bens ... 1986 MKII 1.8 8v K-Jet Golf ... project

[Ben Lessani]

...but then i got offered some even more exciting items

yellow/creme leather seats and door cards, they're from a 5 door, but i'm sure i'll be able to find some way to make them fit (maybe removing the back off my reclining seat and swapping the covers over).




i am also going to try and remove the quarter light windows i have now, as i have been told, i should be able to fit the one piece glass in instead without a giant amount of bother. the guy im getting the leathers says he will throw in the windows for me, i know i will be left with a hole in the door where the mirror was, but i can fill that, and its much easier than replacing an entire door.

the newer windows should make the car look 100 times better, i can't wait. also, when it gets the new seats in, i think i will be removing all the window tints (although they are completely perfect - not sure if they'll look good or not). if anyone wants them, i would be happy to swap for standard glass plus £100. also, my step dad knows a guy that makes up car carpets pretty cheap, so i might even replace the whole carpets in the car in a yellow/creme colour (though i dont think it will age well).

its all starting to look for, as my friends and family have dubbed it - "the death wagon"

oil based madness
i drove to manchester at a rather honest and conservative 65mph, and only used 25l of fuel, which ended up equating to 40mpg - which is good! but driving about town its using up a fair whack, about 17mph - so ive got to try and figure out whats going on exactly (probably just my lead foot). also, its burning a lot of oil, from a full sump to bone dry in under 1000 miles, i know its an old car, but its still a fair amount of oil to be burning up. i might strip the head off and replace the valve stem seals if i can be bothered, but i dont want to muck about with it too much as its working perfect-ish right now, no performance hang ups.

[Ben Lessani]

im soon going to be a scrubbin dubber
after my drivers front shock decided it didn't want to dampen anymore, and the rear opposite corner decided it couldnt be bothered compensating for it, i had to buy new shocks. i was going to get some half used avo's off my mate, but he mucked about too much and i couldnt be bothered waiting. so, as i dont figure myself as much of a performance driver, i thought i'd go and get some cheap and nasty coilovers.

http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&ih=001&sspagename=STRK%3AMEWN%3AIT&viewitem=&item=110081485873&rd=1&rd=1



i'm thinking its worth grabbing some new top mounts for these too, so i will pop those on aswell, and no longer will i be terrified going 90mph on the motorway with the car dipping and wallowing all over the show.

£Â£Ã‚£ this car owes me big time!

[Ben Lessani]

How should I start this, after the shocks sitting in my living room for 3 months before fitting them I really have been lazy with the car. Last few posts I had just bought the leather seats and the coilys.

I fitted the leather seats the same night as picking them up, they dropped in reasonably well, front seats were easy, but the back seats were a total pain in the arse, I'm pretty confident they didn't come from a MK2 at all seen as though there were pins in the bottom of the seats to retain it on either side. The door cards would never fit because they are way smaller - so at the moment, I'm puzzled as what to do with the doors, maybe put black leather door cards on.

I got the coilovers fitted just last week, dropped them on, bought new front top mounts, rears seemed to be peachy. I fitted the whole lot and managed to get the height right about first time. It not only looks awesome, but the drive has just been changed completely. Its a little stiff, but my god does it grip, I've got the worst tyres in the world on it and I can fire round bends at 40+ now, I love it, its like driving a go-kart. Best purchase I've ever made, its totally transformed the car.



I've been without music for a long time, so I started going about making the boot build. I've got 2 cones, but for a start I'm just going to use one side of the boot. Its a fibreglass build inside the wheel arch, with an MDF face, I only had time to get a start on the fibreglass, but next week I will finish the MDF too.

Heres my handy box of glassing bits, along with a few car cleaning products,



I started by masking off the carpet with tonnes of masking tape, then I applied a second layer, a binbag (which was pointless and caused me more bother than its worth) and more tape. The bag just made it awkward to follow the shape of the car, more tape would have done the trick just fine I think.



So overall, the car is looking pretty tasty, I've got loads of small things to clean up, but to the normal person its beautiful! Thankfully, the engine is mint, but the g/box is starting to cause a few issues and is looking to be replaced within the next few thousand miles.

