Golf mk1 1.1 '80 full restoration project (Loads of pictures!)

Hey mk1marc Thank you for the wonderfull comment!
It's been an awesome journey restoring this little 1.1 golf mk1
And we will keep updating this thread!  

Great build and fantastic result

rmn  Thank you!

Today I got started with installing the radio and sigaret lighter.

Laying some new cables and connecting the speaker cables together.


It got messy :p


Everything installed!
Currently only the front speaker is installed, we still have to get 2 other speakers.
We're also looking for an original face plate for the radio since the one that came with the radio, touches the sliders for the heating.

Our rear wiper motor didn't function properly anymore, especially when it was cold / damp.

After some googling, it seemed that a Golf mk2 rear motor would fit.
Luckily a friend of us had a Golf mk2 where we could take the motor from 

I did had to make a little wiring loom because the mk2 uses a plug.


Fitted, works perfect!


 

Nice just keeps getting better

Thank you, jellybelly

Absolutely spot on, really inspiring and really useful with all the photos, sadly I trusted a so called bodyshop to do the work on my mk1. The result is that my mk1 has sat part finished in the garage under a cover since 2007 not being able to face the bodges. My eldest child is now 10 so this is the first time ive considered tackling the so called body repairs and as such looked for inspiration on the forum. Your post is exactly what i needed, to convince me to go in the garage and do a bit, Thanks

Hey mk1inbits
Nice reading your comment.
At first we also hesitated doing to body work ourselves, but we managed so save quite a bit and of course learned by doing all of it.

If you got some questions, ask them

Again a small update.

Thursday we brought the car to our painter, he'll polish and remove the little imperfections in the paint of the car.

Also, our clutch was pretty hard, after trying figuring out why, we noticed that the little pin, that holds the clutch cable on the clutch pedal, got pulled crooked.
We solved this with a M6 nut and bolt and a small pipe for over the threads.
As we did want a more permanent solution, we asked a friends dad if he could turn a little piece on his lathe.

Old piece


New piece (only got a picture of the drawing I made since the piece is already fitted to the car)


 

Today we went to an oldtimer exhibition, Flanders Collection Car.
A lot of nice cars, sadly no golf mk1 to be seen.. We did find and bought an old sales brochure for the Golf mk1 in Dutch.
We also bought a faceplate for our Blaupunkt radio and a brand new headlight since one of our golf is a little faded.



 

Got the car back from our painter yesterday.
All the little dust specks are removed. Car is looking great!

Had a small drive with my brother in the evening, car is just awesome to drive

Still have to do some little things like fitting new cable seals/guides on the boot and new front headlight.
Also applying the rest of the stickers.

Love this thread. Most enjoyable reading. Very well done lads! 

Lanky512 said

Love this thread. Most enjoyable reading. Very well done lads! 

Thank you for your nice comment, Lanky512

Today we had some nice weather, ideal to tackle some little jobs that needed to be done Started with fitting new rubber wires seals for the boot.
quite a work to pull all the wires through the boot 

Warning sticker under the bonnet


Also fitted our new speakers for the radio in the dash, little jet washer for the windscreen as the old one had snapped of..
and finally new steering rod ends as the ones we previously bought were bad quality.

I've removed/fitted the cables in the tailgate before - a right pain!!!

Another few pictures of our Golf can't hurt, right? My other hobby is photography but when building/restoring our Golf, I pushed this hobby a bit aside.
Since our Golf is finished I've only taken a couple of pictures.
Some pictures from 24th of January:


Golf mk1 1.1 1980 by Martijn Demeulemeester, on Flickr


Golf mk1 1.1 1980 by Martijn Demeulemeester, on Flickr


Golf mk1 1.1 1980 by Martijn Demeulemeester, on Flickr

not as sharp as I wanted it but I still like this one too

Golf mk1 1.1 1980 by Martijn Demeulemeester, on Flickr

Great work , well done  

Thank you, Scooper68 !

Our clutch pedal was pretty hard to press in.
This caused that the tube where the cable goes through got pushed against the upper edge of the hole. it even made the hole a bit bigger.

We asked a friend of ours if he knew what the problem could be.
He suggested to replace the clutch cable (although we got a new one and it still moved really smooth inside the housing itself), if that didn't fixed it, the transmission would have to come out to replace the pressure plate.
Today he stopped by with an old original clutch cable he had laying around.

We quickly swapped it out and it felt much better! We then began disassembling the pedals from the interior so we could weld a bead on the tube so it won't bend again.

Result: Clutch pedal is super smooth, clutch engages smooth and the tube doesn't move!