Wolfsburg-Berlin-Somerset-East Dulwich

Exactly half my lifetime ago, I was lucky enough to have a Lhasa green Mk1 GTI, A453 SYE, with loads of upgrades, including a TSR pack C 1.9 engine, and, yes, a few choice wary 90'd mods too (single wiper anyone?).

Now, another 21 years on, I had a set of BBS Pininfarina wheels sat in storage. Not the loveliest BBS wheel ever, but they are the same as the set that were on my old car.

Now they've been joined by a Lhasa green Mk1 GTI, running a KR on carbs. I've already spent a fortune on parts to sort it out but there's much more to do. It's going to be sorn'd for a year at least. It was bought in Berlin in March 1983 and has lived recently in Essex and in Somerset, where it was restored about 7 years go. 

So with all the serious work to do, I wanted to ask for some opinions. I need to throw the awful Sony Xplod head unit (major priority for a car in storage!) - but what do I replace it with- a Becker or Alpine? Either would be a late 80's or early 90's unit, possibly tape, sound quality is important but a look that fits the aesthetic of the dash more so. And does tha dash light up green at night? I can't remember!

I'll get some pictures up, you'll see I have work to do on quite a few aspects of the car. But what matters to me is that I have a mk1 again. This car is going to be a bit of tribute to my old golf. I hope the work and the car are interesting and even helpful to someone out there!

When I was 19, the only car I wanted was a mk2 golf gti. Ok, I'll admit I liked the Fiesta RS Turbo, but what I really wanted was a golf. My mum had ferried my brother and I around for years in a 1986 Passat 1.6GL estate, so VW meant something to me, and I needed a sporty golf, which meant a mk2.

In those pre internet days, I called the GTI specialists to see if any customers had cars for sale. Probably still a good way to do it today. In, ahem, Max Power, there had been an article about a VW specialist in South East London, they'd used him to change the cambelt on a golf or something. When I called him, oh yes, there was a car for sale.

It was a Lhasa green campaign mk1. And it had a recent TSR 1.9 pack C engine, and all sorts of modifications. Not a mk2 though. I thought I'd see it anyway, and travelled with a mk1 owning friend to Hertford to see it. As we arrived and saw it, I had bought it already. Gleaming metallic green paint, some 15" BBS alloys I hadn't seen before, 16v beesting aerial, single wiper (!), Zender rear spoiler, all kinds of bits. It was stunning. Hey, I was 19 and it was the early 90's!

Of course I bought it. I think I paid £2200. I would love to talk to the guy again- he was an Indian guy who ran a VW specialist in the Charlton/ Woolwich area, had a nice red Ur Quattro, and introduced me to my wonderful golf, A453SYE. The car was first owned by Shell in London. What a company car that would have been in 1983. His customer, the owner, was a gentleman called Junior, from a scary sounding place called East Dulwich. I'd never heard of it and imagined it as some terrifying badland of South East London. I now live there! Junior had spent a fortune on parts and work at TSR, probably about £7k back then in the early 90's!

The car pulled so well. 80mph in third was new to me and my friends, and it bounced off the top end of the speedo on an autobahn near Stansted. It was torquey, light and just wonderful to drive. So long as you didn't need to brake. Mk1 brakes not too good, due to the rhd linkage.

Poor SYE had a sad end. After taking it to Sheffield for university I was coming home from a girlfriends house down the M6 at new year and was hit by a guy in a Honda, span 3 times- I remember that bit distinctly- and ended up shocked and angry on the hard shoulder. I remember thinking I was bound to be hit by a lorry… so I guess I was lucky!

The car had damage to nearly every panel from stones and dents that day, it still drove and the police let me drive home, but it was wrecked. I had no choice but to sell it, so sold it back to the Charlton VW specialist guy again- does anyone know who that would have been?

I only have a few pictures from back then. But recently I saw a set of those rare 15" BBS wheels. BBS Pininfarina. Not their best design ever, but essentially a smaller size of the Ferrari 355 design. I bought the wheels, and now I want to find the car to put them on, and see through my mk1 GTI adventure, now with my kids.

Registered in Berlin, I guess most likely to someone in UK armed forces:
 


 Patina:
 


 

This makes it a Golf GT, not a GTi:
 


 

BBS make me happy:
 


 

Does anyone want to buy these lights:



 With body and mechanical work to do, I've just spent a bit on a new grille, red trim, badges, loads of vital bits:

Interesting story mucker,

Glad you've found another one to make a start on.

How is it? Good and sound I hope.

I think alot of the 90's stuff is making a bit of a comeback as we're all getting to the age of the 'Max Power' renaissance as we want to create what we saw in our formative years. Or perhaps we still have bad taste!  

