Projekt Golf Zwei

[LouieP]

I scrolled up and down like a muppet. Thanks Rambo. Would like to see what you did to get rid of the sloppy shifter

[80 Vert]

I machined new bushes out of nylon but have since biffed that shifter box and updated it with a mk4 one.

[80 Vert]

The headliner now resembling something useable it could finally go back in the car. 2 of the grab handles were missing as well but lucky Rambo005 had spares so got those from him as well as some other interior bits I was missing.
The headliner isn't perfect but considering what I started with I'm extremely satisfied with the outcome.
the material I used is the same foam backed material as what's used on mk5/6 GTI sourced locally.

With the worst job done, or so I thought. My attention turned towards the door cards. Hmmm not good news there either.
Door membranes not attached properly meant the boards were soggy at the bottom, effectively ruining them.
Decision made, rip all the material off and try to salvage the boards.
The boards themselves are quite warped in places but nothing I can really do about that. The bottom 3" was just mush as these things are pretty much compressed cardboard so when they get water logged they just fall apart.

2 part epoxy resin seemed to soak in quite well and putting bulldog clips on while drying seems to have glued them back together somewhat. took ages to reconstruct the corners and bottom edge in to something useable.
Once the basic shape was there coarse sandpaper to straighten things up and then a few coats of resin on the entire bottom half of the panel.
Came across a funky green tartan I wanted to use on the Recaro seats and thought it would tie in well if it was on the door cards as well. Keeping the car the original Caprigruen so green tartan fits the build well I think.
Im still not quite done with them as I want to incorporate probably a red stitch of some kind somewhere but that will come later.


Rear panels done in the same vane, much better condition so much less work.
Very slowly the interior is starting to come together.

[brian]

That looks brilliant

[McDoof]

Very nice.
I remember trying to negotiate to buy that same golf a few years ago, but the seller wanted too much money for the condition of the car. Great to see it's getting a proper vert makeover.

[gti vr6]

Nice work John, looks smick!

[80 Vert]

Gearbox time, with the spare gearbox completely stripped and cleaned the cases got hit with aluminium cleaner which has brought them up really nice, taking off the years of crap and grime but of course raw aluminium never stays that way so I've put an etch type of 2 pack paint over them.
Used OBX diffs in the past with no issues at all and looked to do the same again this time but prices of them have gone up soo much and once you add shipping I wasn't crazy far off the likes of a Pelloquin or Wavetrac so in the end a Wavetrac as ordered along with a set of ARP ring gear bolts.
Everything looked pretty good inside so it was mainly replacing the critical bearings on the main shaft, diff bearings and re shimming the pre loads on everything.
Used a 9N2 Polo shift tower so that I could use a late MK4 shifter box and cables.


Within reason this completed the engine and gearbox to a point, few more things to do but it really was a wait till the car came off the road for the swap to begin so I shifted my attention to the seats.
Wanted to use the same green tartan on the seats, fortunately the car already had front and rear MK3 Recaros in it so that's one less thing to go and find.
Took the seats completely apart and of course the usual bolster wear to fix up from years of in and out.
Got some foam from my upholsterer mate and got to work shaping it with an air sander......VERY messy job!
Cut the stitching to release the centre panels of the seats so that those could be used as patterns for the new material.
Decided I would wash what was left of the covers which on reflection was a mistake as everything got horribly twisted and quite a bit of edge fraying.
I should in hindsight have washed the whole thing and then cut them apart. In any case it came right but wasn't as straight forward as it could have been.
Got the bolsters nice and tight so pretty happy with that, embroidery done the first centre panel went in. Pretty excited at this point. The green won't be for everyone but I absolutely LOVE it.


Had a bit more of a fight with the bases, taking the cover off a few times to add more foam here and there but over all they came out pretty good for a home job. pretty stoked actually.

[80 Vert]

Being fairly useable now I was driving it most days running errands and what ever else came up, strong smell of fuel at times I found the fuel return to the tank in the engine bay didn't even have a hose clip on it. How this thing managed to pass a modified vehicle cert is beyond me but of course these things could have changed post cert. who knows.

Talking to GTIVR6 one day he mentioned having an early VR6 / Corrado steering wheel which I thought would look cool. It had seen plenty of action and the leather was worn through on top but that would make a nice side project and besides I've always wanted to have a go at doing a steering wheel.
Cut the old cover off and separated all the pieces to use as a pattern. My upholsterer mate laughed when I told him what I was doing but he was on board to help with scrap pieces of leather and to sew them together for me. Leather is pretty tough so you really need an industrial machine.

Watched a few videos and one suggested using a sewing machine to pierce the holes for sewing the cover around the wheel, this actually worked brilliantly and made the cross stitch miles easier to do. Kind of chose the wrong type of stitch as it took forever, as in 8-10 hours 
I didn't get the pattern perfect but hey its my first go at it so I'll improve on the next one.


