Thursday, 14 January 2010

The History of my Mark 1 VW Golf GTI 16v

I was originally making this blog to track the progress of the work I am currently doing to my ride.  But having owned it for a while and doing numerous other things to it I figured you don't know where you're going until you know where you've been.  So here is a "brief" history of almost everything that has happened during this period.

Enjoy!

After owning my mk1 Golf for almost 3 years I have done quite alot to it in that time, but mainly I have seriously enjoyed driving it.  Rather than a big paragraph saying what I've done, I'll do a history of the car whilst it's been in my ownership including various pictures along the way.

Bought March 2007, It looked like this:



Pretty much everything I ever wanted in a mk1 Golf GTI (I was originally looking to buy an Audi A3 1.8T but figured I wasn't ready for a sensible car) it had no sunroof, 3 doors, no gash BBS bodykit, moderately lowered (I was immediately to buy a coilover kit anyway) all the right chrome trims, 1/2 cage, Corrado seats and most importantly a Rebuilt 16V KR engine conversion from a Mk2 Golf GTI with 20,000 miles on it, 4 Branch Manifold, 2"exhasut system and the brakes to match. got it for £1800 with tax and MOT... !

Original Interior Shot:














Engine Bay Shot:

So cash in hand I trekked to Great Yarmouth to pick up my "new" pride and joy (4 hour train ride with £1800 in cash on me :S) got to the train station to see my new baby waiting for me, after a quick inspection (regardless of fault I was buying this car!) money changed hands and I was off,  nothing majorly off with it apart from a relay that buzzed because the indicators didn't work and that it took a few throttle pumps to get it started.  I was stoked! until I went to fill up with petrol, I couldn't figure out how to use the petrol cap (I had only owned Mk2 Golfs prior to this) so after a quick phone call to the guy I bought it off and some stern looks off the petrol station staff I tanked up and set off on my 5 hour drive back to South Wales.

At this point in the car's life it didn't have a stereo as the VDO gauges were in the stereo slot, but I had my Ipod and headphones with me (an arrangement that didn't change for about 6months), not that I needed them as the noise of the engine was awesome, exciting and breathtaking.  I had experienced 16v Mk2 GTI's before as my brother Ben and friend Morgy had both owned them and I had been passenger... but I had never driven one before, only the Mk2 GTI 8v I had owned prior.  It was definately different to my 8v Literally being thrown into the back of your seat from the acceleration and the noise just kept getting better as it made its way up the rev range (especially when you have no back seats or sound deadening...) so for the most part I had a grin going ear to ear and a constant prayer going on that I wouldn't encounter any speed camera's as I was still getting used to the cars speed.  The main difference I was surprised with was how solid it felt at higher speeds.  With my mk2 it was shaking and allsorts when you took it faster than you were supposed to, but with the mk1 everything felt calm and controlled.  After a little detour to Chepstow to take my buddy Raoul for a quick spin I had it home (by this time it was about 11pm and I had set out from Slough where I was working at the time at around 10am)

Now that the car was mine I had plans for it, big plans.... initially I wanted 14x8" Borbet T's all round with stretched rubber,  Coilovers and skinny metal bumpers.

First off I got the Borbet's, I've always wanted a brand new set of deep dish alloy's after reading feature after feature in Golf+ and PVW so it was a must and I was inspired by this car (also a 16v) to go down this route.

These are mine (crappy Sony k800 pic):

Look at how new and shiney they were.... next up was the coilover kit, for this I rang up local VW aftermarket specialists Gwent VW.  After initially requesting a FK coilover kit they advised me to go with a Weitec kit as the FK's were apparently prone to thread stripping.  They also informed me that as the engine had been swapped for a bigger one, that I would need higher poundage springs on the front.  I was not aware of this so I was really happy that I'd chosen to go here.  I ended up with the Weitec Hicon-GT (one from the top model, only difference is adjustable damping.)

The morning I went to pick up my coilovers from the shop in Newport (they had to be custom made in Germany because of the spring change) my Borbet's had also arrived from Dubmeister so I put them on ASAP and was happy as hell.  Bit of an arch gap, but I was just about to go pick up my coily's so I wasn't too bothered.  Got to the shop in Newport went in to get my bits and the guys asked if he could see my car and they were loving it, taking pictures etc. and asked to have it on thier site when I had the coilovers on which I was pretty stoked about.  They also informed me that I could of got the rims from there too at the same price.  I kind of wish I had in retrospect because the guy I spoke to at Dubmeister didn't know much about offsets and stuff (I wasn't as heavily into Veedub forum's as I am now) so they poke out a bit at the front, never got done by the rozzer's for it though.

