1984 1.6 GL

I was hoping to get a good portion of the car properly cleaned today, but the brilliant sunshine seems to switch to really heavy rain before you can really get much done so I've sacked it off as a bad job.  I did manage to get my glass sorted out, happily.  I started with the windscreen which I hadn't realised was quite as badly covered in overspray as it is, when I was done you could actually see through the screen as though it wasn't even there.  Passenger side done and driver's side not in this picture.  You can see a bit of black paint on the dash top I haven't yet fully removed, it's so thick that it needs repeated application of cleaner to cut through it so I'm poking at it a bit at a time until it's fully gone.


There was only the tiniest dusting of overspray on the rear window, it was mostly just mucky on the inside so that cleaned up quickly and well.


The side windows had heavier overspray on them, but not as bad as the windscreen.  They too came up nice and smart for the most part.




There is some minor damage to the drop windows in the doors most likely from badly fitted scraper clips.  One bit I can't understand is this strange mark in the centre of the driver's door glass, it's almost like it's been shot blasted and had an attempt to polish it smooth afterwards, there's no contaminant in the glass as one might expect with welder or grinder spatter.


The weather broke when I'd done the windows, but held long enough for me to make a start on the bodywork proper.  Although the car has been washed twice and given a work over with cutting compound I hadn't yet treated it to a claybar so that was my next thing to try out.  I was surprised that there was more overspray hiding under a sort of stubborn rough film of dirt on the front wing and even more surprised at just how well the paint came up once I'd cut through it all back to clean paint.


I managed to make a start on the bonnet too.  You can see the finished polished section on the right.  The rest of the bonnet is clean but it doesn't have as crisp a reflection and looks a different colour purely down to the amount of dirt and overspray still to remove from the panel.  I'm not entirely sure what has caused the plethora of dents on the bonnet but my current theory is that it played host to the annual Little Persons Tap Dancing Contest.  At least it comes up pretty shiny enough to detract your attention from the damage.




Then the heavens seriously opened and I called it quits for the day.


I'll keep plodding away at the overspray removal just like I did with the black paint on the interior and before you know it I'll have a Golf that looks careworn rather than neglected.

After being thoroughly annoyed with collecting new dents and scrapes down the side of the car every day, it's been decided to move it to somewhere where technically it shouldn't get them, though it doesn't really fit properly… never mind.  Instead, I made myself content by tackling some more of that overspray and got the bonnet half done which shifts the very worst of the overspray from off the car.  It's tricky to photograph, but hopefully you can see how much sharper and deeper the reflections are on the passenger side.








I'll keep plodding away at this, I know the bonnet is the worst panel on the car so it'll be pretty easy once I've done that.

That gaffer tape 'repair' I did fell off as I knew it probably would.  This is what needs patching.  I'm going to tidy it up, get some suitable materials and patch it more properly.  I reckon I've got enough material in the patch that was on this side to repair the hole on both sides of the roof in this place.  It'll have to do until I've got money to burn on a new roof.

 

The Golf didn't have any valve caps when I got it, so I dug out the ones I kept from the Polo and put those on.  I might repaint the dots blue.

 

Happily, a bit more brown interior arrived today in the form of the rear seat/hinge trims.  The black ones I've removed will go up for sale and may even pay for the brown ones.  £1 on eBay, plus the postage cost, seemed a bit of a bargain.

 

 

Next weekend I collect the brown seats, door cards, parcel shelf and carpets, I'm looking forward to that.  The existing black/grey interior is up for grabs as soon as the brown arrives if it's of use/interest to anyone.

Yesterday, my parents and I trekked out to Norfolkland to collect a desirable brown interior for my Golf to replace the current stuff.  There's nothing inherently wrong with the current interior beyond the colour being wrong and when an early brown interior came up for sale I made sure I was in a position to grab it.  These things don't seem to come along very often.





From the pictures I knew the stuff would need a clean and a bit of tlc here and there, but nothing that was beyond my skillset.  We met up with the chap selling the interior who was thoroughly decent and had a poke around his very early phase 1 GTi cabby that's awaiting restoration.  The interior I've got is left over from two other cars with brown interiors that he'd broken and were surplus to requirement.  I was surprised at just how many differences there are between his very early Golf and my fairly early phase 2.  Turns out those brown hinge/seat trim pieces I'd got were a luckier find than I realised as the latch mechanism for the roof changed in 83/84 (my car being an 84) and the locking latches move from the roof frame to the seat trims, had I collected a pair of phase 1 trims they wouldn't have fit my car.





