Dizzie - Edition One 20vT

[Dizzie]

28th April 2006
"Making holes..."

As with a lot of parts being replaced during the conversion to RHD I need to cut some new holes in the bulkhead for bits to come through into the engine bay. Before I had cut these the only way to move the car was to steer by adjusting the wheels and pushing some more. First hole I needed to make was lower down which would allow me to connect the steering column from inside the car to the steering rack on the otherside. The cutter of choice was a borrowed 'nibbler' from my friends @ Sextons.

Using the nibbler requires a little skill. if you're not carefull it'll run away from the area you want to cut and just go mad eating everything. I'd drawn a rough circle where I needed the hole so I tried to say within the line! After the nibbler had done it's duty I went round the edges with a hand file to tidy the edge up.

[Dizzie]

30th April 2006
"The wiring nightmare begins"

I wasn't sure how long I'd be up at work today as it was a sunday, but it turned out I had enough time to get a fair wedge of tasks completed. 

Before the engine is installed into the car I needed to mount the brake servo which also requires new holes to be cut and the brake lines which I'll be making up soon. Of course the servo will be receiving a nice new coat of black paint before it's bolted in. It required slightly modifing to get it to clear the turret, but that didn't take long and it was in the bay.

Tasks that don't require much in the way of tools or electricity was installing the wiring loom which I bought for a RHD 90 spec golf. First of all was the loom for the rear of the car. I had removed the LHD version of this part of the loom eariler in the week. The main difference between the 2 is the side of the car that the loom runs down. I wanted to keep the loom as tidy as possible so every single little plastic clip that holes the loom along the back of the car was sought out and used.



Aswell as the whole back of the car being tidy as possible I then routed it nicely down the side of the car again using the clips to hold it in place.



I've always been a fan of cars where the loom is as hidden as possible under the bonnet so this was one of the main issues I had to address. The new loom I had bought had been wrapped with the kind of wrap that new golfs are done in. some of which had to be removed for what I had in mind, but I plan to rewrap any parts that are under the bonnet. There are 2 large clumps of loom that run across the top of the bay on the edge of the raintray which I didn't want on show. I laid the loom into the engine bay to see which bits can be hidden. There are also a number of bits of the loom which won't be used due to the DTA engine management taking care of running the 20vT lump. I only managed to get the 1 large peice routed back into the bulkhead and routed between the matrix and the bulkhead. I decided it was best to plug a few things into the fusebox to make sure it all reached before finalising it's resting place. Everything was fine as it was  You can also see where I've made the hole for the brake servo here too. The hole currently covered in gaffer tape will be welded up soon sealing it from the outside.



I also drilled the holes I needed to ready to mount the mk3 matrix and fan system. There were 2 holes I needed to make in order to bolt this in which with some carefull messurements I did 1st time instead of 3rd time like on the blue mk2. I haven't made the hole yet for the fresh air to enter the car, but this shouldn't be a problem.



I made a few more little cuts to the mk3 dash to get that fitting more flush and sat back to think of how it'll all look once the work is done. 

[Dizzie]

14th May 2006

God it's been like 2 weeks and I haven't updated!

Spend the 7th of May (last sunday) working purely on the dash. I made a lot of new cuts to get it sitting better without gaps aswell as a lot higher so I can use audioscape door pods once I get some. I got it in there and very high by tilting it to bring clearance up at the bottom. This was all going good until I realised there was now a huge gap at the bottom where the peices that meet the door vertical's were about an inch away! grrr. Time for a rethink.

I tilted it back down so they were touching the door verticals again and began working on just moving the dash up instead of tilting. This has been going well apart from I have another gap where I made it fit before. I'll fill these soon when I retrim the whole dash. At a guess I'd say the dash is now about 2 inches higher than it sat in the blue car. The steering column hasn't been lowered like before and the dash is a good inch at least off the standard position so I should have gained some more room lower down to clear pockets.

