'90 Mk2 VR6 Golf Smooth Bay Never Ending Project

[JoeMallett]

So a plank of wood has fallen on my roof, it's not massive but it's such an obvious dent, I'll get a picture up a bit later.

I've never blended paint or anything before, and I can't afford and don't have the time to respray the whole roof right now. Some help with how I could fix it a quicker way would be great. It won't pull out very easily I don't think. I could have a go at beating it out but I'll probably end up making it worse.

[JoeMallett]

Gaskets and steering rack boots turned up.
Nearly back together now.

[JoeMallett]

Been tidying everything up, finished painting the engine.




Not sure what to do with the intake manifold. I have 2k black and Silver Grey (same paint code as my car) I dont know what colour to paint it. Or paint the manifold black, then get the cover and paint that silver.

Also stuck on what colour to paint the gearbox.

Once that's done, just waiting on the manifold gaskets then I can start building it back up ready to go in.

Then for the wiring... -.-

[JoeMallett]

side pic of the orange wheels?

This is the best I can find, they're gone now, sprayed them black and gave them to my GF for her Scirocco.

[JoeMallett]

So the last update has basically brought everything up to where I am now. Been doing quite a bit more welding in the last couple of days, I have seven holes left to do then thats pretty much the welding done.







I think my welding is starting to improve. I did start a welding course but it got cancelled after 2 hours, which is a shame. But hopefully will be getting on a more advanced one and learning TIG as well, very excited about that.

I'm not too sure about what to do with the seams along the inside of the chassis legs at the moment. DO I just cut them off? Or leave them and tidy them up?

Also bought these babies, need to get some custom adapters made, but G23 engineering have already said they can do that. Can't go less than 18mm though so hopefully that will be okay. Not sure on the offset at all, but I'll get on with mock fitting them when I have the money for the adapters.



I want to get this out of the way before I get too involved with the E30, because ideally I need this done by June so I can be on a clubstand at DC13. Worried it won't happen though.

Any tips/ideas on how to clean/paint the engine would be awesome as well. I was thinking of just painting it all black, with a gloss black intake manifold. But I'm not sure about that now.
I also found a photo of a red Mk2 VR6 where they had flipped the throttle body around so the air filter sat above the gearbox, which I thought looked awesome, how difficult it will be to do though, I'm not sure. Annoyingly I can't find the photo now -.-

Shoving in a couple of photos of a Mini Cooper my boss and I have just finished restoring whilst I'm at it.
Sorry for poor photos again, I'm going through my Instagram.



Thats how it was when we got it here.
And how it is now. Finished getting the carpets and seats etc. in on Monday.



Finally made some big progress this week. My friend has the week off, so I got an extra pair of hands. Finished all the welding on my Golfs bay and started prepping for paint.



Then got it in our new semi permanent spray booth for the primer.









Fairly happy with the results. Wish I'd spent more time getting everything perfect, but it's taken so long so far, I just need to get it done so I have a car I can drive again. Plus I did learn to weld ON the car pretty much, so I think I did I good first job. And the first thing I've sprayed unsupervised out of 3.

Hopefully it will sand down well and just get better. Tempted to go back over some of the seams with some sealer just to neaten it up a bit. It was so hard to get out so its still a little bit rough.

Picking up the base coat today so will hopefully have the bay done by the end of the week and get a start on cleaning/painting the engine and other parts.
Does anyone know of the best way I can paint the block and head at home?

Also test fitted the wheels without the adapters. It's going to be a very tight fit, especially with the smallest adapters I can get being 18mm. If anyone has any ideas on tyre sizes, that would be awesome!



More progress has been happening this week. Got the basecoat and lacquer on! Pretty happy with it apart from a few little bits, just down to me being impatient and not spending enough time sanding and cleaning. Also got a couple of runs which really pissed me off. But cooled down and they're sanding out alright, hopefully I can get them barely noticeable.















Started having a go at the engine too. Unfortunately I can't afford to rebuild it at the moment, which I'd really like to do. But at some point I will.
Stripped all the ancillaries etc. off and cleaned the hell out of it. I found out that the matte black gearbox has been painted really badly so thats another thing I have to do.



