LUCY ‘91 Mk2 Golf GTI Alpine White

It's been a while, and the start of November now means MOT day, which as expected led to a failure.

I knew the brake would need doing, the discs were pretty much all shot and I'd picked up some 16v front hubs ready for an upgrade, I also picked up a spare beam ready to build up but I hadn't had a chance to do much with any of this yet so thought I'd put it in for the MOT anyway and see if there was any nasty surpises I wasn't aware of.

But the result was nothing unexpected which is a bonus.

Failures:
Rear brake operation, rear discs, rear beam

Advisories:
Rear brake pipe, front discs pitted


So here's what the last couple of weeks consists of.

Painted up the 16v callipers and carriers.


I had a lot of thought about the colour but in the end, decided the classic red would suit a GTI well.

The front hubs are painted up, but no pic yet.

Some fancy discs have been ordered along with some other stuff. More to come on that later.

Here's the donor rear beam I picked up


The donor beam had fairly new discs and bearings so I thought no need to remove any of that. The backing plates are a bit bent so I'll need to try and beat those straight in situ.

I jet-washed it to remove any loose stuff, but overall it's in pretty good condition.

And it wasn't actually too difficult to knock out the first bush.


The second bush took a bit more effort, but is out now. To be fair it probably required the same amount of effort, it's just by the second one I was getting tired.

Now, I know most people in this situation seem to be sending parts off for powder coating, but as ever I'm trying to keep the costs under control. So, as you can see in the above pic I've started to paint it. I found some paint by JCB that is straight to metal, has an inbuilt rust converter, and as a bonus is heat resistant to 260°C (you may notice I've put some on the hub part of the rear discs. It has a black semi-gloss finish and actually brushes on really well. It's not a show car, it's a hard-working (not every) daily, so I'm hoping this is going to be OK. My personal opinion is Powder Coating can be problematic, the hard coating can easily chip and water can get in under the coating. I know I won't be able to reach all parts once the beam is re-fitted, but I will at least be able to get under the car and touch up the exposed parts if needed. But if it's good enough for JCB's right .... ?

So, here's a fun picture. This is the bush of the current beam fitted to the car. This also shows the crusty brake hose mentioned in the MOT.


After a few hours on Saturday afternoon, I managed to get the culprit out before I lost light.


Yep, that's definitely past it's best


As well as the beam itself the mounting area was flagged up in the MOT.
I was eager to get the underseal off and see what I was dealing with.
The weather Sunday was shocking here, with continual drizzle and occasional downpours but by 3pm the rain had died down and I wanted to get a look, else I knew it would have troubled me for the next week.

After cracking out the angle grinder with the wire wheel of death fitted the picture looked like this.


Which I have to say I was quite pleased about, I know it could have been much worse and I was glad it was far enough away from the beam mount itself so no reason to disturb that.

Impatience got the better of me, so made a masking tape template, which I transferred to a pizza box I got out of the recycling. I grabbed the last of my old roof-cut panel which has served well for welding practice and cut patches over the past few years, and wheeled out the welder.

After a first pass, I had this


Sorry about the pic, was hard to focus under the car and I was losing the light.

There are clearly a few holes to fill on the second pass with the welder, I had the power up too high at the start, doh! But It was 4pm now and getting too dark to continue. So I gave it a quick squirt of paint to protect it till I get a chance to finish off.

I think I need to buy a decent work lamp so I don't waste the evenings, as long as it's not raining too. Once the welding is finished I can at least continue most of the build up in the shed in the dry until it's ready to refit.

 

Great to see more updates... kudos too for doing this on your own, it's a pig of a job.

Looking forward to the next installment.

 

Finally, the update you've all been waiting for.... or maybe not. But a small step in the right direction at least.

First off, early Christmas present to my self:


For some reason, maybe because I like to make hard work for myself, I wanted to stick with OE bushes. Or maybe it's because I bought them previously without thinking it through, and didn't want them to go to waste, even though this kit cost the same as decent poly bushes. Either way, I now have a hand press, pull kit that I can also use with my press.

I started with the tricky side, the side with the brake bias bracket. Even with the extension bit removed the bracket in the beam was a pain in the ass, and totally in the way. I got the majority of the bush in like so...



