Mars red 83 GTI AHN 502Y

Small Update:

A few photo's from the chopping and welding - pretty scary!





….and Gearbox painted now:







More photos this eve of the completed refurbed seatbases - really chuffed with how they turned out…. like new again ;-)

Looking good buddy.    

Cheers dude

Here are the finished seat bases as promised. Just waiting on a new drivers side seat back frame as mine was cracked & fortunately my mates mum ( who runs her own upholstery business is kindly sewing in a new seat bolster ( I used a donor passenger seat cover).













I've also visited the painter and bought all the paint and materials (seam sealer/ sanding pads/ laquer/stonechip/ lead sticks/filler) needed for the car - the bill came to £980
I took a few shots whilst I was there ;-)

I've also moved onto the parcel shelf in terms of refurbishment.



As you can see from the photo it has 6x9 holes in it and is in poor shape so I plan to fit some smaller pioneer speakers.

The plan is to cut two square holes out and glue some wood in it's place and fiberglass the shelf to stiffen it up. I'll then re-carpet it. Anybody know where I can get some thick carpet from in-keeping with the original stuff? I am hopefully going to keep it looking Oem but as you can see currently the shelf is past it's best and bowing quite badly    

Oh and yes for the eagle eyed that is brown shoe lace being used as parcel shelf straps…..I've bought some new rubber ones

They're a money pit these MK1s mate aren't they. Liking the new seats. Hats off to your mum

Hi, just read you're entire thread, and wow to everything, some really good work taking place! Looking forward to seeing it progress, best of luck! Matt.

Really nice to see some good old hard work.. Well done..

Nice work mate, making good progress now!!

Thanks for the comments fella

Rebuilt the hubs last week so here they are:

Looking good buddy !!!  

So I decided this weekend would be a good time ( my wife was on a hen do!) to rebuild the bottom end up sticking the cleaned pistons in and install the new rings, install new big end bearings and the cleaned & polished crankshaft. I bought a piston ring compressor which helped no end but it is a suprisingly time consuming job.
Next up I will get the rebuilt head bolted on - watch this space!

Top skills mate. Looking good  

I helped do the rings and shells on a mates 944 recently - I was surprised too how long it took. I was surprised how sharp new rings are too - they cut your fingers well!  

Ha yes they are sharp - takes a while getting the bottom ring lined up with the little springy oilway & the top ring is tough without the correct tool Here are some progress photo's from the welding:

 

& here's how the engine stands at present:

Looking good buddy. She's gonna be a top MK1 when finished

Very tidy work

Well not a huge amount has happened over the past few weeks but here is a run down:

Made up throttle body and cold start valve paper gaskets and fitted.
Fitted inlet manifold to head
Fitted head, head gasket to block
Checked valve clearances which were all within tolerance
Mock fitted cambelt and lower timing belt cover to work out how it needed modifying



 

I have had a few photos sent through from the shell restoration. A considerable amount of the welding now complete & he hopes to have this completed by the end of the week

Engine looks like new mate. Nice work