That's an awful crash dude, I take it you run rixed/single speed? I'd love to donate a wheel to the cause but you're a bit too far away!

Car is looking lovely, keep up the good work.

Pics of bike(s)?

Well Hi all,

long time no post, Happy new years and all that!

hope you've all had a good one, mine was ace,

and the new year has brought a flurry of Polo based activity.

I'll pick up where we left off,

covered in sand in a tear stained puddle if i remember rightly!

well the wintery weather moved in for a while and I wasn't very encouraged by this, so my time spent at the garage was pretty much non existent over the Xmas period.

However the new year brought with it a new sense of purpose and resolve so here goes with the catching up.............

First I waded into that passenger side wheel arch.

After making up a card template I cut a patch to cover the area, then pounded on it inplace, till it fitted (I padded the front of a normal hammer with a few layers of cardboard and some duct tape, it worked a treat)

then set to work with the grinder and the dremel on the old rusty bits.

which left a rather strange view of the car afterwards!

so here's the old section and the new section

note the sticker that says it should be an offside rear wing :p

I then tacked the new bit into place,

welded all round it, then ground it till it was presentable,

jobs a good'un.

Next came the rear of the passenger side arch,

Having gone at it with the grinder before Xmas I had left the bottom of the hole without any vertical surfaces. So I added an L shaped strip (if you check up the thread u'll see what I'm trying to get at!)

I then had to build a piece that fitted round inside the corner

which also dealt with the holes underneath

its not the neatest welding ever, but it got cleaned up.

then I cut and joggled a piece to fill the rest of the hole

and buzzed that on as well.

all done here too.

Next I had to deal with the horrible hole that was left by the suspension mounting bracket.

My pal Mike and I whipped off the rear suspension and I set to work.

I don't seem to have any pics of this bit, but never mind, I ended up fabricating a couple of areas and after a fair bit of cleaning up and por 15 we put the rear suspension back on.

During the time the suspension was off I noticed a wee bit of rust had crept up between the skins that form the drivers side rear suspension tower,

so that got chopped out

and a piece joggled up and welded in

here's a quick shot of some of the underside whilst I remember

with both aches and rear corners now completed I set about getting my new rear valance to fit

It took a while and I think I went a mad with the number of holes to weld through, but the result was pretty satisfying.

Whilst she was all up on stands I took the opportunity to clean off all the remaining surface rust and scrubbed the whole underside of the car with a wire brush.

This was to get off any old, loose under seal and give a good key to the rest.

I tell you, it's no picnic lying on your back, under there in January, in Scotland, covered in road grime from head to foot!

But it got done and I completely re-undersealed the car with three tins of "Tetroseal" which was a surprisingly good product.

I used the gloopy brush-on stuff, rather than the spray.

It took allot longer to apply but it felt like it would do more good!

With the underside finally finished, the valance back on and suspension re-mounted, the old girl got to go out into the sunshine again :)

I was finally able to have a good clean up and sort out of the garage, having not done so at all for the last couple of months! as seen here

But her day in the sun was short lived, after a quick hoover and a good wipe down,

I used an old copy of the metro and two rolls of the worst masking "tape" to cover the dash. (it was so not sticky, that two of its sticky sides didn't stick together)

Then she went straight back inside for more work.

Sanding and smoothing, and more sanding and more smoothing have been going on feverishly for the last few weeks.

This culminated in a 24 hour straight session from last Wednesday 10am to last Thursday 10am, when there rolled out a very rare beast,

The piebald lesser spotted polo............

and why 10am do you ask?

well................

My good friend Jack turned up and...................

stole her away!

Off to the spray shop we went!

I followed along to catch anything that might fall off :p (I was fighting the sleeps all the way there)

(You can just see the nose of my girlies black Mk7 behind)

So the old girl is away getting some TLC and a nice new coat of Gambia Red (fingers crossed that's the correct colour, I was never able to confirm it!)

and I'm left with an empty garage for a while.

Interestingly I found this when I was tidying up, can you guess what it used to be?

waste not and want not and all that :p

Oh? did i say empty?

Hehe!!!

catch yous all soon.

Really great work mate!

You make all the little chop-weld jobs look like a piece of piss! Kudos!

