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Well I figured I might as well do a thread on it since I keep mentioning it.
Bought it a little over a year ago, looking in a bit of a sorry state being several shades of yellow with rotten rear arches and rusty floor pans.
I'd looked at quite a few Mk1's and a couple of MK2's all with similar issues, almost opted for a MK2 as in some ways it's a "Better" car but I just couldn't quite feel the love for them as much as I did with the MK1.
I opted for this one as it drove and went quite well and had 11 months tax, insurance and MOT which meant I could sell my WRX Wagon immediately and drive this while I sorted it along the way.
This is pretty much how she looked when I bought it, bar the wheels and tyres, it had a couple of other battle scars as well as the one in the last pic, but I didn't take any shots of them.
Last edited by ditchmyster; 02 November 2017 at 09:43 AM.
I thought I'd better start on one of the more pressing jobs and also practice my welding which is about as rusty as the car and a similar length of time since I did any as the car is old... also helps that it won't be seen under the carpet.
So after a fair amount of cutting and faffing there was a big hole in the floor and a couple of templates made, metal cut from a doner shell, which I'll tell you more about later.
To be honest it took me most of the day to do it with a lot of faffing and loads of grinding some pretty ugly welds... not used to Mig welders and thin sheet metal... my welding history is making fences and gates using an Arc welder on a YTS placement as a spotty 16 year old some 35yrs ago.
I got there in the end and the welds are solid with good penetration, which is what counts.
Then a few days later did something similar on the other side but not quite as bad there... only got a shot of what I cut away, but the end result was slightly better having watched a few you tube videos. 😉
Last edited by ditchmyster; 02 November 2017 at 02:05 PM.
While I was doing the bit in the last pic above I noticed more daylight coming through... which became a bit of a recurring them on this car.
So despite having a new full length galvanised replacement sill (something I'll explain later) I thought rather than trying to take on the whole sill... which was a bit too much of a job given my limited experience I'd go at it bit by bit... since I intend to keep this car and will probably have to carry out more welding in future I'll tackle that one at a later date.
All cleaned up to make a template.
Template made... you'll notice I drilled some holes in it, having watched a few more youtube vids I thought I'd have a go at plug welding it, which actually worked out fine but I wasn't happy with just sealing it up with seam sealer in such a vulnerable location so ended up welding it all the way round and then sealing it with seam sealer.
The silver paint I'm using all over is zinc weld through primer... although it's not quite as weld through as I would like it to be.
Finished.
Last edited by ditchmyster; 03 November 2017 at 07:40 AM.
At this point having had a bit of a poke around all over the car and the realisation of how big a job it was going to be and how terribly slow I am at doing it dawned on me.
I decided that I needed to buy something else to drive while I take this off the road so I can crack on with it properly.
Essentially my criteria was the same as when I bought the Golf... small, cheap, reliable and not too thirsty.
I really fancied a Pug 106 but the prices people were asking were about double what I wanted to spend... also never really found one that I would have pulled the trigger on, they were either too messed with or overpriced sheds... I did see a stunningly good condition Pug 205 diesel which I would have scrapped the project for and just kept that instead but as soon as he heard I was English the price got silly.
A few weeks went by and I went to a local motor factors place to get a water pump for the Golf as it was leaking... the guy that works there speaks a bit of English and we always have a bit of a chat, mostly about Subarus...
So now he's laughing at me and asking how could I come from a Subaru to a Golf.... Anyhow he says he's got a nice Golf and I say do you want to sell it to me....
Few days later I pop back to pick the water pump up and it's there... usual silly price at first just to try it on... as they all do out here... so I low ball him back... as you do... and we meet in the middle at just shy of 1000 Euro.
Last edited by ditchmyster; 03 November 2017 at 07:42 AM.
So here she is, another MK1 Golf but a 1.6d so no turbo, which actually isn't the end of the world as it still goes alright not as blisteringly fast as my turbo but still puts a smile on my face.
