pro tip when recaro hunting. find some 3 door ford recaros to add to your parts stash. the foams, base pads etc can be handy for spares. plus the 3 door ones have tilt handles on both sides, so you can use 2x mk2 passenger backrests without having an unsightly hole. plus the inner tilt handle is well handy for helping people out the back without having to get out of the driver seat
This thread has given me as much joy as watching Ed China revive all those cars on 'Wheeler Dealers'. Your attention to detail is amazing. I owned one just like yours (H134 VBD) and wished never sold it!! Look forward to further updates. Enjoy your car mate
...re the motors. Surely thes aren't Recaro specific? There were som MK3 Anni Tecaros on tha FB place for £250. Can't find them now. edit...don't I just hate seeing my "phone typos" echoing back
mk3 Recaro’s are quite different. I could be wrong but I don’t think they came with electric adjust? I know some were heated but I have never seen an electric adjust set.
yeah manual adjust only, the bases are almost the same as normal mk3 ones just have extra frame in for the bolster support
.....surely for the price having manual is little hardship? Or am I missing the point? Manual with heating would do me fine, hence I'm a happy man with standard Ultraviolet with Amazon sourced heater pads. Recaros would be nice but far too expensive for a tight Yorkshireman!
I agree the price of MK2 Recaro’s is eye watering. That said after sitting in them the standard GTI seats feel like church pews! Haha. Maybe I’m just getting old, but I can’t go back to standard seats now. The MK3 recaros are a very similar shape, and a fraction of the price. If you aren’t fussy about having the MK2 versions I’d say MK3 Recaro’s are better bang for your buck, and just as comfortable.
height adjust makes no difference tbh I havent wired the motors in mine since I got them, just jumped with 12v down to lowest position and thats where they have stayed ever since
No, @Tristan , was considering it but ended up getting mk1 tt seats with heating built in, then used passat switches and made a loom to run them. Did consider the retrofit pads for our mgf, but it's another thing that is not priority as its only used minimally so didn't think worth it unless have to get seats out at some point. We do like the Leon's heated seats, very welcome on 4am starts and long drives as feeling old nowadays. Whilst on the subject of heated seats, does anybody ( @rubjonny probably ) know how to wire the mk2/3 style heated seats, with relay under the seat, there are 4 pins on the plug I believe, afraid I only have a picture of it so far, presumably mk4 style switches (tt, passat etc) are a no go? Cheers
for the mk1/2/3 switch you need genuine pads,. or at least the thermistor robbed out of one and fed into your aftermarket seat pad. I hear the mk4 pads thermistor is compatible with the earlier switch but cant confirm this for myself, if it is then presumably the early pads work on mk4 switches as well wiring diagrams as always in my signature, use the cortrado diagram for mk1/2 switch, the mk3 switch has the same plug but has 2 wires swapped over (so you can use the cheaper and easier to find mk3 looms from ebay.de with mk1/2 switch after swapping the required pins)
Some brave dudes having thier buns toasted by ebay specials fed by 30+ year old wiring! I bought a set of GTI seats a bit back which someone had made heated but didn't have the minerals to wire them in as had a fear of being barbequed in my seat as I drove along
Managed to get the afternoon in the garage working on the golf. It’s MOT is a few weeks away so need to crack on now. Headed back to the powdercoaters to pick up the sub frame and brake calipers. I was going to paint the calipers myself, however as I had been sending a fair amount of stuff his way he offered to vapour blast and paint the callipers for £5 each which was too good an offer to pass up. On collection everything looked great. Was really surprised to see that even the original stampings on the subframe had come through nice and cleanly. You couldn’t even make them out when I looked for them prior to refurbish. I am still some way off getting started on the front of the car, so put the subframe and front callipers on the back burner and decided to get going on the rears. I dug out the box of seals I ordered a while back and tried to figure out what goes where! Haha Rebuilding the pistons was pretty strait forward, and although I thought the original pistons might be ok to clean up at the start, on second look they were pretty crusty so I decided to use the ones that came in the kit. Swapping over the threaded post was as simple, and at this point I had almost convinced myself the the job would be “a 10 minute one”… Next up was refitting the spring and spring “basket” into the calliper, and while removing it a week or so ago was easy, getting it back in literally took me hours. It was an absolute pig to try and compress the whole assembly and reinsert the cerclip. I’m convinced there must be a simple trick that I couldn’t figure out, but I eventually resorted to using a 14mm socket, a washer, and part of my rewind tool to push the whole assembly down into the calliper. Once it was all pushed in and seated properly I used long nose cerclip pliers and squeezed them in the gap to try and seat the clip in place. The issue is that once I put the pliers in the gap I was blind, so had to fumble about hoping what I was doing would get the clip to seat. I very nearly gave up after repeating the process several times, but finally managed to get it to seat properly. It honestly took about three hours to do one calliper. With one done I decided to call it a day and I will tackle the second one in the morning. It was an absolute bastard of a job, but that said it feels good to have got it done. It would be rude not to snap a before and after pic after all of that. In other news, I also managed to pick up a 23mm G60 ARB for the car. I was considering going with H&R or Eibach, but this was a fraction of the price and will probably be a little more compliant. Will send it off to blasting and paint when I get around to stripping the front of the car. More battles with the other rear calliper tomorrow…
That caliper spring looks like a hefty beast, no wonder it took so long. Glad I had new ones. Great work keep at it
Managed to get all of the callipers rebuilt today. The second one for the rear was just as stubborn, but I managed to do it in about an hour instead of three… while I had all the gear out I also rebuilt the fronts. So much easier than the rears, and what blows my mind is how rubbish the engineering is for the handbrake mechanism inside the rear callipers. All those moving bits made to very poor tolerances and they hardly move the piston at all. Unbelievable that was the best solution they could come up with. I also fitted the rear disks and carriers but can’t go any further until the flexi hose brackets arrive. I need to start looking for a bleed kit. Can anyone recommend any gear that makes the job easier? The system is completely dry no so will be doing the job from scratch. Any recommendations appreciated.
Always used to used a gunsons eezibleed, on all my old cars, simple, but don't use too high pressure in the tyre to force it through, reasonably sized reservoir on it too. Have got a cheap vacuum bleeder but can't seem to get on with that on the mk2, perhaps it's served its cost purposes already. Usually end up bleeding old school in the end just to be sure and Mrs Dodgy can give feedback on pedal feel without me getting brake fluid on things getting in and out of the car.
