1980 B1 Passat Project

[Peter Jones]

Cheers Chris, still a little bit of work there yet.

I'm not happy 'bout the bolt length, I'll have to scrounge up a set of BMW ones which are a bit longer.

Handbrake cable will be fun, Passats are nothing like Golfs. There's a Yoke in the centre of the car that pulls a cable that runs between the rear wheels sort of a Y arrangement.

I might have to manufacture a custom cable - hooray! I can do it but it'll take a few hours to turn up ends for the bowden sheathes and crimp in a new inner cable.

Converting the front brakes to 4 x 108 will be the challenge. There's quite a few complications and approaches there.

Pete

[Jarred]

Looks like I wasn't the only one working late into the night tonight!

Looks tops with the wheels,

and MASSIVE thanks today for your help as well!

[Peter Jones]

Time now to finish off the handbrake cable tomorrow and pull the front suspension apart.

Needs struts, strut bearings, wheel bearings and all new brakes!

Think I'll use the brakes I just pulled off white.

Pete

[Peter Jones]

OK as promised I got into the handbrake cable conversion today.

These are the ingredients.

• Original cable removed from car.
• Cable set from some sort of Audi I found at the wreckers.
• cable swaging tool.

After much careful measuring I cut down the disc ends of the Audi sheaths. I'd already cut the handbrake ends off the inner and pulled he inners out of the outers.

The two end pieces just above the sheaths are the chassis ends of the original cable. I just pulled them off the original sheath. They're lightly crimped to the sheath so I drove a 10mm drift into them to open them back up again to go onto the Audi cables.



and here they are on the ends of the Audi cables. Lightly crimped with a bench vice.



Inners and cotton reels assembled.



Here it is after the test fit. I used a temporary clamp to gauge the length and keep it all together .





I trimmed the cables either side of the temporary camp and swaged in a lap splice.



Assembled cable.



Some shots now of how it fits in the car.
This is the yoke to the handbrake lever. You can see that the rod running to the handbrake lever had been lengthened to make the drum cables longer to work with the Nissan brakes .

[Peter Jones]

All fits nicely inside the wheel.

[Peter Jones]

Another item that needed attention was the traverse suspension arm under the rear. The big impact that took out the guard obvioulsy bent the thing.

Here it is beside it's replacement from an earlier passat.



That can't have been too good for the rear tracking.

[Peter Jones]

With all of that done I pulled the front struts to get started on those.

Here's some pics.

Awesome Cortina brake conversion (Not!)





But "How do you make them fit?" I hear you say..

Easy just slot the mounting holes! It'll be right if you use really big washers too!



The other side was even more professional.

Both sides had bend thinned down to clear too. Some precision angle grinding going on here!



Ever wonder what a Passat strut looks like?

Wierd huh? Takes the bigger wheel bearings of the MK2/3 size.

Strut and spring much longer than Golf.



Mmmm Cross drilled solid 239mm goodness...

[Peter Jones]

OK. It's been a while. There were some tricky bits to sort out.

Springs are signature red now.



In the course of figuring out stuff I pulled a CV and discovered it was smashed internally , here's the one that went back in.



Strut with new Pedders insert, new wheel bearing and freshly converted 4x108 drive flange. Bump stop and cap are MK1 Golf.



New strut bearing going in , they're the same as MK1 Golf.



Re assembled struts with redrilled 239mm vented discs. These were off White (Wreck to Race car thread).

[Peter Jones]

Ball joints on these are quite different to Golf. The mounting holes are slotted to allow camber adjustment as the strut is in one piece with the hub.



Trouble is if you don't do the nuts up properly this happens



This one was really bad and they'd butchered the ball joint too to try and keep the bolt in the undamaged part of the slot.



Welding was in order, They're not heat treated and just pressed steel so welding is fine.



Bit of filing and grinding and mandatory rattle can painting and good as new.





You can see where this ball joint had been moving around. Would have made for some interesting steering.

Compared to the new one it's clearly worn away around the bolt hole.



There were a mixture of bolts in there of assorted sizes and grades, I'll have to pop down the bolt bar on the weekend and grab some new ones.

[Peter Jones]

With work on the suspension halted until I can get some new ball joint bolts it's time to take a look at the cooling system.

We've never really run it for more than a few moments at a time and the temperature climbs pretty quickly.

The radiator is mechanically stuffed, all the brazed joints are broken and leaking. I've got a newer plastic header one to go in.

As we pulled the hoses off we discovered they were crunchy. They feel like they're lined with cornflakes. Looks like someone's used one of those radiator sealat products and it's coated the insides of the cooling system. Whole system will have to go.