That was an excellent update :)

Good work!

Respect for putting in all that effort. Lots of seriously bad rot there. Hope if pays off! :)

Serious work in there really looking forward to seeing this all shiny :-)

Hello all,

I'm not very good at keeping this thread updated am I!

There's not been huge amounts happening since my last update,

I was rushing like mad to get it to the spray man because I was going to be out of action for a while with this:

(fooked my ankle in April last year and it never really got better, so I had to get a operation to sort out all the ligaments and tendons etc)

Once I was back on my feet I was able to start doing car stuff again,

I've been fiddling with a few things at the garage.

I got to go through and open up all of these

plus heaps more boxes,

I've found various bits and bobs I've not seen for a year of so,

so that was all rather exciting, until...........

this is my lovely fresh 8P 5-speed gearbox - can you spot whats missing?

here's my nasty old box to compare

see it?

ye I'm missing a selector arm and thrust bearing assembly :(

If anyone has an old box of this era sitting about that's knackered,

Please please PLEASE can I get the arm/bearing off you? I'll pay money and everything!

otherwise I've no clue how to source one.

That was a bit disappointing, other than that the box seems in great nick.

To distract myself I started fiddling with other bits and bobs, here's how the old doors looked

and here's a sneek peek at how they will end up

(a nice man in Germany sold me a pair of these for 14 bucks! It cost more to have them sent over! )

I borrowed a pals van to go collect my engine,

I've been storing it at a mates workshop for the last few months as I've not got any room for it.

He helped me put it in the back

I had this cunning plan to use the engine stand to get it back out again on my own........

Which failed.

So with that off the cards, I had a word with myself, cashed in about a months worth of man points and just picked the damn thing up! then dumped it on my bench inside.

Fortunately the bench was a perfect height so it went onto the stand without much more fuss

That done I started to have a play with it

I just had to see if these would fit! (I need to stop showing all the surprises!)

and then I had a wee look under its covers to check the state of play.

Its a really tidy engine on the outside; the dude I bought it from said it had only done 52k.

I was a bit skeptical of his claims, but check out these wheels! not a hint of rust/dirt! :)

So the blocks going to get cleaned and sprayed etc,

There's new belts, water pumps and tensioners to go on and it should be good to go.

One final teeser, I've been toying with an idea for a while, and it looked like it might just work, here a clue

That's all for now but I'm really in need of a 5 speed gearbox thrust bearing assembly,

If anyone can source one, it's you guys!

Cheers!

Fantastic build thread, I admire the fact you have gone to such effort to sort out the rust, keep up the amazing work, I am excited to see the fresh paint.

Keep it up bud, I'm keeping a keen eye on this one. Will the thrust bearing release arm from the old box fit? I've never done that myself but alot of outer gearbox parts are interchangeable it keeps development cost down in the long run.

Very nice work, the welding is great looking. Keep up!

Thanks for all the encouragement!

When I first saw it was missing I thought the old one would be an easy swap over, but sadly not.

However Clubpolo has already come up trumps! I'm picking up a box with a knackered final drive from a gentlemen by the name of Adam in the next week or so.

Problem solved :)

I went and visited the shell a while ago, Its not the spray dudes highest priority that's for sure. But as a mate of a mate hes giving me a great price so I can't complain.

Its progressing nicely and to be honest its much easier doing all the engine and gearbox stuff in a nice empty garage.

I'll try to keep this updated more frequently, two full days working on it tomorrow and Friday so I'll hopefully have some progress to show.

look at this, two posts in less than a week!

well Thursday and Friday were lovely and sunny so I got down the garage and set about my engine,

I started stripping it for cleaning

No horrible surprises I'm pleased to say

I got out the Nitromores and sloshed it all over the block

meanwhile I took off the timing belt and tensioners etc

with the paint all soft I gloved up and assaulted it with a wire brush and an old screwdriver.

With the worst of the paint off, I got the trusty brushes onto my grinder and dremmel,

And It eventually looked like this :)

having admired it for a while over a cup of tea, I masked up the head and the block looked like this by the time I was done

I'm not quite sure what colour it will end up, probably a gun metal/dark silver.