I've also been able to determine that originally my car had a cream roof and that the black one must have been a replacement at some point, this is from colour combinations and the corner trims on mine being cream.  I may be putting a cream roof on after all, we shall see.  Of the items he'd got out of storage, only two weren't with him when we went to collect: passenger door card and front carpet.  Normally, this would have bothered me but since we found out he had other trim pieces he'd be happy to post on with these missing parts and the fact that he seems like a thoroughly decent sort I gave him the benefit of the doubt and look forward to the bits arriving in the near future.





What I got was a nearly complete phase 1 interior that replaces pretty much all the missing brown trim in mine.












Front seats and seatbelts (I'll explain why the belts as well in a moment), rear bench, rear carpet, parcel shelf, parcel shelf side trims, 1 front door card, both rear door cards, window adjuster toggles and wiggle bits, door release handle trims, door arm rests/closers and some dead Ford speakers.  It's a pretty good haul for the money.  With the exception of the driver's seat side bolster, all the foams are in good order and the frames are nice and solid.  The fabric is only saggy because the stitching that gives the centre panels their unique shape has gone probably just from 30 years of bums.  The damage to the fabric on the driver's seat can be conserved and I already have a plan of action to sort this out, all of the dirt will shampoo off fairly easily and they should all come up very nicely.  I may end up swapping the seat foams on the front seats to balance the wear out and make the flat spots less obvious, if they weren't folding seats I'd just swap the seats and belt clasps side to side instead.





So, those seatbelts.  On the phase 1 there's a different belt system to on the phase 2 and every other car I've ever seen.  Instead of having half the lock on the seat and the other on the belt, VW fitted an unusual all in one lock on the seat.  You pull the belt around, hook it on the chrome bar and push the bar down to click the belt in place.  A press of the release button releases the belt.  One advantage I can see of this is not having to fish around for half the lock when it inevitably drops to the bottom of the belt.







Other than that, the front seats fit in the same way as far as I can tell thus far.  Unlike the back seat.  The upright of the back seat fits exactly the same as the phase 2 but the base is quite different.  Instead of a central locating tab and two tabs at the front that screw down to the bodyshell that the phase 2 has, the phase 1 has a peg on one side that slots into a hole in the bodyshell which is present on my car and a sort of ball thing on the other side that I presume should slot or lock into something but on my bodyshell there's only a dimple.  Once it's in place, the seat feels secure enough, but I need to find out just how it should fit properly.







Then it started to rain again so I chucked everything in the car.  I've got out all bar one door card of the old interior so that is in storage ready to be bought and collected by the interested party to offset the cost of the brown interior and later I'll get the rest of the brown interior fitted that I can.  The front seatbelts presently fitted may well end up being used as rear seatbelts in the Princess, but I've not decided yet.















This is the door card I have, for the price of free I'm not complaining at all about it but due to water damage it could do with a new backing board to make it tip top.  The speaker hole is modest enough to allow me to fit some smart period looking things as originally these didn't have front door speakers, apparently.










At the moment I want to get everything fitted to highlight any issues I might have - none so far beyond the back seat base - before I do the cleaning and repairs that are needed.  Should be nice and easy to clean it all up too, it's nice to be working on an interior that isn't hideously grim.

Made some more progress before it got too dark today.  The main thing I wanted to achieve was trial fitting all the parts I'd bought.  I knew everything should fit no problem, but there's always that chance something won't so before I got stuck in to the cleaning and restoration I wanted to get the fitting sorted.  I'd already found out the rear seat base was a different fitting, the next and only thing I found to be different was the front seats.

 

Both front seats go in the rails and move about as they should but the problem is with the seat adjuster lever.  It would seem that the seat adjusters adjust the wrong side of the mechanism.

 

I do have a solution to this.  Since I'm going to be dismantling the front seats for repairs and to even out the foams, I'll also swap the bases and whatnot around so that they do work.  The release mechanism can be operated and the seats can be moved properly, just not by using the adjuster handle under the base, you have to broggle around with this little nubbin instead.

 

Not to worry, it's a minor inconvenience.  I got on with getting everything fitted and vacuumed all the surfaces.  The carpetted parts were quite clean so there were no worries with that and the parcel shelf looks much better for having matching side trims even though it does have old Ford speakers in it.  I don't mind, it looks tidier than it did before.  The rear seat cleaned up well just with the vacuum apart from one or two little spots, I'll shampoo it anyway but the majority of the dirt was just loose dusty stuff.

 

The interior is coming together nicely.  All the stuff that I'll be selling with the exception of the front carpet has been removed and all the brown stuff I have is now fitted.  Next job will be to remove the front seats again, strip them down and get the sewing machine and shampoo out to get them tip top again.  Then just a case of waiting for the other interior bits to arrive in the post so that I can finish the job off fully.

