Feels like ages since I posted but it's been just 3 weeks. In that time I've cracked on with the car, the joy of having my own place with a garage now! To start, fitted the replacement exhaust:
Got to sort one of the rubber hangers out as I couldn't maneuver the exhaust into place while laying on my back so the exhaust tips foul the rear bumper currently. Also stripped off the grill, threw the damaged spot lights out and painted it:
Need to do some finishing touches but it's now satin black which looks a lot fresher than the stock, faded black plastic. Also got some new crystal spot lights and will get some matching headlights at some point. I managed to fit some of the interior trim left over from the first Golf:
So there's also two new rear wheel bearings, two front outer CV joint gaiters and anti-roll bar end links with new bushes waiting to be fitted in order to address all the previous MOT advisories but still need to sort a replacement windscreen. I want to get this car put through with no advisories, which brings me onto the next issue...
It wouldn't start, it fired up and tried to idle but as soon as it did, it died. Very occasionally it's just about hold it for a few seconds but the moment I touched the throttle it died. So I started checking everything out, and when I got to the oil breather, it was FULL of custard. Opened the oil cap to find this:
Bought it with the seller saying it probably needs a new head gasket as it was putting blue smoke out, but we didn't see any on the drive home. However, it used nearly 2 litres of water but there was no visible sign of loss outside the engine. I confirmed my worse fears:
It's garbage inside! Literally just water around the valve train and the water was just brown when I drained it. So off comes the head, stripped down and gave it a small clean ready to get it stripped and skimmed:
Bit of wheel cleaner inside the head and a lot of the burnt on oil can off with just a light once over with a dish brush. Going to "borrow" a lot of the parts from the other 1.8 build to get this one sorted and drivable again, hoping to have the head sorted by next weekend.
The only worrying thing is I can't see any splits of obvious points of failure in the head gasket and the surface of the head appears to be good (waterways seem corrosion free mostly which is a first for me!) but going to get a machine shop to check it over. Hoping that the gasket just failed generally and water seeped in from a few places. Going to drop the sump, change the oil pump for a new one, clean it as much as possible with the block in the car then flush the engine with oil and coolant cleaners then see how it goes.
I'm not going all out on it just yet as I want to use the car for the summer so it's Roadkill style all the way (go watch that show on YouTube if you've not seen it).