Anyways, took two days hard graft but I'm very satisfied with the result.

Hi all,

I've carried on tinkering with things over the last couple of weeks, not been down the garage for a few days thou, so I thought I would do an update and feel all productive :p

I wafted some silver over the black block, it was never going to stay all matt and clean like that.

I tried to make it look a bit like bare metal, you cant see it here but the sump is also a dark silver too, but I'm less pleased with that and I think it will end up being Hammerited black.

I cracked on with cleaning the rocker cover up too (its in mid sand/polish above)

having got the cover to a reasonable standard, I sat down with my new water pump, belt tensioner and timing belt and set about putting things back together again.

I would just like to say a massive thank you here to Mark Crox for putting so many useful tips on his build thread, I was able to print off his timing belt instructions and had it sorted in half an hour.

I ended up going for a "brushed Aluminium" effect on the rocker cover and a wee bit of paint on the lettering; it ended up looking like this:

The engines not finished yet by a long shot, but I'm happy with the direction its going in.

A nice shinny thing arrived in the post the other day too

(they have been going on Ebay BIN for 170 bucks for the last year or so, but recently the same company has started putting them on as auctions. Mine set me back just over ton, you heard it here first )

Another bit of good news was that I met up with Adam from Glasgow and got a bell housing with all the attachments on it. I'll be transferring them all over soon.

The only bad news is I rang the spray dude and the shell is still nowhere near ready :(

oh well, can't be helped.

So, Hello all, Happy Christmas and all that type of thing!

No update since June................. not very studious of me eh?

Well the rest of the summer continued on in a similar way to the last update,

Just chipping away at things,

I managed to source a new Thrust bearing assembly in a bell housing off a Gent on here by the name of Adam-, Many thanks to you sir!

It looked like a perfect match

until as I was swapping the bits over

The damn thing wouldn't fit!!!

There's a brass/bronze sleeve that sits in the lower hole; the one in my Gearbox is a slightly thicker wall, so the arm wont go in!!!

I've still not solved this problem yet, do I open up the sleeve in my Gearbox? try to swap them out? turn down the end of the arm? get another one?

I don't know, anyone else had this problem? or has a bright idea how to solve it, I'm all ears.

Anyways other bits got done,

Engine detailing got finished

then I thought I would have a tidy up and sort out, the place was looking like a scrap heap by the end of the summer

If you want to scroll back up you would see that the shell went away on a trailer back at the start of March.

The dude who was doing the spraying is a friend of a friend, he's pretty much a one man show and is run off his feet the whole time.

Over the summer I was "fairly" busy with non Polo related stuff.

I bought my first flat, moved into it and got married! (they were both over a single weekend btw!!)

So that has taken any free time I had for a couple of months.

Over that time I would ring the spray due very couple of weeks, gently queried him about any "progress".

It seemed that basically hadn't started it for the first 4 or 5 months since it arrived, there were many reasons given and to be honest I was starting to loose patience.

The nights started to draw in and Autumn was upon us.

So the phone calls got more regular, I started a mild campaign of financial blackmail as I now have zero disposable funds after mortgages and wedding debts.

I don't know if the threats of "payment programmes", "budget constraints coming in the near future", "new wife wants a new Bathroom for the new flat" etc did there work but it was only a matter of a couple of weeks later that I received....................... a phone call..............

BOOOM!!!!

Put that in your pipes and smoke it!!!

the colours a bit funny on the pics but I assure you this is a glorious deep burgundy red (Gambia Red FYI)

I left her in the spray shop for a couple more weeks as I couldn't get a trailer sorted, also I wanted to let the paint have a chance to harden off before messing about with it.

So on a very wet evening a few of weeks ago, she came back home

and a wee arty shot for good measure

I started the rebuild by getting inside and doing a bit of sound deadening on the roof;

and in the doors and rear wings:

Then I've started on the front suspension

here's how it looked before

To get them off I had to murder a strut on one side!

and a slightly more elegant solution on the other, I just murdered the top nut:

To get the cylinders out I took some advice and purchased a chain wrench, the caps were rusted on solid so i flooded them with WD for a day or two.

