Author Topic: Bluefox - '84 Golf C 1.9 TDi  (Read 23406 times)

Offline jv

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Bluefox - '84 Golf C 1.9 TDi
« on: 14 October 2014, 10:01 »
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Offline Bluefox

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Re: Bluefox - '84 Golf C 1.9 TDi
« Reply #1 on: 02 February 2015, 00:25 »
So, thought I'd better start a project log.

Shameless stealing of photographs from the for sale ad I bought them from, but gives you a good idea of what she is:

1984 Golf C TDI, 5 door Mars Red, 1.9 TDI (AHU) engine conversion.









The spec, as I picked her up, was as follows:

1.9 AHU TDI engine conversion with shaved bay/hidden wiring
Header tank delete, battery relocation
Hydraulic clutch and 02A cable change/hydraulic clutch gearbox
Front mount intercooler
K&N Cone filter
Custom stainless exhaust, 3" bore, upswept single tip
Passat pedal box conversion
GTI 8v brakes front & rear
Eibach anti-roll bars front & rear
JOM Coilovers
Fully polybushed
Headlamp washers
Genuine small bumpers with chrome inserts and smoked indicators
7-slat single lamp grille with Crosshair headlamps
"C" side repeater blanking plates
Corrado duck bill front spoiler

Sadly though, there's little to no history with the car. I bought it off a guy in Somerset who had her listed in the usual places; had her for 8 months or so. He's only done a few bits, but it sounds like he bought it from a garage somewhere further up country, as he had to travel to collect her. The trail goes cold after this.

I didn't list the BBS's in the spec because I didn't buy them - black wheels aren't my thing and I had plans for the car that didn't include the "done thing" of RM's on a Mk2; so I drove up with my trusty G60 steels and drove her back down to Cornwall.

Here she is celebrating her sister's MOT pass at, er, Sainsburys.


More to follow :)
Bluefox
Current: '84 Golf C 1.9 TDi | '01 Polo GTI | '01 Audi A2 TDi | '83 MG Metro
Previous: '83 GX | '04 R32 | '93 VR6 | '86 GTi 8v | '88 Diesel | '92 G60 | '04 Skoda Superb TDi | '90 GTi 8v | Plus many more!

Project Thread - http://www.golfgtiforum.co.uk/index.php?topic=270683.0

Offline Bluefox

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Re: Bluefox - '84 Golf C 1.9 TDi
« Reply #2 on: 02 February 2015, 00:47 »
Work started pretty quickly to be honest, she took to being part of our fleet very well.


There was a few bits that weren't to my taste. Door pins, "Wolfsburg Edition" stickers, that kind of thing. I mean, I'm a bit of a scene fan but...


See what I did there. Etc. Scene fan. Fan. Geddit.

Anyway, sold the headlamps and indicators on and changed back to standard. I'm really not a fan of crosshairs and besides, I wanted the outside looking as stock as I could make it.




Plus, the wife decided she liked my steels more than her RX's. And all this after breaking my kneecap whilst fitting her coilovers...  :rolleyes:


Still, that left me with this for now:


...which shortly turned into something else. I like the RX's but they were too new for my tastes. Watch this space.


I guess it was at this point things started to go wrong. A quick trip up the road with my daughter resulted in returning home with a smoking OSF brake disc - and that, coupled with the seeming torrential amounts of condensation and a wiring problem (traced via VCDS to faulty N75 sensor and wiring), I decided to tuck her up in the garage and do things "proper job".




A great idea, in theory...
« Last Edit: 02 February 2015, 01:09 by Bluefox »
Bluefox
Current: '84 Golf C 1.9 TDi | '01 Polo GTI | '01 Audi A2 TDi | '83 MG Metro
Previous: '83 GX | '04 R32 | '93 VR6 | '86 GTi 8v | '88 Diesel | '92 G60 | '04 Skoda Superb TDi | '90 GTi 8v | Plus many more!