But being directly on the bush I couldn't get it finally home without fear of putting too much force onto the rubber part of the bush.

I eventually got the bush home, with the correct 8mm exposed.



The other side was a breeze, as I was able to put a large socket type thingy over it.



You might notice a bit of rusty metal in between. This is my secret weapon. I cut the head off the old bush and hollowed out the rubber, then flipped it over to cater for the staggered surface of the new bush.

Tidy!



Finally, Job done!



Next to build up the brakes and lines, then the challenge of actually getting it back on the car.... on the driveway, in the snow !!

 

Using the old bush housing is inspired, you need to post up that tip on a thread of its own or it'll risk getting buried in this one and not being seen by some.

Was thinking your wooden trestles pop up quite often, I've an old aluminium step that gets plenty of use in the same way, couldn't have done some jobs without it!

 

Good spot with the wooden trestles, there are the legs from a small fold-out Ikea table I bought around 1996 when I moved into my first house. I'm not sure at what point they stopped being a table. Probably sometime after 2002 when I moved to my third house, which was bigger so bought a 'proper' dining table. Although I don't think it got dismantled straight away. I think it became an office desk for a while as this was the same time I set up my own business and was working from home.

The weight of the beam is almost a bit much for them though. I keep thinking I should get (or make) something a bit more substantial but I guess there's an emotional attachment now .

 

Now you said that I had to look back through my pics... Bike wheels, bumpers, BMW parts Also a fairly interesting use of a ladder and snow shovels!

 

Seeing the rear bumper again reminds me to ask how the re-texturing is holding up?

Did my own ages ago but they've only actually been on the car and in use for a few hundred miles.

Was concerned they mightn't be that durable, but seem to be holding up so far.

 

The only complaint I have is the texture is a little too rough. I guess that's down to how I applied it, distance from the surface etc, but I decided not to try and flat it back at all as I wasn't sure how well that would work. It's only a temporary arrangement as I have a decent genuine bumper now, I just need to paint it white so that'll be a job for warmer weather.

The textured paint finish is fine, it's stayed black and stayed in place, no flaking and the repairs I did are still good below the paint, no sign of cracking or anything so overall I'm pretty pleased with my work on that. So I don't get around to doing this spare bumper any time soon this temporary fix is good to stay for a while

 

First few bits'n'pieces that I did was years ago and used Halfords 'Truck Bed Liner', for no other reason than I'd bought a tin to experiment with... turned out to be spot-on first time.

When I years later moved onto the MK2's bumpers Halfords didn't seem to keep it stocked so much and it had to be specially ordered in, eventually just couldn't easily get it locally anymore.

Moved onto some other brand, again just experimenting and it turned out to be much easier to work with and got the match of the Halfords stuff or even better results.

The finish was visually perfect, but like you say to the touch it physically had a very slight abrasion to it.

You'd not notice it so much when running your hand across it, but wiping with a cloth caused it to snag.

Found that if you swept the cured surface gently with green scotch-brite (in long arcs, just a few times and all the same direction) it smoothed things out and cloths no longer caught on it.

 

It's been a long time since my last update. Main reason is quite simply there hadn't really been anything to update.... till now.

As before, leading up to Christmas I completed building up the beam.


Then over Christmas we went away so nothing got done. And then my wife and daughter got COVID quite bad.
In early Jan I had to prioritise some decorating, the rest of Jan was a washout.

Finally in Feb I got some time to fit the beam.


And as you may remember, when I got the beam I was pleased it had decent and fairly new discs with good bearings already on it so (apart from some surface rust) I didn't need to do anything about those.

Now here's the massive dumb moment, after all that time with the beam in the shed, painting and fitting it up, I even painted the disc lips with some VHT paint. But it wasn't until it was on the car that I stood back and noticed the blindingly obvious error.

It's only bloody FIVE stud

The other faff, I had no pictures of, was when I dropped the old beam I left the flexi-hoses on the car. When I came to remove them for fitting of the new beam the brake pipe ferrule nuts were very rusty, stuck and easily rounding. I had no choice but to hacksaw the joint. I was hoping I could get new nuts fitted so took them to the local shop but they said I needed a few inches of pipe for the tool to work. So I opted to let them make up new hard lines for both sides, from the bias to the beam.

