Mk2 Golf GTi 20v Turbo Soon To Be Daily.....

[Caddyshack]

I have not found the shift tower...still looking for it. Sorry

Nice job. I would highly recommend rust killer before painting. On the inner wings andd chassis rails I would use POR15 rust killer, degreaser and then por 15 paint...that way the rust should not come back.

[AJB88]

If you ever need parts look in Montenegro, I was over there last week, every other car was a MK2 Golf.

[Sammo123]

I managed to get a little bit more time on the Golf today

I had to stop with the loom wrapping due to running out of loom tape. I’ve ordered more rolls but I’m still waiting for them to arrive, so in the mean time I figured I’d start putting the engine back together!

I’d been waiting for the oil cooler housing gasket to turn up and in the mean time I’d ended up ordering some aluminium coolant housings as well Anyway, I started off with the oil cooler housing, new thermostat & housing and the alternator bracket.



Once I was happy that they were done up correctly (not too tight etc!) I moved onto the coolant housing on the side of the head.



I must admit that considering how cheap these housing were I’m very impressed with the fit and finish. Both housings butted up very well and don’t appear to leave any gaps. Of course I’ll have to wait until it’s full of coolant to know for certain how good they are!!

Last thing to do today was to refit the inlet manifold. Annoyingly a couple of patches of paint have reacted slightly but once the front panel is on etc it should really notice. I’m not annoyed enough about it to strip the whole thing and start again anyway!





So with those bits done I’m a step closer to this being finished. The next job will be to tidy up the various brackets that need to be bolted back on, dipstick tube and then I’ll get on with replacing the cambelt kit and water pump.

[Sammo123]

Oooooo an update

Recently I’ve been stripping my Mk2 Fiesta down and selling off all the bits which has taken up all of my spare time. I’ve now been furloughed from work so I’ve got endless amounts of spare time to try and get bits and bobs done. Of course getting parts is a little challenging at the moment so I’ll just carry on with whatever I can do for now

Today I decided to strip and paint the alternator. It’s definitely seen better days!





Now I’ve never taken an alternator apart before so it was a bit of a learning curve on how it came apart. I figured it out in the end and with the help of a hammer it was apart



I cracked out the Dremel so I could wire wheel the housings but after searching high and low I can’t find the wire wheel attachments anywhere So I grabbed my wire brush and went to town on the front part of the housing! I forgot to take a picture after the hour I spent on it but it was definitely looking a hell of a lot better than it did! I then gave it a good clean up with brake cleaner, chucked it on the very professional spray stand (old bbq complete with coal!) and gave it four or five coats of black Hammerite





I didn’t have the grip left in my hand to wire brush the other half of the housing so that will wait until the new wire brush attachments arrive for the Dremel

Now it’s time to mow the lawn and give the garden a bit of a tidy up but at least that’s one more small tidying job getting done on the Golf

[Sammo123]

Afternoon

Another update! I've been busy doing bits and bobs to the Golf over the last few weeks. I will admit that I haven't used all my free time as wisely as I should, but at least I've been getting something done to the car!

So at my last update I had cleaned up and sprayed half the alternator. Well, my wire brush attachments for the dremel arrived so I got on and cleaned up the other half of the housing and then sprayed that too!





With that done and the weather finally starting to cheer up I decided to get on and replace the front wishbones on the car. The car was fitted with Powerflex bushes all round many many years ago and to say the ride is harsh would be an understatement! It's horrible and the car feels like it's jumping around all over the place when you're driving. So I bought replacement arms with standard rubber bushes already fitted about six or seven months ago but just never got around to fitting them. The reason I went for complete arms is because the old ones are definitely looking past their best!



Now for anyone that has replaced Mk2 Golf wishbones before, you will know it's not a difficult job. Thirty minutes per side if you're working slowly. That is of course if the captive nut inside the chassis leg which secures the wishbones doesn't decide to snap its welds > This is what happened on the drivers side! Now in a way I'm kind of glad it happened on the drivers side because there is an inspection hole in the floorpan below the pedals to give you access to the captive nut (you have to cut a hole in the floor on the passenger side!). Anyway, it was a frustrating thing to happen none the less. First things first was to pull up the carpet and locate the inspection hole.

There it is!



Once I'd prised that up I could see the absolute curse word of a captive nut! Look at it sitting there with that smug, "I'm not moving!" look on it's errrrrr top type bit!



I tried to hammer a socket over it but with the limited space available to swing a hammer I was getting absolutely nowhere, so I decided it was going to be easier to cut the head off the bolt and push the remaining bolt and captive nut up through the inspection hole. Then I could replace the bolt and put a nyloc nut on the other end to secure the wishbone. Simple! Well it would be simple if I had an angle grinder!

[Sammo123]

Anyway, with no angle grinder I decided to resort to my trusty old dremel! After about an hour of cutting I'd only managed to get this far and I couldn't feel my fingers from the vibration (rofl)



I decided to admit defeat and ordered an angle grinder which would arrive in a couple of days

Seeing as I couldn't go any further with that job I decided to turn my attention to the steering UJ boot. The old one had long since perished and dropped off while the car had been sitting in the back garden. Over the years various snails and mice have ventured into the car through the steering column hole and stolen bits of the underlay for their nests!



First of all I unbolted the UJ and lubricated the joint. It's been sitting uncovered for years so was pretty crusty!





This is the new UJ boot. It was advertised as being for a LHD Golf but I figured they can't be that different to a RHD boot.



Lo and behold, it fits!



After a couple of days the new angle grinder arrived and I set to work chopping that poxy bolt out! It took a whole two minutes and I had it out





With the stubborn bolt and captive nut gone I could pull the arm out!



The whole reason behind this endeavour!