Then yesterday I had the car washed, dried and into the workshop for what I hoped was a day were I could get the dash support bar welded into the car and I could start building up the dash, but no welding took place. Instead I worked on the wiring a bit more and tiding things up under the bonnet. I've decided that the battery is now going in the boot aswell as the washer bottle. I removed a couple of bits of the loom from the peices that run down the n/s chassis. with these gone I started to route it through the leg peice by peice. The original big red wire that goes to the battery now pops out the chassis leg halfway down and will connect to the starter motor. I shall connect the huge 0 gauge power cable from the battery to the start also aswell as a big peice of 4 gauge from the alternator to the starter so power levels should be as high as possible.



I will now remove a bit more from the dash support bar so that can be welded in soon. other than that I'm almost at a stop until I can rebuild my engine which should be taking place this week. that after I've made up brake lines and go new rear engine mounts the engine can be installed. I'm not planning on getting the wings smoothed off just yet. that's a future plan as I just want the car running for now!

pics to follow!

****Edit****

Right, here's a pic of my work from saturday. The light is too low in the workshop to take a pic with the flash off so I had to take one when the car was outside in the daylight. It looks like I've gone backwards since the last pic! The only traces of wires that can be hidden are right close to the bulkhead where they enter the chassis legs. after that they only amerge at the end where they meet the headlights, horn, indicators, etc. Really please with how that little opperation went.



The wires you see hanging around the middle of the engine bay are the ones that connect to the engine for the sensors, etc.

I plan to make up some plates to weld onto the tops of the chassis legs which when smoothed down will give the engine bay a lot better look. I will also be removing and smoothing down all the little bits that are in the turrets and eventually removing the scuttle panel and all the holes which have grommets in them at the mo. I'm not going to do that right now even though the engine is out of the car because I just want to get it back in 1 peice and ready to show off at VW Action 

[Dizzie]

3rd June 2006
"work continues"

So the project has been sort of put on hold for the last couple of weeks due to work and waiting for parts from America to arrive. I managed to installed a 20vT lump into a corrado yesterday. It went from engineless at 9am to engine in and mostly connected at lunch and then running and driven out of the workshop at 6pm. Not bad for a day's work 

The parts I've been waiting on for ages have been the new con rods now available from SCAT. SCAT are a company mostly associated with the air cooled side of the VW range, but recently released engine parts for us water cooled peeps. After hearing good reports about them and impressive numbers on both the BHP handling (150 per rod!) and the price! After converting to pounds they set me back £166 for the rods, £40 postage and £27 import tax. Not bad seeing as VAG want twice that for their rods which are no where near as strong. The SCAT rods are also lighter than the standard ones so my engine should rev up slightly better. See the pic to see how much the SCAT ones (on the left) are phatter than the VAG ones.



So I attached the new S3 lower compression pistons to the SCAT 'rods ready to be fitted into my bottom end. I couldn't get the clips into the small ends so I left them until tomorrow when I'll have some help. The new rods also came with ARP bolts so with these babies in the bottom end is pretty much bomb proof which is nice to know when you're knocking on the door of 300bhp. My flywheel should be back next week lightened and balanced 



With the corrado out of the workshop I could finally get my car in there instead of it being outside the unit so it was straight onto the ramp for me to remove the digi fuel pump and get the higher pressure K-jet one installed which was donated by the blue car. I had to make up a small peice of the fuel line as 1 of the pipes came off the pump differently, but that wasn't hard to do.



Making sure the line from the tank was clamped off! There's a full tank of super I didn't want on the workshop floor!



The underside of the car is looking pretty good anyway, but I'll give it a fresh coat of undersealant just to make sure everything is good there!

next I moved on to fitting the corrado pedal box. This will allow me to run a Hydraulic clutch setup. After driving the G60 I can't go back to a cable one. It just feels horrible now! Aswell as simpley changing over the pedal boxes I needed to drill 3 more holes in the bulkhead to mount the clutch cylinder. It also dawned on me why the brake servo 'fork' was so tight up against the pedal. I had used the one from when the car was LHD which had a longer fork due to the servo being further away from the bulkhead. Not to worry as Gareth has another I can have which should sort that problem out. I'll move my 22mm master cylinder over onto it and bolt that one back in with the new pedals once I'll sorted the holes out for the clutch.

