Dont Know Yet Done a lot of research and will be practising alot before i attempt anything probably leave major stuff to the proffessionals. I know a few good welders so can seek advice/help from them hopefully
If your not a confident welder & this is your first attempt, I wouldn't go anywhere near it because if you sell it on & your welds are week...god forbid that someone crashes the car. It'll fold up like paper.
Why? I rebuilt a '75 mg midget as my first project I can't say I was a confient welder. Howerver some 16 years later those welds were tested, when a herd of deer jumping into the road in front of me. Guess how many of the welds I had done 16 year previously failed? I will give you a clue.. the number rymes with nero. Even though the bonnet, wings and front panel are toast that due to hitting deer not welding failure. Most when learning are very paraniod about this and thus are preobbly more fussy that the 'experts', I was. We all start somewhere and all I can say is practice on some bits of scrap steel first, it's not that hard to weld with a mig and does not take long to produce good welds In relaity its not that much work (the hard bit will be learning to weld), there is a repair panel for the battery tray, most of the rest is flat sections, and I am pretty sure there repar panels for most of that. My advice is to spend time chopping out the rot back to good metal and make sections that fit snugly in the resulting holes and but weld them in, grind the welds back and it will be as good as new.
Cheers for your comments, i will be doing plenty of practise welding i have loads of dvds books etc as well and there is so much info online, i will be consulting with professional welders all the way through the process and will only weld the car myself when i know exactly what i am doing, stucturual welding may well be left to the professionals, i dont plan in selling the car anyway but i guarentee i am in no rush and and at no point will i bodge or cut corners - what more can i say
I've got an NOS VAG chassis leg for one of those, but to be honest I think you should find a better shell to start with, unless it's good in most other places. If it's all like the front end, it's the rustiest mk2 I've seen. It's your time and money though.
Sorry but that's not worth saving, not rare cars so just take it as a lesson learnt and find another one.
Find a Solid Non GTI Shell and swap all the bits over? Probably easier than fixing that one, and easier/cheaper to find good shells that aren't GTIs. It kinda breaks the 'don't build a car you can buy' rule, but good GTIs are getting expensive.
Jesus mate David Belamy didnt uncover as much as you when rumaging through the undergrowth. GOOD LUCK and keep going.
Don't give up, you are on a journey for yourself, We all do it all ourselves for ourselves and it will be your achievement. If it was worth maintaining comercially we'd hand them into a garage to do but costs would stop that. My girlfriend thinks I'm a nutter to keep an old car going. Keep going and enjoy. In six months or a year you'll be basking in reflected glory.
That's a weekends work to put right once the OP has got to grips with welding, if you look at the rest of the pics the floor is sound, the sills are also sound. The only real issue is the front chassis leg (probbaly due to the battery leaking) and that's not that hard. Early Mk2 type 19 cars ARE rare now, look around at whats for sale, you'd thing E plate cars are early Mk2s
Problem is once you do that it's no longer a GTI, but an upgraded Driver or CL or whatever the shell came from as the VIN won't be from a GTI and finding a type 19 shell won't be easy anyway
Why is type 19 so great? I have a 85 gti and I dont see why its any better than my 92 16v, in fact its less desirable in my eyes. I thought type 19 was a ed38 thing to make the people who owned the old 8v cars feel special.
Good luck to you I say and ignore all the negativity... it will be a learning curve for you and just think of the pride you'll feel once it is done knowing you've restored the car yourself. Most people told me I was mad to repair my MK2 after a bad smash earlier in the year but I couldn't bear to see him sat on the scrap heap. I know it's not quite the same, but if i'd have listened to those people I wouldn't have my car sat on my drive today looking better than it ever has! They're hard work but it is a great feeling rebuilding a car.
It's closer to the original concept. Bit unfair to compare an 8V to a 16V (not getting into that!) however comapre to the later 8v only real differnance is the later cars more troublesome electronic injection system and inferior rust protection and higher Cd (those 1/4 lights were there for a reason! ever wondered why the 1/4 glass is not in the same plane as the door glass?), while this is a pretty bad example, look at the floors, sills, and I suspect the filler flap area is still sound, to add the not so redundant wiper hole area area. One chassis leg and 2 plates and its time to get ready for paint, seen far more work on many BB cars much younger that have not been alwoed to take root and grow a whole ecosystem. It's also a simple rule of thumb that as cars ascend to classic status the original versions are always worth more. Mk1's are worth more than Mk2,s but the swallow tail Mk1 is worth more than a later Mk1.. it will be the same with Mk2s, and so as time goes by the type 19 will be worth more than the 1G or BBM even (ignoring the exotica like the edition 1 g60s, and rallyes etc) A lot are priced out of buying a Mk1, closest they can get is a type 19 for the money
Totally agree, it'll be a great learning experience and after it's done it'll mean more to you. Keep us updated on progress and we'll look forward to seeing this car come back to life. I just think it's totally awesome what you're doing
