VW Mk1 Golf Cabriolet Restoration

The Start

It all started with an email… I have a Mk1 Golf that has been sat idle for 18 years and needs a little TLC…Is that the sort of thing you would like to do? We didn’t need asking twice. An icon from Martins 20′s, My teens and before the other two were born the Mk1 Golf is one of our favourite cars to work on. Almost all of the parts are quickly and cheaply available from VW Heritage and they are simple, so they make a perfect project.

This belter has spent most of its 105,000 miles in Oxfordshire belonging to the owner of a local department store before being bought by its current owner who was at college at Oxford Poly in the early 90′s. About 20 years ago he left for a life abroad and the Golf got stored with his parents in Suffolk and then latterly in a lock-up in Essex which is where we pick up the story.

We had seen a good number of pictures and the car seemed solid enough, but you never can tell until you get it back home and pop it on the ramp. Apart from the fact that the paint has suffered and the trim has bleached the body is simply outstanding. No car this old has no rust, but we were so surprised by how little rot was in this car we didn’t believe ourselves until it was stripped to a shell!

There is one small hole in the top of the windscreen surround and one repair to make at the base of the near side rear arch where the mud has rotted the metal under the black plastic wheel arch. Both are easy fixes using a hand fabricated patch for the screen and a repair panel for the rear arch.

On the mechanical side it will need a little more work. We removed the spark plugs and sprayed oil into the holes before turning the engine over to check if there was any compression. Cylinders 2 and 4 had none so we will need to whip off the cylinder head and see what has gone wrong. The probability is that the valves have stuck open, but we won’t know until it comes apart. Other than that it is all the usual suspects.

Parts to order

With the car stripped the following is our parts list!

• Front discs, pads and callipers
• Rear drum rebuild kits
• Exhaust system from the down pipe backwards
• Windscreen seal and infill strip
• Outside driveshaft gator
• Hub nuts
• Cam belt Kit
• Full engine service kit including dizzy cap, rotor arm, HT leads, spark plugs, oil filter, air filter, oil
• Head set kit
• Clutch kit
• Gearbox mounts
• Engine mounts
• Front to rear fuel pipe
• Pipes to and from accumulator
• Wiper blades
• Brake flexible hoses
• Drive shaft bolts
• Front and rear plastic bumper sections
• Badges
• Radiator and all rubber hoses
• Outer section of the convertible roof
• Fuel pump

Fuel Injection System

The fuel injection system of to KMI to have that rebuilt as years of petrol have rotted away the seals and it doesn’t work anymore!  You can see the difference that a good clean can make to these components by looking through the gallery below. KMI tell us that the meetering head has significant water contamination so we will need to make sure that the fuel lines and tank have been given a thorough clean and are bone dry before we put the car back together.

Body Preparation

The shell is going straight to the body shop so whilst that is away we will sand blast the suspension components and repaint them, rebuild the engine and brakes so we can get cracked on as soon as they have finished. Their first job is to asses the state of the body and decide what needs repairing. As previously mentioned there is not a lot of body corrosion and these small areas are going to be cleaned up and fresh metal welded in. Otherwise there is heavy contamination in the bonnet and passenger side front wing. These areas will need to be bare metalled to make sure that our finish is perfect across the car. Engine bays are really difficult to prepare with a DA as there are so many creases so to save time we media blast this area. It will effectively strip off all of the old paint, surface rust, oil and contaminants that have built up over the last 30 years giving us the perfect base for primer and paint.

Wheels

The wheels have been stripped of their tyres and valves and have been sent off to Pristine Wheels who will media blast, repair and repaint the wheels to their orignal factory specification.

We always love opening a box of fresh wheels…

Tyres

The tyres that were on the car have all got perished side walls so we will have to replace them. Probably for the best, they were all over 20 years old and would have been pretty much useless anyway.

Body ready for the paint booth

This week the boys have been working on the body shell of the Golf. It needed taking back to the bare metal in a couple of areas because the paint had contamination from previous repairs and years of oil and road grim under the bonnet which would have compromised the quality of the finished job had it simply been flatted down in these areas. Otherwise we had a pretty easy time making 3 small repairs to the windscreen surround and both rear arches. There were a few small dents that needed a touch of filler, but as you can see from the pictures it is a remarkably straight body shell. At some point in its past it has had a bit of a botch repair to bracket that holds the steering rack to the body. We will grind it off and make a better job of it before the car gets painted.

Primer Coat

Here are some picture of the car in primer. It will now get a light rub down before two coats of base coat and then laquer.

Top Coat

So here are a few pictures as the Golf shell was wheeled out of the paint booth. The doors, bonnet and boot will now be painted and then the whole car given a nib and polish before they will are reunited with each other. We should have the whole thing back by the end of the week, from there on it is all about putting the car back together as the chaps in Wolfsberg intended.

Shell back and ready for re-build

We have had the finished shell delivered back to base and are delighted with the finished paint work. We will crack on with carefully re-building her now.

The Rebuild

With the shell back at the barn we could give the interior a good clean up to remove the years of mould and now, body shop dust. With the worst cleaned up it was time to run the wiring loom and then start putting the mechanical parts back in. The first thing was to install the front suspension and rear subframe so we had a rolling shell. With these done the brakes and bearings could be replaced and the various pipes and hoses run. Once the underside was back together we gave it a protective coat of Wax-Oyl before getting on with the engine bay.

The engine has been rebuilt from the block up as it had serious compression issues. The area of the car which had degraded the most over the years of inactivity was the injection system. Stale, water contaminated fuel had eaten through all of the seals and ruined the pumps, lines and the injector unit itself. We were able to either buy new items from VW Heritage, or in the case of the injection unit get it reconditioned. As with the rest of the brakes the master cylinder was seized solid so we sourced a replacement here too.

Hood

It now time to fit a new outer section of the hood. We first take plenty of reference pictures before taking the outer section off. Between the outer section and the headlining there is an insulating layer, which has fallen apart. We carefully remove it and use what is left as a template to make up a new one. Next job will be to fit the hood.

Finishing touches and shake down

The hood turned out to be a pretty tricky thing to replace. Not so complicated, but one of those jobs where you require a lot more hands and patience than you have available! Basically, like any new hood it was a very tight fit and required plenty of careful brute force to get it to place. With the hood itself fitted we then needed to cut a hole out for the rear windscreen. It is a job you don’t want to get wrong as a slip with the scalpel will ruin your day.

The front and rear screens are generally the last part of any car to go back in, so as soon as the glass was finished it was off down to the MOT station for a ticket and our Golf was finally legal again.

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