Imagine my smugness when the first one came off without me getting a hernia,

however, the f*%king cap was now completely stuck inside the chain wrench!!! and I mean STUCK, eventually had to wind it back on, hit it allot with a big Mer until it loosened, but then had to repeat the process of getting the cap off again!

anyway, was fine in the end.

I attacked the legs with the old wire wheel on the grinder, sloshed a shed load of "Krust" over them

and they turned out like this

A few coats of black Hammerite on my custom built spray stand...

Some new bearing pushed in by a local garage, who as it happened charged me $60!!! for the 30 minutes work it must have taken (bastards)

I did some more under-sealing around the front wheel arches and underneath the engine bay/cross beam etc, then had a fun time re assembling the front legs.

As far as I remember the lowering kit I got all that time ago is a 60/40, so with those shocks and springs, some lowering topcaps I got form B-shaw

The fronts now look like this now

So there we go, pretty busy but not always with the Polo.

I promise to try an update more regularly, the weather up here isn't very fun to work in at the moment but I am determined to try and make up for some of the lost time this summer.

This will be on the road ........................ soon........ish

Awesome progress. Sometimes leaving updates for a long time is best!

well done for the commitment sir! i bow down to you for the dedication of this project. I have a bready too and i just sorn it to do some work on it. the respray looks beautiful :)

Well, Hello all!

It's been about 6 months so probably time for an update!

I seem to have been doing everything but my Polo since the winter; my flat now has a lovely new bathroom and the bedroom is in the process of getting done. Strangely the boss says she wants these types of things done rather than me disappearing off to the garage all the time...........

So progress has been in dribs and drabs;

Firstly I set about stripping all the rear suspension off and building up the new stuff; here's a cruddy old drum

Then I had loads of fun copying that onto my new rear arm

I sprayed up my new drums etc, trying to make them look cleaner for longer

With those done I built up the new lowered shocks and springs

Then got on to assembling it all

with that done I realised I didn't have a couple of the smaller components.

They didn't seem to be readily available anywhere new so I cleaned up some of the old bits, here's the process that I've pretty much done on everything I've reused:

Wire wheel off all the rust so there nice and shiny

then slosh a load of rust killer chemical on them and finally several coats of Hammerite

With that all done and assembled I turned my attention to fighting in the fuel tank, whilst doing so I hooked up the patented "Simon's breather Pipe fix"

So remember this beautiful inner arch?

(Cringe)

That now looks like this

note the cheeky wee grommet through the rubber bung?

well that came in useful when adding the new hose, like this:

hopefully this will keep out any more crud and avoid the rot coming back any time soon.

So with the tank in I turned my attentions to brake lines.

Now having never done these before it was rather a steep learning curve. However I will give you the sage like wisdom I have now acquired:

1. buy your brake pipe WITHOUT all the tools as part of a "Kit" - these tools are rubbish.

2. Buy the correct flaring tool - if you spend the money then you will have beautiful, safe and more importantly: an EASY time flaring - I ended up buying a proper little flaring tool that looked a bit like a hammer (rather than the feeble claw style one that sucked) - I could do my flares in situ under the car with no bother at all, was ace!

3. Start your line at the master cylinder end - this is the fiddly end which you want to look the neatest - don't give yourself problems by having the other end attached to your car!

4. use the proper bending device - someone invented it for a reason.

5. if it doesn't look right (flare or bend etc) ITS NOT - your life will depend on your workmanship - do it carefully and properly, once.

6. Put a a union on the pipe the correct way round BEFORE you make the flare.................

As you can probably guess I, I made and remade my brake lines several times, bought various tools on false economy principals until I had the correct tools and well made lines.

Here's what proper flares should look like (eventually) original at the top, new at the bottom

Here's the underside finished

and the engine bay done: It could be neater, the bulges over the steering rack were a total pain and impossible to get to look the same but never mind:

With those all done, I added my braided hoses and fitted the rear suspension

I've not put all the rubber bits/spacers on the fronts yet but fitted them whilst making the lines

Brakes = sorted.

Last update I was fighting with my gearbox pretty hard, the clutch release arm was from a donor bell housing and wouldn't fit, all my attempts to find a replacement or swap out the lower bushings failed (yet more tools bought that didn't work!)