Project Thread - http://www.golfgtiforum.co.uk/index.php?topic=270683.0

Offline Bluefox

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Re: Bluefox - '84 Golf C 1.9 TDi
« Reply #3 on: 11 February 2015, 23:17 »
Once I'd made the decision, and sold our Mk1 to provide some funds, work then started in earnest.

She'd developed a leak had manifested itself as a soaking wet rear offside footwell, so the first thing I did after taking off the bonnet, grille and slam panel was to remove the interior. All of it. Luckily the Mk2 interior is held in with about four bolts and screws (I know it's more than that, I was just making a point :) ) so it didn't take me long. Mercifully we get loads of sunshine even in the depths of January here in Cornwall!





Obviously, I made sure that the seats were correctly stored:


…and just to show how wet the sound deadening was, I had to dry them over the steps to mum’s flat. Nice. Yes, all that water came off those three pieces of sound deadening.


After this, I wanted to turn my attention to the cooling system. She came with what I can only describe as an eBay top fill radiator fitted, which held about two shots worth of coolant. Nowhere near enough:


Besides which, the cap had decided it wasn't up to the job and had developed a habit of spewing coolant everywhere:


I decided that I'd go back to an OE setup with a header tank and a normal radiator. Luck struck and I managed to get a second hand header tank with bracket off another forum for very little, and I'd already bought a new tank from Veedubmachine on a previous visit so I was set. The bay on my car was already shaved so I didn't have any of the mounting hardware; but a bit of mocking up and a pair of M8 stainless bolts later I got the tank in the right place:


...and fitted a Mk2 8v GTI radiator at the same time.


This was the best compromise of core size and unit width - the 16v rad's are bigger but thinner, and the silly sized rads of EU spec cars with aircon are mahoosive. I still had to find room for my intercooler and pipework around the sides so this was the best option.

As I'd already got the nearside coilover off, and my wheel plan had taken a "turn", I thought I'd try and unseize the coils that I had as opposed to buying new ones. They look and feel like JOM or another budget make, but they rode OK and had little signs of wear except some marks on the lock rings and flaking paint. I figured they were old but low mileage, and the damage on the lock rings tied in with the previous owners story of a few episodes of suspension adjustment to cope with the speed bumps by his house.

Anyway, few gallons of Plusgas later and all was good:


I subsequently repeated this with all four coils and painted the springs in black Hammerite to help them last a little longer.

Back in the engine bay, I turned my attention to the induction side of things. She previously had what I thought was a K&N filter on the end of the MAF, but having driven the car back from Somerset with the thing attached and looked through the history it was clear this wasn't the case - a cheap eBay filter with a K&N filter sticker was the problem. The turbo was constantly spooling/making my ears bleed at 70mph on a long run. I'm too old for that!

I managed to get a Mk3 TDI airbox but it was way too big - so I took a trip to a local scrap yard on a whim and found a Mk2 Ibiza TDI, the donor vehicle for my engine. A fiver was a worthwhile punt so I bought it home and test fitted, she sat there happily. A bit of head scratching resulted in me realising I had to come up with a new mounting solution.

Airbox:


Remove OE Mountings:


Offer up and mark position, then install stainless bolts for mounting points:


The rubber "bushes" incidentally are actually rubber door stops with the mountings drilled out to M12. £1 from B&Q.

Test fit again:


Make mounting hardware, using washers, brackets and wing nuts I had in the spares pile:


Et voila:


All that's left is the piping to the MAF. Speaking of piping, I'd already plumbed in the header tank et al with some silicone hoses and stainless clips I ordered from Auto Silicone Hoses on eBay, they really are superb.

Anyway more updates soon. Wiring next…
« Last Edit: 03 March 2015, 23:08 by Bluefox »
Bluefox
Current: '84 Golf C 1.9 TDi | '01 Polo GTI | '01 Audi A2 TDi | '83 MG Metro
Previous: '83 GX | '04 R32 | '93 VR6 | '86 GTi 8v | '88 Diesel | '92 G60 | '04 Skoda Superb TDi | '90 GTi 8v | Plus many more!

