well since ive joined up i thought i ought to start a build thread to document progress, i know its not a gti but it should have some gti esque performance when its done.
ive come from minis then jap rwd stuff (mx5 turbos, 200sx's etc.) so all these funny fwd german boxes are really new to me so bear with me.
Now the car ive bought is a 1983 mk1 formel E 1.1, the car was originally my mates, he ran it for a while then sold it my brother who planned on doing it up as his first car. The car was partially stripped then partially prepped for paint and sent to the body shop to be blown over in the original mars red. however because of one thing and another its been sat at the body shop for last 4 month and now my brothers going to uni he cant afford to do it so ive stepped in to rescue it. Heres how it looked outside the bodyshop looking very sad for itself
The initial plan was to tidy the bits of rust up, theres a bit on the back valance and one arch needs work, then wip out the sewing machine sorry i mean 1.1 and paint the bay then have the whole car painted. Im still toying with colour ideas, either white, bright baby blue or kawasaki green and short term drop in a 1.8 8valve on a carb and 5 speed box. The Long term i plan was 20vt but id just like to get it on the road for now
So i got it round to a mates garage and set about sorting the arches out, spent a couple of days cutting the rot out and replacing it with good metal, wasnt too fussed about it being perfect as i planned on running with the arch trims on, actually turned out really well
then removed rear wash wipe as i felt it just looks neater
starting making good progress on it and still planned on doing the 1.8 8 valve conversion to start with, also read more and more about the 20vt conversion and liked the look of that long term. Then one saturday night after a beer or 9
got carried away and bought this
20 valve turbo powwweeerrrss!!!
so it kinda altered things as that was my budget for the build GONE! so now i need to sell some parts from the mk4 to cover costs a bit. Ther plan is now to get the car painted and built back up with the 1.1 in it, then do the swap as i really havent got space to store all the bits form both cars
So did some more work on the mk1. Repaired the spare wheel well as that was damaged, also repaired the back valance. Removed the rear towing eye and blanked it off and completely smoothed over the back valance. then applied a fresh coat of stonechip to this and the sills.
here it is mid progress, pictures arent great (youl soon realise im not a photographer)
hope all that makes sense, its kinda a combination of posts from a couple of other forums im on, il keep this one up to date as work progresses
thoughts welcomed
mat