My first car - 1983 Mk1 Golf

[Mk1Sam]

After always wanting a Mk1 Golf, i was determined to have my own as my first car, no matter what the cost was going to be!
After looking for about a year for the ideal Mk1 for myself, 2 years ago, at the age of 16 i bought my dream car! A 1983 Mk1 Golf. She was a 3 door with no sunroof and a mighty 1.1 engine under the bonnet! Which i thought would make my insurance cheep when i finally turned 17 and passed my test!





She wasn't perfect, but she was mine!
Now was the time for me to start imagining what i wanted to do with her. First plans were to remove the disgusting front grill that didn't fit, and remove the horrible rear lights.
I wanted to fit a standard grill and standard rear lights as i much preferred the look of them.

My dad insured her on a classic policy so we could keep her moving while i waited for 6 long agonising months till i could slap the L plates on and get behind the wheel myself!

I shall update more of this possibly tomorrow as i have 2 years worth to post up!
Only just registered on this forum - why i didn't do this sooner ill never know!

[Mk1Sam]

This will most likely be the only full picture of the engine bay i will ever post on here, as there is nothing to show other than the fact it is totally standard, but in surprisingly good condition for a original engine bay!



During the time leading up untill i was 17, the down pipe developed a blow, so i got my dad to drive her with me riding shotgun to a local garage where it was changed for a new downpipe. While it was in the garage, i asked to have a look under the car while it was up on the ramps which the guys at the garage kindly let me do so.
I was rather surprised at how clean it was, with all the guys in the garage wanting to have a look under her! They said she was the cleanest Mk1 they had seen in years, which instantly made me feel like i had done well for myself, and had not let my want over power my common sense when i bought her.

I eventually got round to fixing the drivers side window, as when i got her, there was no window mech. The window was held up in the door ghetto style with 2 lengths of wood, and after about the 3rd time the wood had fell over, allowing the window to fly into the door, i decided it would be a good idea to buy a new window regulator + 2 seats and rubbers from VW heritage. This gave me the first excuse to do something to her! I had it fitted within the hour! Awesome, a window that worked!

[dDutch]

looking good! what are the plans?

[Mk1Sam]

A couple of months went by, and i managed to save just enough to be able to afford a new grill and small front splitter. I also ordered a Rabbit injection badge for a laugh.
I was limited on funds as i was still in my final year of high school at this point, so there were many weekends washing my parents cars and their friends cars to try to make some money.






I was well chuffed! It was starting to look like a Mk1 should do again!

After a few more weeks, i had enough money to change the rear lights back to the original spec ones, as i really couldn't stand those clear light ones!
I also had a set of pressed plates made, and fitted them to the car.
I never had a front licence plate holder on the front of the car, and i had never liked the way the original plate holders stick out below the front bumper, so i set about making my own bracket which was attached just at the level of the front bumper, tight into the front valance. In my opinion it made the front of the car look cleaner and less cluttered.






FINALLY, THE DAY CAME!
I was 17 and i could finally slap the L plates onto the Golf and take her for a spin!





And after driving her for a while, it confirmed how badly i needed to ditch the ridiculous bad boy exhaust as it sounded horrendous!
So i got myself onto ebay and managed to get a brand new standard exhaust for her for under £30 delivered - win win!
With the help of my mates pit, a blow lamp, a hammer and a fair amount of swearing, i realised why the pipe was so cheep, as i needed to tweet almost every bend in every way to get the pipe to fit correctly!
But it was worth it in the end when i started her up and she sounded sweet and classic!
I also fitted a new Volkswagen badge on the rear which was kindly bought by a friend for my birthday.





After just under 3 months of turning 17, the day of my driving test came and i passed 1st time with 3 minors!! Awesome!! The day i had been waiting for my whole life had just happened! I was over the moon!
Time to get insured.....
After spending a whole day trying to find insurance that was not a total joke, the cheapest i found was for £2600!! But i had no choice but to pay it! Thieving swines!

[FourRingsB6]

Car looks so clean. I could only wish to find a Mk1 in that kind of shape around me. Enjoy it, and congrats on the driving test.

[Steve.]

Very clean MK1, if only mine were this clean! I can't wait to see more progress on it.

[Mk1Sam]

After driving for about 3 months, i gave her a bloody good service!
The service was that good infact, i managed to kill a clutch!
Heres how bad the old inline fuel filter was!



After a look on ebay, i won a clutch, clutch plate and a release bearing for £26! Happy days!
Having never fitted a clutch before, i asked my dad for a hand - turns out he had never fitted a clutch before either! It couldn't have been a more simple clutch change for our first times.
I simply followed the haynes manual, and luckily the only problem i had was one of the drive shaft bolts were rounded, but just had enough left for me to undo the bolt!
I then popped to DubUnit in Tamworth and Matt was very kind enough to help me out and give me a few drive shaft bolts that were in great condition, and got me out of the shit!
I also thought it would be a good idea to change the clutch cable while i was at it.
As the clutch had been slipping rather alot, a gave the flywheel a very light sanding to improve its surface.





