1983 Standard GTI Concours 42000miles

Thought I'd put some pictures up of my motor.

Bought it in April with just over 42,000 on the clock. I spoke with the original owners who had nick named it Black Bullet.

Its all pretty original and has only covered 3,000 miles in the last 8 years.








Short term just looking to tidy it up a bit. Long term I'd like to concours it but I've done that before and don't know if I have enough time to do it.

Currently tidying the engine bay. This picture was how I bought it.
Should have some more pictures by the end of the week.



The guy I bought it off had his local garage tell him the gearbox had gone so replaced it but eventually sourced the rumble to a front wheel bearing!

 I bought it with the original gearbox in the boot so I have cleaned it up and thought I'd take a picture of the old next to the clean before I put it (back) in!



Its 1st outing (hopefully) will be to the GTI Festival at Santapod on the 6th July.

looks nice, cant believe the mileage. decided i wanna black tin top now

Very nice, look forward to seeing it at the Pod!

what did you use to clean that gearbox?

jools182 said

what did you use to clean that gearbox?

I've got access to a steam cleaner and a wet glass bead blast unit.

I plugged the speedo hole and put insulation tape around other fragile parts
Steam cleaned it then into the blast unit. The beauty of the blaster is it is not harsh like shot blasting and leaves a satin finish.
Out of the blaster and back onto the steam cleaner.
I bought a zinc plating kit for the gear linkage parts to get the yellow passivate finish and replated all the bolt heads.
The bead blaster leaves a superb finish for zinc plating. Once blasted I dip them in masonary cleaner briefly, rinse then straight into the zinc plating bucket.

top job!

gah that is sweet! kinda makes me wish id kept mine stock!

dont do concourse, it would be a shame to not see this being used for fear of it being dirty

Look what I found under 25 years of crud!

Before…….



After…….






Took a few hours and it certainly wouldn't win any prizes but its more inkeeping with its mileage now.

Top job Yomp, looks fantastic 8)

Yomp said

Look what I found under 25 years of crud!

Before…….



After…….






Took a few hours and it certainly wouldn't win any prizes but its more inkeeping with its mileage now.

that can't be the same engine !!!

Looks great dude, well done
All the hard work was definately worth it

fancy doing mine  

did you take everything apart to clean it all ?
looks good top job , just what mine needs

Great find not many mk1s with under 50000 miles left engine looks sweeeeeeeeeeeet!

Top job!  Come up really nice.

pirelli said

did you take everything apart to clean it all ?

Various parts came off but not all. Its a bit addictive really. As I put a clean part back on it made the part next to it look rubbish so then that got took off and cleaned and painted/plated. I've basically run out of time at the moment but theres loads more to do. I want to use it next week to do the Pod.

It's been bit of an experiment as I'm seriously considering stripping it down to the shell and having the shell acid dipped and then having a electrophoretic coating applied. Although its low mileage there are parts of the shell which, if left, will slowly degrade. Some of the underseal under the arches has hardened to a point where its starting to come away in places and there is some surface rust around some of the seams.

Top job looks fantastic. 8)

Very very nice I think i will have to do this on my car I have seen plenty of people do it!! Looks fantastic!!!!
Where is your washer bottle???

ChrisRivage said

Where is your washer bottle???

Well spotted! I was waitng to get another piece of washer pipe before I put it back on. Its in place now.

Finally got it out the workshop today. Ready for the GTI festival. These were taken just before the heavens opened!  :roll:

Won best engine at Billing 2008

The work on the engine paid off. Was a nice suprise.
Finished off a really good weekend.

Although my MK1 has only covered 40,000 miles the back end seemed to sit lower than the front giving it an odd appearence.

I spoke with the original owners who owned it for best part of 24 years and they confirmed it had never carried any prolonged weight in the back.

I could only assume the springs were weakened after being sat on for 26 years.

Finally bit the bullet this week and ordered a brand new set of rear springs from VW at ?60 quid each   I didn't want to go anywhere else for them as there are so many different rates for different cars of that period. Standard,GTi,Cabby,Scirocco,jetta etc. and GSF just supply a couple of rates so who knows how it was going to sit with them on :dontknow:

Fitted them today and thankfully the ?120 gamble paid off and the back of the car now sits up by around 30mm to what it did on the old ones.     The old ones I took off were original as they had the correct yellow identification markings on them as did the new ones.

Thought I'd post this as it goes to show that these parts can be affected by just sitting idle.

If anyone is interested the distance between the centre of the wheel and the bottom of the arch is around 340mm.