Golf GTI 16v Anniversary

[martin mrt]

It's been a long long time coming, 13 years nearly, but finally I have the mk3 Golf I've lusted after since the day I first laid eyes on it!!!!

It's very well known on Club GTI and I plan to do very little changes other than tidy it up and enjoy it.
It's perfect in the looks dept IMO

The Mk3 Golf always gets slated for being slow, overweight, wallowy etc, areas which I have defended the Golf on numerous occasions. This car proves my point, with some tweaks to the geometry and some quality components fitted, this is a car that will handle every bit as well as a similarly equipped Corrado or Mk2 Golf.



As the car has always been, and with the previous (Ess Three) plate

I got it needing some work, it was using oil, had been stripped of some of the mega fancy parts to be sold on seperately, so my plan was to get it useable for summer,

This was it last Monday/Tuesday after a few setbacks putting the spare engine back together, but here it is with new TB, water pump, sump gasket, red rocket cover and some other new parts


The following night, work was progressing well, lightened and balanced flywheel, clutch and box all bolted together



Thursday night seen the engine in, and started off the first turn of the key, delighted.



I wanted to get the car ready for a run last weekend, however there was some issues that I hadn't allowed for so it wasn't to be sadly

Here's some more pics, none of which are mine, but I'll get some of my own taken over the weekend

Here is the car as it was ready to collect, only thing I've changed is the Taillights to OEM originals





My Favourite part of the car, Mk4 Recaros, trimmed in half leather with OEM Anniversary Cloth and heated Corrado Pads, wired into a Corrado loom and Mk3 Golf switch



MASSIVE thanks to my mate Pudsey without his assistance it would still be in bits

Edited by martin mrt on Thursday 28th May 17:30

[martin mrt]

Thanks, the interior really is something special.

Yeah it's one of only 150 16v ABF Anniversaries brought to the UK, and there's reckoned to be less than 50 surviving examples, hence why I replaced the broken ABF with another

Blue samco hose was done years ago when it was pretty much the standard colour choice

[martin mrt]

Yeah 1996 was when they were released for sale, this is a two owner car (father then son) and comes with the original bill of sale and FVWSH which can't be common these days!!!

I just don't get the mk2 Golf appeal, had a few and much prefer a mk3

[martin mrt]

lufbramatt said:

Great to see this brought back to life. Knew it from when Ess Three had it on clubGTI.

what happened to the original engine? IIRC he had done lots of work to it and it was pushing nearly 200bhp without forced induction?

Glen has been a good friend if mine for years now and wanted to break the car, it was never actually "for sale" we came to a mutual agreement that saved the car from the crusher and we were both happy with.

I believe an Oil control ring gave way on its run to the CGTI RR day in London, the car hadn't been used much prior to the trip and still made more power than a every other ABF albeit running on 3 cylinders.

197bhp rings a bell N/A

The fancy head and gearbox along with all the other modded ancillaries were sold on to another friend of ours.

On a separate note, suffered a breakdown last night, no prior warning the car just died, after investigation work today it turns out either the ECU or fuel pump relay failed, I replaced both as they are common failures, so hopefully I'll get some miles under its belt this week