'88 Golf GTI - Rotbox Round II

[Shepherd]

Nice progress so far!
I liked the old wheels a little more though, looked a bit more aggressive.

[Greg|H]

Nice progress so far!
I liked the old wheels a little more though, looked a bit more aggressive.

Cheers for your feedback!
I liked the look of the previous wheels too, purely because of the more aggressive colour and tighter fitment. I'm not that into the gold, so I may look into getting the centre's powder coated a similar grey when I split them for wider dishes next year The RS's will better the RZ's when I'm done hopefully

[Greg|H]

I pulled the wheels off the car as the ally was looking a little worse for wear. They had lost their shine, and had a slight build up of corrosion on the surface. I used Autosol metal polish, and a high speed drill with a buffing attachment to polish everything. I'm really happy with the results, they're looking much better than when I bought them!

Please could someone recommend a good wax to seal them with?

[Greg|H]

Hey everyone, it's been a while since I last did an update! Time to bring this thread up to speed.

Skip back to January this year, I had daily'd the mk2 through winter, and it was really getting to the point where it needed to be taken off the road for a proper rebuild. The faults were mounting up, and due to the bad weather and lack of time on my half, I just didn’t fix them. The final straw was when the Head Gasket blew mid January this year. So I parked it up, sold the splits, and bought a sensible Japanese car that wasn’t so demanding on the maintenance side of things like the Mk2. I guess I lost all motivation with the Golf after the constant problems I had with it.

Although it wasn't long before the cogs started turning in my head though, and the cravings to be back behind the wheel of the Mk2 set in again. I just wanted my Mk2 Golf to be as reliable - as it was fun, because it is the most fun car I’ve ever owned.

With the engine in need of a rebuild, along with a bunch of other parts that needed overhauling or replacing, I decided I’d just go all out and do an engine conversion. So I sold my Honda after only a couple of months of ownership by way of gathering funds to build the Mk2 again, and set about finding a suitable donor car for my Mk2 Golf. I’d always liked the idea of building a properly fast Mk2, so I decided a 1.8T engine was the way to go!

I picked up this Audi A3 8L Sport for a really good price. Complete with an AUM 1.8T engine, with K03s turbo, and 02J gearbox. (105K on the clock). This engine should happily see around the 230bhp mark, with a few supporting mods and a remap, so it’ll be plenty quick enough once in the light Mk2!





I stripped the mk2 of its old 1.8 8v PB engine, gearbox and all associated components. It was only a mornings work, I love how easy old cars are to work on!



Next I set about taking care of tidying up the engine bay.. removing & treating surface rust, removing all excess seam sealer, shaving off some un-needed brackets and attending to two area that needed welding with the help of my mate Charlie. I also had to flatten an area on the bulk head so that I can mount a hydraulic master cylinder for the clutch, which will now be hydraulic operated as opposed to cable operated. (I'm using a late spec Corrado pedal box).

I didn’t take many photos along the way, but today I have finished painted the engine bay, so have a few photos.









Considering the only place I have to work on the car is outdoors in a dusty garage compound, I think the engine bay turned out alright. I plan on respraying the whole car in the future, and I will be changing the colour, so I painted the engine bay black for now so that it’ll go with whatever colour I decide on for the exterior in the future. I quite like black bays too, so it seemed like the logical thing to do..

So this brings me up to date; The golf is prepped, the donor car is bought, and a collection of parts to make the conversion possible is slowly growing. Once I’ve got everything I need for the conversion, I’ll strip the Audi and get to work!

[Greg|H]

I got a bit of spare time to work on the car last weekend so I fitted my Corrado Pedal box. I wanted to replace the standard mk2 Golf pedal box with a Corrado one as this would allow me to run a hydraulic clutch, which is required for the 02J Gearbox that I am going to use with the 1.8T engine.

First up I set about removing my old pedal box which involved dropping the steering column down and out of the way. To do this I had to remove the clocks from the dashboard to access the necessary bolts to undo to free the steering column.

Once I removed the old pedal box I laid it next to the Corrado one to check if they both mounted to the car in the same way, which they do with exception to the top mounting bracket being positioned to the right of where it should be by 35mm (I will get to this later).

(Standard Mk2 Golf pedal box on the left, Corrado one on the Right)



With the old pedal box removed, I could bolt the Corrado pedal box in place and mark out where to drill the hole in the bulk head for the clutch master cylinder.



I centre punched the centres of these holes, centre drilled them, and then used a hole saw to cut the hole for the clutch master cylinder to poke through.

Making good use of my punch that I made, there’s something satisfying about using your own tools.



