Adi's PB powered mk2 golf GL *TAKE 2*

Well I got the clutch and cover plate off (with starter ring), hoping that will bolt straight to the ABF clutch disc.... Oh and it would appear I had a lucky escape with the clutch, it was dying a horrible death yet it felt pretty normal

I took delivery of this rotten heap o crap the other day. I swear I've never seen a golf with so many holes! Unfortunately due to being made redundant I had to make do with whatever donor was available locally and cheaply, so no ABF



Here's the tall block 2E and other crap that'l end up in my mk2



280s and widetrack... oh go on then



Well quite a bit of stripping of the donor car has happened today, mainly because pikeys found where my garage was and have seen the donor car outside my garage, and in case they come and nick the donor, I want to make sure I have what I need.

First of all I had a look through the history of the donor, nearly a FSH, tax discs back to 1997 and this...



Who would pay that for a mk3 golf? haha. I had some difficulties in removing the rolling mk3 front end, as some numpty had snapped a bolt, tack the half of a bolt on, and run a crap bit of weld between the subframe and chassis!! This is what happens when you attack it for an hour with a lump hammer and a chisel



Then I dragged the running gear out



Then pulled the widetrack rear beam out



Then dragged the mk3 out the way with the trusty laguna and ended up with this



Made room under the mk2 front and ended up with a big pile of golf crap



This is the mk2 bay before I took the old 1.8 GTI downpipe off



Then me and a mate moved the mk3 stuff in



Stripped this rats nest out the mk3



Thought it was a good time to call it a night, cover up the mk3 and put it all away



Nest up, removing the mk2 loom, and bay cleaning!

I dont understand?Why is it a 5 stud when it is a 1992/93

I was under the assumption that 280mm brake set ups were all 4stud bar the early vr6's.

All mk3 GTI's were 5 stud, even the early ones. Its only basic mk3's (like yours ) that had 4 stud hubs. Also all the 8v GTI mk3's had 280s, but the 16v and VR6 had 288s I've even got the 22mm master cylinder like I had on the last GL if you remember we fitted a new one to. Makes all the difference, didn't you swap your MC for a bigger one?

Yes i went 22mm.Theres nothing basic about my car
Im pretty sure your wrong,but i cant be bothered to search to prove my point.Maybe tomorrow.
Its a while since i did my brake upgrade so i could be wrong.To stay 4 stud i had to use G60 discs and pads if i remember rightly.

I don't think I've ever seen an early mk3 GTI on 4 stud, and this is definately a K reg. And yes you did use G60s. Today I learnt that the mk3 GTI's and VR6s didn't have a widetrack rear beam, it was only a few basic 4 stud cars that had a 20mm wider rear beam I never knew that. So it didn't actually matter to you which rear beam you used on yours, if you wanted 5 stud you'd only have to change the discs. So now I need 2 10mm spacers for the back wheels to get "full widetrack".

Mine had the widest rear axle out of the lot of the mk3's.Chris Knott has a massive thread on cgti with all the dimensions.
The reason i fitted a NARROWER rear beam to mind is so that when i get some proper wheels for it i have a lot more room to play with.I shortened it by 20mm hence the reason with the last set of wheels i had to use 10mm spacers either side to get them to sit correct.

Heres some other info you may like to know.
http://www.clubgti.com/showthread.php?138484-Rear-axle-back-plate-to-back-plate-dimensions-FAQ/page2

Also using spacers to make your car wide track is cheating.Your car will only be halftracked
You need to find an early mk3 driver 1.8 drum brake rear beam which is 1376mm to be a grown up wide track.I scrapped mine. Infact im sure i gave it to you to scrap

the pikeys got there 1st Wouldn't have had an anti roll bar anyway.

Go aftermarket.Shouldnt make too much difference on a the rusty tintop mk2's anyway.Just the lardy mk3s lol

I quite like the look of the fancy ones you can get for fabia VRS's. Doubt it would make any difference unless I was tracking it.

Been down the garage today, to see to the mess left by all the weld on the subframe mount. This is what I was greeted with



Buzz buzz, grind grind



Then a coat of zinc primer. Its not pretty but it'l do

Now the man-flu is going away slowly I've done a bit on it, got all the mk3 running gear bolted up in place, steering UJ on rack, flexis screwed to calipers, etc



Then I decided I would stick some wheels on the back of it and push it out, theres no way I can do the wiring in the garage.



Was really nice to see it out in the light again after nearly 2 months. Definately need smaller tyres but I've already sorted something for that. 280s look disappointingly small behind these wheels, but never mind, these are the only 5x100 wheels I have at the mo.
Have some pointless pics

Done a bit today, now the car is out the garage so I have a bit more room I've tidied the garage up a bit and made a start prepping the mk3 rear beam, took off the brake pipes I chopped (scrappy style ) and removed the rear calipers to sell as I have some newer ones with braided hoses to go on. Also made a start on removing the mk2 axle...



OK so all I did was take the back wheels off and assess the state of the unions on the bias valve (which look clean ) but as you can see it was raining and I'd already got wet enough lol.

Here's the state of play in the garage now, you can see the mk3 beam stood up against the wall.

Had a go on the golf today, a pics say a thousand words so...