The easy part done I could start on the cross stitch, bought some curved needles for the job which worked well........just took forever.
Looks like I've picked one of the harder stitches to do, 2 needle cross stitch. Having to go back through the same hole twice in order to make the X but I did it, looks cool.
Feeling pretty jazzed at this point, thinking this will actually all work.

[le mans]

Looks awesome John.

[80 Vert]

During 2019 I had planned to take December off to work on this swap so that I could do it most as a job rather than as time allowed, I also didn't want this turning in to a year plus long project.
Anyways fast forward to November 19 2019 and I'd gotten all my jobs finished early so rather than taking something else on I decided I'd start a couple weeks early which looking at it now I would fully need.
At the time I didn't know just how big the project would become but from past experiences I should have known this was going to happen! 
Drove the old dunger in the shop and on the hoist, time to dismember it.
First things first, pull the ABF out. At least I could fully vouch for this engine having been driving it for a while and fortunately I'd already pre sold it to another VASK member which in early Jan 2020 I fitted it in to his car for him so that worked out very nicely.

With the front off it was nice to see the car hadn't had any frontals, only a battery box replacement which looked like it would need some work again this time round.
Decided to label the wiring I needed to keep so that once its all on the floor its easier to figure out what to discard.
Off with the axles, cut the exhaust in to pieces and in to the steel bin as I won't be using any of it.

Rolled the car forward to the gantry and yanked the engine and box out. As easy as that. Now what?
The ABF looked pretty dry so I was confident the new owner would be happy with it, took the gearbox and clutch off which could also be on sold to recover some $$ to put in to other stuff.
Having finished all my paying work for other people it meant I have a spare car space in the shop so everything that got removed from Projekt  Zwei could be laid out on the floor until I was needed or could be sold.

Up next the sub frame, struts, brakes, steering rack and lines, basically everything underneath including the fuel tank and lines were removed.
The wiring wasn't overly tidy and holes had been hacked indiscriminately where ever needed which wasn't going to fly and at this point I decided to do a semi wire tuck as well further complicating a short build time.
But hey projects are meant to grow right?

On one of my trips to Wellington during the year I'd bought a few things from Lane including an un cracked dash. The original one was badly cracked and looked to have shrunk in places, mainly in the corners near the speakers. Not nice at all.
Front seats out, carpets and dash out.
It had to all come apart back to a bare firewall for the new AC box and hydro clutch swap. Who ever did the conversion to ABF had converted the 02A gearbox to a cable operation which was never going to work for this swap so very early on I decided to get rid of it and swap to hydraulic.
Not a lot left of it now but tearing stuff apart is easy right, putting it all back together is the fun part.

[albert7550]

Hi, what kind of aluminium cleaner can you recommend for parts like the gearbox casings? Thanks

[80 Vert]

I can't recall the brand but I bought it from Supercheap.

[80 Vert]

The end of the year fast approaching there was a bunch of stuff I really needed to get done and organized before most companies shut down for the holidays, kinds of things that stop you in your tracks.
Chris at Tyretech had gotten me an incredible deal on a new set of Michelin Pilot sport tyres so the logical place to start was stripping the Chinese tyres off those Work Pietra Corse wheels, a pretty rare wheel these days.
Kerbed 360 deg on all 4 wheels  Don't know how that's possible but there you go.
Machined all 4 lips back smooth, ready to go to Pro Coat.

The sub frame in the car turned out to already be a mk3 one but they had cut the rear lugs off instead of adding threaded holes to the floor of the body.
Since I had a good K frame I binned the other one, added the mounts and bolted that in. Plan was to get all the fabrication done and figure everything out fitment wise before looking at paint.
Modified the engine block to fit the Mk2 front mount bracket giving me 2 points of reference to fit the engine, the gearbox mount is all Mk3 locating one point and the mk2 front mount locates the front.
This gave me a starting point to make the rear engine mount from scratch.

Engine sitting in place I didn't like the lean it was on so started playing with heights and angles to get things lined up. Modified the front cross member for AC pump pulley clearance.
The easiest part done I started to quickly realise all the problem areas of dealing with such a narrow engine bay. A bunch of engine in and out to finish the rear mount, made really problematic by the turbo and its associated piping.
In all heavy modifications needed to make it all work.

[80 Vert]

Another trip to AA wreckers armed with a drill and spot weld cutter yielded a factory mk6 coolant tank bracket and the whole left trans mount brackets which also incorporate the mounts for the battery tray and air box. These will be cut down to just the pieces I needed.
Temporarily re fitted the bonnet for checking clearances etc, one major problem I noticed immediately was the Mk6 pancake pipe out of the turbo was never going to work. The turbo exits directly against the RH chassis rail, a problem made worse by a drive shaft being in the same space.
Looked at all sorts of options, odd shaped flat pipe etc but nothing was really going to work so I carried on getting other problems solved.