I used a 32mm hole saw, but this came out slightly too small so I had to fettle it a little with a curved file to open out the hole. This worked out good as I removed the burrs at the same time as this.




I should probably mention that I flattened the section on the bulk head where the clutch master cylinder needed to mount to prior to painting the engine bay. Normally is curved, but you obviously need a flat surface to mount the clutch MC to so the pin goes through the bulk head and lines up parallel with the clutch pedal..



To the left you can see the clutch mater cylinder slots into place nicely.



With the necessary holes made, and the pedalbox bolted in place, as mentioned earlier there was only one bracket on the pedalbox that didn’t/wouldn’t line up with its threaded bolt hole. Shown here..



This bracket was supposed to share the bolt hole with a bolt securing the lower bracket of the steering column. To combat this you could either chop this bracket off and weld it in place 35mm to the left of where it is, or you could make a bracket to link this bracket with the bolt hole it’s meant to line up with. I chose to do the latter and see if it was a sufficient way around the problem before resorting to chopping up the Corrado pedal box.

I put a bolt facing down like this..



Then I made a bracket with two holes in in 35mm apart (centre to centre). Left it looking rough as it was only for test purposes at this point..



I then had to trim and flatten the edge of the bracket on the steering column, where this new bracket I made would bolt up against.




By this point I was all set to install the steering column, along with my new bracket to hold everything in place.

I bolted the steering column back in up top.



Then bolted it in underneath, with use of the new bracket, a longer bolt, and some washers.




I added the other bolts to the steering column assembly, so it’s fully bolted in. I checked the pedal box and steering column for any flexing and play that could have been introduced by using the bracket I made, but it was all solid. No flex, no play, so I’m content this was a nice method to use to avoid having to adapt the pedalbox to fit. I removed the bracket I made again, to file some rounds onto the sharp corners to finish it off.



That’s one more job ticked off the to do list!

[Greg|H]

Time for a little progress update, I drove my A3 over to my mates workshop after work last week to strip the engine, gearbox, loom, everything out. We arrived there at 5 ish, and had a nice collection of parts on the floor, one ruined A3, and a cold beer in hand before 10pm. Can't thank Tom enough, I'd have been doing this on the road outside my house if it wasn't for him! Having a second pair of hands and a ramp made light work of it.

Engine was out in a couple of hours, but getting the loom out was a nightmare. Full on dash out job, it got dark so I returned to it the next day.. I kept all the standard loom, ecu, dbw pedal, clocks etc incase I decide I want to go back to OEM management in the future. Managed to sell the leather sports seats too, so now all the parts out of the audi only owe me ~£500, which is about what they'd cost individually, maybe less, but I've had the benefit of driving the car that they are out of and knowing that they are up to scratch for the Mk2!

A few pic's from the teardown!

Proof of millage, engine light is for the thermostat so no biggy!











Half way through the loom out..





Next up is to transport all the bits back to mine, replace the cambelt, water pump, thermostat, engine mounts and various other little bits, then see what it looks like in the bay of the Mk2!

[Greg|H]

Little update to keep the ball rolling..

My vibra technics front engine mount arrived so I fitted that. I nearly just bought a solid one but I thought it would be worth spending a bit more on this for the sake of less NVH. I went for the road one as opposed to competition, as this primarily be a road car.
New VS Old





All the mounts are in now ready for the engine. The front mounting holes on the front crossmember are slotted so it may need tweaking once I drop the engine in.



Next up is swapping out the driveshaft flanges/cups to 100mm ones.



Comparison between the new 100mm cups and the old ones on the 02M (?) gearbox.



The 02J cups are just secured with one bolt in the centre, nice and easy to remove!



A comparison between the new 100mm cups VS the old 02J cups..



With the cups removed



New cup fitted, easy peasy!



Next I removed the air con compressor and power steering pump as my mk2 requires neither of these. I'll have to source a shorter FEAD belt too, anybody know which model of Golf or A3 may have the correct length one? I suspect they'd all have power steering at the least so I a standard belt may not work?..



It leaves the mounting frame for these components looking a bit crap without these components mounted to it. Might have to see if I can get a simpler one or machine off the access material to tidy it up.



I was also looking for a new daily and my mate who I sold my old Eunos too was looking to sell it, so I bought it back! Kind of ironic because I originally sold the Mazda to buy the Mk2. Feel pretty blessed to own them both now. There's a few minor changes to it, but its not too dissimilar to when I sold it. It's still a blast to drive too



I chucky the nardi in it as soon as I got the mazda back. Saves it sitting round gathering dust!

