Francisca - The Red Lady.

[Tom93]

Looks good man, if you need and 2ltr parts I have stuff laying around the shed

[Water Boy]

When removing motor undo exhuast at the cat, leave the down pipe on as you can pull motor out with it still attached.

You will beed to swap the hole loom from your 2ltr into the CL.

[Tom93]

When removing motor undo exhuast at the cat, leave the down pipe on as you can pull motor out with it still attached. .

Yep did this with the vr and my 2ltr makes it alot easier

[KI11Z]

Always waned a red car, how's the paint? Much fade? It'll look ace

[shooitt]

Yeah I haven't been very active on here lately... Lost passion for my ****box lol. As you know.
Just discovered this thread!! Woo! Can't wait to see the mk3 GTI wannabe!

Sent from my C6603 using Tapatalk 2

[Smeeeb]

Looks good man, if you need and 2ltr parts I have stuff laying around the shed

I should have everything i need, i have your number anyway if i need anything.

When removing motor undo exhuast at the cat, leave the down pipe on as you can pull motor out with it still attached.

You will beed to swap the hole loom from your 2ltr into the CL.

There's always the next time. I'm also going to have to feed the fuel return line among other things.

Always waned a red car, how's the paint? Much fade? It'll look ace

I feel like the car has had a respray sometime in it's life, either that or it's been stored inside it's whole life. The only bad fade is on the rear bumper which i find odd.

Yeah I haven't been very active on here lately... Lost passion for my ****box lol. As you know.
Just discovered this thread!! Woo! Can't wait to see the mk3 GTI wannabe!

Sent from my C6603 using Tapatalk 2

Your going to come down and help whether you like it or not.

[shooitt]

Make me

Sent from my C6603 using Tapatalk 2

[Smeeeb]

Make me

Sent from my C6603 using Tapatalk 2

I certainly will.

[HaydEn]

Moar lows stat
Moar wides stat


"I only post on Facebook if I know i am going to get likes" - M

[Smeeeb]

Hey there,

So on Sunday last weekend, Stathi or DruceJNR came down to get a front bumper off me. I decided to take advantage of this and make him help my Father and I swap the stock CL rear beam with a VR rear beam out of one of the many wrecks i have at my house.

We did the usually jacking up and prep, unfortunately seeing we have two other cars on jack we had no spare jacks to hold my little red Golf up so we used timber we had laying around to support the car.


Rear Beam Swap (3 of 12) by Smeeeb, on Flickr

Removing the original rear beam was straight forward, it was only a matter of taking the wheels off, disconnecting the brake hydrolics line, the handbrake cable. The bolt connect the suspension in, which is a nut a bolt in the CL in comparison to a bolt and nut welded in spot or something of the sort in both the VR and the GL rear beams. The only thing left connecting the rear beam to the car were three bolts, which is only a 17mm socket with a breaker bar and some elbow grease away from not being attached anymore, they are pretty seized.


Rear Beam Swap (4 of 12) by Smeeeb, on Flickr

To get to the handbrake cable you have to completely pull apart the barrel, it's a good opportunity to see the inner workings of a drum brake. A silly design really, was really fidily getting it off. You had pull the whole mechanism out the unattach the cable.


Rear Beam Swap (5 of 12) by Smeeeb, on Flickr

The rear beam i was using is from the first VR dad and i bought which was originally all destined for the black car. Those plans had changed obviously as the gearbox ended up in dads VR and the rest of the car apart from the engine and rear beam were left at Camden GTI when they converted his car from auto to manual.

Dad and i did all the prep on the new beam the night before, all pretty straight forward stuff. New bearings, new discs, new brake pads.


Rear Beam Swap (1 of 12) by Smeeeb, on Flickr

We used the brake callipers out of the black seeing they had been reconditioned to an extent not that long ago.


Rear Beam Swap (2 of 12) by Smeeeb, on Flickr

Now the main reason we swapped the rear beams and not just put the calipers on

The stock CL Rear beam - No sway bar at all


Rear Beam Swap (9 of 12) by Smeeeb, on Flickr

Stock VR rear beam - massive sway bar


Rear Beam Swap (8 of 12) by Smeeeb, on Flickr

Another major difference between the CL and VR is the VR has ABS and the CL doesn't.

"Wouldn't affect much" you say well there you are very wrong, Because the CL doesn't have ABS they have a brake distributor valve which controls how much pressure is being applied to the rear brakes and stopping them to lock up, essentially doing the same job as ABS except alot more primitive.

This was a big difference between the two beams because the CL beam had the little bracket that is used to hold the distributor valve and the VR does not.

VR beam - no bracket


Rear Beam Swap (7 of 12) by Smeeeb, on Flickr

CL beam - Bracket


Rear Beam Swap (6 of 12) by Smeeeb, on Flickr

Luckily it was an easy change as we only had to swap the foot per say of the beams over. I would not have known this at all and would have just swapped the rear beams over as they were, luckily my father knows all and spotted to problem before i went through with it completely.

Putting the new beam is was simple as putting bolts into there holes and connecting up lines, except the plates on the new rear beam were in a different place to the CL one as the car it is off was on lowering springs changing the geometry on the suspension making the plate face up more. These plates aren't very easy to re-position without lots of grunt.


Rear Beam Swap (10 of 12) by Smeeeb, on Flickr

It was a two man job for sure, no way you could position the plate and bolt it up at the same time.

By the time we had everything bolted and ready to bleed the brakes we discovered we had a major lack of brake fluid in the shed...


Rear Beam Swap (12 of 12) by Smeeeb, on Flickr

So we called it a night and went down the pub for dinner and had some delicious burgers and a beer.

Also my old car is quite dirty seeing it's been sitting stationary in the shed.


Rear Beam Swap (11 of 12) by Smeeeb, on Flickr

(it says "wash me or don't i'm a wreck not a car" i lol'd)

Last night dad and i got back to it and bled the brakes and adjusted the handbrake cable, i'm sure you all know how to do that so i won't go into massive amounts of detail.


Rear Beam Swap2 (1 of 2) by Smeeeb, on Flickr

After that we went for a little drive to test the brakes on some of the brake roads around the place, they work pretty much the same

We swapped around the tyres on the car seeing the ones i bought it with are now pretty much bald...

Having an effective wreckers of MK3 is becoming a great thing.


Rear Beam Swap2 (2 of 2) by Smeeeb, on Flickr

Except the sway makes hugely noticeable difference to corner going back and forth over the mountain to school today.


Till next time - (which will most likely be an engine swap)