1.9 refurb project (about time too)

[Mac Crash 78 1 Cars]

Have had this car since 2011 and wished I'd have started a project thread back then at the time. Car has been reasonably cared for and used until being sat up a few years ago mostly due to work circumstances involving a daily run to Aberdeen (180 miles trip) every day for the last 9 years. Glad to say that I eventually had the luck and opportunity to start up business on my own and so in theory now have no excuse for not having the time to do it and get my GTi back on the road where it belongs.

 

I happen to have one of those fancy (highly recommended) CTEK battery chargers which didn't take very long to tell me that my battery was done for... gutted about that because it was a Bosch Silver type, no one to blame but myself though so borrowed my neighbour's trade card and picked up a new Yuasa battery from Halfords. Engine fired up immediately with good idle speed and oil pressure... brought up to temperature, everything seemed to be okay although I'm aware that any car that's been stood for a while outside needs to be properly looked over and checked. So careful drive round to the workshop where some space has been made for it. Thought I'd give it a quick wash first before putting it inside and mostly to hose down the scuttle panel where debris from trees had settled.

 

Then the low coolant light came on, at first I thought it was just from water accidentally being introduced into the coolant tank sensor from washing the scuttle area but soon realised something was amiss when there was steam coming from the exhaust and the engine started misfiring. Sure enough a pool of coolant under the car traced to a leaking exhaust manifold gasket, we'd snapped the last stud when fitting a new manifold several years back on a cold driveway and had always meant to address it but as it had a new gasket and no visible gas leak and wasn't audible I'd left it. Might have been a blessing as it made the coolant leak easy to find and I'm hoping confirms that it's the head gasket gone and nothing worse. Video link below.

 

 

So next job is head off for inspection and if all is well i.e. it's just the gasket then something just a wee bit better we have laying around with steel valves and a piper cam will be going back on.

 

Car inside now with some workshop space set aside for refurb.

 

List is long but hopefully won't prove too extensive. Main intention (long intended) had been to remove the existing beam and fit a new uprated beam which I have nearly finished collecting all the parts together for. There there are some areas around the drivers floorpan and O/S/R sill area/jacking point to repair. Once the beam is done then an upgrade of the front suspension to balance the car properly. Driver's electric window mechanism finally fell to bits inside the door, but we might be able to save that with spares from the rally car as a new set of polycarb windows arrived for it last week and so the window mechanisms are now spares. The rest is cosmetic and paintwork.... mostly...

[cybernck 402 1 Cars]

So... what's happened with this?