Morgie's 81 GTi restoration - Engine bay time!

Nice one Dan, will be good to have you at the meet - you can see if you can find another pink Golf!    

pazwaa said

Some top restoration work there, car looks great now, but a bit scary to start with when your floor pan is a vast hole.    Good luck with the rest of the restoration, keep the pictures coming. Matt.

Can I ask what anti stone chip you used?

Haha tell me about it!  

It's only light protection which I used on the interior and the underside of the sills, I'll have a look at work tomorrow, we're bound to have some laying around somewhere  

This is the texture it can give:

Hairyarse said

Nice one Dan, will be good to have you at the meet - you can see if you can find another pink Golf!   

Paha how very dare you!

Doors, bonnet, tailgate and rear arches primed:









Out of the booth and with the inner wings protected:





And the front wings rolled, undersealed and primed:



Much more rubbing down later… it's ready for paint! Apologies for the dodgy phone pictures here:

Morgie said

pazwaa said

Some top restoration work there, car looks great now, but a bit scary to start with when your floor pan is a vast hole.    Good luck with the rest of the restoration, keep the pictures coming. Matt.

Can I ask what anti stone chip you used?

Haha tell me about it!  

It's only light protection which I used on the interior and the underside of the sills, I'll have a look at work tomorrow, we're bound to have some laying around somewhere  

This is the texture it can give:

Cheers dan. Car looks great all primed up, looking forward to seeing it in colour!  

So… the colour…

I was very particular about the type of colour I wanted; it had to be light as I hate looking after dark coloured cars, it had to be straight, non-metallic, non-pearl and most importantly I had to absolutely love it!

This decision took me about 2 years and the full restoration time to make!

and here it is…….

You're so lucky to be able to use work facilities, that's a right bonus! I'd paint my car pink for that!    Sorry chap, last pink joke I promise (as I still don't know what they're on about, it doesn't look pink to me!)

Have you chosen what's happening to the rest of the car yet? i.e. engine, interior, wheels?

To continue the trend I thought I'd have a go at painting it myself, turns out I could have chosen an easier colour for my first respray! After the first 4 coats it still looked green and it eventually took another 3 to bring out the right colour!

Amazingly the base turned out ok :







Then came the lacquer, it all seemed ok in the booth but once out after a couple of days to air dry it turned out the finish wasn't amazing .







You can see the dryness on the rear quarter there ^^^

Forgetting about the shell for a while I concentrated on the removable panels and got them painted:











And hung on the shell, it's looking like a car again!:

Hairyarse said

You're so lucky to be able to use work facilities, that's a right bonus! I'd paint my car pink for that!    Sorry chap, last pink joke I promise (as I still don't know what they're on about, it doesn't look pink to me!)

Have you chosen what's happening to the rest of the car yet? i.e. engine, interior, wheels?

Haha the yellow makes it look less pink anyway  

Coming up  

Obviously I wasn't happy with my finish on the car so decided to redo it:









or more specifically to save my wallet getting another paint material based pounding I asked my workmate Ray to re-lacquer it for me and he did a brilliant job

That yellow is a superb colour, I'm guessing you don't need to do the inside of the doors and tailgate to match the rest of the interior because the metal isn't going to be on show.

wow love the colour, this is gona be great when finished, few yellow mk1 projects about at the mo, look real nice :-)

Wow, great patience and attention to detail  

Love a yellow MK1        

Cheers folks  

I haven't seen any other yellow ones in the making, better start reading some more builds  

Volksangyl said

That yellow is a superb colour, I'm guessing you don't need to do the inside of the doors and tailgate to match the rest of the interior because the metal isn't going to be on show.

Ahh now a lot of the inside of the doors and tailgate is on show but I'm hoping with the interior all built up it should look ok. If not I can always paint the insides grey to match  

Now I'll share with you the lowest point of the project .

Before it was painted I was in the process of moving house. I kept everything I stripped from the car in the garage in a giant box as you do. I came home one day to find the garage empty where my dad had cleared it all out to move to the new house and, you guessed it, the whole lot had been chucked!! I lost headlights, tailights, sidetrims, every single seal and rubber, most of the glass, mirrors, handles, locks, carpets, headlining, most of the dash, arches, clips, screws and gaskets for everything, numberplates and holders and who knows what else, I was absolutely gutted and couldn't understand how it had all been thrown away without even a thought to what it all was! .

That was a bad day for sure and it took a while to blow over.

Anyway that's now passed and it brings us to what I've been doing for the last 18 months; buying new parts and building it up!

Here's some pics from when it was painted to now

On the trailer leaving my work where it had spent the last 2 years:



With the GTi grill which I thankfully had stored somewhere else (the engine bay is a job for another year):



Think it needs lowering a bit :



Having fun with the wiring, need to get some sort of CD player in there at some point:



The first of the new seals :

Shame your old man binned all the stuff mate. I'd be .

Good luck getting her finished

I bought some wheels:



Tried them on:

Before



After





Rolled rear arches





Decided they were a bit too big and heavy, so I bought some more wheels :



Tried them on:







And with some new arches courtesy of Funk held up to the car along with an old bumper just to give me an idea:







And how they currently look

Oh no that would be a tough one to forgive!

Liking seeing this come together

Those rims suit the car very well mate. Nice purchase