`85 Postal Service Golf Restoration: 16V ITBs etc.

In the meantime, I took apart the donor car. A Passat 16V GL with 280k km on the clock, second owner car. Quite sad to rip it apart but rarely anybody wants a GL Passat and it was cheap so it had to go.

I gave the first batch of parts away to zinc plating and powdercoat:

 

Ooooh, shiny

 

Same thing with Passats in my country very few early one around now most never got repaired and just scrapped instead ,later ones really holding low value and are a bargain buy.
Great skills there will be a very nice car when finished,cheers.

 

Wow, absolutely wow! Very nice work in this thread!

 

Thank you for your interest and your nice comments!

With the underbody finished, I went on working on the engine bay. First I found some more rust at the strut tower on the drivers side:



I also kept on working on the interior, I tried to recreate the original seams:

 

You do that all by yourself? That's jealous-making awesome!

 

Thanks @daNpy

Yes I do everything by myself, however sometimes i would not complain having a bunch of little helpers

I have only time on the weekend so I try my best

Something that bothered me was the hole for the intake that was never used and never will be used on this car. I didn`t just want to close it, so I thought why not mirror the drivers side? And so on I went

 

There is a piece of plastic to fit and close this hole.
But this works too

 

That really looks great, did you cut it out of something or make it?

 

@daNpy: I know the plastic piece, it`s just not looking pretty and I have to keep myself busy ya know.

I used the driver`s side of a donor car for the sheet metal and just flipped it upside down, the dondor car had an accident sometime in the past and the piece was mangled a bit but I was able to fix it.

 

Alongside the replacement of the plastic covers I also put in some effort on the driveability. The car will get an airride, but even with the coilovers previously mounted, I had some clearance issues in the wheel wells and the driveshaft on the passenger side. Yes i already had the thin driveshaft from the Polo model mounted.

Made some space to play:



Also found some rust while removing the windshield:

 

How do you get the welds in a corner like the windshield that clean?

 

With a finger file I guess?

 

The radius of the wheel of a power/ finger file is often too thick to get in these corners in my experience.

 

These are a great tool for working in tight spaces. However, for the finish I can recommend a electric file and some brushes

 

Now for further preparation, I closed all holes in the engine bay which are no longer needed, plus I made some new ones for the hydraulic clutch and the shifter cables for the 02a (guess it is time to introduce the powertrain to you in the near future).



I took off all the paint in the engine bay, also behind the strut towers and the rain gutter.



All seams were treated with thinned 2k Epoxy primer, same as on the underfloor. With nothing left to do I could paint the engine bay with 2k EP primer. It will stay that way until the engine and all parts are test fitted. Paint is still wet on the pictures.



With paint dry, first seams were sealed:

 

With your daily updates it seems your claim of "only working in the weekends" means every working day is a weekend. Either that, or you are incredibly fast in the evenings.

Again, those welds! Jealous-making.

 

Haha, as you can probably guess already, I am catching up here to the actual status. In the real-world, I am a bit further along already.
I started working on the car in December 2021, so it`s now getting closer to it`s anniversary.

Thank you very much for the nice comments, it`s really nice to see other people appreciating the work.

Since the metal work is roughly finished at this point, we may proceed with the drivetrain:

The engine will be a 2.0 16V ABF with ITBs from jenvey, as you can imagine also the internals of the engine will get some work done, but let me first introduce the gearbox, the original 02A that came from the donor vehicle, a Passat 35i:



Upon inspection, the gearbox looked fine except for some wear on the synchronizer rings, but after 280k km (174k mi) it`s completely acceptable.
I disassemled it, cleaned it, the gearbox housing was powdercoated in RAL9006 "white aluminium". All bolts, nuts etc got zinc coated.



The gearbox got some changes: I wanted to have a long 5th gear, so I put in a 0.717 gear from a 1.9TDi New Beetle 02J. Also the gearshift tower was taken from a 02J gearbox. The original differential was swapped for a Wavetrac. All bearings as well as all gasket and the synchronizer rings got replaced. Now I have a 02A/02J 4+E Gearbox with a torsen differential



In parallel, the "new" alternator which accepts the spring loaded mounting braket or vice versa also got a bit of a do-over (The colour of the pulley wheel is just a test because I was currently at my friends company who happens to be an anodizing business):