Background.I picked up my 8v just after christmas last year - having had two mk3 Fiestas I fancied a change and wanted to get a car i'd always admired from afar since being a wee nipper. This lead me onto a straight battle between a 205 Gti and a mk2 Golf Gti.
I test drove a couple of each and it became pretty clear after just a few drives that the Golf was far more my cup of tea - also two of the 205s i'd seen had a nasty habit of dying and stalling which didn't impress me.
So the obvious challenge was to find one in as good a nick as possible but not breaking the bank.
My wish list was to get a small bumpered 3 door Golf in either 8v or 16v guise and as original as possible.
My jade green Golf came up on autotrader a few days after christmas and to be honest i went to have a look at it because i was bored, not really expecting to fall in love with it!
Also the day before i'd dragged my dad with me to come see an utter dog of a 16v in the next village and he wanted £750 for that so my hopes of finding one were waning.
Once turning up at the little car dealership my Golf i had a little nosey around and seemed to be in much better nick than the ad had stated.
Off i went for a test drive and i knew i had to get this car, it was on for £690 with 11 months MOT and tax - Managed to get the final price down to £575 so was very pleased with that.
The car was registered in september 1988 and was on an F plate, it was a 3 door 8v as well.
The car had 156,000 on the clock and had an amazingly comprehensive service history with all the old MOT's and receipts back to when it was new.
So theres the little back story to me getting my Golf and now onto what I have done to it and future plans.
Whats I've Done.Unfortunately as i've come to starting a project thread late i don't have many photos to back up what i've done - that is to change from now on though.
After getting the car back home the first thing to sort out was the lack of any headunit and speakers!
So a quick raid of ebay soon sorted that out. I was pleased with the Sony headunit i bought as well as it features a bluetooth handsfree feature which has been very useful.
Next up was to replace the rear boot struts with some mk3 ones as the ones i had were showing their age and struggling to hold the boot up.
After this was to replace the drivers side manual window regulator as the original one was stupidly stiff and was starting to scrap against the door card.
When i took off the door cards they were suffering from some damp at the base so i thought it best to replace those, managed to pick up some replacements off ebay for 99p with speakers so a bit of a bargain there!
Once i had sorted that i wanted to get rid of the amber indicators and got smoked for both the front and side. I also invested in some half smoked later 16v rear lights too. Cosmetically the car was in very good nick for the age and there were only a couple of blemishes and rust i needed to sort.
I had a bash at sorting the little surface rust around the fuel filler cap but unfortunately didn't even attempt to blend in so although its halted the rust it needs me to go back and sort out.
Mechanically the car was incredibly sorted and one thing i coulnd't quite understand was that the previous owner to me had spent over £600 on the car in october 2007 so they made a big loss when selling to me. All the better for my though as my first 7 months motoring were hassle free with no work to be done.
In the last few months I have had to: Replace the gearlever ball as reverse and 1st were easy to mix up - also fitted a weighted gear shift rod
Replace the offside outer CV joint
Replace the front discs and pads
Give it a good service
New rear brake pipes due to corrosion
Two new front tyres and tracking
New centre silencer - The old silencer developed a hole the size of a fist and it sounded like a fighter plane!
Future Plans.So its coming upto a year of me having the car and is still going strong as the odometer is coming upto 170,000. So it has been an incredibly enjoyable 14,000 miles of driving so far. I have just recently purchased an F reg 16v which i was intending to restore but unfortunately it is too far gone to save but this has meant that a few new toys can be put onto my 8v.
So the plans are: Replace the central locking over and hopefully sort out my remote central locking that unfortunately died in the summer Potentially swap over the 160mph clocks from the 16v but still undecided Relocate the immobiliser slot to nearer the steering wheel as currently it is in the passenger footwell which is awkward
Find a replacement drivers seat as there is quite bad bolster wear
Re paint the bodge fix around the filler cap
Potentially get some BBS RA Sportlines or some P-slots but i'm still very fond of my steelies so shall see on this one
Here are some photos from the course of the year. I even tried out a leather interior for a bit but much prefered my standard seats, so back in they went.
This christmas holidays I intend to get on to fitting the electric windows and central locking.
Watch this space.