Looking forward to the updates  

Ian

It's started! Orders arriving from VW heritage and CrazyQuiffs with loads of goodies, and i seem to have ordered Planted seat subframes for recaros and a full USRT gearshift magic box type thing. I don't have any recaros (yet) and I haven't driven the car far enough to know if the $200 gearshift kit is a necessary investment or not. But it looks fab and if it does what it says it does, I'm in!

Would love to post a link to it on the usrallyteam.com site but my phone or their site is playing up.

borednow said

Interesting story mucker,

Glad you've found another one to make a start on.

How is it? Good and sound I hope.

I think alot of the 90's stuff is making a bit of a comeback as we're all getting to the age of the 'Max Power' renaissance as we want to create what we saw in our formative years. Or perhaps we still have bad taste!  

Looking forward to the updates  

Ian

Thanks, Ian. Thank goodness for vwgolfmk1.org.uk the site has been priceless for me already. Loads of good advice and expertise here.

I think the golf is basically sound. There's work to do and it reminds you that other people's standards are not always what yours are… and I've read the entire "money pit" thread which made me feel awful and was a heads up for what I might find on this engine conversion. To be honest, seeing tape wrapped in the fuel hose the the carbs isn't a great sign.

I have decided that I won't be looking for a sender rear spoiler- I had one on my original gti, but I don't think I need to recreate every detail to pay homage to that great car. Hoping to end up a bit more as the factory intended, at least on the outside. Although someone has removed and painted (badly) over the rear wiper mounting. 

It'll be slow going on this car but I'll keep you all posted. At least the packages are arriving (and I have ECS, Planted and USRT to collect on a US trip in 2 weeks, though ECS is for the Alpina)

I hope I can contribute something to this great forum in time, thanks for having me.

Sounds like a great project  

Would love to see some pictures and hear your thoughts on the usrt kit, they look like a good buy on the website.

Matt

Hi Matt

Due to a mix up at USRT, the gear linkage kit didn't arrive. They were very good about it and offered to rush it to the UK, but as I have no actual need of it soon, I opted to wait until the end of the month when I'm back in the US again and avoid any risk of customs charges!

The planted su frames came home in my bike bag (took an MTB out to Oregon) and the ECS 2 piece six's I'm after for my alpina are only in stock now, so they're coming back with me at the end of the month too. 

The car has plenty of parts sat with it now, looking forward to putting the proper grille back on it, albeit a new one, and proper silver badges too. The carb fuel lines need some attention as they have been taped up (scary!) and I have DEI black titanium exhaust wrap coming which I'll get into the tubular manifold. Heat from this has wrecked the steering column boot, so have a new one and need to order the Audi TT heat shield others have used.

I can stick up some pictures from the resto back in 2008. Then hopefully some progress pics!

Some pics from back when it was a 1.9 8 valve

A big thank you for the friendly welcome and expert help provided here- just a minor update on my way to the US again, which means that this week I will finally get the USRT gear linkage kit- can't wait!

Dreaming ahead a bit, i bought a very well priced Becker Mexico Pro head unit for the car- it's a minidisc one, which lets me relive my mid 90's fantasies perfectly, and do something with piles of MDs i have from back then. My kids are either going to hate the music or end up loving it too!

I have also found out that the car's KR was fully rebuilt when fitted, and had uprated piper cams inserted. Whether that's a good thing compared to KR cams is another question. I don't spend my life at 6500 rpm… it has been good to learn a bit more about the conversion, although I also have a growing list of work to do ahead of being really happy with the car. But that's as per usual I guess!



The picture is the car back when it was sold in 2014. The windscreen decal has gone :-)

Great photos, cheers  

Matt

I love how these old golfs end up collecting connections to so many places- the driveways we excitedly fitted new suspension on, the countries they lived in when we moved or passed through on epic road trips, and the places that definitely aren't Wolfsburg that nice parts are crafted in before being sent out. The global Golf mk1!

In tune with that, I picked up a nice vernier pulley from USRT on a work trip last week. its a Techtonics one crafted in Oregon, right on the Pacific, sent to the East coast, and then flown home to London. One more part to fit- my aim being to try tmretarding the ignition a bit to gain some bottom end on this peaky KR, that's fitted with even peakier cams. Anyone have recommendations on how much as a starting place for a KR on piper cams (don't know the lift and duration though hoping they are the fast road ones, not ultimate/rally/race)

We'll know when it's tuned and driven I guess!

