Mars Red 1983 Mk1 Golf GTI

Hi there, my name is Lee and after a few years of wishful thinking I have finally bought a Golf Mk1 GTI to restore. I have a small amount of mechanical experience, but still consider myself an amateur, especially when it comes to golf specific knowledge. I fully intend on changing this and hopefully I am able to do everything physically posible to restore my car myself. So here she is…




As you can see from the pictures there are lots of issues to address. Most of them seem straight forward but I am puzzled by a few issues. The first one I want to look at is what I think could be a fuel problem:

• When the engine warms up (after a bit of steady driving) it stutters as if there isn't enough fuel getting through. The longer you drive the car the worse it gets until I have to pull over, stop and turn the engine off .

Not sure where to start with this one, any advice would be appriciated! It's a 1.8 injection engine

Also, is it better to do a restoration from the outside in or from the inside out?!

Hopefully after a bit of graft (and no doubt every spare penny I have!) I can get it up to the standard of some of the other great cars in this owner's club!

Thanks for the interest in my project, I hope to post whenever I improve something worth seeing or just generally chew the fat with any fellow enthusiasts.

It doesn't look too bad that tbh mate. 

I would do underneath, engine bay first as this is where major attention will be needed if its bad. 

And I also wouldn't worry about the engine yet if your doing a small resto or taking the engine out at least as they never run the same when you put it back in

Hi,

Looks like a good base car mate, congrats  

Thanks for the confidence boost and good advice, I've just got hold of ramps and axle stands so I'll be getting on with the underneath at the weekend!

So after a few hours fault finding with a Haynes manual I came to the conclusion that the ignition coil was goosed (primary winding resistance above expected level). Got a new one, fitted it and the engine runs great! 

Good fix Lee, well traced! Nice to get a simple part swap like that to fix a running issue.

On the resto front a lot will depend if you want, or need to do a rolling resto but I would suggest you go from the inside out.

Common rot points can be rear beam mounts, esp. on offside around fuel pump. Inner rear arch and filler neck area. Just have a good dig around underneath and see what you can find.

With a bit of luck nothing major and it's just needing some cosmetic work.  

After a while without being able to get any time out to tinker I got a few spare days. The rear of the car is now minus rear axle, suspension, fuel tank and attached parts! Found rust in the fuel tank so decided to do the rear end while I'm at it!

I've spent a few hours de-rusting everything (thankfully only surface rust!) Hammerite will be applied liberally once I get time, followed by re-fitting the back end (replacing rubber fuel lines also as they look old)

Anyone reckon I should flush the fuel lines (if so how?!) and change the fuel filter just in case the rust has been pushed through to the engine side? Is there any way to check the fuel pump/accumulator are rust free?

Typical, only went to the garage to inspect the underneath and clean my interior! 11 hours of graft later…