Project 83 MK1 cabby, several years in the making!

Well I've spammed it everywhere else so thought why not put it on here too 8)

Sitting here bored at work I thought it was about time I posted up my MK1 Golf cabby project, which has been causing me greif for the last 3 years.  Over the last few months the light at the end of the tunnel is now in sight, and things are looking up at long last!

But lets reeeeeewind back to the beginning.  A long time ago me & my dad bought this off ebay, trusting to the sellers word that it was '95% complete', oh what suckers we were.  It had a spray job which was reasonably good, but some of the masking left a lot to be desired, and parets that would have taken all of 5 seconds to remove were left in place, see exhaust, the sticker round the filler neck & the wiper spindles for example.



1st job was to replace the ruined hood, for whatever reason the guy decided to destroy a perfectly servicable hood by tearing it off down the C pillars, rather than just removing the seals and peeling it back.  I also fitted a nice GTI 4 lamp grille and tintop small waistline strips:







A few weeks later some BBS lookalikes were purchased which improved the looks no end.

Unfortunatly yet again I was done over by a seller, he saiud they were VW fitment but they were actually Renault fitment, so the centre bore was about 1-2mm too big.  After ages spent trying to source spacers I gave up and sold them to a mate with a Clio!





A little while later I purchased a nice late spec interior and sealed the doorcards off, and fitted some nice wing mirrors, looks like a car now!  While I was there I ripped out the last of the nasty blue dash/interior parts, fitted a black dash, console and fitted nice brand new carpets from newton comercial.  Oh and yet another hood, this one was recently done by a pro and had a nice black headlining.  This also saved us the nail biting job of cutting a big hole in our nice new hood for the rear window







With the interior pretty much sorted I moved onto the exterior, I binned off those horrible body coloured bumpers and fitted some nice oem black ones along with clear indicators.





Next I decided it was a good idea to remove the BBS kit, to see what was lurking underneath.  Predictably the kit was held on by a large ammount of self-tapping screws straight into the bodywork, lovely. But at least the guy had sprayed it without the kit on, which was something.  Bad news was he used about 16 tons of silicone sealant on the arches which I'm really struggling to remove, and didnt take the kit off when the slam panel was welded up along the middle where the radiator sits.  This resulted in a nice melted patch on the kit and lots of rust where the welds had not been treated where they had burned thru the panel.  Luckily no serious holes were found and the damage is covered by the front bumper!  Back to OEM:

Now here is where the story goes rapidly downhill.  I decided it would be a good plan to remove the rear beam to refurb it, as well as take off the fuel tank to check for rusticles floating around inside.  The filler neck was so bad it snapped in half when I tried to remove it!

Once I had the rear up on axle stands, I found lots of bad news underneath.  Yes those are the rear inner arches, left chopped up and rusted with fresh outer arches fitted and painted, left unsealed.  Did I mention the previous owner was a total cowboy? :x  :x





Looking at the rear beam and suspention mountings didn't give me any good news either:





Yep its partially my fault for not checking, and assuming that since new arches were fitted the guy would have the sence to do the inners at the same time and seal them properly!  Oh well, water under the bridge now.  After months & months trying to find someone to come weld it for me, Oli came to my rescue and started the patching work.











But as some of you may or may not know, Oli (nmt_oli) sadly passed away  I lost interest in the project for a while after this, dispite only knowing him for a few months I counted him as one of my best friends.  RIP buddy I feel honoured to have served you my very best cheese toastys.

Eventually I managed to find another welder prepared to take on the job, and it was finally completed.  I'm particularly happy with the repairs to the suspention mounting, its a work of art!  I should have spent more time cleaning up welds here & there, but I couldnt be bothered!













After over a year on stands it was back on 4 wheels, woohoo!  At the same time I fitted a new beam with rear disc prakes, and I fitted some nice poly bushes.  Also I refurbished the rear suspension and fitted a solid rear filler neck, POR15ed up.  This stuff seriously is the dogs, cant fault the finish even after applied with a brush!

Here it is as things stand, please excuse the crappy wheels they're just for storage purposes.