Whilst I was under the bonnet I ran the fog light peice of loom. This is detattachable from the rest of the car so I missed it earlier when I was routing cables through the chassis legs. not a problem though. Then I installed the 0 gauge cable which I would be running from the starter motor to the battery which now lives in the boot. I was having doubts about getting this into the leg due to it's size and thinking new holes would be needed, but it all went in there just about! I then did all the laying of the cable nicely inside the car where it ends in the boot.



I also put the washer bottle in the boot and installed 1 side of the parcel shelf supports. Not a bad day's work. I'll rebuilt the engine tomorrow or next week once i've ordered up headbolts and gaskets

[Dizzie]

4th June 2006
"bottom end rebuild"

With the promise of a BBQ at the unit on the cards and the glorious welsh sunshine set to full power I popped into work to find Gareth and Kins sat on my seats from the edition one inside the door of the workshop with the paper and glasses of coke while burgers and bacon sizzled on the smallest BBQ you've ever seen...

Anyway, not a lot to write about really in this update. In a nutshell I fitted my pistons and rods into the bottom end without breaking any piston rings (although piston no2 tried twice not to go in!)

With the pistons and rods installed, bolted to the crank and torqued up I slung on the sump once again and took some pics. Head bolts, gaskets, water pump and oil pump will be ordered up this week and the whole engine will be back in 1 peice ready to install into the car once I've fitted rear engine mounts and made up the brake lines. 


Pistons in


Lovely ARP bolts 


Everything looks so much better with a bit of paint. Almost brand new 

[Dizzie]

21st June 2006
"slow, but steady progress"

About time for an update ain't it?! First of all there isn't a chance in hell the car will be making it's debut on the weekend at VW Action. The costs in getting it running aswell as the spare time I have to complete the car were heavily against me so I decided a more realistic debut show would be Edition 38 at the end of the year. This gives me a lot more time to sort out all the little niggles aswell as take more time over everything making sure there are no corners cut just to get something finished.

Anyways, what have I bought in the last 2 weeks? Firstly I won a set of mk3 clocks on ebay for £19.98 (inc the P&P), but they were lost in the post by ANC, grrrr. The seller was very understanding and issued a refund on the item so everything was good there. There was another set of clocks listed a few days later taken from a Seat Ibiza GTi. Physically the same as the mk3 Golf ones, but they have silver dials and red needles  they also only set me back £16.50 (inc P&P). Bargin 



Secondly I purchased the new water pump to go into my engine. The plastic impellar ones are prone to breaking their blades so I decided one of the metal impellar ones is a better investment. They're only a couple of quid more at the end of the day so it's silly not to if your original one has died. Another visit to the local GSF and £21.74 later...



Seeing as I haven't bought the new oil pump yet the sump remains unsealed, but temporaryly bolted to the bottom end for photo purposes. Once I get said oil pump I will seal the sump on for the final time and the bottom half of the engine will be complete. I will be getting this from VAG aswell as 10 headbolts and every gasket for the engine (about 8 of them). The VAG headgaskets are better quality than GSF ones so I don't really want to risk it for the sake of a few quid in this department! I've reattached the crank pulley, installed the timing belt onto the crank and reinstalled the cambelt covers for the bottom end.



After my amazing find of Aubergine hammerite something had to be painted in it. The colour isn't a complete match as that would be asking too much, but after a quick mix with some black we got it slightly closer to the car's colour. It seems every other alternator these days is polished so I decided to colour code mine  I also painted the aux belt tensioner which will be installed soon as the paint is still drying. that means I can install the aux belt too



I'm hoping I can get the head bolts and head gasket next week so I can bolt the head back onto the engine. my inlet manifold is currently away being polished. I'm going to have the rocker cover polished also when Chi says he has the time to get that done. I can't wait to bolt the head back on and stand back to see the engine well on it's way to being back in one peice

I still need a rear engine mount. preferabley a G60 one so it can take a little more abuse, but until I can install the brake lines under the bonnet it would be silly to install the engine just yet. I also need my flywheel back from being lightened and balanced and then a clutch to go on it before I can attach the recently rebuilt G60 gearbox.