It's actually much better than the Yellow one and he's spent a shed load of money on it over 4yrs, engine re-build, respray, 5 speed box, brakes, suspension etc... it's still got a couple of rust issue underneath but no worse than any of them I've seen and easily sorted... main thing it's cheap and reliable and full of little parts that I want... so going to save me a few quid and some time.
Also comes with loads of spare parts and another shell... so now I've got 3 MK1 Golfs.
Needed a polish as the paint had gone white hazey and a good clean, but she came up well and looks great now.
I'm basically robbing all the nice bits off this one to put on the yellow one, twin lamps, centre console, wheels, front bumper, wind deflectors, door protectors, rear interior panels, carpet, door, lights on buzzer, Alpine radio cassette player, main headlights, door handles and a few other bits, so all in all a great buy... shame I didn't find it first really.
Last edited by ditchmyster; 03 November 2017 at 07:31 AM.
So, I ran them both in tandem for a little while just to make sure the green one was going to be ok... I live in a bit of a remote location so I needed to be sure it wasn't going to let me down before I took the yellow one off the road... as it turns out it's a good job I did as I had a few issues with it in the first couple of months.
First one being a burst water pipe to the heater... fortunately I was close to home so was able to limp it back with the aid of 5 litres of water from a bloke a couple of miles away and a load of hanging about waiting for it to cool down.
Second time I pulled into a petrol station to fill up... when I came to drive off it wouldn't go into gear... so ended up having it recovered back home, fortunately I'd bought some local European cover to drive the Subaru back to the UK, so I was able to use that to get it back home for free. I then spent a couple of days fitting the original 4 speed box back in it that I was given when I bought it, so no real drama.
Then the third time it decided to spit all it's oil out while I was in town, couldn't see what was going on so just called the recovery company and had it taken back home... turns out the oil filter somehow managed to split on the seam at the top where it screws to the engine... again it was an easy fix and I was quite relieved.
Beyond those early teething problems she's been a dream to own I was not too sure if the lad sold me a lemon at one point, but ultimately it goes with the territory of owning 30+ year old cars.
With the green one now taken care of and running like a dream I decided it was about time I got into the meat of the job.
As mentioned earlier the rear arches were rotten, the bloke I bought the car off was planning on doing a full restoration on the car but just never got round to it, hence selling it to me, so along with the car I got 2 new rear replacement arches, a spare engine, which turned out to be knackered but did come in handy later for some spares, and a set of 5 BBS alloys with a couple of half decent tyres... all in all not a bad deal for a car with 11 months tax,test and insurance for 800 euros.
So I set about cutting out and cleaning the first rear arch to see how bad it was and where the good metal started.
As you can see the inner wing was a bit rotten and it also went around the corner slightly into the rear valance.
So I set about cutting a suitable piece out of the doner shell I'd got when I bought the Green one, I thought it might help a bit if I used a bit that had a similar profile but in the end that was pointless as I ended up having to segment it to get the right curve.
I also had to cut more of the outer wing out so as to be able to get in to weld to where the good metal was on the inner wing.
My welding was however starting to improve.
Last edited by ditchmyster; 06 November 2017 at 07:06 AM.
With a fair amount of cutting, grinding, welding and head scratching I finally arrived at a profile that matched and I'd be able to fit the outer wing to, I also had to rebuild the inside bottom corner so I'd have something to weld the new bit of rear valance to.
I then set about offering up the replacement rear arch panel. It goes up to the trim line but I didn't want to use that much of it as that would then mean that I'd be scuppered for any future repair using the same panel, and since these cars all seem to rot in exactly the same place that could be a distinct possibility and finding a replacement rear quarter in the future could prove nigh on impossible.
So offered it up, drew along the edges and set about working out what was the least I could get away with using.
