Here we go. Last week my beloved Golf came out of the garage for the first time in exactly 18 years. My excuse is explained in my Welcome post if you care to take a look. This is how she looks now, after a good wash, clay bar and front end Ultimate Compounded. I'm sorry I was too excited to think of taking a before pic! As you can see she has teardrops, which is kind of appropriate considering all the rust I discovered after washing all the dust and spider poo off. Worst is lower driver's door, rear sill and nearside rear arch. I'll get these professionally fixed, but I'll see what they say about all the spots. Complete respray seems a bit OTT. Red is defo best colour for hiding rust. Provided you step back a bit . This view shows rear sill rust. The teardrops were too far gone to be re-diamond cut, so have been powder coated in semi-sparkle silver. I'm happy with that. New tyres Goodyear standard size 185/60x14. Bog standard under here, which was my mission all along - to get her back to the day I parked her up. Done nothing in here yet! Needless to say the driver's seat bolster needs sorting. Next post: the oily bits!
So, where do you start resurrecting a barn find? That's right, get the engine going. Tip: start at the back. Not me: stuck a good battery in it and gave it a good crank. As I found out, all this did was suck in the dissolved rubber boot thingy on the bottom of the lift pump. Removed pump/gauge assembly. It looked like this: Being a cheapskate, I thought no problem I can fix that! Prised open the bottom of the pump, cleaned it out, removed all the stalactites from the gauge, drained the petrol from the tank (kept it for general degreasing jobs - looks like the wee of a very sick old man haha), cleaned the treacle from the bottom of the tank (the remainder of the boot thingy), refitted assembly and poured in a gallon of fuel. Did she start then? No, of course not. This is where ClubGTI forums come into their own. Thank you to all the contributors for sharing their knowledge. No sound from main pump when should be priming. 12V there, so removed the whole filter/pump assembly. Cleaned it up, replaced filter. Main pump was seized. Nothing I tried could rescue it. OEM Bosch one was £180, so bought copy from GSF for £60. Now getting fuel at pressure regulator, but still won't start. Pulled injectors. Pulsed them on bench with battery - silence. Bought ultrasound cleaner from Ebay (what a great shop!), put injectors in jam jar of petrol inside ultrasound cleaner and pulsed them until they were all clicking away nicely. The O ring seals looked OK so I just put them back in and BINGO she started. Big cheer from me! Engine sounded quite tappety so discovered on here the half litre of ATF in the oil dodge. It works! Left it in for a few weeks worth of starting engine and running it for a bit (because I could!) and it went a lot quieter. Drained oil and fitted new Bosch filter and added some Wynns for good measure. Used Petronas synthetic cos that's what Lewis uses haha. Now that the engine was running, I noticed a couple of sensor issues: coolant level led flashing - cleaning out the expansion tank sorted that. No oil temp on MFA - cleaned contact on top of oil cooler fixed that. Ran engine until fan came on - it groaned into life. The car had had a good service just before being laid up, including cam belt, spark plugs and leads, dizzy cap. I have bought a new cam belt and tensioner tho, as 18 years in one position has probably not done them any good but not plucked up courage to tackle that job yet. Next post: the brakes
Thanks for kind words, Pascal! **Stop Press** Took her for MOT test this afternoon - OMG she passed! I am one happy camper. Set up insurance with Footman James on Friday (quite reasonable, so Club discount must have worked, or they think I'm a boring old fart...), so just need to do the tax and she's legal once more. So, the brakes. Needless to say they were all seized up. Front: new discs, blew out pistons with Schraeder valve shoved in bleed hole, new seal kit from BiggRed, sprayed silver, new flexi. This pic shows about 10 miles worth of wear on the new disc, so they work! One of the little rubber flexi guides was missing, so had to get new set. Rears: already had one of these but needed to buy this to get to the handbrake mechanism. Waste of time, they were wrecked, so bought new calipers. In the interest of originality decided to go for MK2 ones rather than MK3 or 4 upgrades: car is going to live in barn and not a daily so hopefully handbrake mech should last. 79k miles and this is all the wear on rear discs... anyone know how to fiddle with the pressure regulator valve? New flexi too, of course. I gave up trying to change the beam flexis: for some reason my 11mm flared nut spanner (Halfords) which fitted the front and rear wheel lines just fine was too loose and I was scared of rounding them off. Passed MOT so that's a job for when I've finished everything else ie never probably haha. Oh and new Pagid pads all round. Tried using my Eezibleed, but after filling the bottle for the third time realised that the fluid was leaking out of the reservoir bungs. Thinking that the master cylinder had seized up, I bought a new one. Got the 16V 22.20mm one instead of 20.64mm. Size matters... Got Boy3 who's a petrolhead to do the business on the pedal. Here's a pic of the original MC: It seems to still work as I found out when I pushed the plunger in with it in my vice and it squirted fluid all over me. New ones are 4 hole (cos of ABS I suppose) so need blanking plugs: The amount of pedal pressure required to stop is so much more than modern cars, but am getting used to it. It's the GO pedal that's the best bit on a Golf GTI .
