Sad tale - will there be a happy ending?

Only start it if your sure you'll finish it. It hurts to see the dreaded "unfinished project" being broke for spares. Unless its a pile of orange ashes in your yard it's not to far gone. Might take a bit of time (and a fair few quid!) but is nothing compared to 20 years of history.

Fresh Fuel,Oil, new battery……Once she runs         

Well progress has been fairly slow on this project.

I've had to reroof the lean-to where the Golf was stored to store one of my other cars but now have the Golf in my main garage and have started stripping her down.

Front wings shot - but inner wings quite good. This later car had the inner wing liners and loads of protective gunk.

New brake discs and pads (half price at EuroCarParts so couldn't really say no even if the rebuild is not successful). Wheels back on to allow garage shuffling.

Wipers, bumbers, a-pillar trims, quad light grille and lights all removed for later



Doors off - doors them selves not bad apart from rust patches along bottom edge. now they're off strippingn them is something I can work on up at the house in the odd half hours. Below you can see the new front seat

All front seat, seatbelts and rear bench removed. Metal base to rear bench is pretty shot, will keep my eyes open for a replacement.

Floor is generally sound apart from front outer corners left and right where it meets the sills Some repair work has been done here in the past.

Rear spare wheel well is good except for a two/three inch run near the rear tow bar. The tow bar irons are rusted to hell and will need to be ground off. I won't be putting a tow bar back on this baby when she's done. Rear lights and everything put away for cleaning and reuse.



Spurious surface rust around the sunroof. The roof was reskinned some years ago (15-20 probably) when car jumpers ran along a line of parked cars in Southport. My main fear was the whole roof would be rusting away but it seems to be just a few patches here and there. I'm going to try wire brushing and cutting out the rusty patches and plug welding in new metal where required. If it all goes wrong the worst i can do is to need a new roof skin anyway!



Bad side above, good side below!


On the underside it seems the "usual" problems exist - shot outer sills and chassis rails near rear beam mounts and rear chassis legs extengin under boot floor. Plan is now to move the shell into a taller garage and get a rollover system in place to sort out the underside.

On a positive note a new battery and fuel pump has seen the car running smoothly but I think a sticky air flow sensor arm makes it a pig to start. That will all be stripped and rebuild anyhow.



The interior has been vacuumed up and "sun dried" and is now in my attic awaiting proper wet cleaning and repair of tilt cables etc when the weather is better.

Will get another update when the car is on her side with the underside stripped.

Looks like there's a fair bit of work there to keep you busy mate over the coming months. Good luck bringing her back to life.   

Aren't MK2 cassette sunroofs the same as MK1's?
Sure I read some where?

plus take fuel tank cover off and check tank for rust particles and the fuel filler pipe for rust.
These will make for poor runnning etc.

Pleased though your saving her.    

chortle said

Aren't MK2 cassette sunroofs the same as MK1's?
Sure I read some where?

plus take fuel tank cover off and check tank for rust particles and the fuel filler pipe for rust.
These will make for poor runnning etc.

Pleased though your saving her.    

Is that the little black round plate under where the rear seats were? Also I replaced the filler neck around 10 years ago. I was in Tesco filling up and someone started shouting to me that petrol was pouring all over the floor. The filler nozzle had just broke it's way through the rusty pipe! Wasn't too bad a job to fix IIRC! Thanks for encouragement and advice.  

yep little round plate givrs scsess to tank..

Good luck with the project mate    glad you decided to save her, would have been a shame to scrap after 20 years of history!