Spent another solid weekend in the workshop making progress towards stripping her down to a shell...
That was up to Saturday. Came back Sunday morning and cracked on, was determined to have her ready for the body shop as she was due in Saturday morning.
Quite proud of my work, if I may say so myself! All ready to go, then today my mate texts me these:
She's now in the body shop and the proper restoration can begin! The floor under the front seats is pretty shot to be honest, planning to replace it but weld in custom mounting points for Recaro or Cobra seats with a bolt on generic frame to suit. That way I can run slightly better chassis re-enforcements while mounting safer seats. Also going to need to repair the rear turrets and wheel arches, but also going to smooth the interior out and delete a lot of stuff, fitting a roll cage and some carpets and that's about it really.
Up front I'll need to repair all the rust, get the custom mounting points for my intercooler and radiator made up and some minor adjustments and smoothing to the engine bay. Relocating the battery to the driver's side where the air box used to go so I can run my intake system for the 1.8T similar to the 2.0 TFSI in design, as this is a really good flow and I'm very familiar with it. Also planning on separating out the electronics of the engine bay and interior as much as possible, so running the essential mk2 Golf systems off the original wiring loom and fuse box but then for the engine I'll use a mk4 Golf engine bay fuse box to keep things as separated as possible. Made a start on the first of the interior looms, because I'm not running rear wind screen wipers or washer, deleted that out the loom:
Got to sort through all this lot though at some point to extract what I need:
Decided that was a job for a rainy day. Got on with the interior loom, this one is only going to run the rear lights and fuel tank, and seeing as I'm running a mk3 Golf VR6 tank, it simplified the wiring even more. Plan to separate the looms even more into individual systems then combine them in insulation so that each system can be separated back out easily in the future.
The dash board wiring will remain pretty much untouched bar removing the wires that aren't needed for connecting to engine bay wiring. Will then wrap it all up in modern insulation so it's much more modern looking and protected. Loads of work on that little project alone but I'm excited to say I've already done one job that doesn't involve pulling stuff apart without re-building something! Progress towards the re-build has begun...
Got a VR6 rear beam as well which is in better condition than my GTI one so should turn out much better when done, also got some spacer plates for the stub axles to increase it's width by another 24mm. Sourced some mk3 Golf VR6 front hubs and a mk3 Golf power steering rack and tie rods with ends, so after I get some wishbones I have all the hardware to do both axles. Just a case of cleaning it all up, making it good as new or fitting new parts where required and upgrades too, then having it bolted up ready to fit as a complete axle. If all goes to plan (time and budget allowing) I'll have front and rear axles sat ready to be fitted the same day I get the shell back, I'm aiming to have the car rolling on all 4 wheels within 3 days of getting her back. How hard can a full rebuild from a shell be?
Stay tuned, although I'm also planning some tasty upgrades to the 6R too so take a peak at that every now and then for some other progress!