Thanks for the reply mate, I'll be watching out for this one in Oct. I just feel it's gonna ba a good build thread.

cant wait for the resto, i may have to join you in 2013 for some show with my mk1 :-D

Slight update with a change of plans...

Originally I was saying that i would keep this Mk1 completely standard once i've restored it in a couple years time, but after much thought i've decided to make a start on this now modifying it too (slightly), and will keep my white one completely stardart instead when i eventually restore that :)

This is meant to be a restoration that i'll be doing over around 10 months ready for some 2013 shows, so there won't be very regular updates, or any interesting ones for a while yet.

My plans are to fully strip the shell, sort out the outer sills and inner sills (if needed), then once its structurally sound, i'll make a spit for it and do the rest of the bodywork on there. My grandad is letting me use his garage because my brother refused to let me take over ours. So i pulled out this tank which has been in there since 1997 from his garage-

And painted the walls and floors ready for zeee polo

I had some time today to start stripping the car down, so far i'm very happy with the amount of rot i've found-

Not a pretty sight, but I was expecting so much more rot under that seal from looking at other mk1s. its all just rust stains and surface rust other than the hole you see. The seal was pretty far gone...

Drivers side however, not a spot of rust to be seen

the original door membranes had never been touched, which would probably explain why every bolt on the doors were so difficult to remove!. . .

The boot floor and wheel well are mint

The floor pan on the car seems to be completely rot free too, the crap you see all over it is just adhesive left over from the carpets and other poop

The passenger side inner sill looks completely rust free from the interior, but the drivers inner sill will most probably need a bit of work around the lower edges...

back in the garage

aaaaaaaaand thats all I've managed to do so far. Not really trying to rush as i've got plenty of time :)

Hopefully next saturday will get the wings off (revealing more rust i presume), fuel tank out, engine out, so it will be ready for me to remove the sills :)

Can I have the merc please?

oh yeah erm good work on the polo too

Never Ian

got a little bit more done

The shell is nearly completely stripped now... revealing a slightly largish hole on the o/s inner wing, and a bit of surface rust, but again was expecting worse and at least the apost is solid

Passenger side inner is holed too not as badly though, except theres also a nice hole on the apost

dropped the remainder of the engine and gbox out :)

The engine bay has poop loads of surface rust, hopefully it wont be too pitted or holed once i've grinded/blasted it all back

and now its back in the garage :)

I've began drilling out the spotwelds on the sill, which has got to be the most tedious task lol

Thats all really... Will remove it fully next week and hopefully get the new one/ones cut and lined up ready to be welded on... thats if i dont find loads of rot on the inner sill! which i most probably will do

Edited 6 October, 201213 yr by Gamu

Awesome work!

cheers dude :)

done a bit more to it today

Drilled the front section of the sill off... It was in good nik actually but i knew there was some rust lurking around the inner sill so i had to remove it to fix it properly.

Basically, I originally bought full length sills for both sides of the car, but the sills arent 1 piece from factory, the rear end of the sill is part of the rear quarter panel, and the front section a completely separate panel, they're spot welded together where they overlap near the middle.

so i'm gonna do my best to replicate it because i dont want it to be obvious that the sills have been replaced. so i've got genuine front sections, and will fabricate the rear end using pieces from the pattern full length panels I've got, then weld them together in the middle like factory-ish :)

The all important stamp

the genuine panel looks as though it will fit beautifully :)

I had no clamps, so heres a lovely view of my arm, my hand looks very dislocated somehow.. lol

Heres a previous repair that was done to it, a piece of poo really.. been welded what seems randomly!

I kindof want to keep as much original metal (where good) that i can, so i've only cut/drilled a small section of the rear end off... just enough space for me to sort out the other rusty areas that have been revealed..

A close up of whats lurking under the sill...

Not too bad really, will replace the whole lip, which shouldnt be too difficult as its kindof a floating panel with just a few spotwelds and a simple enough shape.

This is whats behind the old patch that was welded in,

Again, not too bad, i have inner arch (which is what you see there) repair panels which should spread far enough to enable me to chop all the rot out :)

and heres how i left her....

Will try to fabricate all the pieces that need doing over sunday and maybe tack them in place, or fully weld up.. also got to treat all the accessible areas to a lik of por15