Getting there... It'll soon be ready to use after i've bled the brake system and got the wheels with tyres back on

 

 

Wellers test fitted front and rear with the replacement wing back on, they don't actually poke out as much as I had feared.

 

I'd imagine i will still need to roll the arches and go for some tyres with a bit of stretch though!!

Edited 6 March, 20179 yr by nope

It's been a while, and a fair bit has happened that I haven't caught up on yet so i'll do my best to try remember the order in which it happened.

It was ready  to take it out of the garage, first time in a long time. Just to try out the brakes and make sure I was happy with everything i'd done underneath.
(please ignore the shoddy wing that was put on whilst the replacement was off being painted, and all the chalk marks noting where all the dents were! )

 

Turns out the brakes are horrendous, with no servo they are just plain dangerous.  More to come on brakes later!

 

So back in the garage it went... note having no bumpers meant having no indicators.. yet. So I had play around see where I could put the original indicators from the bumpers.

Dont worry, I used the old smashed up grille that first came with the car before anyone complains about cutting it up!

 

   or    

 

I did prefer the version inside the grille for a little while as it was something a bit different but never fully committed to sticking with it. Finally settled on a different configuration which comes later.

 

I think shortly after this I took a trip down the west coast to fetch a corrado interior that i'd found for an absolute steal, only kept the front seats and largely binned the rest which wasnt in as good condition, after scavenging all the spare trim clips and brackets of course. Corrado seats are comfy as ....

 

 

Next up I was getting fed up of the ugly steels that have been on for testing and I couldn't get around having the wellers on, they were just too wide and I don't like the poke look, I like to keep things flush and it turns out as wellers are welded all the way around the centres, theres no easy way to narrow them and no one was prepared to try. So there was a set of baby G60 steels I found cheap over in germany that have a similar design, just with nowhere near as much dish, they were delivered and I got to work on a very quick overhaul of each wheel before getting some new rubber put on.

(original -> keyed up ↵ primered -> painted).  All in a days work.

 

 

 

New rubber fitted and new wheels on. Starting to get there. Some spacers bought for the rear (still not fitted as waiting for correct length radius bolts to arrive) and some smoothed centre caps to hide the wheel bolts (fitted later)

 

 

Whilst waiting for the spacers and bolts to come through I had some new VWII calipers, sourced from a GTI golf Mk3 arrive.  PAIN IN THE ASS.  Didn't fit as bolt spacing was different so I had to buy a pair of G40 carriers from Germany for nearly £70.00!  Oh well, whilst im at it, might as well do the lot, new vented 20mm discs and a brembo pads. I just want the damn thing to stop when I press the pedal rather than thinking about it for 3/4 of the pedal travel!  So calipers were blasted, overhauled with new seals and bleed nipples (pistons were ok to re-use) and fitted and given a good few licks of paint.  Finally after a good few brake bleeds i've managed to get them to feel good! It's no F1 set up but its a hell of a lot safer now than it was before.

 

 

Back on the road now and keeping the bumperless look, indicators were required! So quite simply just used the side repeaters from the replacement wings... used the wiring holes in the front valance from the original indicators... and mounted the orange repeaters with magnets!  Much tidier in my opinion.

 

 

Passed MOT with no advisories so was absolutely beaming after that!

They couldn't fault what i'd done with it underneath so that's a big confidence booster about doing some more work (or less) on it in the future.

 

Finally had the bonnet and wing back from re-spray and now my front end looks 100% shiny. The rest of the car however.... 

 

Next chapter will probably be in a month or so on the new engine, and hopefully have the spacers (finally) so that my wheels actually sit flush with the outer arches.

Still a fair way to go but starting to see the end of the project in sight!

 

This looks mint! I’m interested in your brake setup! Can I mail you to discuss as I want haha! 

Edited 24 December, 20178 yr by micky1991

Quite like the inserted indicators, ill have that grill if its going spare

On 12/24/2017 at 00:45, micky1991 said:

This looks mint! I’m interested in your brake setup! Can I mail you to discuss as I want haha! 

 

Its a fairly common conversion to use the VW11 calipers with a thicker vented disc, i think the original disc is 12mm and uses thick pads, then going vented will use a 20mm thick disc combined with thinner pads to make up for the space difference.  The caliper carrier I had to buy to make it fit my hub was for a G40 as the original carriers that came with the calipers were from a GTi 3 golf, so were quite different.    A little bit of research shows that there are some VW11 calipers that you can buy which are direct fit, from memory I think the early Golf MK1 GTi model are direct fit so will save the extra hassle of buying overpriced carriers from german ebay.

 

On 12/24/2017 at 10:26, kiran_182 said:

Quite like the inserted indicators, ill have that grill if its going spare

 

Thanks, it was just a little play around to see what would work, but if you see in the other picture the grille is all smashed up hence why it was used as a test to see what it would be like.  I still have it but it is in farily bad condition!