Ok!  A couple of days before christmas I fitted the power plant, which is a std KR lump from a MK2 16v, and it'll be running on OEM managmnet.  The gearbox is a refurbed FD unit, so it should go quite nicely!
While I'm here, I might as well go through the engine plans that changed over and over again while the project dragged on excruciatingly slowly

The car was supplied with 2 engines, both in half and in a bit of a state.  A MK1 1.6 GTI and 1.8 GTI lump, plus boxes of random bits.  Original plan was to rebuild the 1.8 8v lump and drop that in, I lapped in some valves and fitted it up with hydro tappets, only to realise later it was a solid lifter head and as such had no oilways for the hydro tappes b*lcks
Then the plan was to fit the 2.0 8v lump out of my MK2 GTI, since I was going to put a 2.0 16v lump in it later on anyway.  Finally a MK1 16v conversion downpipe pretty much fell into my lap, and I managed to persuade a mate of mine to sell me his KR lump for ?50.  
Heres a pic of the bay as it stands now, yes I know its filthy and has random patches of por15, but the respray never included the engine bay so it didnt match the outside anyway  I have to say fitting a MK1 engine on your own with the bonnet still on is a complete ball ache, get a mate to help you and remove the bonnet for the love of god



Oh and heres my MK1 conversion downpipe, in case anyone fancies doing it themselves.  Top half is MK2 GTI, bottom half is MK1 GTI, with some jiggery in the middle!

small progress update, wiring is 90% done!  I unwrapped the std cabby engine loom and binned all the rubbish I dont need, then offered up the 16v isv & ignition controller loom, plus the cold start bits.  Only had to extend the wiring to the over-run cutoff valve & idle switch the rest was pretty much spot on.  I even managed to fit the wires thru the stock scuttle tray wiring holes/grommets too which was a bonus, no need to cut any holes.

Now all I need to do is finish building up the engine so I can finalise the wiring lengths, solder it up then re-wrap it all!

Just been cleaning up bits & bobs, have to say POR-15 is the nuts!
Used metal ready to de-rust all the bits, this stuff is ace.  Dump summat rusty in there, come back a few hours later and it comes out rust free!  Works especially well on bolts, the threads come out perfecto.

Some bits take longer than others depending on how crusty they are, and sometimes there are stubborn deposits that need filing down then a second treatment.  The best bit is it leaves a etched coating which is perfect to paint over

Considering I then just slapped on the POR paint with a brush willy-nilly some of it came out pretty nice

This Sunday I cracked on with it a bit more.  I fitted all the fuel system and lines to the engine bay, cleaned up my brake cross bar and fitted the MC/servo.  As you can see engine is looking more complete too and the wiring loom is about 90% done & wrapped

The brake cross bar was completly caked in thick sticky grease, real nasty stuff. Even carb cleaner struggled to remove it! Eventually I won and it looks alot better now

Last wednesday I put in a few more hours and it runs

First thing was get the airbox in. I tried a 90spec one but it was just too big, so I did a deal with a friend to swap it with his pre-90 one.  Still, surgery was required! This is the bottom, just shows how much had to be trimmed


Then after throwing some tools at the engine bay I ended up with this, note the use of an 8v inlet boot, the pre-90 16v one was far too tall!  I need a post-90 one really but it works.  Bit of a struggle to stretch it over the 16v metering head:


Heres a better view of the dizzy/servo arrangement, which can be tricky on MK1 16v conversions:


What I did was fit an ABF dizzy cap, but rather than hack it up like you see on so many conversions I simply rotated the dizzy 180degrees, and lined it up as best I could. Just needs to be close enough to run, once going you fine tune dizzy with a timing light anyway!  Only issue with this is the stock 16v king lead is too small, so you need an 8v one. Luckily I had a scrap set of 16v leads and I figured out how to pop the ends off them, (read: they were scrap because I had yanked the end off one accidently, then noticed I could yank the end off another and fit it ) so was able to fit 2 angled ends to a sparky lead which ended up close to perfect.

Heres a closeup of how I mounted my ign controller in the end, had to use a bit of angled metal on one of the screw holes as there was no way I could screw the ign controller down in such a way the cable came out at a sensible angle, whilst stiull having it secured into the metal bracket with 2 screws:


Had a few problems along the way, first the filler neck was leaking fuel everywhere and yay one of the juilees was completly siezed, snapped the end of me screwdriver off!  Managed to get another one next to it which solved that. Then I got no fuel at all, scratched me head for ages over that one and eventually it turned out it was down to the inline mesh filter I had swapped in from another MK1 pump. Binned that and now I have fuel!  Next I wasnt getting any buzz from the ISV.  Found I had forgot an earht, but still nothing.  Again I scratched my head a bit, thought maybe the isv controller was duff.  Dug out my multimeter to test some earths around the bay, then remembered I didnt have an ISV controller as it was still in a box in the garage.  So I plugged it in and it worked