With the old one out I could slot the new arm in and then nut and bolt it in place





With that job done I could move onto something I've been wanting to do for ages! Remove the rather dead Toad alarm and anything else that has been wired into the loom over the years!



To make sure I didn't start, realise it was a pain in the and then change my mind, I did this! No going back now (rofl)



I figured the easiest way to access everything that had been spliced into was to just remove the dashboard. I've got other things to do behind there so it was going to come out at some point anyway.



I managed to find all the alarm wiring and cut it out. I also found plenty of other redundant aftermarket bits spliced into the loom which I cut out at the same time.



With all that out of the way I decided to strip all the old insulation off and re-wrap everything











With loom wrapped and looking neat and tidy I called it a day. I'll do another update tomorrow on what else I've been getting up to

[martin mrt]

Some nice work going on there.

[RS Grant]

I have wired in gauges and stereos but that is the limit of my wiring experience... so any other kind of wiring, in particular behind the dashboard, is something which gives me the fear even thinking about it.

Looks like you've done a great job, methodically done with a really tidy finish.

[Sammo123]

With the wiring all tidied up that finished up a bit more of the car I'm going to be fitting electric mirrors and windows so I'm not quite done with the wiring yet but it's getting there.

With the dashboard out I could now access the heater box. When I first turned the blowers on after dragging the car out of the garden the blower motor made a horrible screeching noise and slowly burst into a very noisy life. This was shortly followed by a load of foam flying out of the air vents. It's a well know issue that due to the age of these cars the foam lining inside the heater box just crumbles apart and comes out of the vents! The next job was to get this sorted! I figured I may as well replace the ancient heater matrix and screechy blower motor while I was in there so those bits got ordered from eBay ages ago

The heater box is only held in with three bolts going through the bulkhead into the engine bay. With them undone I only had to wiggle the box inside and out it came.



I removed all the clips holding the various pieces of the box together and then gently prised it apart. This is what the heater flaps were looking like after thirty years.





I removed the flaps from the box and cleaned all the foam off them.



Now I did a bit of reading up on what was the best thing to use when replacing the foam and it seemed to be a 50/50 split between using sticky backed foam sheets from Hobby Craft or using aluminium tape. I decided to use aluminium tape because I already had a roll of it





With both flaps fully sealed in tape I refitted them into the heater box and pushed the two halves back together. I then fitted the nice shiny eBay special heater matrix which happened to be a Hella part I forgot to take a picture of the old one but it was definitely past its best.



With the new matrix fitted the main part of the heater box was done. Sorry for the crap picture!



Next job was to replace the blower motor. It's such an easy job and took a whole minute including swapping the resistor from the old motor to the new one.





With the two parts done all I needed to do was replace the foam liners for the external vents and it could all go back together again.







With all the foam replaced and the heater box back together I could put it back in the car



While the dashboard is out I also wanted to replace the ancient dash speakers. I removed the covers and found the original speakers nestled in there.



Two screws per side and they were out and straight in the bin. I then fitted my shiny new Alpine speakers that I picked up for £18 They fit straight in with no modification required.



Then it was back on with the speaker covers and another job done!



Again, with the dash out there was another job I wanted to tackle. When the engine conversion was done to this car many years ago the company that carried it out left the cable operated clutch in. At the time the only way to go to a hydraulic clutch was to nick bits from a Corrado which was lots of hassle. The clutch has always been heavy and not as predictable as you'd like it to be. These days there is an off the shelf hydraulic clutch conversion kit from a company in Canada called Fabless Manufacturing. It's an expensive kit so when a nearly new one popped up on Facebook for a third of the price I got it bought! I wanted to get it fitted while the dash was out to give me a bit more access. Its a clever kit that bolts to the existing clutch pedal and requires no modification to use Just what I wanted.

I managed to get the main bracket bolted into place but when I tried to fit the pin that will eventually connect the pedal to the master cylinder it was getting jammed when the clutch pedal was operated.





I tried slackening off the mounting bolts in case I hadn't aligned it properly but was still having issues. I've emailed Fabless Manufacturing and sent them some photos but they can't see that I've done anything wrong so have advised removing the pedal box from the car so I can check for any other issues. Not ideal but thankfully it's only about six bolts holding the pedal box in so I'll get on with that tomorrow.

That's it for now. All up to date. I still don't know when I'm going back to work so I'll carry on with the Golf until I do

[Gallons Per Mile]

You're doing a cracking job on this. Well thought out mods and fixes. This is going to be a decent car once you've got it back in one piece. Makes me want to sell my MK4 and buy another mk2...

[Shadow R1]

Great job ticking through the list.

[Huskyman]

Cracking car and cracking thread! One word of caution with the alternator, make sure you have a good ground return path after painting the alternator, otherwise you will have all sort of horrible electrical problems, and kill the alternator. HTH.

[Sammo123]

Gallons Per Mile said:

You're doing a cracking job on this. Well thought out mods and fixes. This is going to be a decent car once you've got it back in one piece. Makes me want to sell my MK4 and buy another mk2...

Thanks Hopefully I’ll one day get it back in one piece

[vr6chris]

Hi mate. How did you get on with the Fabless Manufacturing clutch bracket? I've got the same kit (RHD) and it fits lovely. The pin for the slave cylinder does sit close to the right hand side of the bracket, but the hole in the pedal assembly for the front bolt is so huge there should be enough play for adjustment. The bracket needs to be pushed right, towards the column.

On the subject of this bracket. That front bolt uses the clutch pedal switch hole....and for the 20v to run correctly it needs to have the clutch switch operational. What are you doing to get around this?

I can only think that the the fabless bracket will need modification by moving that front bolt further to the right, then cut the section out where the switch should go.