So as promised, a proper update with pictures!

Had a fun old day yesterday. I'm not even sure how much of that is sarcasm. Went and met up with my mate at about 3pm to get my coilovers on, as he has a driveway and better tools than I currently do. I measured up the ride height from the top of the arch to the bottom of the wheel all around before we did anything and they were as follows;

Fronts - 60.7cm

Rears - 62.5cm

We set about getting the nearside front shock off first, it came off okay once we'd fiddled about and worked out the best way to take off the bolts. At this point I got a picture of the shocks and the coilovers for comparison.

This was before we wound down the coilovers, when would down there was about 4.5mm of thread left before the very bottom. At this point we started to hit some problems, as we didn't have spring compressors. We got them all ready to bolt up and compressed them by jacking the beam up and bolting at the top. The first time this failed miserably as we'd put them together slightly wrong and the little ball bearing that stops the shock was the wrong way round and when we were jacking the suspension through we lowered the car and the shock just went straight up through the whole. Luckily not too far and the bonnet was open so it caused no damage. We then got them the right way round and it all went together fine. So we had one wheel done and we were fast running out of daylight.

The next one was the worst. I forgot to take a picture but the top of the offside strut (the part that the allen key goes into) had rusted quite badly and had stiffened right up. The way we finally managed to get it off was my friend had to support the allen key with his foot, while I pushed the spanner from underneath. That was a sight to see! But in the end we got there and we started to make progress. He made a start on the back while I finished off the front offside. By this time it was completely dark and we were using a lamp as out source of light. It wasn't too bad as we knew what we were doing by this point!

So we finally got three of four done and lowered that side down so it was sat on at least two of it's lowered wheels. It was looking pretty decent at this point but I decided i wanted to go lower so we wound down a bit more.

so we got it back up and lowered them a little more and then did the final side and got it down on all fours to see how she looked.

As you can see, it's incredibly low on the rears! We'd wound it down as far as they'd go with the helper springs still on. i measured the ride height again at this point and they were sitting like this.

Fronts - 53.5cm

Rears - 52.5cm

So the rears had gone down 10cm at this point.

And at this point we ran it up and down the road a couple of times to check all was okay. It was at this point that I could hear a bizarre grinding noise coming from the front offside wheel and we were trying to work out what it was as we were both in a hurry to get going, it was 9pm and I had work at 5am, he had to pick his girlfriend up from work at 9.45. We quickly got the car back up on axle stands and had a poke around and eventually worked out that the backside part of the brake disc had been knocked and was rubbing. So we got that fixed back into place and drove to pick up his girlfriend so he could be behind me to see what I couldn't, and as a back up if the worst happened. It was a little bit too low on the rears but it was too late to change it so we arranged to meet up again today to adjust the rears. I liked how low it sat but it rubbed a little around sharp corners with one or two people in the car, so it would have been unbearable with 4 or 5. It's worth noting that we'd left the 5mm spacers from the previous wheels on.

Here are some pictures I took while waiting for my girlfriend to finish work.

Good old DIY hands;

Here's your average 5'5" 21 year old female next to the car.

Went back to his today after I finished work to get the car back up and adjust the rears because they were so low that they were just impractical. I noticed on the way there that I had to hold the wheel off to the right because I was getting some pull, so I decided I'd try and get an alignment booked in today (best had, going to be on the motorway for the first time in 3 days!) but focused on getting the car raised first. I'd previously forgot to mention that we'd also fitted a cone filter the previous night. But it was making the car smell too oily in the cabin so I took it off again. It did sound good though.

After raising the rears up i measured it one last time and the rears were now 55.4cm so we'd brought it up almost 3cm. I'm still very happy with how it looks though.

I went into Kwik-Fit (I know, I know, I was in a rush) to get my wheel alignment done and it turned out that my camber and toe angle were a few degrees out each. I did notice that when he was setting up the wheel alignment machine he entered the car as a 90-94 Polo, which obviously it isn't. But I don't think it affected the final outcome. He had to heat up the track rod ends in order to adjust apparently. Cost me £44.95, which could have been worse. Here are the before and after measurements from the wheel alignment, camber is still 2 degrees different on the front offside, so no doubt that tyre will wear out quicker.

But overall, I'm happy with how the car now looks, the steering isn't scarily light anymore and it's not pulling to the side. My rear nearside shock is making a squeaky noise whenever it's worked, but I'm hoping that will just be it settling and not anything worse than that.

Here are some final shots I took this afternoon. Needs a clean!