Oh, and here's a brilliant picture- PNH543Y's home in Berlin back in the day, actually in the year the car lived there- RAF GATOW. It was a Luftwaffe airfield from 1934 built along the lines of RAF Cranwell college. Apparaently somenlf the light bulbs in the hangers when it was later GATOW still dated from the 1930's, well into the 1990's!

It was a home to flying boats, including the beautiful Shorts  Sunderland, and later to wheel spinning Golf  GTI's :-)

 

I started this thread going on about half a lifetime ago, and I just found this, from half a lifetime ago:

   

I remember it so vividly- hardly able to sleep waiting to collect it, that first drive, all the adventures.

The receipt is covered with my scrawls from phoning around insurance companies. Quite a bit cheaper now!

Brilliant!!  

More of my old one! I found all of my old paperwork this weekend, including some worryingly accurate artwork I did that picks out all of my 90's trends, and a few more pictures. Shame I never had the number plate on straight!

 

I like that there's a little numerical link between the old Lhasa green one and my current- that one was A453SYE and this one is PNH543Y.

That plate would have done my OCD in  

SANJP would like these old pics, a bit of 'retro'  

More massive progress!

I have a list of priorities that starts with things like making the fuel lines safe, functioning suspension, a heat shield between the manifold and steering rack, sort of critical stuff.


 So I've made progress by changing the rear lights to less offensive ones, and ordering the red grille trim and new silver (you can see they have been hand reddened!) badges.


 When I see what you lot take on and achieve I'm quite embarrassed. Though this is my second parallel project car, as I'm doing a rolling restoration on the Alpina.


 Anyway, it lives, and it will have its face back soon!

The red badge looks great but the winner for me is the South African Citi model rear lights just a blöödy shame they're not available for the Cabrio otherwise I'd have had a set instead of the Fifft that I've got.

But the combination looks great!


Sent from my Smartphone

It's your lucky day.

Hello from Chepstow…That was my car and I know a lot of its history…

You are right the car was originally bought by a serviceman, then sold at about 40k to a Graham Benson from Cheltenham who was a good friend of mine. At the time I had a black Mk1 1.6 that had been reworked by GTi Engineering, including their 1857cc conversion (YBF839X).

Graham was an RAC mechanic and a very good one as well. He did a lot of work on this car himself. Suspension, brake upgrades (including the rear disc conversion) and a swap to a diesel gearbox after it threw a diff pin (this resulted in 70mph being a whole 1000rpm less than in a standard Gti)…..The car was kept immaculately, definitely used but meticulously maintained.

Engine wise it had head work done by a small engineering outfit in Chipping Norton (?) as well as a Kent GS2 cam, and other odds & ends. The car was tuned by the original AmD (or Automotive Developments as it was with Geoff Everett an Mike Devine, in Oddington). The car was running around 145bhp which was hot for an 8v stock block. I remember laughing with them at its power delivery. The 'curve' went up and then 'flat' rather than tailing off….flat from 6500 to 8000rpm, yes on a standard block….

The mix of the gear ratios and this never ending top end power made it quite a car. It would hit 100mph in 3rd gear (no limiter, obviously), 4th would see it go off the clock and 5th was anyone's guess…..

We were both heavily involved with the early days of Club Gti at the time. The car featuring on one of the adverts for Gti International. It was also featured in either VW Audi magazine or Fastcar. Not because it had 1000bhp, but it was generally so well sorted. That summed the car up and Grahams attention to detail….It went well, it handled like it was on rails and it stopped on a 10p….oh and it looked standard, a bit lower but sat on steel wheels was what you would today call a 'sleeper'…

You must remember that in these days Tim Styles who started TSR had just left his job as a school teacher (not that he knew anything about Golfs by the time he sold TSR) and many of the names in VW tuning simply were not in existence.

Graham 'on a whim' then part exchanged the car for a 205 Gti….A month later, he tracked the car down in Swansea (it had been through a few traders hands) and swiftly bought it back….it stayed in his hands till about 135k, when he sold it to me after buying a 20v Quattro….

At 145k it cracked a cam follower, so I swapped out the engine with a 1.9 unit from BR Motorsport (who was one of the head guys from GTi Engineering). The car was now giving around 155bhp, not so free revving (Shrick265) but with oodles of torque….
At 147k I sold it to a young chap from Zummerzet due to an ever increasing family. That was the end of that….

The car was a gem….

Shame it looks like the history was lost…there was absolutely everything with it…..Every tyre, every spark plug….absolutely everything…..

Hope she does you well….

If you ever want to sell again (or ever Chepstow direction), tap me up….

I have no photos from this period (ex took them all)….

Graham now lives in Peterborough (ehhmm Facebook him)…..He's not RAC anymore, now works for VW…..

All the best

Dave_T
07752967294