Then I found that the radiator included with the car was completly trashed which annoyed me, why keep the rad if you know its bust?  Oh well. James came to the rescue and dropped me off a nice shiny one, cheers dude

Roll on the weekend!!  Saturday was spent on electrics mostly, checking bulbs, cleaning connectors and fiddling with wiring.  Got everythign working except the reverse lights as the switch was a bit bust, attempted a repair but it was dead! In zee bin it went.  I also cut holes in the A pillars for my door wiring (scary!) and chopped up the door skin so the aftermarket tweaters the PO fitted to the door cards sat flush.  Also swapped in the new radiator, but couldnt do much more as I didnt have enough coolant!

Then on Sunday I tightend my driveshafts then started on the front brakes, after chucking yet more spanners about the place I ended up with this:


Scirocco 16v front brakes 8)
This also meant that unfortunatly the scabby 13" wheels no longer fit (shame!) so I swapped on my ET13 MIM copies for a laugh, as expected, there was poke



So I took them off again and swapped on me TSWs, much better:




Looking at the last pic I'm debating whether to spray em all black with a red pinstripe, or spray the odd one silver. Descisions!
Once the wheels were sorted, I set to work on the handbrake.  Since I have scirocco 16v cqables with MK3 calipers, they arn't quite long enough. I scoured the internet and ETKA trying to find a set that were 20mm longer, but without success.  So I bit the bullet and whipped out the dremmel, chopped 20mm off the tubes under the car and re-routed the cables slightly.  Was just enough! I need to threadlock the nuts now though as there isnt enough thread to get 2 nuts on, unless I can find 2 shorter handbrake nuts (they have a domed end on 1 side)

Once this was done, I drove the car half a foot forward then back again, another milestone  8)
Now all I need is some brake pipes and some fluid, then car will be complete!

been a while since I updated!

Next step was to plumb in the brakes and get them bled.  1st thing I did was whip off the brake fluid bottle and give it a damn good clean, grot plus brake fluid isnt a good mix!  Next up I retrieved the old bay brake lines from the bits pile in the corner and cleaned them up, to find they were in overall great condition, so next challenge was to figure out how they are routed as they came off 2 years ago

After some head scratching I got it figured out, and the front flexis fitted. bit of waxoil on the lines where they poke out under the arches for some rust proofing and that was the fronts done!  Next thing I did was to remove the old inline pressure regulators, I had no further need of them since all rear brake force regulation was now being done by a MK2 bias valve, since the old MK1 unit was siezed solid.  This was handy as I could fit MK2 brake line T pieces in their place, and to these I fitted my MK1 brake pressure switches

Heres a couple of pics of the bias bracket template I made, since then a proper one was fabricated out of steel but I havent piccied it up yet!  crusty flex line has also been binned




Piccy of my cleaned bottle, also shows how much cl,earance you get using an ABF dizzy cap!


and here are my pressure switches. note unplugged one thanks to it being stuck closed, was a new one as well  :x


After that I had to figure out a way of mounting a washer bottle, since the factory spot was taken by the 16v air box.  I had picked up a MK2, MK3 and late MK1 cab bottles along the way, I found the MK3 bottle was too tall and the MK2 item was just too much effort to fit. However the MK1 bottle I found a neat mounting solution that required no drilling.  After that a quick re-route of the washer jet piping and it was plumbed in.  I had to drag the wire for the bottle back thru the lighting loom and out up near the bottle, then run a fresh earth to the battery to get it wired up.  After that various clips and cable ties was all it took to neaten everything up. Note MK2 clutch cable arm, recommended to keep the cable from hacksawing the box!



for those of you who are curious, the metal hook holding my washer bottle in is a MK2 self adjusting clutch cable steady arm, perfect fit round the bottle stud and with a bit of bending reached the top mount stud like it was designed to be there

Washers didnt like to work too well so I had to take the jet off and clean it out, also the contacts in the wiper stalk were bent out of shape and crudded up, bit of tweaking and a sand down sorted that.  Then rest of the day was spent bleeding the system over & over again, to no effect. in the end I gave up

couple of days later I had a brainwave!  turns out I had fitted the brake servo 1 way valve the wrong way round, so was getting no servo assistance dooooh
Pics in the post above show it the right way round, eagle eyed views will note its wrong in the older pics, and also the 1 way valve looks a bit different. reason is I snapped one of the vac nipples off when I flipped it round, so I nicked a MK3 one from the scrappy.  Brakes were instantly transformed, so now I know what a servo failure in a MK1 feels like, scary!  Car was then MOTed and passed with only 2 advisories for rusty rear discs (as it had been sat for months) and blowing joints on the exhaust

Pic of it soon after the MOT, outside still far from done but I'm a happy bunny!