 

I much prefer my tatty old brown interior even to the smart grey and black stuff that was in there just a few days ago, but I've already been told that I've made it look worse.  As I like to point out, I'm the one spending time in the car not them so they can like it or lump it.

Have moved this to my brother's new place that has a nice secure garage and we've discovered the brake issue is the front flexi hoses that appear to have collapsed internally.  Some issues with breather hoses, but little else at the minute, car is running quite nicely.

Still hunting for the right fabric to retrim the phase 1 seats with, found a few that are close but none that are perfect yet.  I'm using the Princess pretty much all the time though, the Golf and I aren't getting on like I thought we would and while I'll get it sorted and looking good I don't know if it's going to stay with me long term.  We shall see.

Interesting times… I have recently been given another Princess which meant either that or the Golf had to go.  Golfs are not my passion, to me they're a tidy little German car so I already knew I'd be parting ways with it.

However, I am still going to be connected to this particular Golf and am still slated to complete various jobs on it because my brother has taken it on instead and plans to go a similar to route to the one I was taking.

So at the moment the Golf has had its roof stripped down and the interior is waiting on a retrim pending the final seat facing colour my brother wants to go for.   The engine seems to have responded well to my brother's tinkering and runs better than I got it to.

Not going to be a quick job to get it through an MoT which was my plan, instead my brother is stripping most of the car down and rebuilding it with a view to getting it back on the road no earlier than next year to ensure as many issues as possible are resolved.

I'll keep this blog updated with progress as I find it.

Good luck with the new project, keep us updated with how the old Golf gets on with your brother.

Smudger

well car is mot'd now but i use it all the time with no roof fitted at all as its more fun this way, don't murder me lol .
Love this car to bits so glad my brother let me take it on. The engine was only so smokey due to rubish oil or whatever was that came out of it …. looked more like watery marmite. Have the roof frame up for grabs if anyones interested but the removable bar at the front has a small bend in it on the left side and the headliner too which looks ok.
Also hi to everyone I only just joined forum

oh forgot to mention need a set of dash clocks with a working rev gauge and doesn't think that it's a set of flashing xmas lights, it's getting hard to drive in the dark with only the blue main beam tell tale … that is unless the mains are on, then its the temp light haha

Well the Christmas period has been fairly productive and miserable at the same time. Firstly those manky front seats are now re trimmed in a dark brown velour and look allot better than they did. I started to build a removable hard top using the existing roof frame that was really badly bent, this is on the car and looks a mess at the moment but will get finished soon. Some tw#t tried to steal the golf while at friends house Xmas night and crashed it into a neighbours car then ran off. And finally rear wheel bearing has given up and needs to be changed lol …. pics arriving soon .

Nightmare mate. Hope she's not too badly damaged

Smudger

Think I got away with a bent rear panel and a broken light and when I say bent its only just enough to make the light look wonky and the gap on the corner is now wrong ... she would be fixed anyway just the cost can be a little much at this time of year .... think feelings are more hurt than the car lol

That sucks, damn thieving scumbag! Glad they didn't get away with it though

ahh, how annoying. thieving b*stards

Update time using Potato-cam.  The early seats that were picked up have now been retrimmed in brown dralon to match the vinyl and the brown dash.  Not bad for a first attempt at seat retrimming.  I believe they're phase 1 GTi seats with 1979 date stickers under the old covers.  They have the old weird seatbelt clips and the release/adjust lever has been modified to fit the early phase 2 tub that they're now in.




The roof is coming along well.   Built on the original frame with a fibreglass skin and now building the form and knocking back to get it into the right shape.  Lots of work still to do, but it's getting there steadily.




I'll get a side profile pic at some point.  I'd mentioned the crashy stuff, here's what's happened.  You can see the chipped indicator and the slight deformation of the rear panel.


The light unit got pushed in at the bottom, which has made the top pop out a bit.


This is the worst view of it, the paint has come off back to the galvanised metal on this corner.  Everything still works, but it needs straightening and a complete new light cluster because it's broken all the fixings.  Bumper moved back on its adjustment and jiggled straight so at least it doesn't look too bad now.

Hooray I found out what the colour is on the car, after going to a body shop I was recommended by a friend in the garage trade. The guy took one look at the car and said "that's ford pacific blue that is", the quote for the festive crash damage was also excellent at £150 including the rear drivers side arch that needs rust repair. This was a surprise as its actually deformed a section of the rear quarter slightly as well. Also over Christmas I've had to replace both rear wheel bearings and sort out the gearbox after it jammed in 3rd gear. So she is definitely keeping me busy over the first winter period of ownership

An interesting build thread, wonder what happened to it in the end?