[AtlantisTouring]

Great build so far mate, Keep it coming

[Broucksje]

nice work man!

[kittenpuncher]

Way to stick with the mk2 man amazing work so far, keep it up!

[zainymk1]

looking great man...keep em coming!

[Jonnys_Stanceventures]

Congrats on getting to have both cars! The mk2's turning out great! How do the coilovers ride? Been looking for a good pair for my mk2 aswell. Thanks!

[TWM Performance]

Man this is such a great build. The interior is so immaculate! Great work so far

- Renato

[Greg|H]

Great build so far mate, Keep it coming

Thanks man! Hope to have it running by christmas

nice work man!

Cheers dude!

Way to stick with the mk2 man amazing work so far, keep it up!

The Mk2's the one. It should be a lot of fun once the swap is complete

looking great man...keep em coming!

Cheers mate!

Congrats on getting to have both cars! The mk2's turning out great! How do the coilovers ride? Been looking for a good pair for my mk2 aswell. Thanks!

The coilovers are really good for the money. A very good middle ground between the budget ones and the mega expensive ones. It handles nicely on them and the ride comfort is fairly good as far as coilovers go. The only think I wish they had was adjustable damping, but for the price you can't go wrong

Man this is such a great build. The interior is so immaculate! Great work so far

- Renato

Thank you The cars not too exciting to look at yet, but once its up and running I can focus on the aesthetics too

[Greg|H]

These are the brackets that I will be using to mount the 20VT engine in the MK2 golf. There's the black 02A bracket off of a Mk2 Golf G60, which you can buy new from VW heritage (The other two a bit more tricky to get a hold of. Lots of emailing people selling engines or breaking cars to ask for the brackets, but I got them in the end!). A corrado '4 cylinder' rear engine bracket, and an 02A rear gearbox bracket.



First up I fitted the 02A gearbox bracket. It bolts straight up to the 02J gearbox with 3 bolts. Easy as it gets!



With that in place I fitted the rear corrado bracket. To do this I had to remove the boost pipe that goes down the back of the engine, as this fowls where the bracket would need to be. This piping will be re-routed for the FMIC anyway, so not a problem! Picture to remind me where the vacuum hoses were..



Here's a comparison between the corrado rear engine bracket and the standard one off my old 8v GTI engine. Notice the Corrado one is longer, therefore allows the engine to sit further forwards in the engine bay. This will reduce the risk of the brake master cylinder contacting the cambelt cover, as they sit rather close! (Corrado bracket on the right).



Upon offering up the 'raddo bracket, I couldn't bolt it in place as the top edge of it fowled on the turbo oil feed hose.



To overcome this I just filed a small amount of material off the top of the bracket, and bolted it in place using the bolts from the old bracket off the 8v engine.





That's the rear two brackets in place. I will fit the from along with the starter motor before putting the engine in the car.

Question time...

The 02A gearbox/engine has a front engine mount, that is secured with 3 long bolts that go through the starter motor, bell housing and crankcase, to then bolt onto the engine mount at the other side, with M10 bolts. I believe the he starter motor, bell housing and crankcase are essentially sandwiched together.

On the 02J gearbox, as standard it doesn’t use this front engine mount, but has a similar configuration with the starter motor bolts – the only difference being that the bolts pass through the starter motor and bell housing, but this time fasten into threaded through-holes on the crankcase. Additionally, M12 bolts are used as opposed to M10.

The only/most viable way to mount the 20VT engine and 02J gearbox into my Mk2 Golf is to use the 02A front engine bracket off of the G60 Mk2 (as far as I'm aware), as this mates up to the 02J gearbox perfectly.

The issue lies with the fact that the 02A gearbox uses M10 bolts, which fasten into captive nuts on the Mk2 G60 bracket, and the 02J gearbox uses M12 bolts.

Therefore I have two options that I can think of;
1. Machine off the captive nuts from the 02A bracket, use longer M12 bolts to fasten on the starter motor like STD, and M12 nuts to secure the bracket to the ends of the M12's that'll poke through the other side of the crankcase.
2. Leave the 02A bracket alone, use longer M10 bolts, so that they don’t fasten into the crankcase, but purely pass through it all and fasten into the captive nuts on the 02A bracket. Therefore sandwiching the starter motor, bell housing and crankcase in the middle.

Can anybody shed any light on which option is best, or how you've done it when carrying out the conversion? I believe option 2 is safe enough as long as the bolts are torqued correctly and washers are used under the bolt heads to ensure that the clamp load area is the same for M10's as M12's. Option 1 would obviously be safer as its more secure, but yeah, what have you guys done?

Thanks!