Hello to all, thought I would post this in the MK1 section so It didn't get lost amongst the general builds. I'm a 23yr old Gold Coaster with too much time on my hands. This is my build thread. Your opinion, suggestion and experience is more than welcome so please feel free to comment.
3 weeks ago I joined the VW owners club and purchased a 4 door MK1 golf, I've wanted one since I can remember but my purchase influences have been biased towards Japanese imports until now. Since then it's been a very short love hate relationship in the quest to get this girl to where she deserves to be.
I purchased the car off another member on this forum in Brisbane for a price I could justify in a condition I wanted. Unregistered, Not running and looking like **** haha. Some have probably seen it around before as I've read it's been for sale a couple times before. While I understand buying a car completed is the easy option, I wanted this one to truly be mine. A true D.I.Y build to keep me occupied.
I pretty much knew I was going to buy the car before I had seen it, Bad rust was my only real concern and this car was virtually rust free except for a few minor areas and some spots on the roof which had been repaired (kind of)..
This is how it was when I first laid eyes upon her.
Drove up the next day with the trailer to take delivery.
Got her safely home and unloaded. A great task lay ahead of me...
First thing I made a priority was rectifying the roof. The roof had a few sections of rust that had been previously repaired but had still not been sealed. I live right on the water so getting this covered was paramount. A quick clean up and removal of about 3KG of unwanted/unneeded body filler did the job. I only used a spray can to cover the roof to a satisfactory standard. I have every intention to remove it once I start preparing it for paint.
The car didn't have a working handbrake when I got it as one of the cables had snapped. Luckily the old owner has sourced a cable so it just needed to be fitted. A hour later and it was locked like a chastity belt. I took this opportunity to inspect the rear brakes also.
While I was fixing the handbrake I decided to clean out all the junk from the interior and install the seats that came separate with the car. A pair of Honda Prelude seats which have been adapted to fit MK1 rails. I'm not sure if I fully like them yet but they are many times better than stock items.
Next on the list was reassemble the engine and replace the turbo...OK let me back track here. Did I mention the car is turbocharged? Still carburettor but featuring a blow through set-up. I'll go into a little more detail in another post. Anyway, The turbo had to be replaced as the oil seals were shot. On closer inspection along with the 5mm up and down shaft play, A nice exhaust housing crack had appeared.
The Turbo was a TD05H 14B from a 1st gen 4G63 engine (Mitsubishi). I tried for days to find a replacement the same size as I wanted to avoid putting on a laggier 16G or even worse adapting the set-up for a new turbo all together.
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