Monkey's 1981 Golf GTi 1.6 project - rust is lighter than carbon fibre

Bought a one piece BBS RS wheel from the car booty for a tenner. Found out it's only possible to have one type of metric tyre which costs about £400 each…..


So i made myself a coffee table  


It's important to recycle guys  

LOL excellent! Comfy looking seat too  

Neglected the mk1 for a bit so thought i'd do what I always do…buy some shiny bits to get me interested again

New filler cap


and some shiny door handles



Gotta grab me some crystal clear headlights too and fit the single light grille on, been too long!

Bling bling!  

Need to see some pics of the car too  

Of course my good sir! Haven't had a chance to get to the garage as I came back from holiday Tuesday morning, but hopefully going this week to start fitting gubbins on

Get up there mate and get some pics up. I am not around this weekend but will be in touch soon about meeting up mate.

Filler cap fitted, not too sure on it though?

I prefer original to be honest

Not for me dude to be honest. A shiny Hella one would look better

Yeah i reckon the original will go back on!

No updates really, been at uni for the majority of the time but managed to sell my mim's for £230 so gave myself a little treat in the form of some BBS RM's needing a fair bit of work! Need to grab myself 3 dishes and some centre caps but for the price i can't complain! All the bolts for them are there and proper BBS ones, barrels aren't cracked or bent and all the threads are good So this weekend was mostly consisted of me polishing 120 bolts by hand, got the majority of the lacquer on the dish sorted too, paint stripper, then jetwash and paint stripper again is the best thing i found for refurbing on a budget!

Gave one a quick clean and paint in black, not too keen on it, i think i'll be sandblasting them and laying down a nice anthracite metallic, polished lips and polished bolts.
Also tried colour coding the bolts to the car, but again, looks pretty yuk in my opinion, need to keep it classy

Bought the fuel cap from another mk1 member matey, i'm not too keen on it so if you want to buy it i'm more than happy to let it go, send us a message

Not too sure on that mate, don't think it is and the cap's about 100 miles away from me atm

Don't know what make it is but seems quality, say £17.50 posted? Won't be able to send it for a while as I am studying at uni and wont be home until 2 weeks from now

Will let you know ASAP buddy

Right, after using about 2 tins of nitromorse to refurb 4 wheels (not cheap at £15 a litre!) and still not getting good results, I've finally found some decent industrial strength paint stripper. Starchem Syntryp, £30 for 5L and it's got dichloromethane in it too which is now banned in the EU for public sale. After a little poking around on the internet it seems that this stuff will take off pretty much any paint inc. 2pk so good news for me! Just waiting for it to arrive and i'm going to let my brother get involved a bit. Partly because i'm not in London but mostly because i'm too lazy to do it  

Anyhow, i shall be letting everyone know how well this paint stripper performs next weekend, all that's left is to find a nice metallic grey that'll suit the wheels

Right chaps, used the paint stripper this weekend. Applied a thick coating, left for 10 minutes and then reapplied, waiting another 10 minutes and pressure washed the wheels. The remaining lacquer turns into an rubbery elastic sheet which comes off after a bit of rubbing with you hand. Used a respirator as this stuff is pretty evil and some latex gloves. The latex tore on my thumb and some of the stuff got on my hand. Much swearing was involved as my thumb felt as if someone had tried to blow torch it




Anyways, after the first lot of paint stripper this was left









Then out came the polisher!














Got one of the wheels bolted up but it's coming off again for paint

Looking good buddy.

That's a decent transformation Ahmet, nice one

Cheers lads, they'll look good when done, although i'm now in 2 minds whether to fix up the mk2 aswell. I've got a litre of Tornado red and a front end needing some paint….

Well it would be rude not to, keep it and do it - you know you want to