Model: Polo GT

Engine: 1.3 (3F)

Suspension: Standard at the moment

Brakes: Standard

Wheels and Tyres: 13" BBS RA's

Exterior Styling: Dogily painted rust spots count?

Interior Styling:

ICE and Security: None yet

Comments: I bought this on ebay for £200 from down south in the summer, I bought it back on a hired car transporter as it was undriveable. Initially I bought it just for the engine to put in my 1.0 squareback and to break the rest to make a bit of money back. But I decided it was too good to break and fancied having a black gt coupe so I set about sorting it out. It had been front ended and the passenger side was of the slam panel/headlight panel was stoved in, but luckily the wings were ok as were the chassis legs. I'd been gathering parts for the my breadvan but decided to leave it standard and put everything on the GT, so far i've got:

-40mm H&R rear springs and shocks, got these in the for sale section on here off of someone who front ended their loon (sorry I can't remember your name!)

- Weitec 40mm springs and shocks for the front

- Refurbished VWII calipers (had these done by bigred)

- ATE Disc and pads

- Eicher drums and brake shoes

- Goodridge braided hoses

- GED front lower brace

- G-Ladeirsite ARB blocks

- Shot blasted and powder coated rear beam off a G40

- Sump tray (most recent acquistion)

- A multitude of service parts from GSF and VW

- New genuine Clutch

- New sump

- 3 sets of BBS RA's ( Don't ask me why!)

- New Track control arms with superflex bushes

- Spare head off of an NZ for playing around with porting and polishing in the future

- powder coated driveshafts with new CV boots ready to go on

I've got all these parts to fit but no time to fit them, I try and get what I can done at the weekends but the going is slow. The first problem I encountered were some nice rust holes in the sills and battery tray along with the passenger door being completely rusted away at the bottom and the sunroof was shot. A trip to the scrappy provided me with a new Silver sun roof out of an NZ coupe and some new stainless steel sunroof lifters from VW.

I started work on the crash damage at the front this is how it looked when I started (apologies for the pic it's the one off of the ebay listing):

How it looked after a couple of days of straightening (it was crushed a lot more inwards that it is in this pic):

This is how it looked after many days of straightening the front end:

Next I waged my war on the rust, I used some wire wheels in an old drill to remove most of the rust and some hammerite cure rust (green gloop) to treat it. I had fun pulling all the underseal off of everywhere I suspected there was rust. Finally when I thought I'd found everything I booked it in at a welders round the corner from me to be patched up. Since then i've bought a small clarke pro 90 welder so I can sort out any more holes that will appear (I dare not take the sill/arch trims off!). I had a fun trip to the welders as I left off two HT leads, thought it was down on power lol!

Once it was all welded up I painted it all with zinc primer and some chassis black paint.

Had to strip out the inside for the welding:

Then there were the holes:

One in the front drivers side jacking point:

Battery Tray:

Passenger side sill Hole No 1:

Passenger side sill Hole No 2:

Behind the drivers seat inside:

It was running a bit rough so I hooked it up to vagcom and found it had fault codes for nearly all of the sensors so I cleared them and it seemed to run better. Then I did the timing following the useful guide on here. However for some reason that escapes me now I suspected the headgasket had gone and took the head off which snowballed into removing the engine completely. I got the block back to bare metal and lacquered it black. While the engine was out I thought i'd swap the sump over for the new one at which point I found the oil pump chain was very slack, which meant more new parts and time. Engine is currently still in bits awaiting new valve stem seals, tappets and other various seals for the head. Oil pump chain is now at the correct tension, had fun trying to get the all ready rounded cam sprocket bolt off, ended up using a clarke air impact wrench which had it off in a matter of seconds.

I used some acid etch primer on the gearbox and then painted it gloss black. I still have the selector seal to change before the gearbox is done.

Pretty much it for now, need to get some more pictures of it how it stands at the moment.

Future Plans: 4-branch and full stainless exhaust. Get it finished and MOT it! Hopefully before christmas

Edit: Added a couple of pics

Edit 2: Updated Title

Edited 6 July, 201016 yr by Lance

looks like a fun project. bargain at 200 quid though

lovin this mate

looks like great progress

Cheers for the comments, I'll have to get some more up to date pictures of the welding that was done and the engine work i'm currently doing.

Been a while since I updated this, I'm slowly getting the car back together now, hoping i'll be finished before summer is over.

Few things that I did over winter:

Painted the gearbox black

Got my spare rear beam shot blasted and powder coated ready to build up and swap over when I replace the petrol tank. Also pushed in new genuine VW bushes too.

Got a fan shroud and fan from an NZ in the scrappies and painted it up

Also took the head off of the NZ in the local scrappy and got it skimmed as the original GT head has corroded where the thermostat bolts up. I've rebuilt it with new valve stem seals, hydraulic lifters and the double valve springs from the GT head haven't got any up to date pictures of the head though.

I wasn't too impressed by the powdercoating on the rear beam so I took the front struts, carriers, spring caps, rear brake back plates and front disc spash guards to a different powder coaters and they did a really good job.

Here's what I managed to do today:

Genuine VW front wheel bearing kits

Piece of pipe just the right size to sit on the outer edge of the bearing but small enough to clear the bearing housing in the strut.