Project Thread - http://www.golfgtiforum.co.uk/index.php?topic=270683.0

Offline Bluefox

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Re: Bluefox - '84 Golf C 1.9 TDi
« Reply #4 on: 03 March 2015, 23:44 »
So, the wiring. I had a number of fault codes stored on ETKA that seemed to suggest a problem with the N75 boost control and the G72 intake temperature sensor, along with the N18 EGR that had previously been deleted and a couple of superfluous codes related to the lack of ABS sensors on my vehicle:


Now, I looked at these and ran some graphs with VCDS as to how everything was performing - plus, having driven the vehicle back from Yeovil, I concluded that she was running in limp mode. There wasn't a light on my dash - in fact, there isn't a glow plug warning on my dash either, so I'm assuming these clocks came from a petrol Ibiza/a different car to the ECU, or the bulbs had been removed/had blown/etc. According to the previous owner he just waited for the service warning to go out before starting.

This was the graph of sensor readings along with throttle position and RPM in a 3rd gear acceleration up a slight incline:


The head scratching started here. A cursory glance and some in-scientific resistance measuring with Autodata and my trusty multimeter revealed nothing awry, so I plumped for replacement valves of both - no effect. Same conditions, same road, new sensors:


...no change.

I stewed on that for a while until I realised that one of the codes said "open or short to positive" and the other "open or short to negative" - at this stage, that seemed a little odd, so I unwrapped the combination of cloth tape and plastic conduit to reveal this:


...basically, very bad joins, corrosion and other such electrical debauchery. Closer inspection revealed that these wires had been "repaired" at some point - and here it became more clear as to the car's history. It seems as though the chap I bought her from didn't know much about her, and basically loved, cleaned and enjoyed her for what she was throughout his relatively brief ownership. It appears from the history paperwork and the botched repairs that there was a person who "had a go" at fixing the issues/finishing the project of the original garage who did the conversion, and who I suspect was responsible for this shoddy wiring.

Anyway, once I'd cursed that person's first born and drunk many beers whilst pouring over photographs and wiring diagrams (they might have happened the other way around) and I was back in the cold light of day, I was left with these four wires:


...which I decided to deal with later, because I was getting pissed off.

Cheered myself up by doing some auxiliary wiring. The cooling fan was a little, well, horrendously badly wired:


..this had a direct, unfused feed with 15a wire straight from the battery. Hmm. So I did a little bit of soldering and taping to make things all purdy:

A new auxiliary fuse box for the fan and dipped/main beam upgrades:



New wiring looms for dipped and main headlamps, including 30A relays and 30A cable to support the 130/90w bulbs I'd already bought:



Whilst all this was going on, I managed to find time to fit some new SilentCoat 3mm sound deadening (from Sound Deadening Shop on eBay):


...and start sorting out the central locking kit I also bought on eBay. My car has standard Mk2 locks and a Mk3 ignition barrel - so I've decided to use a OE style remote kit (from RightClick on eBay) with a Mk3 blade, and got some Mk2 non-VW keys to keep with the remotes in case they fail. Looks much tidier on the keyring than a million VW branded keys!


More soon! :)
Bluefox
Current: '84 Golf C 1.9 TDi | '01 Polo GTI | '01 Audi A2 TDi | '83 MG Metro
Previous: '83 GX | '04 R32 | '93 VR6 | '86 GTi 8v | '88 Diesel | '92 G60 | '04 Skoda Superb TDi | '90 GTi 8v | Plus many more!

Project Thread - http://www.golfgtiforum.co.uk/index.php?topic=270683.0

Offline Simeon

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Re: Bluefox - '84 Golf C 1.9 TDi
« Reply #5 on: 23 May 2015, 09:11 »
Loving this mate, any updates?