The gearbox when i first removed it. I gave it a good clean in Gunk before i put it back on!




New release bearing fitted after the box was cleaned up to a reasonable standard






Great! I had a clutch that worked.... until just under a week later, when this happened!




I lost all drive on the way to my friends house, about 100 yards from his drive.
I heard a slight bang, and then i had no go!
I could select all gears fine, and i knew it couldn't have been the clutch as i was able to do 50mph on the spot, and press the clutch in and the speedo would drop back to 0.
It must have been gearbox related past the final drive.
It must not have been able to handle all 45bhp of the mighty 1.1 engine!

Once back home, i had no trouble taking the gearbox off as i had learnt how to just a few days before - sods law!
Once i disconnected the shorter drive shaft, the problem became apparent when gearbox oil started flowing out all down the drive.... sorry dad!
This was what i found!





Balls! Now i was left to find another 4 speed box having no idea which box would fit my engine, if there were any differences etc.
So i had to do my research, and thanks to the guys on the Mk1Golf owners club, i was able to find out the information i needed.
Awesome, now it was time to scour the internet to find a gearbox!

[Mk1Sam]

Car looks so clean. I could only wish to find a Mk1 in that kind of shape around me. Enjoy it, and congrats on the driving test.

Very clean MK1, if only mine were this clean! I can't wait to see more progress on it.

looking good! what are the plans?

Thanks guys!
Ive got plenty more to come!
This is from about 18months ago, and ill keep updating the thread until ive reached to the point where i am now!
So keep your eyes out!

[Alec451]

Car is a beauty, Can't wait till you get her low.

[BenTen]

Can't wait to see the rest of build.

[Nick475]

Awesome man. Congrats on passing test. Awesome first car

[Mk1Sam]

Continuing from my last post, i managed to find another 1.1 engine and gearbox on ebay and won it for £90! Bargin!
I also got an extra gearbox from a chap on the owners club for £10!
I cant see why my dad wasnt very happy with the fact i wanted to squeeze the engine and gearbox into the boot of his Bmw 3 series coupé... haha! Needless to say it was a bit of a ball ache, but we managed it, just!

Here she was, not a prity sight, but it worked!
I took the box off the engine to make it easier to fit into the boot.
I put the engine straight into the shed, and began to clean the new gearbox with Gunk once again.
I then removed the release bearing from the old box onto this new box Job done, just needed to fit the new box into the car.
I removed all the grease from the inner cv joints, and the drive shaft flanges on the box, and repacked them with new grease (I didn't use that castrol stuff in the photo, i when and got the correct grease)






Box fitted, took her out for a spin, and happy days, she worked again!


Next on the to do list was the rear brakes. I got a friend of my dads to check the brakes in his MOT garage, and he found that one of the rear brakes hardly worked.
So i went away and ordered some new brake shoes and cylinders for the drums, might as well do both rear brakes while im at it!
Once i took the effected drum case off, it was very clear what had happened. The cylinder had been pissing fluid into the drum!
While i was rebuilding the drums, the shoe retaining string and top hat clip type thing decided to slip out of the thin nose pliers and fly off into the bush next to the car! Balls! After about 10 mins looking for them with a magnet, i gave up and walked to Megaspares where they just happened to have the brake kit with all the springs etc! I decided just to use one spring and clip, and to use the rest of the kit the next time i replace the rear shoes.
Heres a before and after - huge difference!






I fancied a bit of a change on the outside of the car, and i always had a softspot for the large GTI front splitter! I managed to get my hands on a very good condition one, with only a few scuff on the underside of the splitter, which didnt bother me as i know i would put more into it!



Fellow Mk1 owners will im sure be aware that these 2 pieces very rarely meet up in the center, and you usually have on average a 5mm gap between them when they are fitted to the car.
I wanted to over come this so i used a dremal and elongated the fixing holes to allow for more adjustment. I then also drilled a series of holes in the webbing on the rear of the splitter and attached cable ties to help keep the splitter together when it is fitted to the car.
Bit of a fiddly job, wasn't very neat as some numpty had tried to do this idea before and failed!