Turned my attention to the AC system instead, funny how things change over the years. Wrecked MK3's used to be everywhere but not so anymore. Found a complete AC box and took the thing apart to clean the evaporator and re foam the control flaps.
Fitted a new heater core at the same time.
My car was a non AC model so a few extra holes had to be drilled for the box to fit, its very similar to the Mk2 one but just doesn't fit 100%. The box I ended up with was the Mk3 AC part coupled to the Mk2 control head.
The air intake doesn't line up quite right with the hole in the rain tray and as a result the dash vents don't line up either.
I decided I couldn't live with that, The box needed to go further forward where the pipes exit to make it line up so I just sectioned that part of the firewall to bring it forward the 20 or so mm it needed.
This made the box line up well and also brought the dash vent in to line, full custom pipes would need to be made once I knew what space I had left.

Having made the mount for the mk6 engine bay fuse box I was able to cut down the mounts I got from AA wreckers to find a spot for those where the battery box and air box could live for an OEM look.
I was never going to use a so called "cold" air intake with a pod filter.
A, they look crap and B, sound like crap. Not for me thanks 
Anyways, I'm doing 8-10 hour days by now and things are starting to happen but around every corner there's another problem.
My friend Filx had decided to wreck his TSI wagon which gave me the car side wire harness, ECU, exhaust sensors and a bunch of other useful parts I'd need. Spent a Saturday helping him wreck that and stripping the parts I needed out of it.
Another dead VW off to scrap.

[80 Vert]

Motor out again to start on the ABS unit and brake lines. Bit of a guessing game at this point but I was fairly certain the ECU would want to see the brake light switch and clutch switch so that would entail fitting MK6 stuff as its all totally different to anything I've used in the past.
I didn't have a new clutch cylinder yet as it had not yet arrived from overseas, this would have to be figured out later.
The MK6 master cylinder has the brake light switch on the side of it which is operated magnetically, this posed a challenge. Due to space and other factors I couldn't use a mk5/6 booster.
Lots of measuring and looking at various parts I ended up with a mk2 booster and fitted a mk6 master cylinder to it. With the ABS unit positioned I made lines from the master cylinder to ABS and out to each wheel.

The majority of the braking system figured out the engine and box could go back in for now to start on the cooling system. I wanted to leave as much of the front end as standard as possible.
I really wanted to use a Corrado VR6 radiator as it fits the MK2 but little chance of finding one here as the Corrado VR6 was never sold here.
Called Qualitat and a few other vw  places but no was the answer.
Decided worth calling my local radiator shop I've dealt with for years, YES!! In stock, unbelievable.
Not only that but it was cheap!! and turned out to be a German made Behr one.
Radiator in place and slam panel on it becomes pretty clear things are going to be tight, not to mention how to get the coolant hoses from the engine to radiator with the front cross member in the way.
I modified a MK4 AC condenser to fit on the front of the radiator which worked out really well, new drier in the factory location left just enough room for intercooler piping........hopefully.
Custom fan shroud would need to be made, if the ECU cannot see the factory fan control unit it limits power. Control unit is in the main fan.....which is far to big to fit my application.

[LouieP]

That radiator was a score! Out of curiosity, how come you reached for the mk6 ea888 and not the MQB ea888.3? I know you have one in stock

[80 Vert]

Yeah I couldn't quite believe it, especially once I got it to see it was Behr and not some cheap rubbish brand.
The motor, suppose it was the fact I had two mk6 EA888 exchange engines and decided I didn't need two of them so it made sense to use one myself.

[80 Vert]

With the slam panel on it looks like I just have enough room between the chassis rails and the radiator to run the intercooler piping, at this point I'm able to measure up and order a suitable intercooler for the job.
The one I ended up with is rated for 350hp so that leaves plenty of scope for any future tweaks if that eventuates.
By now I've also made the pipework for the A/C, using a mix of mk3 / 4 here but didn't really take any pics of that. Plenty of work in just those alone.
The wiring was often in my way but decided to leave it as it would eventually end up  semi tucked in the chassis rail to clean the bay up a little.

On to the next issue, power steering! No provision for power steering pump on these engines and not really any room for it anyway due to the oil filter housing being on that side of the motor.
Mk5/6 electric rack wont work as its far too big. Back to the Mk3 p/s rack and a hydroelectric pump to run it.
After doing a bit of research I imported an Opel Zafira pump, it even has a control unit so that it only runs when there's load on it ie when driving straight it draws little to no power but its able to run as stand alone so it has no can bus type issues.
Luckily there was a perfect spot for it in the LF inner guard.

Modified the mount that came with the pump to get it in there, its very very tight but seems to work well.
With the pump in place I made new high and low pressure lines back to the steering rack that just run under the chassis rail back to the stock clamp on the sub frame.


Since I'm using a mk6 engine bay fuse box this already has a power output dedicated to an electric steering system with a 80A fuse so its quite nice and tidy.
soo many problems, so few solutions haha. On to solving the turbo outlet issue. Drastic measures needed but more on that next week if anyone is still reading this!

[gti vr6]

still reading 

[Trofeo]

Another epic build. So much talent!