This post is to get my thread up to when she passed the MOT. Been having fun ragging her around town. Pulls like a train from about 3000rpm so big smiles every time The first test drive was somewhat disappointing: unbeknown to me and Boy3 (who was itching to have first ride as much as I was) this piece of plastic gave way as I selected reverse to get her out of the garage... This lost me 1st, 2nd and reverse gears, so pulling away in 3rd was underwhelming. Fortunately the fix was easy peasy and cheap too:£2.89 from EuroParts! The other linkages seemed OK, so just gave them a squirt of liquid grease. Gear box a bit like stirring porridge - will an oil change help? The windscreen washer pump leaked (seal inside dried out I expect) so bought new one off the Bay. You'll notice that the valve gubbins on replacement is the other way round, so needed to swap the power connectors over. The rear screen nozzle was blocked, so used my tyre compressor to blast it clear from the outside, after removing white pipe from rubber socket: Lifted rear seat to discover that a flipping mouse had chewed one of the safety belts: The grey bits are from the hole he chewed in the seat foam. Bought replacement belt set off eBay. Came with double short female socket belts too if anyone needs em. This is not the only mouse damage, more on this later! Car is booked into body shop next week to have the 3 bad rust problem areas sorted. Noticed a groaning noise from the rear (even with no passenger there haha) so suspect wheel bearings. Also a clonking noise, suspect beam bushes as struts seem OK although the bump stops looked awful. Looks like the beam is going to have to come off so that's a job I'm really looking forward to...
changing the oil wont help the box, but hopefully its just that all the linkage bushes are in as poor condition as the short rod! get yourself a kit and check this thread: https://clubgti.com/forums/index.php?threads/129347 the 2nd part covers the gear shifter housing under the car, grab the stick and lift it upwards. if theres play, it also needs doing.
Thanks rubjonny! Just checked the stick: about 3mm up/down play so I guess I'll be doing both parts. Another job to add to the list. Excellent guide btw, who needs a Haynes manual!
Got her back just before Christmas. Here are some pics kindly taken by the body shop manager. Well framed beardy man haha: The rear arch was worse than expected, due to being slightly pushed in by a scrape (not me - previous owner!) So some welding and extra money was required: Rear sill (don't look at the parcel shelf speaker holes ): Ahh, lovely new paint. Looks like Mars red in this light. I supplied decals and new badge clips (VW Heritage). Need to take her back to body shop to get these decals fitted as hadn't expected them to go that far on this corner! I think that's enough RED for now haha.
Good going , I’ll be starting on my red golf later in the year , How much was the paint job if you don’t mind me asking ?
Original quote for the 3 areas was £837, but extra welding on arch pushed it up to £1043 (inc VAT). Total respray was ball parked at nearly 4k. I don't know how this compares to other bodyshop prices - I didn't bother to get other quotes. Too lazy , and I knew who I wanted anyway. Good luck with your red one!
4K, god, how did you hide that from the misses, I would go on a business trip for a couple of weeks to hide lol Thanks for sharing
Didn't have total respray, I'm not that mad! Just the 3 bad rusty panels for a grand. Still a lot, tho! The rest of the car will be spot treated with a touch up kit applied by toothpick (so my googling tells me).
Coupla months ago I took RJ's advice and renewed the gear linkage bushes. A bit fiddly but very satisfying once all back in. The relay shaft ball definitely needed changing! Here's the completed relay tower. I used my vice to push the orange bush into place. The old one was shot. I've got the bits to change the stick ball and socket, but been too busy sorting my Yammy. Also a little while ago I was whizzing up a hill and all of a sudden the engine lost power and started vibrating terribly. Traced the problem to spark plug #1. Replaced the set, but engine was still running rough below about 3k rpm. Replaced the coil, thinking that the bad plug could have hurt it. Nope. Removed knock sensor and tested it by measuring a/c output and whacking it with a spanner. Seemed to work. Then my mate said Change the Leads, it's always the leads.... and of course he was right. Went for the 8mm Magnicors cos I like blue.... and all is well again in my world.
