No Time Toulouse Golf Mk1 Build Thread

Spend £300 on a car they said… Drive over 1000km in 3 days they said… So what have we chosen to do the Monte Carlo Or Bust Rally in? A Golf MK1 Convertible of course! We are team  No Time Toulouse - 4 great friends who have been into V'dubs for years have decided to raise money for charity and go on an adventure in… well at the moment it's a shed of a Volkswagen… Who are we? Matt Spiers, Gail Wayman,  Jason Lelliott & Andy Griffin. To donate to Jigsaw School, an independent day school for children and young people with an autism spectrum disorder. Just text MCOB51 Followed by your donation amount £1, £2, £3, £4, £5 or £10 to 70070 or go to our just giving page No Time Toulouse Toulouse is fundraising for Jigsaw Trust Between the 17th - 19th July we'll be taking part in Champagne Charlie which starts in Saint Quentin France and Finishes in Monte Carlo. All money raised goes directly to the charity.. We're (well Matt is) funding the resto on the Golf out of our own pocket! If you have a business that would like to get involved, please send Andy  or Matt an email to
notimetoulouse@outlook.com …Starting as low as £10 for your company logo, that will be seen at local shows by thousands of people… And in 4 other counties of course! Please follow our fb page https://www.facebook.com/NoTimeToulouse and share our story far and wide..

So now you guys have the background as to why I've started this build thread… And to answer a question some of you may have… Yes out of all of the cars we could have chosen we actively searched and sourced the Mk1. To be honest we weren't looking for a convertible…. But once we found it we had to have it! All 4 of us have a love for V'dubs so it was only natural that we were going to do this in a car that we don't already own…. Between us we have a Splitty, several Beetles, a T25, a Trekker, a Bay and a US import wildly customised 1302S… So you could say the choices were somewhat limited!

You may have seen us splashing ourselves all over facebook to try and get things moving and the donations coming in… But if you only follow facebook you'll only get half the story… On facebook we're only going to put out there select pictures, info and updates that will further our cause… But on this build thread you guys are going to get the full story warts and all…

To get us going I'll put up the pics of  the car as we first saw it…. The price and the romanticism of driving a convertible on the continent as you'll see won over the reality of how much of a shed it really was…

There we go, now we can see it in all it's glory (or lack of at this point!) Looking forward to see your progress boys!

Are you keeping the exhaust? or putting it back ona  1.2 fiat punto where it belongs  

The exhaust… The least of our worries right now! I'd like to think we'll go back to stock or at least something that will not be a hinderance… Mind you… Matt is a boy racer at heart so it may stay…. You'll have to keep an eye on the thread to see what happens to it… 

should be good this, a local AA man near where i work did it last year i think and said he had a brilliant time

Good luck boys will be keeping an eye on this and will get a donation over, I was going to do one of these over the Aug bank holiday but unfortunately after my back op a few years ago 23 hours or so driving over 3 days would not be good for it :-(. Keep an eye on the free parts section, and when you are struggling make sure you post up. funk-star could be a useful contact for you, he breaks Mk1's so might have bits you are looking for, and I am sure he will do you a good price

No Time Toulouse said

The exhaust… The least of our worries right now! I'd like to think we'll go back to stock or at least something that will not be a hinderance… Mind you… Matt is a boy racer at heart so it may stay…. You'll have to keep an eye on the thread to see what happens to it… 

That'll make a nosey 3 day drive then haha! What's the plans once you've got there as well, you all driving it back?

And I'll be keeping a close eye

We all get advised to view before buying… Well…What can I say… We were on a budget and it was at a bargain basement price which ticked all the boxes…

Matt did the deal with the guy… Arranged for it to be collected and transported to him…

And this is what arrived on the trailer! And yes we were all wearing rose tinted glasses…





Bit out of focus I grant you…. I think Matt may have been in shock when he took this! lol




Sheds make great places to store random stuff.. And bits that should be bolted to the car somewhere!




Yes that is water you can see filling up the area around the seat runners…



Don't think the seller mentioned not only did they fit a daft boy racer exhaust but they slammed it to within an inch of its life… Not exactly practical to be 4 up doing a jaunt across France!

We're all looking forward to going… And yes, it would not be much fun if you had back issues…. As for what's the plan once we finish the Rally…. Drive the cabby back home again! We've all got our fingers crossed that we can do what will potentially be 6 days under our own steam! Through facebook we've already hooked up with some other folks who have v'dubs. So we're hoping that we can keep each other going…

Thanks for the tips guys on finding parts… Over the next week you'll probably be able to have a laugh at one of Matts mistake purchases…

As for noise… It's a cabby… It'll be sunny so the top will be down the whole way! My other car is The Beast… So the cabby will be quiet by comparison! lol

So I should probably pick this point to join in! I'll be doing the spanner work on the Golf which leaves little time for anything else, hence why Andy will be doing most of the build thread. I'll point out that the car is stored where I work as my darling wife would (probably reasonably) have said no to another project outside the house. So all work is done in lunch hours and the occasional weekend afternoon, and bits are carted home for working on in the shed till too late o'clock. It is also being done on a budget that makes a shoestring look like a banker's bonus. The build thread will lag behind a bit as the work is going at speed, but i'm sure Andy will still find time to point out my mistakes! There is a bit of a lack of strip down photos as my 2 year old mini me decided to smash my phone which had the first 100 odd photos on it so most posts will jump to the rebuild, but you get the idea. and I am not a boy racer. I just appreciate the faster things in life! Here's a quick jump to the next step in the process.

and I promise that the large hammer in the first photo was not used to remove the engine… 

I do a similar thing each year, driven from Dublin to Barca and back  a couple of times, this year were heading to Rimini. Such great fun - providing you like the people your sharing the car with!
Are you going to do a few passes on the Alps?