It's all coming together slowly 

[Dizzie]

12th July 2006
"interior progress"

As funds are extremely tight at the moment I've been working on doing things that won't cost me a penny! A few weeks ago I made the hole for the hydraulic clutch cylinder to mount to. As the hole was on a ridge in the bulkhead the cylinder didn't sit flush and when connected to the pedal was very very low. After a quick look at a friend's RHD G60 saw I needed to flatten the bulkhead in that section to allow it to sit flush and hopefully bring the pedal up... 2 brave pills later and with Dan holding a peice of wood inside the car and me in the engine bay I started to hammer away... You can see where I've had to flatten the bulkhead to get it in there. I'll give that a lick of hammerite in as close as I can get the right colour soon!



With the pedal box bolted in for now and the steering column secure I wanted to get the mk3 dash support bar finally welded into the car so I could build up the dash and reduce the number of dash bits that are in the rear of the car cluttering things up! with some small alterations to the areas of the car that hold a mk2 dash in it was time to get the welder out and make those spot welds to hold it in position. After 2 small spots it was held in there pretty solid, but I want to remove the actual dash soon and put in a good few inches of strong weld that will hold it as solid and hopefully stiffen up the car a little bit. sort of like a strut brace (ish). With the dash secure in the car it was time to step back and have a look at the fit. After all it was a bit late to decide it needed to move now we'd welded it in! Luckily the fit was as I wanted and it's nice and flush against the windscreen line and sits nice against the door verticals. the overcuts on the edges will be filled in with fibreglass soon and once I've retrimmed the dash in alcantara you'll never know they were there! Also I need to build up the remaining air vents with fibreglass so there are no gaps or holes allowing the warm air from the blower to leak. In the blue car this was a major issue, but something no one else knew about 



Still got a hole where the LHD steering coloum went into the engine bay. this will also be covered up hopefully this week if I get a chance to get some more work done on her



As I'm still waiting on the fusebox hanger from a certain forum member... my fusebox remains on the floor with all that loom lol! I managed to wire in the driver's side electric window and mirror also yesterday so I could build the door back up temporaryly. It'll all be coming off again to install the cable for the speaker and central locking, but for now at least there isn't a door car without a door inside the car making it look messy. It's starting to look like a car now inside. So pleased I've got the dash in there finally! I've hit a slight problem concerning the clocks. they don't fit. My steering column is in the way. I'll be having a think about this problem over the next few days. I may have to cut most of it away and build another support peice which will be welded or bolted to the car giving the original support back to the column. I don't want to pull on the wheel when getting out of the car and find it dropping on my knees!



After my little session with the quik clay and major Zymöl waxing sesh it was only fair to put a pic of it in the daylight. I should of taken a pic when the sun was out, which wasn't for long! The purple looks gorgeous 



What's in the white bag? PAS lines, that are still leaking 3 months after I drained the system 

[Dizzie]

25th July 2006
"Brake lines done - yay"

We had a F plate gti in work that was being broken for parts. The original plan was to build up my brake lines using the new copper pipes we have, but with a lack of tool to do the ends the chances of me actually doing this sometime soon were slim to none. Anyway, with the other mk2 going I decided to liberate it of it's brake lines and transfer them onto my car. that way I know they're perfected sorted for the task. After about 20 mins of carefully removing them off the bottom of the car and moving them around the engine so I didn't bend them out of shape they were off the car. The original LHD setup was removed too and folded up ready to be binned.

I removed the lines from the compensator under the n/s wheel forward. The compensator is the common place were the LHD and RHD lines are at the same point on the car. Refitting the lines to the unside fo the car is so much easier than removing them without breaking anything! After using the daily driver as a referance they were fitted to the edition one as if VAG had done them



I still need to mount the proper servo with the master cylinder on before I can attach the lines to it making the braking system pretty much finished. Getting this done has really recharged my inspiration towards the project! I've got the front calipers and carriers setup removed off the car and gave them a bit of a shotblast to remove the previous paint before giving them a fresh lick of black paint. After 15 mins of shotblasting the 1st caliper I gave up. It's hard work lol. so decided if the paint isn't coming off like that it's hardly going to come off when they're on the car!

I'll be painting them this week ready to refit to the car.