I'd also in the meantime been looking at my various options on how to tackle this on youtube... the result being I bought a swaging tool from Ebay with which I could make a lip/ step in the body panel to sit the new arch into and weld it into place.
All well and good on a nice long flat piece of metal but the contours of the rear arch made this very difficult... the tool being quite bulky didn't help either and I was going to have to cut even more metal out to get it in to make the lip, which is something I really didn't want to do.
I'm starting to realise now why local bodyshops wanted £300 a side to fit these.
Last edited by ditchmyster; 06 November 2017 at 07:41 AM.
As the swaging tool turned out to be pretty much useless I ended up doing it the way I was trying to avoid, which basically means that I needed to be very accurate at measuring and cutting both pieces to butt them together with little or no gap and stitch a small weld in one place and basically play join the dots so as not to blow holes in either piece or cause heat distortion in the panel.
Very time consuming as well as being a little tricky... I also had to weld a few tabs on the inside of the quarter panel to help keep the arch flush and stop it falling in if you get my drift.
My welding is getting much better, still not quite as good as I'd like it to be but I'm starting to get the hang of it now.
Last edited by ditchmyster; 06 November 2017 at 03:21 PM.
One thing I will say is it's very time consuming work... more so for a first timer like myself, I don't expect it to be as good a job as someone that does it everyday... obviously there's not much chance of that happening... but the reason I'm doing it myself is to learn for myself so that the next time I do it I've got more of an idea what I'm doing... Also the car isn't worth me spending the amount of money a body shop would ask for all the work I'm doing... I'm just not prepared to pay £3k to fix a 500 quid car.
Ok it would be a better job but I doubt it would last much longer before it needs doing again given that it's a daily driver that's going to have a hard life... not a weekend garage queen tucked away in a heated garage.
I'm just looking to end up with a rot / hole free shell that's all the same colour.
So with that side done I moved on to do the other side... what a bloody nightmare that turned into.
Not sure exactly the cause but my best guess is poor tooling as in very old worn out, but this patent panel was all over the place... not like it had been damaged or twisted... more like it was just pressed like it because no amout of persuasion would make it twist back to being as it should be... it also had a bulge in it on the front of the curve of the arch.
So many hours of fun getting it to sit and look something like vaguely right... less said the better, but this is me somewhere close to the end, few bits left to tidy up and some gaps to fill with welds.
Last edited by ditchmyster; 06 November 2017 at 04:13 PM.
As a bit of a distraction from all the welding and sanding I started on the under sealing, as you can see I decided to put some underseal on the inner wings, also tidied up the inside of the wings and sprayed them with zinc primer and then coated them with underseal... I'm a bit of a belt and braces kind of guy... I also want this car to last another 30yrs.
Last edited by ditchmyster; 07 November 2017 at 06:27 PM.
As you'd expect this car has suffered over the last 30 odd years, everywhere you look there's another ding... not helped by this car coming from the local "Big City" so I thought I'd have some fun with my marker pen.
Last edited by ditchmyster; 07 November 2017 at 06:38 PM.
As you can see just the roof could keep me busy for days, wings and doors and the bonnet again all in a couple of weeks for a novice to get somewhere near half decent... so again... reality VS expectation over ultimate goal.
Theres no way I'm going to get this car looking showroom perfect... I just haven't got the time or the inclination to even attempt it... let alone the skill required, and yet again I need to take into account the kind of life this car is going to have for the next few years... and it ain't going to be pretty being a daily hack out here, so why spend the time trying to make the car pretty... function over form is the order of the day.
So mission statement reiterated... lets get on with sorting the old girl out.
Last edited by ditchmyster; 07 November 2017 at 06:59 PM.
So after liberal doses of filler and a shed load of sanding... hence it being outside, and a fair old amount of welding of little holes here and there... along with some seam welding on the rear turrets... just to stiffen things up for future suspension mods... it was time to make my garage into a spray booth.
Last edited by ditchmyster; 07 November 2017 at 07:12 PM.
