I've had this car since June 7th 2013, I haven't particularly done too much work on it in that time.
I bought it with 54,700 original km on it, but there were a few things not too good on it.
Things that needed attention when I got it:
- Top strip of covering on doors was peeling back and shrinking Fixed
- Gearbox was noisy and sometimes crunched into gear Fixed
- Front left guard had been repaired pretty dodgily at some point Replaced with a guard which I took to bare metal and resprayed
- Front bumper is cracked on one side and a bit bent Fixed
- A couple of bumper mounts are a bit crap Fixed
-Speedo/odometer is reading 8% off, ie I am driving 100 but it says 92 Fixed with LSD
- Little dings in random places Some have been fixed
- Small amount of surface rust All fixed, whoever came up with the idea of rustproofing when new is a genius
Things that went wrong on it after some driving:
- Points/condenser went bad, fixed that but they started to go bad again quickly, appeared to be that the bushings in the distributor were wearing out. Replaced the distributor with an electronic type.
- That's about it
Some quick stats from my maintenance log in the car: (OUT OF DATE)
- Spark plugs changed on 6/12/13, NGK BP5ES
- Distributor replaced with electronic version, 15/12/13
- Oil and filter changed, 28/11/13 (~3,000 km since last change), Castrol GTX 20W-50 This oil seems too thick for the car and it takes a few seconds to build pressure when starting cold
- Gear oil changed, 10/10/13, Caltex 80W-90
Fuel (after correction for odometer)
- Average fuel consumption (~ 2 people in car): 7.37 L/100 km
- Fuel consumption on a long trip (with full load): 5.01 L/100 km
Replacing the door trim strips:
Completed: 28/09/13
First step was to find some materials:
- Brown lino of that colour was impossible to find (or at least after a day of driving around asking) so I settled on something a little darker.
- Contact adhesive, I bought 1 L from Mitre 10. Stupid idea buying so much. I left it in the back of my car and it spilled. Good thing I had it inside a cardboard box.
- Paint brush for adhesive.
- Craft knife for cutting the material.
- Pen and straight edge to mark material.
- Solid surface to work on.
- Phillips and flat head screwdrivers.
- Scraper.
Before:
The process involved removing the door hande, arm rest, black trim strip and mirror control. There were some clips holding the door card in place. I used the flat head screwdriver to unclip them carefully and then I pulled the strip off the door. The old adhesive and foam was an absolute bastard to remove. It took almost an hour. I then used some screw drivers as wedges about 10 cm down the side of the door card to hold it away at the top. This allowed me to apply the new strips.
After (note the colour changing VW) :
All in all it came out quite nicely and that new brown actually looks good.
Replacing the front left guard:
Completed: 12/1/14
The old guard was pretty crap. Someone hit something with the car at some point and must have completely munted that guard. The one that was on it was not even the original one, it was either off a red car or a blue car or both. The back bottom quarter was a replacement section welded in and the whole thing was covered in bog and was cracking like anything. The trim strip was also put on an angle.
I ordered a guard off of Olds Cool and had it sent up. It had a few dents in it when I got it but it was solid on the whole. I got the hammer and brake pad out to remove the dents and set to work on it. It was covered in old cavity wax on the inside, which was an absolute bugger to get off. I used a flap disk on the grinder to get rid of the paint BAD IDEA it is almost impossible to get a flat surface with the grinder. I ended up spending hours upon hours priming and blocking the panel to get it decent. It has a few little pinholes from rust down at the bottom on the front, but I killed all of the rust and prepped it so they shouldn't cause any future issues. I would have welded the holes if my mig was working.
Before:
Working on the new panel: ( I don't have many pictures of this)
Installed:
It still needs a nice polish
Some random pictures of the car:
Future plans:
- Continue to tidy it up
- NO LOWERING
- NO NEW WHEELS
- Possibly some new nolathane bushes or something all around some day