As for what was going on inside the car. I also took the carpet from the breaker so I now had a complete carpet set that was in very good condition. the patch under the driver's heals wasn't worn at all. I guess the mats that were in the breaker when we got it had been in there a long time and that shows with these carpets . The downside was I think someone has spilt a mcd coke or something in the back. When I lifted the carpet out the smell that hit me can only be described as raw sewage!

I completely soaked them in truck wash before turning the pressure washer up to the highest heat setting and giving them the cleaning of their lives! Now they look brand new again and don't smell!

I also got a rear bench for the car in the same pattern as the front seats so that was put in there to make the car a little more complete. all the parts and bits still to put on the car now fit in the boot so the car doesn't look like it's had the interior ripped out of it! I'll be installing the carpet's once I've changed the roof seals. No point in doing them without swaping the seals else as soon as it rains I'll have a puddle in the back again!



As the car has been sat outside for the last couple of weeks it was getting really dusty so I gave it a wash. It's all about the purple eh JV!



The little update didn't cost me a penny which was nice 

[Dizzie]

6th August 2006
"Engine gets rebuilt and installed"

I had a little surprise this week in work. The boss had bought all the gaskets and bolts I needed to complete my engine and get it back into the engine bay. With the whole Saturday to work on my engine I cracked on! I'll pretty much leave the pictures to do the talking

Let's start at the bottom and work up. First of all I needed to install the new oil pump and windage tray. The sump on the 20v doesn't have a gasket like a 8v from a mk2 so you have to use a special sealer. it's a bit like icing a cake lol!



Next up was to pop on the lovely genuine VAG metal head gasket and bolt on the head.





As money is still very very tight at the moment and I haven't got the other rocker cover polished up I decided to give the old one a quick spray to see what that comes out like. I'm quite impressed really. looks good



After spending several hours reattaching water pipes and getting all the oil and water feeds for the turbo sorted it was time to bolt on the gearbox. this was pretty much the last thing I had to do. My flywheel had been lightened and balanced last month so that was bolted onto the crank. I think a lot has been taken off it because there's a lot of space between it and the block

Hopefully that'll allow my engine to spin up nicely. With everything bolted on it was time to load it onto the crane ready to install into the car



I'll be having a new intake pipe made up when it goes for the downpipe and boost pipes. the standard one is so bendy it can't be good for airflow! As soon as my polished inlet manifold arrives from voodoo that'll be going on which will make the engine viewing a lot more pleasant. Kinda lets down the look now I'm probably going to move the PAS tank so it's flush against the chassis let. sort of sticks out a bit!

I did have a solid front engine mount, but it doesn't line up and I was getting really annoyed so popped in a standard 16v one for now.







had to put this pic in 

[Dizzie]

16th August 2006
"Brakes are done - almost"

Only a little update, but I thought I should do one anyway. The hydraulic clutch was now installed and ready to bleed and the brakes weren't far off being bled themselves. Managed to get a cheap set of goodridge braided brake lines for the car so that was the final peice of the hydraulics completed. Now all I need to do it put it all together.

The fronts were extremely easy as I didn't have flexi lines on there anyway so it was a simple case of just popping them on. The middle peice which goes between the ridgid lines on the car to the rear beam were little buggers. The one on the n/s was pretty much unaccessable due to the brake compenstator being in the way. After I'd removed that it was easy enough to remove and replace with the new line.



The n/s rear was again easy enough. I decided to install my new green stuff pads at the same time. I think the person that installed the last set of pads didn't really know how to fit them right as there was no copper slip on them so removal was more difficult than I had of hoped. After much pry barage they were off the car. I will be removing them again soon to install my sexy drilled rear discs purely cos they look nicer than the solid ones. After the car is running the discs won't look like they're off a scrapper and they'll be back to their shiney state.

Annoyingly the o/s rear caliper is seized and no matter how much I hammered it it wouldn't free up so it's time for another one Either that or time to pop on mk3 ones 



I also installed the shorter of the 2 driveshafts while the car was up in the air. I need a CV boot before I can install the longer one.



We're going to see if we can make up a downpipe using the original TT one and my old k03S one. That'll save me a few more quid and then I just need the management loom before I can turn the key. Well, that's providing I've done the rest of the electrics lol