Off came the mk2 GTI rear axle



Lined up the mk3 axle



I had previously swapped a few brake lines over, greased them up and swapped the calipers to some good ones I bought a while back with braided hoses



Came across a slight problem here, the bias valve on the mk3 beam is about 7 inches further back! No biggie I'l just extend the brake pipes



Came across an even bigger problem here! I snapped a bolt that fixes the beam to the chassis. Any tips on how to rectify this without taking the beam back off?



Feeling a bit down at this point I finished up, stuck some wheels on and stood back to admire my work




Then having a bit of time left I attacked some boring wiring jobs. First up, remove the dash. Deja Vu sets in here, seen all this before so many times...



As you can see here I've swapped the loom for the clocks and swapped the stalks over from the mk3. Just got to fish out the MFA loom from the donor and plug that it. Question of the day.... What are these 2 anonymous plugs for that come off the 2 blue fusebox plugs for the mk3 clocks?

Done a bit more today. Took the digifant engine harness out



Here's the 2 mk2 looms and the single mk3 loom (its small as a lot of it is attached to the engine and just joins this loom with a big round plug next to the dizzy)



Mk3 loom in and plugged in



We have some life...



However when I turn the ignition on the ISV cracks and the fuel pump primes. But it won't turn over and I get no ignition lights on the clocks. Probably caused by some of these anonymous plugs that don't seem to go anywhere...?

I'm proud to introduce my new daily




She's a fairly original 8v GTI, had a lot spent on it, only changes are rainbow seats and spax adjustables. I've been a little bit naughty and stolen the early mk3 steering wheel, osram nightbreaker bulbs, and gearknob from the GL. Also got an amazing classic policy from footman james, 288quid fully comp with breakdown cover and overseas cover! Nearly fell off my chair!

Its amazing what a difference some elbow grease makes

Well something big happened today. Not real progress on the car but its a big deal for me.

Firstly I got the 2 aquainted




Then I hooked them up



Then stood back and admired my dream garden haha

UPDATE...

Well the new plates and grille badge turned up, freshening the GTI up nicely



Also fitted some spare mirrors to it as both mirrors were unadjustable from inside, one had snapped cables and the other just didn't have an adjuster! Also got hold of a mirror knob and rubber boot for it, just to finish off the inside. No pics, because, well we all know what a standard golf GTI looks like inside!

Today seeing as the sun has its hat on I thought I'd have a go at the GL. Got it running much better today, turned out I forgot there was no brake master cylinder on it causing a massive vaccum leak! bunged the hole on the pipe and jobs a good 'un, will even tickover nicely now too, considering there's no exhaust past the cat! So now its running OKish I thought I better stick some hoses, a radiator and some water in it...

Bit of an update, I painted some engine bay parts on the GL to make it look a bit more presentable, also got some of them stainless dome bolts for the rocker cover coming too.



Also fitted an exhaust to the GL, that'l please the neighbours! Next job was to make some working clocks out of 2 sets for the GTI, so there was some of this going on...




Now they work and look like this (yes I realise the needles need some adjustment, it was getting dark and I was in a rush to get it all back together to go out)



Then today I felt the need to rectify this



New rocker gasket fitted, quick clean to check for leaks (I will pressure wash it at morrisons when I'm next down that way)

Been ON IT!!!

Yesterday was a mission to get the engine bay pretty much complete, I did take pics on my phone but it crashed and I lost them all, so I went and took a few pics with the camera this morning so you get the idea. First up, fit the 22mm master cylinder I removed from the donor and painted up a few weeks ago needed fitting, I chose the cleanest out of the 3 resevoirs I had...



Next job was to mount the ECU somewhere more fixed, I tried mounting it to the old PB ECU cage, but that failed, so for the time being its cable tied down under the scuttle tray, not pretty, but you can't see it...



Also fitted my spangly stainless rocker bolts



Then I had the messy task of swapping a PAS pipe and resevoir over to the better fitting mk2 items, looks much better. I was going to sort this out today...



So that I could get some fluid in it and give it brakes but the rain and general laziness says no.
On another note I did put all the front end back together properly and took a load of "I'm happy with that" pictures!

Well well whats been happening today? I got a few hours on it and after some frantic googling/frustration on my mk3 clocks not working, I found that you have to bridge D8/E2 and you get life in the mk3 clocks!

So a celebratory picture...



So then all the dash could go back in now I'm done with the wiring in the car



I am however a bit annoyed with how the clocks sit, I read up on it and took the advice to trim the upper inner lining of the dash and moved the right hand support bracket over and its still a bit poo tbh...



You may also spot my mk3 stalks (had to trim the top column cowling) and I put the early mk3 wheel back in that I had put in the GTI (but I stole it from this car anyway).
In other news I'm having some difficulty in getting the engine to run correctly, the idle is wierd and the engine revs aren't too quick to come back down, most likely caused by the monumental vacuum leak that I can't find!!! Sounds like its coming from the inlet manifold somewhere, I've investigated it, took the ISV off and bunged the holes, checked the little vac hoses, checked the servo vac hose and I just can't find it! Any ideas?

UPDATE time.

Now it is all up and running sweet and 95% completed... its all coming out again. The 2E conversion is up for sale and seeing as my mk3 VR6 daily is turning into a seive in true mk3 fashion this mk2 is going to recieve a worthy engine. Probably won't be any further updates until this lot comes out and the bay gets prepped as I'm using the mk3 until the mot runs out in April, but watch this little space...