I opted for good old fashioned cellulose base and lacquer, three reasons, 1st I can mess around with the base as much as I like before applying the lacquer, 2nd it's probably the least toxic and 3rd I can polish the cr4p out of the lacquer at a later date... which was obviously going to be required given my total lack of experience.
Time to get some high build primer on the job... after all... I need all the help I can get.
Last edited by ditchmyster; 07 November 2017 at 07:30 PM.
I'm doing an ever so slight colour change so that means I'm painting anything that will be visible bar the engine bay which was painted blue by the previous owner... no idea why but I've decided to leave it as is because it's grown on me... and I can't be 4r$ed right now as I have enough on my plate.
So loads of flatting later, I decide that I've had enough and it's time to paint the bloody thing.
Last edited by ditchmyster; 07 November 2017 at 07:42 PM.
For some strange reason... probably because I'd had enough and it was beer o'clock ... that's the only picture I have of it when it was freshly painted.
I also had issues with a replacement bonnet that I have as the one that came with it has seen better days but due to time and a severe case of can'tbearsedititis I've left the original one on... I've also replaced the passenger door as the original had a rusty hole in a position that was going to be more hassle than it was worth to attempt to repair.
I also have another tailgate that has a hole for the rear wiper but again that a job for another day.
The over all paint job is actually better than I expected... although I can see it's short comings quite easily... but ultimately I didn't expect it to be professional quality as it was all about learning.
It's got it's winter wheels and tyres on at the moment but I have got some deep dish 15's for summer time, but as we're headed into winter and the weather could change at any moment I've opted for the winter set up and had the geometry set accordingly as well as leaving the higher suspension in place for now as reasonable ground clearance is desirable out here... especially at this time of year.
Now that she's rust free and looking reasonably decent, it's time to sort things out under the bonnet and get her handling nicely.
I know the tints won't be to everyones taste... and they're not strictly to mine... but with summer temps in excess of 40 degrees, they're a necessary evil.
Oh and she's also got MK4 seats in the front now... was offered some Recaros but £400 was a bridge too far for this car right now... maybe later down the line, but for now I'll opt for comfort over form.
Time for a play in the bay, which is an area I'm more familiar with.
Lol... thanks, it's a lot of work and never having done it doesn't help much either... I never expected it to be perfect and now I know what it takes to make it perfect I'm glad I didn't attempt it... the main thing for me was just to sort the rust, which I've done.
The overall condition of the car wasn't bad enough to warrant new floor pans and sills and I just didn't have the time or skill to do them... I'm sure I could have gotten through it but it would have taken me bloody ages... and again if they started to rot then there'd be nothing to weld replacements to.
Doing a whole car like this really is a hell of a lot of work... maybe not so much for the blokes that do it everyday and have the right equipment... main one being a decent compressor... not like mine which is a 100 quid Lidl jobby along with a Lidl spray gun... it was always going to be a struggle to get Rolls Royce quality results.
Next time I do it in a few years I'll have a better / much bigger compressor and a decent gun... I'll also take the job on a panel at a time instead of painting the whole car in one go... which is a massive task and another area where I went wrong.
But we live and learn and I'm happy with how it turned out for a first effort.
Sold the green one a week ago for around £60 less than I paid for it, minus quite a few of the nice desirable parts it came with... so quite pleased with myself.
Only problem for it now is the lad that bought it seems like he is either going to kill the engine or crash it unfortunately... it would seem he's a bit of an idiot when it comes to cars... already had reports of him tearing about the place in it... I hope he doesn't bin it as it's a nice straight car, be a shame for it to end up at the scrap yard.
But hey ho... it's not in my name or on my insurance anymore so that's a relief... as I sold it to him with only 5 days left and that's run out now.
Last edited by ditchmyster; 19 November 2017 at 08:37 AM.
02 November 2017, 09:29 AM
My MK1 Golf 1.6 TD