[Ben Lessani]

new wheels!
After a super last minute decision, i bought some new wheels shortly before leaving manchester to go to glasgow. i stopped off in carlisle to meet up with the fella and managed to secure these little beauties...



and they will be wrapped in some nice new rubbers. buying some 195/45/15 uniroyal rainsports at a bargain of £43 per corner. i'll be very finely polishing the crap out of the wheels to get them looking super amazing before i fit them. then i'll have the joy of re-adjusting the coilys....i can't wait, my little death wagon is going to look amazing, i just need to finish the interior and consider actually sorting a stereo.

[Ben Lessani]

you spin me right round
i still haven't gotten round to fitting the wheels yet, but i did manage to take a good look at them, i was a little bit disappointed really because the last owner had really badly resprayed the inside of them in a really tacky black. im going to have to spend a lot of time polishing the crap out of them to get the wheels back to the bare metal, but it should be worth it. then i'll try and find some chrome center caps and bolt covers.

in the mean time, because i still need to work on them, i test fitted them on the car to see how they would look, and if they will rub etc. they seem to be fine, but i couldn't check turning clearances because i only had a single jack and the car was on a slope - so it wouldn't have been a bright idea to go spinning the wheels. but i'll get it up on the 2 posts to check anyway. so a quick chop gave me an idea (the car normally doesnt sit so uneven, its just that the other side was jacked up).



oh, right, so anyway, i was thinking what would it look like if i sprayed the inside black - i seriously doubt i would do it, but its worth a quick bash

[Ben Lessani]

i'm on a road to nowhere, nowhere being the wholesale tyre shop
i know i've been really lazy with my posting on here (apologies guys and girls), i've got a few more photos now. i have been working full time to generate some extra dollars over the summer and my hard work has paid off with some rather barginous bits. my new glorious tyres, uniroyal rainsport 195/45/15, set me back a massive £129.20 - in total. i got an amazing deal, dont ask me how, but i just did. so i got my new rubbers strapped on and got my new wheels balanced up.




i fitted them then went about double checking the tracking (with them being a different width/size/offset), just incase it went askew. but the tracking was still spot on, what still concerns me is the camber on the drivers side wheel - i dont have any equipment to check the camber, anyone know a good *cheap* place to go in glasgow that could sort me out?

"solid....solid as a rock....do do do-do dooo"
also, as my front engine mount is 21 years old and basically completely shot, if i drive it remotely hard, it rattles the exhaust loose. and if anyone has been tracking my exhaust - its all homemade . so i have to re-tighten it every 3 weeks as it starts dragging on the ground. i have just bought a solid front mount to combat this and also had a big re-sort of the pipe work. i used a 2tonne van exhaust rubber (cut in half) to support the rear end, with an exhaust 'u' bracket heated up and flattened out, then welded onto the pipe and two nuts (with the thread flattened to lock the nut) and washers to hold the rubbers on. it seems solid as a rock, and hopefully, as long as i take it easy, it will last long enough until my mount arrives.



sticky, but no mess
is the only way to describe the tyres. they are amazing, even though the camber is gubbed on the o/s wheel, its glued to the road, the roads were soaking tonight, and i could hit tight roundabouts at 40+ without any hint of understear (or overstear). im in love with them, my straight line braking is much better too. i should really have taken a photo of the state of the wheels before - 1mm tread left on the fronts

[Ben Lessani]

more to do
future plans still include

• full service, g/box oil, engine oil, oil filter, oil flush, check plugs
• fix the damn sunroof leak!!!
• fix drivers side window (clamp inside is snapped should be able to weld back on)
• finish the ice, f/g boot build and door pods.
• 90 spec front doors and mirrors
• crystal side indicators
• crystal headlights
• get a twin square exhaust or two square tips
• possibly half smoked rear lights
• respray front grill body colour
• smooth boot plinth and wiper hole
• upgrade brakes to bigger (280mm or so)
• retrim the door cards (or use ally) and bleach carpet to creme/yellow
• buy pedal covers
• renew valve stem oil seals

then i'll probably just sell the car cos theres no more to do to it...

