Well, without getting too emotional about it lol, after a fair bit of work on this thing in the past couple weeks to get it upto scratch, it finally got the blue plate stamped on the front and some registration plates for Tassie. To say I'm relieved that it didn't struggle going over the pits is an understatement. They even stamped my name on the blue plate as the 'modifier', feels like I'm now very tied to this vehicle for life now!
I've had some pretty big ups n downs amongst the build, my motivation definitely dwindled off here and there. When I first started, I was ridiculously clueless, not an idea in the world. My family at the time were also restoring cars, XR6 turbo into a XB falcon, and a 50's customline, so I just jumped on that band wagon. I had a mk4 gti golf at the time which I was doing all them 'ricer' mods to like blacking out badges and dumb stuff like that haha, but I just had no money at all so when I could buy a project car for $250, why not. The mk2 was at least 'rare', so gave me a good incentive to plow some time into it, but there was a reason it cost only $250. I was just clueless as to how much work there actually was lol.
When I first got it, it came with not much at all so the best thing I could do for the first year was fix the underside. Cut out some minor rust areas, learnt to weld patches back in, for some reason I thought it would be cool to not grind back the welds, leave them there as more battle scars..... what an idiot haha. Scraping the body deadener off with a heat gun and spatula was somewhat therapeutic, but just heavy on time. But its all I could do anyways, no money, no engine to put in the car, just fix the body. Spraying the underside was a good learning curve, could be messy, just lay it on thick, didn't matter. But still so far from any hope to getting it on the road.
Few months later, I called a guy up north of Tassie, in hopes of finding a 1.8t. That was the engine that was in my mk4 gti, so I wanted it in the mk2 as well, its also the first thing that pops up on google when you type in 'mk2 golf cool engine swap'. We chatted, he had nothing, he was going to enquire around for me. Then he just loosely mentioned he had some mk3 VR6 that had been causing him trouble. So I did a quick bit of googling, and sure enough I bought it off him for $1000. Sight unseen, no idea on engine condition, just took the plunge. Best. Decision. Ever.
Did some basic diagnosing (ie. google 'mk3 VR6 misfiring, how to fix') lol. Hayd3n on this forum actually helped me the most by telling me that the ignition coil can work intermittently, so after spotting a crack in it, I changed that and wallah. A running VR6. Sure I could have sold the whole car for probs 4-5k, but nope, tear it down for the mk2. Also, best decision ever. Learning that most things can be swapped from chassis to chassis between the A2 and A3 platforms was great. Everything that came off the VR6 got cleaned, rust proofed, sprayed and then onto the mk2. Some people ask me why I went to so much pain of swapping the dash as well. Because I just didn't know much about auto electrics. Didn't know what to do with the immobiliser or the clocks, so I just took the entire mk3 and threw it into the mk2. You can only google so much then you really need a fair bit of experience behind you to know what to do. Anyways, happy days.
Getting into the shell restoration was the longest times when I just thought it wouldn't end. I stripped the whole body to bare metal, which was enormous hours. Least I know I have definitely treated as much rust as possible. Any little stone chips that have been on the car previously with a little tiny rust hole? Well that rust has crept underneath the paint like some sort of spider web about 10-20mm around that one little stone chip. So if you don't strip it back in those areas, that rust will be bubbling through the paintwork in 5 years time. I also wanted the sunroof gone. It was an aftermarket chop and looked awful. Welding that closed was a crap job, warped the roof something crazy and took a lot of beating and bog to fix. That definitely is the worst part of the overall restoration, should've done my research a bit better there.
Spraying for the first time was exhausting, and I'm pretty terrible at it too haha. Spraying out of the gun is pretty easy motion wise, I don't have any problems with that, but setting your pressure/fan correctly is tedious, plus all my equipment is about as low on the budget as you can get to spray a car with. I find it tough to avoid orange peel, I definitely need to improve my knowledge for gun setup in the future. I also sprayed under my house, so dust in the paintwork was inevitable. Prep work is 100% key. The amount of times I didn't sand well enough, looked extremely obvious. Then it required stripping the whole panel and starting again. It's hard not to be impatient, it just takes such a long time. I also sprayed the car metallic, why on earth did I think my first paint job in metallic was a good idea? I'll never know.
The final touches to the car was very enjoyable, just all the little tinkering jobs like getting bumpers on, making the windscreen wipers work, splicing in the tail lights, fiddling around with interior stuff. Again though, everything was done on a budget so I re-used all my window trims, bumpers were pretty cheap and crap quality, some of the tint on rear window has been damaged, all things I just can't afford to keep forking cash out for. Definitely a lot of compromising. The engine is definitely in need of some loving so I'll have to save my $$ and consider pulling that out in the future for a rebuild, another thing to learn.
The car will never be driven in the rain haha, I promised myself that after finishing off the underside. It'll be a sunday cruiser, occassionally drive it to work, maybe even take it to a car show, not that its really that special to anyone else, just to me and the very few early model golf enthusiast. I'm glad I was able to get it registered and I won't be letting that lapse any time soon. My only final touches I hope to make in the coming year will be a nice 2.5" exhaust and some method of lowering it (definitely not my cheap coilovers that makes it feel like a gokart). Then just drive it until the engine really needs some attention, its at 234xxxkm so it has definitely had a fair share of driving.
All in all, have learnt lots, so can't complain. And the car should be worth more than what it cost me, so that's at least a perk too haha. Now to sink my time and money into my mk3 now that I have bit more of an idea with what I'm doing lol.
When you have taken apart all the fuel lines during the transplant and swapped them between cars, there's not a better feeling of having a fire extinguisher close by
Interestingly, took the scales home from work today. Boom, 1102kg, with 3/4 tank fuel. So lets rip off about 35kg in fuel from that and we sit at about 1067kg, driverless. Not stoked, thought it was less, dare I say it but I thought it would be below a tonne! It's about 30kg heavier over the front right wheel than it is the left. I'd love to get it lighter, but who can be bothered, it's already fun enough to drive
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Originally Posted by vwmk2
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