I painted the block today, I couldn't get a gloss HT black in a can, so I bought a tin, and just brushed it on. I came out a lot better than I expected.



I didn't manage to get the head as clean as I was hoping so think I'm going to buy some silver HT and hope that doesn't look too bad. Any good ideas on how to clean it better would be great.

Whilst waiting between coats I got on with tidying up some other parts ready to paint. I quickly found out these have been painted awfully as well, with no prep work at all!



Glad to see it coming together. Hopefully have the engine in early next week and be able to get the wiring started!

[P78]

side pic of the orange wheels?

[JoeMallett]

I have another build thread that was supposed to be for my E30 but where I've been working on the Golf it's taken over that thread, so I thought I'd do a proper one for my main project seeing as it's moving forward quite quickly at the moment.

Here's how it should hopefully go...

2.8 OBDII VR6 conversion
Smooth bay
Wire tuck
Lay it on the ground
I have some interesting wheels that I need to make fit, offset needs some planning with the adapters.
New interior, hopefully retrimmed eventually.
Then see how it goes from there...

Theres a bit of a catch up until I'm up to date where I've owned this car for a few years.

I bought the car back in August 2010 as a completely standard 1990 1.8 8v GTI. Annoyingly I couldn't insure it until April the following year. I just left it as it was for a while, it was having timing issues and electrical issues where it had been sat in a barn for so long, so all my money was going towards sorting it out.





Eventually I managed to afford some cheap JOM coilovers, so they went on and I just played about with the ride height and left everything as it was, apart from a from maintenance parts here and there.
This photo is from August 2011, parked next to the E30 I now own haha



Not long after insuring the car, I was at my now ex-girlfriends house, when I saw my car rolling past the window. The bolt for one of the handbrake cables had snapped and the car rolled into the neighbours brand new Mazda 6. You can just about see the damage in this photo. A nice crease down the door, cracked door handle and indicator, cracked bump strips. I was gutted.



Last year I was looking at ways I could improve arch clearance to drop my car some more when I came across a load of unknown rust under the plastic arches.





I quickly tidied that up and bodge pulled the arches with some mole grips for more lows haha, I'd had enough of my car after finding all the rust so didn't really care about appearance for a while.



Car was used in a music video just after this





For my birthday I got all of the damage repaired. Had the dent in the door sorted, the rear arch replaced. Then the front two arches cut out and the back to rolled. Now I have plenty of clearance for wheels .



The next step went a bit wrong. My wheels were all flaking and horrible and I couldn't afford a new set. So I decided to refurb them myself. The finish turned out pretty good, but the paint was not the copper I wanted it to be, it was orange -.-





Edition 38 2012



I drove the car around like this for a while before I decided it was time for a change. I wanted to just get stuck in a do what I could myself. So I decided an engine change would be fun. I chose a VR6 mainly because I like the look of them and the idea of having an extra 2 cylinders, I realise I could go down other routes like a 1.8t for more power.
I got pointed in the direction of someone selling a 2.8 OBDII with most of what I needed for the conversion for £300 which I didn't think was too bad.
So off I went, and started stripping the car down.





Resprayed the Mk3 subframe.



Then shortened the new mount and test fitted the VR. Still needs a bit of adjustment.



Picked up some Corrado front and rear seats.



And a Jetta front end, £15 well spent I think!..



I then started on cleaning the bay. I wasn't going to bother with smoothing etc, but I couldn't resist once the bay was empty. Seam sealer is the worst creation...



I then had to have a go at welding. I'd used an arc welder a few times before around the farm. So thought I'd just get stuck in. Didn't go amazingly well, but I'm starting to get the hang of it I think. As long as the first attempts stay in place, I'll be able to tidy them up haha.
This was my attempt before moving on to the car. The car was a LOT harder. I realise the rust really isn't ideal. I spend much more time cleaning up the metal on my car, promise.



There was a lovely rust hole under the battery mounting bracket, so I thought I'd tackle that first.