I was trouble free for a while after this! But then i began to have problems with my carb. Some times i would be slowing down to stop at a junction, and the bloody things would just cut out! Once it happened when i was about to turn right at a crossroad, then it cut out just as the lights changed, and would not start!
Some times it started after a few goes, others it did not.
After about the 10th time of this happening, i got a friend to check the carb out for me, and he found there was a small bit of crap in the carb that was sitting on the float needle valve, allowing petrol to just flood into the engine, effectively choking it to death.
My friend cleared this problem, but i could see there was a large amount of crap still remaining in the bottom of the carb... possibly due to the old fuel filter being so crapped up!
After this, i could not get the car to tick over, but it did keep hunting up and down in the revs on its own.
I gave up and began the search for a rebuild kit for the standard carb - i was having no luck at all. Once again the Mk1GolfOwnersClub saved the day and a chap pointed me in the direction of http://gowerandlee.co.uk/ ! Admittedly the website looked very shady, but i gave the guys a phone call and they were immensely helpful and really knew their stuff. I would highly recommend them!
I order the rebuild kit for the carb over the phone and it came in lightning speed!
I also ordered a rubber carb gasket from VW Heritage to replace the old worn one, which had started to split.
Having never rebuilt a carb before, i was looking for hours to find a youtube video of someone rebuilding an original carb, but i was having no luck. But i managed to stumble across an exploded diagram of all the parts in the carb! WIN! Ive added the diagram below in case anyone else reading this thread could find it useful!
I set about cleaning it with carb cleaner, and it was filthy!
I mixed and matched a couple of things from the carb that was on the spair engine, such as the float as it was in slightly better condition.









Im sure i could have got the carb to look much more presentable by polishing things, but i just wanted it to work and serve its purpose!
I changed everything i could, the only things i did not change were the jet and the float (swapped float from the spare carb however). I changed all the gaskets, seals, o rings, diaphrams etc etc.
I did away with the temperature sensor type thing on the side of the carb, as its not really of any use in England. Its only really of any use in very cold country's.

[Mk1Sam]

Car is a beauty, Can't wait till you get her low.

Can't wait to see the rest of build.

Awesome man. Congrats on passing test. Awesome first car

Cheers guys!
Shes sitting low now, but ill continue to write the thread in the order the build happened.

[Mk1Sam]

I managed to gain use of a Rapid Prototype 3D Printer!
I set about designing the plastic part of the horn push (under the rubber part) on CAD software, as the clips had broke on my Wolfsburg steering steering wheel, and didnt fancy paying £250 for another wheel that would most likely have the same brittle plastic.
I designed the main body, excluding the clip ends and the brass horn connection fittings, and made a prototype just the make sure that it would fit on the wheel first before i continued with it!
Awesome, it fit! I began to design the brass horn connection ring fittings, and recessing them properly allowing the small brass tabs to be bent into position to hold it in place.
I then ran another prototype through the machine to check that all the connections were in the right places.
Even better, it worked perfect!
Before i finished designing the clip ends, i managed to find the horn push centre on ebay, in Cyprus, with the rubber in a bad way! But looking at the photos in the advert closer, all the clips were intact with all the springs! I won it for £15ish!
When it came, i binned the rubber outer, and the plastic was perfect!
I ended up using the real one instead, with the comfort of knowing if this one broke, i had my back up one!
Heres a few pictures of the design in CAD





This was the steering wheel before, and you can see where someone had used some black sealant to attach the horn push.
I managed to cut this off, and carefully used a dremel to remove the sealent off both the metal of the wheel, and the rubber!



I had always loved the poke look with plenty of stretch, and was unsure what wheel i would like to go with, width, size etc.
I fancied a set of 8s on the front, and 9s on the back.
A friends let me try one of his 9s on the rear of mine for size, and i quite liked it! Maybe would be better with a little more poke!





This made my mind up, i wanted 9s on the rear! But with slightly less ET so it would poke more!
To accommodate the wide wheels, i knew i could need to have my arches cut alot!

A little more time passed by, and the area of my bulkhead around the clutch cable pulled through - very common problem on Mk1s
As i had never welded before, i decided i had better play it safe and allow someone else to do it for me!
Cut the old part out, and welded in the new repair panel that cost £15! Bargin!










Just found a pic of when i tried a friends set of 10.5" BBS RS' on!
I think i had finally made up my mind of what wheels to get!

[Mk1Sam]

A friend popped round today in his new toy! Rather strange as he was drooling over my Mk1, and i was drooling over his big blue lambo!



The winter was here, and having planned a list of things i wanted to get done, i decided it would be easier if i took her off the road untill i had done almost everything i wanted to do for this moment in time!
Before i took her off the road, she ran a 6 and a half hour round trip in the pouring rain with no problems, she never missed a beat! This was to pick up the wheels i had just bought!
They were 15x8 up front, and 15x9 on the rear. I am unsure of the offset, but they fitted perfectly how i wanted them to, so i paid the man his money and it was a done deal!

And here they are! BBS RS', with plenty of stretch all round!







The marks on the tyre were from me taking her for a spin round the block with the new wheels on, and it was then very clear, i needed to take more material out of my arches!