Newly Acquired Cabrio

I’ve recently acquired a 1.8L Automatic Mk1 Cabrio from my Brother-in-Law as he doesn’t have the time, patience or knowledge to get it where it needs to be.



Overall it’s in reasonably good condition mechanically. In the past year we’ve overhauled the Brakes and Suspension. The carb needs tuning as it’s currently running rich, but hopefully this is just a matter of adjusting the mixture screw. We’ve also ironed out most of the electrical issues and only have a pesky fog light to fully resolve.

The first thing that needs doing is to cut out the rust patches in the rear quarters. Thankfully I already have replacement panels and my limited welding skills should be able to rectify this soon.



The next is to clean all of the old perished bitumen sound deadening and replace it with more modern panels and some new acoustic underlay

The future tasks I am considering are the following:

• Full respray in original Helios Blue paint
• New custom cream leather interior
• New hood and headliner

Does anyone know of a good Resprayer in the south east and has anyone had this done recently and can share the rough costs?

The same applies for Interiors. I’ve been looking at MJ Interiors and Retro Retrims who both look to do quality jobs but are quite far from me. Again I’d be interested in hearing from anyone who might have had this done recently. One other option would be to use Newton Commercial to buy ready made carpet and door cards as an interim measure.

I’ve been looking at a new hood from https://www.carhood.com/soft-top-directory/volkswagen-vw-car-hoods/ as it seems refurbing the original can be quite difficult.



Some other things people have suggested are slinging BBS alloys on it as they look amazing, add value to the car and hold their value really well. They’ve also suggested putting a bass box in the boot, but I can’t see having this in a soft top having much effect. If anyone has any advice on these it would be well received.

So other than that are there any other pointers from the good people in this forum to help me get this old girl back to her glory?

Looks like a decent project.
Unless you think the bitumen sound deadening is hiding rust, I wouldn't try and strip it all off as it's quite a job and you'll probably need to re-paint the floor. I'd just remove the lose stuff and then fit sound deadening over the top. Although if you are going for a full strip down re-spray then go for it.
Get a build thread started so we can follow the progress!

J

No point in trying to repair the roof as it will cost nearly as much as replacing the whole thing.

If you do want to replace the headliner then you will need to do when replacing the outer roof as that's the only way to do it.

Vinyl roof if living outside last about 10 years before they start to crack as the sun does the most damage, you can buy products to help protect it from the UVs from the sun.

Amp and sub in the boot, I've got one as the standard speakers have very little bass because of where they are . Later cars did have larger front speakers and tweeters in the door cards to help with sound quality.

So after a long time off and spending hours trawling the internet for parts, the Golf is nearly ready for it's next phase in life.

Since my last post I stripped out all of the old deadening and cleaned it up (to my amazement there was no rust under it all), then installed Dodo Mat DEADN Hex sound deadening mat and over that some Dodo Mat Super Liner 12mm.



















 I managed to find a decent body shop to do all of the body repairs and a complete respray back in August, and it's due to be returned to me imminently.

I ordered a completely new set of Door Cards and Carpet from Newton Commercial and a shed ton of parts from Heritage. These are now catalogued and sat organised on shelving ready to install. This is alongside a new (to me) set of GTI front seats and BBS RZ 450 wheels. The aim is to keep this as classic looking as possible

I'm due the car back from the sprayers at the end of the week, ready to start work on putting the interior in, so you can expect lots of questions. I'll have plenty of before, during, and after photos