Got the loom out of its box as promised... Fook! Have a feeling I'm going to know a lot more about electrics by the time this is done. Old immobiliser (it worked when the car last ran 15+ years ago) was actually very straight forward to remove, basically boiled down to the two heavy wires I've zoomed in on being spliced into, everything else was on spades. I'm guessing they're to do with the starter / ignition maybe?
Have you just removed the immobiliser? Plate looks great I checked my mk2 and the data sticker in the car has EN, but not on the sevice sticker
Took it out yesterday... after laying the loom out on the floor and taking a proper look at things it was pretty obvious how it'd been installed / what'd been cut into. Turned out to not be that much, just simple 1990's tech. I suppose.
Cam cover back today... if you hadn't seen it before the SCHRICK script was milled down (to 2.5mm from 5.0mm) you'd probably think that's how it was intended to be. The GTiE plate is 2.0mm, so with the 0.5mm of the high temp. adhesive tape it'll sit flush with the untouched surrounding fins. Tested out the tape over the week-end on some off-cuts of aluminium, it's to be applied after a warming up and properly cures in 24hrs... they were stuck like sh*t to a blanket, could barely get the pieces apart again!
Forgot to mention getting the flywheel back yesterday too. I suspect it's a MK2 item that one of the previous owner seems to have 'upgraded' to. Was at pains to tell him I wasn't looking anything dramatic, the car's not going to be raced or rallied and it was more about adding the work to the list of period modifications being done than anything else... shallow, I know! It was 5.1kg originally, a weight that seems to be borne out as standard on other forum posts. It's now 0.75kg lighter at 4.35kg, so not very much by the amounts others are getting off. Apparently it was just a bit of the rim and most of the raised detail on the outer face and that's it. Interesting that the logo's still there, didn't pay it much heed before, but that's SACHS, they must've made them for VW?
This is a blatant (unpaid!) plug for 'Sayner Works'... Google him, he fabricates A1 Golf / Scirocco chassis stuff. Liked the look of his upper strut braces, but unfortunately he doesn't currently do them for standard engine / unmodified bays like mine, the postion of the original expansion tank gets in the way, but his front sub frames are a direct fit. It's a work of art and a millimeter perfect fit, the workmanship is exceptional, as is the finish... borderline criminal to hide it away under the car.
Until I'd read the article above, never gave much thought as to when the RE1900 was introduced by GTi-Engineering. Got me looking back to see if it could be narrowed down to more than just the year, 1986. The engine Craig sent is (uniquely) marked 86.06.01 and if I've understood correctly that number is made up of the year/month and sequential order number for that month... so in my case that'd be the 1st order taken in June 1986. The order date isn't the same as the actual conversion date, which will be later, and both are marked on the plaque in later cars. Some of the images of plaques found on-line show just a short space of time between these dates (conversions were advertised as only taking days if on an exchange basis) and others can be quite a bit longer, I'm guessing it probably depended on their order books and how long it took them to work their way around to you. Anyhow, got me thinking 86.06.01 must be near the beginning of RE1900 conversions. Info's scant, but so far the earliest reference I've found is an advert in the April 1986 ' issue of Car' magazine where it's flagged as being 'New'. The April 1986 price is £1475, if you run that through this inflation calculator that equates to £4218 in todays money! https://www.bankofengland.co.uk/monetary-policy/inflation/inflation-calculator
Mentioned away back at the start of the thread about one of the cars that influenced me the most was featured in the June 1983 Hot Car magazine. At the end of the feature it ran through all the modifications / additions GTiE did to that particular car. Granted it had the more expensive RE2000 engine and leather interior than I'm planning, but the remainder is more or less the same. Total price in 1983... £15130.81 (just over £49250.00 today). To give that some context they say the equivalent bog standard 1.8 GTI they tested the Z20 against had a list price of £7046.43 (just over £22900.00 today).
A follow on from a couple of earlier posts... first being the adaptation done to a basic control pressure regulator and the second the getting of an enhanced vacuum version. The basic adaptation done below is just as before for that part of the enhanced regulator, each is more or less the same in that regard, but what's now included is an additional adaptation to allow for the adjustment of the enhanced regulators full vacuum aspect. Lots of pics, most are self explanatory or explained in more detail in the earlier post. Have tried to high-light the full vacuum adjuster, found beneath the brass cover. Went to the extra bother of trying to make it as completely sealed as it originally would've been. Now that the hex adjuster is exposed you'll possibly see there's a channel that runs up its center, taking you to the middle portion of the casing. You're seeing the regulator post clean up, you'll have to believe me when I say these get very dirty and it'd be inevitable moisture / grim etc. would enter the regulator via the now open brass cap if you didn't close things up properly again. I've just mocked up the final images, I'm still waiting for new 'O' rings for the fuel cell. Usefully the old 'O' ring perfectly fits over the now open brass cap, that and the white plastic replacement / black bung do the job instead. You just have to pull out the bung now, when wanting to adjust the regulator, takes a standard 4mm allen key. Can you guess what the white cap is / was? The discoloured gasket affair, mine was spot on and held vacuum perfectly. They do seem to fail though, but there's kits out there to replace them, that however seems to involve drilling out the 4x aluminium studs and replacing the metal cups / gasket before re-fixing with nuts and screws (supplied in the kits).
All reassembled. If the vacuum diaphragm doesn't need replacing, it's really only the cost of a fuel cell 'o' ring and some 'o' ring cord plus a nut / bolt / washer. I've intentionally left the pin (that's now with an adjusting nut) and the fuel cell proud of where they'll likely ultimately be set, that'll need doing once the engine's up and running and the pressures can be read.
