Pistolpete's Mars Red Mk1 GTi restoration

Love the exhaust! How does it sound? I'm considering yours or a miltek and can't decide? 

vdubber2 said

Love the exhaust! How does it sound? I'm considering yours or a miltek and can't decide? 

I'll try and post up a quick video to give you an idea, but to me it sounds fantastic. Quite subtle, but a nice rasp if you rev it. I've got a very slight rattle against one of the heat shields to sort (always tricky with a 2.5" system with clearance over rear axle as she's lowered quite a bit), but the fit is spot on.

nicci21paul said

some testing stations are still open

 yes, had my mk1 tested on 27 April - all good straight through. No great surprise seeing as I managed a paltry 200 miles in a year 

Pistol said

vdubber2 said

Love the exhaust! How does it sound? I'm considering yours or a miltek and can't decide? 

I'll try and post up a quick video to give you an idea, but to me it sounds fantastic. Quite subtle, but a nice rasp if you rev it. I've got a very slight rattle against one of the heat shields to sort (always tricky with a 2.5" system with clearance over rear axle as she's lowered quite a bit), but the fit is spot on.

Great progress! Looking lovely

Will echo the same on the exhaust, it looks 'right' and sounds great too, sounds good when pressing on!

One thing I would say is definitely get the centre silencer, as above .. not the straight pipe, very loud! I've had to order the silencer.

I was planning on doing some back to back sound clips of silenced and un silenced, there doesn't seem to be much around for powersprint for reference

Looks better than new - a real labour of love (and skinned knuckles I imagine!)

Agree with you on the Milltek; I have one on the Mk2 16v (Manifold included) and there is a lovely deep burble from them but as you rev there is a real howl/snarl from them higher up the rev range. Would love to hear it on the Mk1.

vdubber2 said

Love the exhaust! How does it sound? I'm considering yours or a miltek and can't decide?

Took a couple of short vids today to give you an idea how the Powersprint exhaust sounds.  It's a bit lumpy as car needs properly set up and has a Schrick cam, also has stage 2 head, 4-2-1 manifold and centre silencer.

00107 - YouTube

00108 - YouTube

Thanks so much. That sounds great! 

Wow!! Beautiful car and great story!.....

As you could tell from the vids posted above, car needed set up correctly. So I've gone back to start from scratch after borrowing a Blue Point CO gas tester.

Blanked off dizzy vacuum, set timing using induction timing light, it's bang on 6deg BTDC.

CO set to 2% and idle tweaked back down to 1000rpm.

When I drive car, it goes fine when accelerating, but it is a bit stuttering from low revs pick-up. Im wondering if the fuelling needs to be richer to cope with the ported/polished head, 276 cam, Audi WUR & throttle body, port matched inlet manifold, 4 branch manifold & stainless 60mm exhaust + K&N filter element with drilled air box.

Obviously I'll be taking it to a rolling road for a proper tune once I can get it MOT'd but this is just to get it as best as I can for now.

Pistol said

As you could tell from the vids posted above, car needed set up correctly. So I've gone back to start from scratch after borrowing a Blue Point CO gas tester.

Blanked off dizzy vacuum, set timing using induction timing light, it's bang on 6deg BTDC.

CO set to 2% and idle tweaked back down to 1000rpm.

When I drive car, it goes fine when accelerating, but it is a bit stuttering from low revs pick-up. Im wondering if the fuelling needs to be richer to cope with the ported/polished head, 276 cam, Audi WUR & throttle body, port matched inlet manifold, 4 branch manifold & stainless 60mm exhaust + K&N filter element with drilled air box.

Obviously I'll be taking it to a rolling road for a proper tune once I can get it MOT'd but this is just to get it as best as I can for now.

I have the exact same problem, mines booked into my mechanics on wednesday, been tinkering with it for a few weeks but not getting anywhere I'll let you know what solved my problem when it's fixed

Check out the GovtNI site again, there's been a few updates since… It's like Greek to me trying to decipher the language used, but if I've read it correctly they're intending to restart testing again, but initially it'll only be certain classes of vehicle.

One of those is vehicles with MOT's that have expired more than 12 months previously (and weren't eligible for automatic TEC's as a result), as yours has.

Another recent change, though I think it's yet to pass into law, is bringing Northern Ireland into line with the rest of the UK and finally allowing vehicles over 40 years old to be MOT exempt… so maybe one, other or both changes will mean you can get out in the MK1 soon?

https://www.nidirect.gov.uk/articles/coronavirus-covid-19-and-motoring

https://www.aovc.co.uk/articles/press-release-from-department-of-infrastructure-re-exemption-from-mot-for-historic-vehicles

Well, it's been a while since I posted any sort of update.  I decided before I wanted to detail the car, I needed to sort my garage out once and for all as it was getting far too dusty.  All the years of trailing a jack across it had ruined the paint on the floor.  Decided to go for a 2-pack epoxy resin coating.  Took a lot of effort, had to move the Mk1 out to my parents-in-law's garage and basically empty the garage completely.  