I got the coilovers on (aswell as the skinny metal bumpers that had arrived in the meantime) I didn't have them on much of a drop to begin with:


































The Golf was now due for its first MOT and a few issues came up, firstly there was no washer bottle.  Being converted to a 16v engine from a Mk2 meant that the metering unit was now in the way of the original washer bottle bracket.  My mechanic as he good as he is didn't know where the original bottle was located when he went to replace it and was thrown off by the unused expansion tank bracket (the car uses a top fill radiator) and ended up putting a camper one in there to get it through the MOT which is still in there today (that will soon change..)  Secondly the gear box was plastered in oil,  I was a bit gutted about this as the engine was said to have been rebuilt.  It turned out the previous owner had replaced the oil pipe that returns to the metering unit with a K&N oil breather that spat the shit out,  the genuine pipe turned out to cost 50 odd quid from VW, but that was fitted and no more juicy gearbox.  I also got advisories on the sills which would need replacing.  That's it off memory, I could dig out the old MOT from my receipt box but I think this will suffice for now.

Engine Bay shot with camper washer bottle:
















It was around this time that the car had it's first re-spray aswell (spurred on by the MOT advisory.)  It had a few issues with the paint on the arches, it was bubbling and coming off.  My mechanic recommended me a place in Abergavenny called Autolaque (Do not go there EVER) and they agreed to replace the sills and paint everything below the centre trim line for around 800quid (Been as it is metallic paint you need a large area covered to blend it in).  So I booked it in there, took it in at the appointed time and all that,  they ended up having the car nearly 2 weeks longer than agreed then did a pretty shit job (most notable shitness was the fact that that forgotten to put the chrome sill strips back on) they offered to redo it but with the amount of time they were likely to take and the likely shit job I didnt bother.  Worst part was my friend Trewy (a car sprayer who later did work on my car) had stopped and had a chat when he seen me with the car by Chepstow skatepark and offered to do the work aswell for a similar price, which I declined as I had to wait a while for my appointment with the other place.... FAIL!!

Those are most of the major things for now, I'll list the rest of the things bought/stuff done fairly quickly.

Wound down the suspension pretty far (sump is an inch off the floor...)


































CL Chin spoiler ripped off by dead rabbit, new one bought from GPC VW Audi (Genuine) along with new genuine front no. plate hanger and smoked indicator lenses (didn't end up using the lenses)

Sempal Central locking kit bought and fitted (not on remote as I planned to have it all wired up when I had the alarm fitted)

Had to buy standard plastic No. plates due to police hassel....

Crystal Cross Hair Headlamps.

New genuine scuttle cover off Ebay.

Bought Genuine Rear Strut top covers off Ebay.

Made it to Run To The Sun VW Fest.

Blew a wheel bearing on the way to Bug Jam (after flooding the car from driving through what looked to be a sizeable puddle but turned out to be a flooded road) spent 24hours in a service station (due to the fact there were massive floods all over the country that weekend and most of Worcester was underwater) with Raoul and ended up paying 550quid to get it trailered home :( nevermind getting my hubs machined out and new bearings, the perils of having wide wheels.  I won £120 off the gambling machine off a fiver so that kept us in arcade games and KFC until we got home anyways.

Me and Raoul on the way after investigating the "grinding noise" and saying fuck it we'll make it there.....



















































Heater matrix hose blown, had to buy mk1 and mk2 hoses from South Hereford VW as I didn't know which one was used (Turned out it was the mk1 one)

Audio finally installed in the form of an Alpine CDE-9850Ri headunit (Fullspeed Ipod Compatible) Audioscape custom 10cm door builds (i had this size as it was the maximum size i could of had with manual window winders i had at the time..) and Rainbow SLX 230 Deluxe speakers, tweeters and in door sound deadening.  Pretty much the dogs bollocks.

Head unit:

















Door Build and tweeter:

When this was done I also bought a new centre console from a cabby (with gauge slots) and moved my VDO gauges from the dash to the centre console.

As you can also see from that picture I had bought some wooden beetle style window winders off Ebay because I'd seen them on a feature car and thought they were kinda cool.

You can also see in that pictue the custom mats I had made by www.justmatz.co.uk with car coloured outers.