Hope you enjoyed this post. :P

May go even lower when it settles! mine did.

Looks very nice though

Edited 15 February, 201511 yr by vdoubleu

On the first set of pictures the helper springs are at the very bottom of the thread. I was getting some pretty excessive rubbing, whereas now it doesn't seem too bad.

The ride is pretty horrible on the Cornish roads, but I've been in worse. The road's are pretty awful around here.

Thanks, I'm pretty happy with it. :) We'll see how it holds out on the M5 in a few days, a little bit nervous!

A quick before and after (With a flipped image of the before)

So I've had my first brush with an insurance company. They told me that it would be £23.95 to declare my car as lowered, but now that I'm actually trying to declare it, they're telling me it'll be £52.73. ><

All cleaned up and ready for the journey today!

Happy with the way she looks now... Couple of bits left to do though!

Nice wheels 😉 looking smart

Haha, funny you should say that.

Thanks man, she's looking good now!

Next job is the rust, wanna get it sorted before the MOT in May.

We also made it up the M5 okay. Felt sorry for her, when we were doing 80 consistently. Poor girl was screaming, 5th gear isn't long enough for high speed!

Edited 20 February, 201511 yr by mbusby993

On the way up the M5 I appear to have lost a centre cap, which was annoying but it meant I had an excuse to replace the remaining VW ones with shiny new BBS ones. These turned up today so I got them all fitted up and they look great!

Edited 21 February, 201511 yr by mbusby993

Successfully made the 400-mile(ish) round trip up to visit family and back, and a fair few miles while we were up there too. She did alright, considering how worried I was about a few hours of motorway speeds!

As I mentioned in my previous post, somewhere along the way I lost a centre cap so I've gotten all of them replaced with new BBS ones. They still need a spot of lacquer. But as the car's in desperate need of a clean now, after we got home and a bird kindly shat all over it, I'll wait and do it all at once.

Here's a pic I took this morning. Happy with the way it looks now, could possibly even go a little lower at the front.

Quality isn't great, it was taken from a distance, zoomed in.

Edited 28 February, 201511 yr by mbusby993

Finally gave her a clean today, but then I think karma came around and bit me for letting her get so dirty as I then managed to kerb one of my wheels this morning. Not very happy!

I know that the outer is flash red and I'm unsure, but I think the black is just a regular matte black.

Anybody got any good tips for touching up this sort of damage? Can't really afford to refurb the wheels at the moment, just looking to touch up. It doesn't appear to have damaged the wheel too much, just stripped a bit of the paint.

Gave the car a clean about 3 days ago... Less than 24 hours later a bird had done about 7,000 sh*ts on it.

72 hours later and it looks like this. Absolutely miserable, love Cornish weather at this time of year! ><

Oh, and I've got some wind deflectors on the way! Gonna be nice to be able to open my window when it's raining. Plus I just generally think they look good.

Edited 12 March, 201511 yr by mbusby993

I also had a bit of a play around on one of the online modders, and I think this is a thing I'd like to do in a few years...

Would love a Mk2 'loon one day!

Nothing huge to report, I've got a couple of little bits done here and there but I've not really got room to work on here without either driving 30 miles to my mums, or 8 miles to my girlfriends mums where I have to use a stone-chippings driveway.

However, I sorted my leaky rocker gasket out by fitting a new one. Didn't do it up tight enough at first and it still seemed to leak, but I believe it's okay now. Got to keep an eye on it!

Just looks like 16 years of built-up crap to me. Cleaned around the edges but forgot to take a photo! Looked much better before fitting the new gasket. (Yes, my hot air pipe is held together with gaffer tape. There was an... incident.)

I also thought to take a photo of my gearbox while I was in/around/underneath the car and it's clear that it's been leaking over time. I didn't, however, manage to fill up my gearbox oil because I couldn't fit my drain plug hex bit in past a bracket holding wiring and plugs! Not really sure how to get around that...

Unclip retainer for connector out of eye on gearbox (arrow 2)

Ideal, I figured something would just pop out, but thought I'd check first! I'll get it done soon. :)

The gearbox oil leak looks like it's probably came from the selector shaft seal

I understand that's a fairly common one? How difficult are they to replace. I don't want to put much more money into this car to be honest, it's becoming a right money pit.

It's not really economically viable to keep spending on a car that I feel is just gonna let go one day in the not too distant future.