Haha that large hammer might come in handy again for that exhaust  

Looks good mate, I see you've also replaced the roof for one that doesn't leak (I'm not really one to speak, this morning it look like I'd wet myself when I got to work)

Looks like you're making good progress though, FYI funk-star is  Mark Carter who has offered you parts via Facebook, www.classic-vw.co.uk/

Ahhh cheers, I've already got some parts from classic-vw actually. I'm making a big push this week, which will inevitably end up with a big parts list so I will be getting in touch with Mark soon i'm sure! and if the exhaust works, its staying, there's no fat in the budget at the moment! A few passes of the alps? - not if I can find a way round; I just dont trust those brakes with 4 on board…

So, after the engine came out it was swiftly stripped and head off. It was a complete unknown quantity as it was a non runner and half the parts were missing, so I wasn't going to take the risk of something being wrong. As I stripped it down with some ease, I started thinking that although it had been off the road for 20 years, it must have been rebuilt not long before it was retired.




Apart from some rusty, oily, watery gunk (with added sycamore seed), the pistons and bores looked pretty clean.  A wipe over and they were back to shiny metal. Head was checked and straight and true, valves were clean, cam shaft was smooth and straight. A handy egg box served for storing the lifters.




If anyone can tell me what the hell the pipe coming off the back of the head is for i'd be grateful? Looks like a vacuum pipe that's been blocked off? Comes off a small plastic flange..?!

Anyway, starting to think it was a waste of time stripping it down, I took the sump off and had a poke around the crank shaft; and this fell out…



How the &*%£ an acorn got in there, god only knows, but that along with lots of lumps of sealant, made me glad to have gone to the effort!

 

Literally wetting myself at the acorn, amazing haha!

The brakes are fine, not any worse than a camper or a beatle, you need to go through the alps, it will be amazing!!

Looks like you've made some good progress though Matt, and as for the exhaust, least it will be fun in the tunnels (if you can hear it above the wind noise)

I dunno if you've thought about a roof yet, but chortle is your man

If you are anywhere near me (Herts) I'd gladly donate parts needed if I have any you need

All for a good cause!! 

cavs said

If you are anywhere near me (Herts) I'd gladly donate parts needed if I have any you need

All for a good cause!! 

Chris has helped me out a few times when I used to live down in London, he's got a sweet caddy too

This is great! Looking forward to following the progress  

I'm planning to drive my cabby and 36thcrazyfist down through France in August so will be interested to see how you get on!

Cavs - thanks for the offer. The car is near Cranleigh, Surrey so probably a bit far away unless you're on you're way to the beach!? As for the roof - I had great plans, which have now been replaced by localised repairs, using woven fabric backed, adhesive strips…

Next up on the project thread - gearbox.

As Andy alluded to, some mistakes were made in this process and more were to come… Drive shafts were taken off and taken home. New boots were ordered all round. For the correct year and vehicle. Cleaned out all the old grease and crud, re-packed the CV's with new grease put the boots on, then the Cv's.

If you've done it, you know its a messy, messy job that no amount of rag can cope with and one of my least favorite jobs. So when I went to marry the CV boot cup with the CV and it didn't match, I was not happy…

A bit of research and it turns out there are 2 CV boots that match. So I purchased the other size. And they didnt fit either… So I did what I should have done first and checked the gearbox code and you guessed it - 100mm cups from a mk2 box. So now I order the correct boots and go through the strip down, get covered in grease, fit new boots job again, bash the granny outta them to get them fitted and all is well.

All is well until I turn my attention to the gearbox that is. A quick degrease and fiddle and I realise that the gear selector doesn't really move that much. After some persuading with my favorite 6lb tool, I can still only get 1st and sometimes a tenuous 3rd. So now I have a choice / problem. Fix gearbox for £££, replace gearbox with standard, but that means new driveshafts and possibly hubs, or find a replacement box with 100mm cups. As it turns out, a friendly breaker on ebay who I had previously purchased some bumpers off, had the right box, for the right price and delivered it the next day. After a clean and paint, it came up pretty good.



Whilst all this had been going on, I also had some time to spend on cleaning the head. A coat of etch prime and then some VHT silver (although it looks grey to me), rocker cover in red and I was quite please with the result:



Back at the office, I had been busy with the paint and got the engine bay, half way to decent. Can you guess what colour the car will be when finished?!

First photo taken from a distance so it looked better  (ignore the caravan, nothing to do with me!)

Closer up, but still looking pretty bad. Cheapo tin foil does make an excellent all in one masking though. Wish I'd though of it years ago!

Engine bay and a 'test' wing complete, starting to look good  

I know what you mean about parts, I went and bought a rotor arm yesterday and completely wrong, companies can't seem to get anything right these days!

Looking good thought mate, is the tin foil for the flux capacitor ? I'm guessing it's going to be white then?

Oh I also forgot to mention, I saw these over the weekend while I was down in London - one in a pub, one on the road (not in that order  )