Mallorca Cabby Restoration - Progress update

Hi All,

Not had much time to be on here alot recently but the resto's certainly not gone cold!
Been flat out, spending money mainly and organizing for deliveries. collections etc.
Big progress made on the new engine and running gear side of things. I managed to bag myself a great deal on a 1.8 16V KR from a lad in London, paid him ?350 for the complete engine, gearbox and all ancilliarys inc. ECU, loom, fuse box, manifold and even a spare head! The engine is mint clean and done 110k. This has now been taken off to Jim at the engine shop in London for a full strip down, re-con, fast road cam install and a full nut and bolt clean and re-paint. Shouldn't be too much more than 2 weeks before it's back in it's crate amd on the way to sunny mallorca.
As far as the shell goes, well it does go…on friday to the paintshop which I found local to me. A one man operation, middle aged German fella who's got a proper soft spot for VW's. He understands the brief perfectly and different from all of the Spanish paintshops I checked out, he knows WHY I am restoring the car. They said, oh yeah we can do it..but why are you bothering? Why don't you just buy a new golf??!! Philistines!!
Anyway, away she goes on Friday and there she'll stay for 3-5 weeks for a full rub down, prep, primer and several more coats until it's time for the final coat and laquer. Don't want to give away the colour just now, but I have searched and searched the net, mags and any other source of Veedub info and only found 1 other mk1 golf painted in this colour (another cabby funny enough from Germany). I think it's a brave move..I hope it's not too brave?? :roll:
I've managed to source 70% of the total amount of brand new parts going back on the car when it's painted, all the things I thought would be hard to get hold of haven't been quite as difficult as imagined Big shouts out to Rich at Crazy Quiffs, Matt at Liquid Metal Refinement, Guido at Speed-Tech tuning in Germany and all at Newton Commercial.
The seats and some other smaller interior parts left today in the biggest box I've ever seen!! Bound for the UK and Newtons workshops to be fully re-furbed and leather re-trimmed, again colour will remain a secret for now.

Well…thats sort of it I guess. I've got a bit of a quiet period coming up now, can't do anything with the car until it comes back from paint and as I'm gonna be shelling out pretty soon for that, the engine mods and recon and the interior re-furb, I don't really want to spend out too much until i get all that back and sorted!
Still got a mountain of parts to buy, more running gear mainly as in coils, brakes (inc. rear disc conversion kit), tyres and other larger bits of trim like bumpers, new roof and will be spending another fortune at Crazy's on ARB's, Beams, wishbones and bushes etc!
I'll hope to put up some more pics once the paints started, until then wont be much else to report, thanks for looking though.

Cheers
Marc   8)