off, hope you like the new apperance,
I love it!!! It so clean and tidy. I would love to go and drive around Europe for a holiday. Would be so relaxing!
gorgeous looking golf!!!! fantastic trip! promised the GTI a run round europe next year. plus i need to take my bike to France, though not sure how it'd fit in the mk1....
i'd fit the bike in somehow, it costs an arm and a leg to hire them!! 150 for 2.5 days and that was with discount through the GF cousin who works high up in Kona!!!! that was per bike BTW and make sure you wear a full face helmet and armour. my GF found out the hard way
the bike doesn't come apart that easily, as i found out when i boxed it up to send home from NZ, its a santa cruz V10, roof rack job maybe..... got a full face, dont ride big stuff with out it.
Love the V10, you can get the racks that mount on the rear screen don't know if they would be any good for you. And the riding in Les Gets was fantastic, abit like Afan Wales but longer harder and better. Plus you have a lift to the top
You've just done my dream trip. Lovely car and I'm amazed that you had no probs at all especially for the age of the car. Got any more pics of Monaco? oh and the car
That stuff is pretty horrible, does smell like ATF fluid and it stained the tarmac quite badley outside my mothers home. ooops. As requested more pics of Monte Carlo, the SLR had a B/W film in that day, only got a few pics of Monte Carlo with the Digi. oh and for good measure some Ring pics! Not one problem really, didn't use any oil, always started first time, had a fair bit of brake fade at the Ring! and going through the Mont Blanc tunnel the oil buzzer went off - pressure was a good 5 + bars tho' and it's a none stopping raod/tunnel, so had to carry on, the buzzer stopped within a couple of secs anyway. Someone broke our wing mirror and am still waiting for another one!
The good old girl developed a little running problem, she began to drop a cylinder on tick over and would hickup on the motorway, a suspected dirty fuel filter did was not the cause, the higher temps in slower driving combined with a hard to start engine hinted at a leaky head gasket. Time for an ABF. The hunt was on, not just for the ABF but for many other parts that are required to get the MK1 carb converted over to EFI and manual gear change. We have a couple of MK2 8v gear boxes in good condition sitting in the cellar so it was decied to use one of these. matted to a MK3 16v motor, a 4 branch was sourced, along with all the gear stick and linkage. From VW a clutch pedal, pedal box, cable, bushes, brackets and clips were all purchased new ready to go, a new rear geabox mount was needed as the auto is diferent, a steering rack was sourced from Crazy Quiffs (this was a LHD manual!) it has a brcket on it for the gearshift. There are two main ways to go about converting a MK1 to ABF, one is to run it on K-jet (great if you have a GTi) or run it on the EFI Digi MK3 management. I decided that the Digi managment is the way forward and to run it on the full MK3 wiring loom, this gives me the standard ECU and the OBD port etc for easier problem solving. So, searching ebay and my contacts at some scrappies we decided it was alot more cost effective to buy and then strip a whole mk3 16v, ECU's and wiring looms go for 100 on the bay plus the price of the engine (300+) it starts to get expensince. So we hunted for a MK3 16v and found a goodun not to far away, it had 105K on the clocks, MOT's and some service history to back it up, it had a running problem when we viewed it, i spotted straight away that the brake vacuum line was unplugged - conected it up and it ran sweet! - went back to the dealer told him it ran crap, knocked him down on the price and bought it for 500. We ran it for a week including a longish motorway trip to gauge the engine, it ran well. Note the holes drilled in the top of the airbox - muppet. we put the car on the drive and in a weekend stripped it we felt a bit bad to begin with as the car appeared to be in good condition... but it is a MK3 and had some herrendous rust in the chassis. both sides were rusted through interior out decided to use the mk3 soundproofing for the MK1, try and make the car into a comfortable dialy cruiser. engine out gear box seems to have blown a seal fianlly after two hard days graft the full wiring loom has been removed and laybled, the engine, gearbox, safts rearbeam etc had been tken off and the car was taken away on the sunday - yeppy.
So after aquiring the ABF we set about preping the that parts we had collected, MK1 fuel pump and bracket, cleaned up with a wire brush, and then treated with kurerust, primed colourd and laqured ready for a coating of underseal to keep it rust free. an old GTi fuel tank taken back to bare metal where it was rusting the good old kurerust working it's majic again primed, coloured and laqured then coated in underseal
so........the work has begun on the ABF conversion, and also from auto to 5 speed manual! tuesday saw the beginning, where the interior has been stripped out and new wiring (loom from the donor mk3) is being laid. new clutch pedal installed for the new mk2 gearbox. the wiring continued into wednesday. new steering column, from the donor mk3 car. (all done by Smudge!!) thursday saw us getting the engine and auto gearbox out, which we thought would take most of the day but in fact was all out by lunchtime! brilliant!! the bay was in pretty good shape, but we gave it a big old clean up, then today treated some bits for rust and then gave it the fastest re-spray ever timing it with the rain! then todays pics: yesterday was poor weather, so we didn't get a massive amount done. went to halfords to pick up some essential bits and peices, like gunk to clean up the gearbox that we're putting in. also had to find a new gearbox mount, the one we'd bought was for a 4 speed. luckily we managed to get one from Gurds, thanks very much, and wasn't too far away! it cleaned up lovely too! today was another damp day, managed to finish off clening up the gearbox and have now sprayed it up and looks almost new!! have a before pic, after clean up and will add the fully painted version later, once its dry and in some decent light! after a good fair few hours cleaning with a wire brush tool on the drill, hand brush and a couple of cans of Gunk, loads of Plenty and some hard graft!! hopefully we're planning on getting the engine in on tuesday afternoon/evening. we're now on the hunt for some 100mm driveshafts after speaking to someone who's already done this conversion and split many boots. the eninge has had a new timing belt this week, and ribbed belt. have also modified the mk1 lower belt cover to fit the thicker 16v belt and go around the engine mount. will post a pic of that once its been taken. still to go is the wiring loom in the engine bay, and also joining all the mk1 connections to the mk3 loom we're running through the car. we need to put in a new steering rack before the engine goes in aswell. we're using the management system from the donor mk3, ecu and full wiring loom. will post updates end of the week when hopefully a lot more progress on the old girl has been made!