This problem foxed me until I finally took my fathers advice; I applied 3 hours of patience and delicacy to shave and polish down the end of the arm so it fitted, turned and the O ring located.

With that done I finally had a functional gearbox!

however I failed to take a picture of it!

So with that done I realised there was now very little standing in my way regarding getting the engine in.

My good friend and namesake Simon and I went halfers on one of these:

I think we went a bit over board as I can technically lift the weight of the entire car with it!

I did a bit of spray painting

which ended up looking like this

I then used the silly big crane to pick up the motor so I could finally get at the clutch and flywheel etc, (slight over kill as you can see!)

the flywheel was pretty grotty, but nothing some gentle wire wheeling and petrol couldn't fix:

all clean

New clutch on (didn't have an alignment tool, so I did in meticulously by eye and a steel rule)

which swiftly lead me to mating my gearbox and block finally! This was a bit of a faf, you need to squeeze the clutch in a bit sideways past the drive shaft; it was tricky on the bench in optimum conditions, I wouldn't attempt it anywhere else!

Can you see where this update is leading us?..............

Simon came over yesterday, we knew it was going to be a tight squeeze;

this wasn't helped by having the manifold attached, so we ended up taking it off and putting it inside the engine bay and reattaching it when the block was half way in

But with intricate amounts of very slow lowering, then raising, then lowering again, pushing, pulling, swearing and a pinched finger or two.................

TAADAAAHHHHH!!!!!!!!

we then let her out into the sunshine to admire our handiwork

the ride height is absolutely perfect, so much so that I failed to take a picture!

Then I got carried away and bolted on the carbs and went a bit snap happy; here's my favourites

So currently feeling very smug,

I'm very happy with how its all looking, hopefully I can keep up the momentum on the build,

maybe running and driving by the end of the Summer or Autumn or year?........................

Cheers for reading all this, hope you enjoy!

Looking good mate. As the saying goes slow and steady wins the race.

Looking pukka! Good work mate, keep it up!

some awesome work gone into this. looks fucking amazing.

Hello Hello, only three months since last post, not too bad by my previous standards!

loads has been happening, I've been tinkering away quite allot for the last wee while, got lots done too which has been really encouraging, lots of "ups" and a major "down" but progress progress progress :)

I had a bit of a coup just after the last post, I went to the local breakers yard to get a gearbox mounting bolt; as one of the ones I fitted had pretty ruined threads.

So got there, found a Mk2 golf and started merrily removing said bolt, having got it, I turned round to see the holy grail sitting on its belly a few yards away...............

a Mk2f 5 speed breadvan!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

my 15 minute job turned into a full days stripping!, I got a full set of tinted glass with good rubbers, full gear linkage, headinging, washer bottles, parcel shelf, the list went on. I finally got to the checkout man, he laughed at me and charged me 60 bucks!!!! result.

So start with where I left off, I carried on with engine based bits and bobs and it wasn't long before I had these installed and connected up

having fiddled with the gear linkage to get it all perfectly aligned etc I realised it had far too much slop in it for my tastes so I pulled the mechanism apart again and made a thin aluminium insert inside the cage; here's a pic of the card template so you get an idea, I forgot to snap the final product (I was too busy getting it reattached to see if it worked)

I did the trick beautifully, was a pain to adjust the linkage back to how I had it but the changes are allot more positive with significant waggle reduction.

The handbrake got connected up finally, however I couldn't find that big rubber/foam ring to put round the large cage on the day, I've found it since of course but not been back under to put it on!

Then came the fuelling system, I plumbed in the tank etc, and installed the pump. I read somewhere to fit it as close to the tank as possible so I ended up fitting it here:

sorry for the bad picture, it doesn't hang down any lower that the TCA's or the sump, and it was easy to attach through the bracket, that then initially got plumbed into a filter king regulator that I mounted here:

with that organised I turned my attention to my carbs, I wanted to get rid of the large black plastic moulding that was part of the original air box. However it had a dual function of holding the trumpets on.

so I traced the mounting surface and sent a picture to my Dad who knocked up a set of plates for me

Each plate had a paper template on the reverse to help with accurate cutting of all the holes so I left them on to act as a gasket.