[Ben Lessani]

rock solid
in a bizarre decision, to cure my exhaust rocking woes, i got a solid engine mount from joe, it came without bolts (bit dissapointed about), but i did happen to have the right bits kicking about.

if anyone has bought one from him, the bolts needed are

2x m10 (1.5 pitch) - 17mm
1x m8 (1.0 pitch) - 13mm

i dont know if i went about it the right way, but to change it out, i slipped a jack under the gearbox and jacked it up a tiny bit, mainly just to support the weight. then i undid the top nut off the front engine mount, then i had to remove the front lower valance to get to the two bottom bolts. the m8 wasnt even there! to get the old mount out, i had to drop out the front subframe, the front bumper was removed and two 13mm bolts, one on each side and it dropped straight out. the old mount was removed and the new one was fitted up, it was easier to line up the mount with the subframe loose, then bolted everything up, then torqued it up. 60nm for the top 17mm bolt, 70nm for the bottom 17mm bolt and 35nm for the 13mm bolt, each subframe bolt (13mm) was torqued to 70nm and then the bumper was refitted with each 17mm bolt at 82nm.

in my most honest opinion, as always, when you start the engine, the whole car kicks and its like being punched in the kidneys (albeit lightly), on idle the car vibrates, at 1500rpm it settles, whilst driving the vibration is not noticeable at all. the most noticeable thing so far is the fact when accelerating and decelerating suddenly in the same gear, the car doesnt chug about or throw like it used to.

i'll need to reseal the exhaust again, but that should be it sorted out for sure now!

...next mod on the cards is a big brake upgrade to 280mm.......

[Ben Lessani]

early morning fixation
so i was up super early today and took a bash at going over a few things on the car. i popped the bonnet and for some reason i just started dismantling the gear linkage. about 6 pins and 6 bolts later i pretty much had the thing in pieces. i'd always struggled to get reverse (i put it in, and it would pop clean out 2s later) - so i can't reverse without burning the clutch out. fifth was becoming a little bit of a struggle too.

i found a few things that were causing my problems..





Most of the bushes were in good condition (apart from the big red one). I bought a bush repair kit from GSF, but the foam doughnuts were a piece of rubbish  - its best sticking with the oem parts. as you can see from the photos, part of the linkage was twisted and the relay shaft bush was seriously worn.

after removing the gear lever, i stripped the ball and housing from the bottom and replaced it with a new one, but whilst tightening the retaining bracket i managed to strip the bolt off the main support plate. so i had to drill off the old stud, and fit another bolt in its place.






alignment was the next trick, the white reverse bracket was all bent out of shape - so the alignment tool wasn't going to work, so i went with just doing it by eye. i did it a couple of times, first starting with holding it in place with duct tape - but that was no use. i managed to just wedge different shaped objects around the lever to stop it moving at all, i put it in 3rd, and aligned it to 3rd......however, even after all these new parts, 5th is still a struggle and reverse still pops out. so basically i threw £27 down the drain on new parts to achieve nothing.

[Ben Lessani]

this just winds me up
next up on the list was to fix the drivers window (again). the little metal bracket that holds the window to the actual moving wire just keeps breaking. it broke a while ago, and i managed to get a couple of small welds onto it - very careful not to melt the wire! but it had given way again, so now i was forced to try something new. i'm not sure whether you can buy the support from vw and i lost my manual window winders, so i had to improvise. this was the state of it before...




and after...






i just made it up out of cut alluminium and then steel cable tied it together. it seems pretty sturdy, so i'll see how long it can hold up for.

then after that, i finally got round to making up the doorpods for my front speakers, i have a couple of spare speaker trays, so i remade a new one out of fibreglass. i started by making speaker rings then screwing them into place, then pulling cloth over the top, and laying glass resin over it. it will need about 2/3 layers of glass before its perfect and airtight, but then it should be perfect.





after all this i thought i would take a quick look at the scrubbing issues i've had whilst taking hard right corners, i didn't want to wear the tyres out, or damage the arches, so i brought the car up at the front by about 1cm and that seems to have cured the problem quite nicely.

so until next time ...