Big bit of threaded stud and washer to pull the bearing into the strut

Pulling the new bearing in

Fitted

Forgot to take pics of pulling the hub into the bearing but I used the same method as for the bearing with a smaller piece of pipe the same diameter as the inner race of the bearing when I pulled the hub in.

Finished strut

Koni adjustable shocks :-)

Found these strut caps with a nut on, much easier to tighten up than the original caps

Using my massive adjustable spanner

And finally both struts completed

Gonna put the springs, new VW top mounts and brake carriers on tomorrow and then make a start on the rear beam.

loving this thread man, its nice to see someone putting some real effort in. hope its gonna be good

black gts ftw

Glad you like it hoping it'll be good when it's finished too.

Didn't get as much done today as I planned but both front struts are all finished.

Painted the block black

New crankshaft oil seal and end plate gasket fitted along with new timing belt pulley and new genuine vw sump.

Finishing degreasing the engine bay, still needs more cleaning. Loom needs re-wrapping and got a stage 2 subframe to fit.

Plans for next weekend are build up the rear beam and bolt the head back on the bottom end and time it all up.

looks great still!

great work so far, keep it up

Spent both Saturday and Sunday last weekend on the GT to make up for spending the previous weekend getting the red polo ready for the MOT; it needed both front shocks and a CV boot doing (I think i've mastered taking apart and putting back together the Polo's front suspension now).Anyways back to the GT:

I've bolted the head back onto the block, timed it all up and fitted a new clutch. I managed to wrestle the gearbox onto the block on the floor and torque it up. Unfortunately I didn't take any pictures of this as I was going along. Spent ages trying to get the damn G-Ladeirsite ARB blocks to bolt up to the body (it seemed as though the holes in the blocks didn't match the holes in the body) but this seemed to resolve itself after I sanded back the powdercoat on the ARB on the bits that went through the blocks so that the blocks weren't held apart by the ARB being too thick due to the powdercoat.

A few weeks back I painted the new petrol tank with Por15, just a word of warning don't get it on your hands! If it dries NOTHING will take it off, I had to walk around with black paint on my hands for a few days lol, serves me right for not reading the instructions on the tin.

Engine in

Was using the red polo to see where everything is supposed to go :p.

After a whole year of the car being up on axle stands in the garage and not moved it was awesome to get it back on all 4 wheels.

The Koni adjustable shocks are awesome, needless to say i've been playing around with them quite a bit and am well impressed. I've had a change of heart with regards to braking and i'm going for the 256mm Vauxhall conversion now instead of G40 stuff, already have the golf mk2 discs and calipers+carriers off of a Cavalier, just need pads now. Oh and i'm pretty sure Lupo GTI brake hoses will fit, I read that on the forum somewhere only I can't remember who said it. Also got some 14" BBS RA's to clear the new brakes.

I'll try and keep this a bit more up to date now the GT's getting close to running.

good progress on this, looks like quite a tidy little project :)

Happy days, well done for saving it!

Also nice work on the bearings, it's the one thing I can never do myself.

For some reason this thread only has two stars?

Great progress. Keep up the good work.

Daryl

Cheers guys, no idea why it only has two stars :p.

@Callum. I should have scrapped the shell really there's a lot of rust but I think i've sorted the worst bits now, just got the sunroof to sort out later. The front wheel bearings are a pain in the neck, I was lucky I had a bit of pipe just the right size, could really do with the use of a lathe to make up a decent spacer though as my bit of pipe isn't very square at the end.

Couple of advancements, got the old rotten petrol tank off of the car.

Filler neck gone at the base

I've been spending my time replacing the rubber fuel hoses that join up the the main fuel lines, it's quite a maze of pipes under there and almost all of the rubber hoses are cracked and perished.

Got my 14" BBS RA's powdercoated black and had a trial fit of the 256mm brakes.

They're now wrapped in 185/50 yoko A539's with some stubby valves. I have to say it looks more awesome than I thought it would with the red calipers.

Got the rear beam on today along with the H&R shocks and springs. Also I hate drum brakes lol, spent ages fighting with the springs on drivers side rear so ran out of time for passenger side. Sorry no pics of the work today (worked well into the dark). I'm slightly worried that the gt will have a weird stance with the 40mm H&R stuff on the back and 40mm weitec springs on the front;the back is sitting lower than the front, but I don't fancy taking the whole front suspension apart again to fit some 60mm springs so it'll have to do for now :S

Need to sort the petrol tank, passenger side rear drum, rear brake hoses and mount up the fuel pump tomorrow. I haven't finished hooking everything up to the engine yet so still have that to do. It's getting there slowly.

Didn't get as much done as I planned and also I took the day off today :p, I blame the weather.

She looks like this at the moment, really hoping the front will settle down a bit as it has brand new springs but the stuff on the rear is second hand, see how it goes anyway.

Finished wrapping the manifold so I fitted that

Started plumbing the water stuff in and got a new header tank so I can actually see how much coolant is in it

Youve motivated me to get cracking on my GT

Bye :)

what profile tires you get dude. whole car looks awesome,credit to you. :)

@Gageyo: Get a build thread up! (if you haven't already) Definitely need more GTs on the roads, good luck with it :)

@Barry: Thanks. Tyres are 185/50 14" Yoko A539's

Nice- I like where this is going