I was a bit gutted, since I'd managed to save all the hard pipes on the beam so decided not to spend £60 odd on a brake pipe kit, which would of allowed me to have done all new pipes. I then ended up paying £55 to get just 2 made, oh well.

So I was able to go ahead and fit the new pipe work, but had a further delay as I had to wait on an order for new rear discs and bearings.

I also couldn't continue with the fronts as I'd forgotten to undo the main spindle nut on the front before lifting it and disconnecting the brakes so I needed it back on the floor to undo those.

Cut to the following week.



I was then able to switch to the front. Going from this...


To this...


Another little job I started, was to tackle my gnarly wheels. Going from this...


To this...


I bought a small air DA with a massive selection of abrasive pads.


Only on will done, and still need to prep and paint etc. But I just wanted to try the tool and see if I was able to do it.

Really happy with the results.





And that now brings us right up to date.
With brushing off the snow and taking it for it's MOT.




And I've just had the call it passed.
So I'm road legal again, I'll get it Taxed and get back out there.

Still plenty of jobs to do, so the rolling project continues.

 

Was just thinking of Lucy last week, it's good to see her back and running again, great work!

 

Well it's spring cleaning time and littering up my shed has been a set of leather rear seats from a Polo that I got last summer.

They're 60/40 split from a 6n, and had been screwed onto 2f frames and unlike an old Golf, where the bench rolls up they're split base and back like more modern cars where the base flips forward and the back folds down into the space where the base previously was.

So all of the was greatly different to a Mk2 rear bench and I wasn't quite sure how I was going to work it out. I had pondered this previously and got nowhere.

Anyway, back to wanting to tidy of the shed I decide it was time to make progress.

Sorry, I forgot the before and during pics. But with a bit of dedication, and the help of a stanly knife, and a needle and thread I managed to manipulate the foam and covers onto a one piece Golf rear bench.



Even though I'm still not a big fan of leather, I have to say I'm happy with this:





I still need to get a steamer on it to tease out some of the storage indentations, but it's in there and it works.

I'll cut a bit of board for the back and cover it, as currently this isn't pretty, but it'll do



I can now chuck out the polo seat frames and the old Mk2 foam and upholstery from the donor bench, which gets a lot of junk out the shed. I do however have a full Ultraviolet interior that is in the shed, which ideally needs stashing somewhere else - or selling.
I don't want to sell, as I'm still not 100% convinced on the leather, even though I like the Recaros. But I recently had someone asking, which got me thinking. Ideally I want to store in case I ever want to change it back, but getting the space back and making some money would be nice too.

 

That's nice work but no way would I part with those UV Recaros.
I would love to have a set of Mk2 Recaros but they are beyond my reach - I do have a rainbow interior but the Recaros are the cat's pyjamas.

 

Unfortunately the original UV seats are not recaro, just standard GTI seats. The Polo Colour Concept leather seats was a cheap way to get some recaros though.

 

Original GTI seats are in fact Recaros (Not to be confused with Recaro Sports seats that were a pay for upgrade). If you disassemble the "regular" seats the frames are stamped and stickered Recaro.

 

Yes, i actually knew this, I’ve stripped down loads of them over the years. And I considered saying so as I typed my reply. But I just didn’t want to be that guy so kept it basic. But thanks

Lol.

Oh and I’ve found and bought some headrests now. Hopefully they’ll get delivered this week and with a bit of luck they fit as they’re from another VAG car. Update to follow soon….

 

I heard about this many moons ago but didn't put much credence in it, so they actually are Recaros after all.

To me real Recaros (regardless of what model they are) have the serious side and thigh bolsters - like those below, they just look pukka.

 

So, I found some rear headrests



But to get them I had to do a bit of thinking. Finding some original Polo Colour Concept headrest was unlikely so I trawled through eBay with quite a general search. Now it seems the going rate for leather headrests tend to be about £40-£50 each.

But I found these, they're actually from a 2004 Audi A4 cabriolet. I asked the seller to send some measurements and what he came back with matched what I needed to I took a punt on it. £23 posted for the pair! I can live with that.

 

Result!!

 

Good results on the seats, look fab!

Costel1969 Agree with your recaro comments, whether they make the standard GTI seats or not, terming the standard armchairs as Recaro is something only keyword spammers on ebay do IMO