With that done I moved on and fitted the radiator etc and got the water system hooked up.

Sadly it then came to the wiring, which I had been putting off for ages! I had the original engine looms and a cut about afh loom that came with the engine. These were all to be blended into one system.................

I cleaned them all up with petrol and laid them all out, tea and head scratching started in earnest until I realised I would have to get another AFH loom as the one I had was too far gone.

I wanted the uprated wiring of the AFH loom and the scrap man (careless, heartless vandal) had snipped of partially snipped almost every element of it!

So I shelved the wiring till I got a new AFH loom, I sourced one at medium expense off ebay and set back to it.

Now I'm about as far from an auto electrician as can be imagined; I was there going through the wiring diagrams in Haynes not getting anywhere fast

until fortunately for me i realised VW has kept the same wiring colours for the last 30ish years!

So it was simply a case of matching up the colours that I need to join up, ditching all the rest and bob's you are uncle I had it done in a couple of hours!

Moving on.

I turned my attentions back to the interior,

stuck in a load of sound deadening carpet

I had loads left over, so I put the rest in!

Then started the headlinging; I had spent a good hour surgically removing it from that scrapper, sadly it was grey............................

Not for long!!!!!!

All nice and black, I used satin straight to vinyl spray paint and to be honest it came out looking pretty factory.

Then with the use of a vast number of bulldog clips that I have managed to have "liberated" from my better halves work i got on and fitted the lining.

It was surprisingly simple to do; much easier than removing it! with the ribs fitted into their clips you just carefully stretch the edged out and contact adhesive them in place (secured with bulldog clips!!)

After a few hours it looked like this

with her out in the open I remembered to take a shot of the ride height

There isn't much ground clearance any more, so I'm going to have to be fairly careful with Edinburgh's enthusiasm for speed humps and pot holes!

I then received these in the post

which led to a fun evening of making:

BOOBS!!!!

I've since made it all black and pt in a black card insert to fill the gaps up, I'm pretty pleased with it as it hides neatly under the original cover. No idea how it will sound thou!

I even had a visitor that evening

So now for the "down" I mentioned:

The following day my latest wheel whim arrived and I was so enthused by them I took one along to the workshop, with it I took a wing along so I could check fitments etc...........

(both my wings had been living in a cupboard at home to keep them safe btw)

So wheel fitting led to this

and this

really pleased with the look, the other three arn't in quite as perfect condition (due to the sellers terrible packaging, I made him refund me half back) but they will look ace I think.

Sadly thou bringing the wing along then led to this

and this

Don't Kick heavy inanimate objects when upset!!!! (I had a plaster holding my big toenail on!!)

So I had to source another one which looked like this before I sent it away to my spray dude:

Anyway, moving on.

I fiddled with distributors

I seem to have ended up with a good collection!

I had some issues with the thermostat housing, the vac advance was hitting one of the hose connections, so I ended up cutting off a small braket and then heated the nozzle to bend it out the way; I've not got an after picture but hopefully you get the idea from this pic:

having installed the dizzy finally, and stepped back to view the results of my handy work;

And over the next few evenings my good friend and namesake Simon and I fiddled with advance positions and carb set ups until..................

(video to be up loaded :P)

IT LIVES!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

sounds like an old truck at the moment as it doesn't have an exhaust but sooo pleased to see it "working"

Two minor panics during this time;

1. water apparently running out of the exhaust!!!!

- it wasn't, I left the bleed valve open on the top of the heater and forgot to close it again!

2. Oil bubbling out of the dipstick channel!!!!!!!!!!!!

- cured by removing a bung I had fitted into the oil breather hose (don't ask me why i had done that!)

Anyway, all is going well, my ankle is working again, the spray dude will hopefully have the wing back in a week or two and by then I'm hoping to have it ready to take to an exhaust builder.

An MOT is looming!

Thanks for reading!

Edited 21 October, 201312 yr by Hammerheed

Brilliant news!! :)

Its great when you put things back together and they work! :)

Really like this thread man, I had a Bready this colour myself although it wasn't as nice as your. Very jealous of those early door mirrors of your, they really are the holy grail

This just shows what a difference it makes when you put the effort into doing it all properly. This is gonna be a stunner.