Over the next few weeks I cleaned off the sticky crap from the arches, sparayed the grille surround and fitted the GTI arch kit + splitter. The result is pretty spectacular:




Oh and finished fitting the interior:

Looking alot better from when I last saw it. :y:

cheers! next step is to remove the last of crud from lower quarter then chrome sill strips can go on, then sort out all the hood leaks!  few bits n bobs needed around the place, door handle surrounds, mirtror adjuster that kinda thing.  gotta get my 16v mk2 clokcs in there at some point as well

Right! A couple of weeks ago I decided it was time to replace the outer roof skin, since the one on there was leaking and generally getting tired.  The week before I striped down a replacement hood frame I had bought with a good hood skin on it, since the rear frame was rotten I couldnt just throw it on.
While it was apart I used the frame as a template to rebuild the hood insulation bag. This is a common problem with cabbies, they're usually split apart inside which causes horsehair to fall inside the cabin everytime you open the hood.  After 7 hours of work it was done, and now I can now do a mean back stitch

So the day came along, should be a quick job as I had done one before.  There would have been more pics, but you know those jobs that should be easy but turn out to be a nightmare? Well that happened so I didnt have time to stop work

Once I stripped the old hood away I found my frame was badly rotten along the front, and several clips crumbled away in my hands as I removed the old hood bag. Great!  Luckily I had the donor hood frame still, so I went about swapping that over.  Let me tell you manouvering a hood frame by yourself is a pain in the rear

I then had a look at the rear screen frame from my old hood, I had thought it was in pretty good nick but a closer look and I noted the frame was badly rotten at the top mounting points for the tensioning straps, so it was no good to me. Luckily I had found an almost mint one in a scrappy a month before, which I want goign to use due to a bit of rot on it. But it was in much better condition than mine so i cleaned it up and gave it a coat of POR15.

Once I had done that, I found the headliner on the replacement frame was split in couple of places, so it had to go.  Bit of a shame as my old headliner was a rare black item, I was hoping to sell it on to claw some money back!  So I cracked on with that, and after I got that on I fitted my replacement bag and packed it out with horsehair salvaged from both hoods.  By this time it was 7:30, and I was due to get to the pub for 8!  To prevent a catastrophic lack of beverage I threw on the outer skin roughly, sealed the hole for the rear window with a plastic sheet to keep any possible rain off and make it look half decent just in case some undesirables happened along.  Heres a couple of pics taken just before i covered it up, shows the bag nicely.  The join along the middle is actually how they made them from the factory, the join is glued up.  The back of it is stapled to the frame and the front is held down with glue and a strip of tape:








The next day I cracked on with the skin replacement, which happily went along fine without any troubles.  The rear frame was a pain to do as since the hole was already cut I had nothing to hold onto while I pulled it tight to get the staples in, but I got there eventually!  I took my time with it and I think I got it on there pretty nicely, especially along the front at the join to the header frame, you often see them with it all curled up along there which means it wont seal very well.  Also a good shot showing my alloy wheel mismatch due to a shortage of good tyres and funds to shod things in rubber!




After all that work, now I'm thinking about selling it, I must be crazy

Nice work on cab, enjoy it for a bit then sell it but I am sure you properly have another project you want to work on....

yeah I've been driving it for quite a while, should have left it alone once I got the MOT sorted really but all the niggly bits annoy me so I had to fix them!

rubjonny said

yeah I've been driving it for quite a while, should have left it alone once I got the MOT sorted really but all the niggly bits annoy me so I had to fix them!

I know how that feels, it never stops.

After all your posts saving my 'project' I've found yours!!!  What's the state of affairs with it now then?

I sold it ages ago, to a local guy who runs the mot place round the corner. his plans are to get it resprayed in the same colour, thats all it needs really mechanicly was spot on. just paint looked like ass

god knows when he is going to do it though I keep pestering him about it whenever I go in there

Looked a nice tidy conversion!  N also answered the question that's been running in my mind for a while…bbs or not…and the answer is not (although I do love those kits!)  So you not running a mk1 these days then?