Had electric windows installed.  This was a bit of a pain as I originally bought a genuine electic window set from a Mk2 to go on there which turned out not to fit and which I didnt sell on for another year.  I ended up buying a Sempal automotive universal kit, which i powered from a dual bezel Corrado electric window switch mounted on the dash next to the choke blank,  Looks OEM and even has the same green lighting as the rest of the dash.  Install went smoothly apart from having to get the loom plugs for the switch from South Hereford VW.


Fitted a Mk3 Golf Wiper motor in place of the orginal (cost me a fiver off Ebay!) easy mod and actually makes your wipers do what theyre meant to.......

Replaced the rear door cards with extremely good condition secondhand Ebay ones.

Replaced the boot Cards with good condition second handers from Ebay.

Bought a new "Volkswagen" Rear badge, flag style mirrors and full bonnet release mech from www.volkswarenhaus.de as I had been wanting to get rid of the bonnet pins for a while.  I had also ordered a "Golf LS" badge but unfortunately they had none in stock at the time.





I had also bought some genuine rear 1/4 spats off Ebay.

 Unfortunately most of the stuff I bought was on Ebay secondhand so I don't have receipts to jog my memory but I think I'm doing pretty well, it's not necesserily in order but it's close enough......


NOW.

Time for another major hurdle in my baby's life!!!

Whilst on holiday snowboarding with Sheffield Uni January 2008 (I didn't go to the Uni but I went on the trips because my friend Will Westwood was up there) they're an awesome load of dudes and I partied the shit out of the place, we went to Val Thorens, it snowed flat out the first 3 days we were there.  So I had a wicked time hitting loads of fresh powder and drinking myself stupid in the evenings.  All in all it was an awesome weeks holiday.

Anyway, I got back into the country to have a phone call literally as I got off the ferry, it was my brother (I was working with him at the time) he first told me that the job we were on was finishing early because the contract got cut short (Major bummer!) THEN he told me that my car had been crashed into where it'd been parked up whilst I was away!

Major downer,  I was pretty pissed off and wanted to get home to see what the crack was.

It turned out a lorry of some sort had gone into it hitting the passenger wing and completely wrecking my pre 1979 skinny metal bumper :(
Wing damage (there was a massive dent just above where the picture ends and the bumper was replaced in this pic)

 State of the bumper:

Making the best out of a bad situation I removed the bonnet pins and fitted the bonnet release mech I had bought before,  put on my old plastic bumpers (thank god I didn't sell them) treated them with some UPVC dye I bought from SWG motorsport which worked amazingly and brought them out amazing.  I also bought some new German style pressed metal FE font No. Plates and a rear dealer surround from Dubmeister.




















Now was time for re-spray number 2!! For this job I got Trewy invovled,  he is really good at what he does and enjoys it, which I guess makes him even better at it.  After seeing he Escort RS Turbo and the work he'd done on it I definately wanted him doing my car.

Plan was to smooth the bonnet pins, smooth the slam panel and delete the trim clip holes in the wings from the previous spray job where they didn't re-attach my chrome sill trims but left the trim clip in the wing?!?!? Also he was going to do my genuine rear 1/4 spats done in plastic effect paint and also paint the inside of the boot, as it was still black (the original colour of the car) whilst doing the boot I also had the plates on the inner wheel arch (for the rollcage) smoothed and the rollcage re-shoot in satin black.

You can kind of see the original state of the boot here:

















During respay shots Trewy text me:

 

 












And with everything back in, I originally thought the rollcage plate had been removed its that smooth!

















He had it ready for me in time for Run To The Sun VW Fest 2008 in Newquay.  One thing about Trewy, if he says he'll do something he'll do it, and this was no exeption, he put in alot of hours and got a fucking awesome result :D he even called me mid job to see if I wanted the C pillar trims removed and the paint sprayed up that high as I didn't have any B-pillar trims to carry on the theme.  Good boy!

Pics from Run To The Sun:

















 
































Bonnet pins gone for good:


































Newly Painted 1/4 Spats:


































One of my all time favourite pictures of the car:


















I did intend to take it to the show and shine on the Sunday at RTTS but I ended up having the craziest night of my life (Literally) but that is a completely different story I won't go into needless to say I was in no fit state to drive that morning so no show and shine for me :(

After this nothing major happened to the car, apart from general maintainence, new alternator, starter motor, tyres etc.  It is my daily driver and I used it for going to work, going places riding etc. and that's about it. I guess I kind of neglected it and took it for granted.... until the accident happened.

And that is the history of my ownership of this mk1 from March 2007 until now.

Now a new story unfolds.......

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