Have a look at this http://www.clubpolo.co.uk/forum/index.php?showtopic=340276#entry2658556I posted a document on how to replace the seal without removing the box :)

Seal http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/181423974465?_trksid=p2060353.m1438.l2649&ssPageName=STRK%3AMEBIDX%3AIT

Ah brilliant! I'll have a look at that when I'm on the pc next. That's not too bad for the seal, I'd say £4.95 isn't going to make too much of a dent. [emoji38]

Got a couple of bits done today. I topped up my gearbox oil although it wasn't as empty as I suspected. Only about 800ml went in. I also managed to finally fix my squeaky coilover! Touch wood. I had the wheel off and pushed up from the bottom of the hub and it shifted the top mount enough that it was no longer wonky and now it's blissfully quiet. Didn't even need to take off the coilover as I suspected I would have to.

Bought some new Pioneer speakers today to replace the stock speakers. I think the aftermarket Sony head unit I have was putting out a bit too much power and they were blowing considerably.

The set I bought came to £45 for 4 speakers and sound 10x better.

We'll see how well my awful crimping and the spade connectors hold out. Hopefully I won't have to re-do my work any time soon.

If the weather keeps up I've got a few plans for this week!

Wednesday I plan on Getting her up on stands and grounding down the rear arches to rust treat, prime and paint.

Thursday I'll hopefully be cutting out and fibreglassing my rust patch under the door. Not an ideal solution but I'm very skint and my MOT is looming just four weeks away.

Friday there's a meet in Truro so she'll be getting a good wash and wax. If I'm feeling brave I may drop a few more turns on the coilys. Even if just for the meet. I can still make it over speed bumps so I'm clearly not low enough!

Just Got to pray for good weather!

This is going to be a fairly picture heavy thread, just to worn you all!

I've had a fairly productive day today, I managed to crack on despite the heavy wind and sort out my arches. It's far from a perfect job, but it's a damn sight better than the horrid orange tinge of rust and bubbly paint!

I'm going to try and organise the pictures I took into some sort of order, as they seem to be all over the places.

Pulled up at my mums place at about 12pm and got the car up on stands and wheels off etc;

Did the left side first, as this side wasn't as bad as the right. I attempted to start this job back in November before uncovering a hole, concluding it was too cold to do anything useful and giving up. So the rust didn't look as bad on this side, and there was already a touch of fibreglass.

This was as it was after I removed the wheel, so i got stuck in with the wire wheel and after a while it looked a bit more like this;

Even that looks a fair amount better than it did initially. You can see the part that was already fibreglass down at the bottom and it's reassuring that the fibreglass held up fairly well over winter. I brushed Kurust on at this point, forgot to take any pictures of that but it was interesting to watch it react with the metal. i'd heard mostly negative about Kurust but it did a fairly good job of prepping up the metal that was there. I mean, it won't last forever but it's done the trick for now.

After letting the Kurust do it's job I got in with fibreglassing up the areas that needed patching/filling. The side i'd done previously wasn't too bad.

After drying and sanding down;

So that side was ready for paint. In between these sections we prepped the right side too, but I thought the pictures would show better in 'side order' so to speak.

The right side looked considerably worse, the left side didn't have any rust bubbling. The pictures don't do it justice, to be honest.

You can see that it looks much worse than the other side. Undeterred, I cracked on with my drill. I had a lot of fun with this!

Put Hope to work with the wire brush first though! A girl who's willing to get stuck in to dirty car jobs is one worth keeping. i'm sure she's glad of her worth.

Rust flakes everywhere!

I forgot to take a photo of the arch when it had been sanded, so here's one of it all fibred up and waiting to dry. And one of it sanded for good measure.

So the next step was to tape up newspaper everywhere ready for a coat or two of primer!

(May have caught her unaware here!)

Initial primer coats on either side;

Already an improvement!

Got a topcoat on as well, and it's not perfect but it looks better. Needs lightly sanding down, washing and then a polish and hopefully it will blend in a tad better. but it still looks a lot better than it did! Oh, and ten points to anyone who can complete the Sudoku challenge on the newspaper!

And one last dodgy picture from one of those apps that lets you put two images together!

Some of the damage. I think she got more primer than the car!

Overall, it's a hell of a lot better than it was, but it could also be much better still. It'll do for a car that only cost me £380 and I'm not even confident will pass it's MOT.

A job well done, I'd say.

You shouldn't have put a solid line of masking tape around the area. Should have put it further up and fanned the paint out would have made it 10 times easier to blend.

Came out pretty well though a lot better than before! White shows rust a mile off!