Before



After

Before I put the Mk1 back in, I had promised a mate I would detail his 911 for him so thought this was the best opportunity to get it done.

Now onto more important matters, the Mk1 !
I've never really had a chance to get back to it with all this going on, but it has never been running quite right since I first fired it up.  Bought a cheap fuel pressure test kit off eBay and thought I had things set up ok.  Borrowed a mates Snap-on CO tester to set the mixture and idle.  It was still a pig when it was running from cold, coughing/spluttering and sounded like it was misfiring.  Bit the bullet and ordered a proper K-Jet testing kit, really good quality kit

https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/Gauge-For-K-Jetronic-Ka-Jetronic-Pressure-Tester-Fuel-Distributor/183950579736?ssPageName=STRK%3AMEBIDX%3AIT&_trksid=p2057872.m2749.l2649

Rigged it up this morning and confirmed what I suspected, cold control pressure was way out.  System pressure is perfect at 5.2bar, cold control was over 2 bar.  I've already drilled out the 16v WUR to adjust the pressure, so wound this back to 1 bar as per the graph and you could hear the engine sounding sweeter already.  Quick tweak of the mixture and idle and all good.  Re-connected WUR electrical connector and the pressure steadily rose to 3.5bar as it should.  Left for an hour and residual pressure still at 2.6bar so everything is looking great.  It's obviously still a wee bit lumpy but that'll be the Schrick 276 cam, but it revs so cleanly now.



Now I just need to finish the interior.  Gave the rear bench a proper clean:-



And that's her in the newly refurbished garage ready for winter.  Engine bay is finally complete, just got to touch up the paint a bit on the metering head and give it all a damn good clean from the dust.  Then get the paintwork detailed.

Pleased you've got it all sorted out! That's the one thing I'm not overly looking forward to - getting the CIS set up right. I bought a load of bits to make up my own gauge (~£25), but I've not had a chance to test it yet - I have some concerns that the union for WUR pipe isn't going to seat properly (that odd cone fitting). I might try and find some banjo ends like that. That's the same chap I bought all my rebuild kits off - really helpful guy.

Is it all MOT'd (or the equiv) then?

You before and after garage pictures are like a 'spot the difference'!

J

It's always the small problems that can cause the biggest headaches. Everything inside the car has always worked fine, but over the course of the resto the MFA LCD screen started to bleed as is quite common.  I found some pretty detailed instructions on the forum, and there's a guy on eBay (ydsparts) selling Mk1 MFA LCD screens for about £30. So……



Took my time, was very careful, got new LCD installed.



Put it all back together, plugged in……dead! Played about with it, got random segments illuminating but nothing better.

Sent the whole clocks off to Crazyquiffs hoping Rich could sort them, and he managed to get the clock working ok, but as soon as you try the MFA functions, the whole thing freezes and won't go back to even the clock function. Got clock back again by playing with fuse in/out multiple times. So I'll live without it for a while and continue the hunt for a spare MFA LCD circuit board.

Decided to get onto something more enjoyable (I'm not a fan of electrical stuff), and finally get the car detailed. It was actually 2013 when she was painted, and I've never machine polished it, just waxed it loads.

So, out of the garage for a wash, clay bar, wash and dried.


Then back into garage and masked up



I won't bore everyone with the full detail but I gave her 5 stages of machine polishing starting with Menzerna FG400, followed by Menzerna Super Finish Plus, then Poorboys Black Hole Glaze, and 2 coats of Chemical Guys Jetseal 109 before a final application of Collinite 915 wax.  I've still to fully finish everything such as bumpers/trim, glass etc, but I'm delighted with the finish now.

Hi Pete,
she looks sweet
could you link the instructions you spoke off please? I’m just too lazy to look 😚

could maybe help with the clocks if you want to pm me?

and I will take the opportunity to wish a Happy Xmas to anyone that reads this 😁

tubbett said

Hi Pete,
she looks sweet
could you link the instructions you spoke off please? I’m just too lazy to look 😚

could maybe help with the clocks if you want to pm me?

Cheers tubbett.

This is the link I used for the clocks, there is also a good how-to on here by Satans Creation which I used.

4130 Products - Changing the color of the gauge cluster lights.

And yes, I should have said, Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year to all the Forum Users, many people have been such a great help over the years.  Here's hoping for a few shows in 2021 so I can put a few faces to names/usernames !!

Cars looking stunning pete good work!! i had an issue with my clocks too still not managing to get any illumination on mine i thought changing the bulbs might of done it but still nothing, do crazyquiffs repair the clocks?