1992 Mk2 Golf GTI - ABF Power!

Done some more work and collecting of bits in the past week or so, starting to come together at last!
Finally got my rear axle back together and painted, just waiting on Volkswagen getting in new rear calliper bolts and the plastic clips for the brake lines, also wish I could find a supplier of polybushes for the bottom of the rear struts but to no avail.


Cleaned up my spare subframe and gave that a coat of black smoothrite too - fitted my Eibach front ARB which has been sitting in my shed forever, as well as my wider Passat wishbones:


Unfortunately, the ARB is too fat for these normal Golf-sized drop link bushes, so I'm gonna have to get them back out and drill out the centres by a couple of mm. :roll:


No matter, it's no biggie and I'll do it soon enough. Still need to pick up some bushes from diggerbucket, hopefully do it this weekend! Anyways, picked up something else at the end of last week, and it's lurking behind here...


It's a completely complete 2 litre ABK engine with 120k on the clock. It came from an automatic Audi 80 which was dark blue, so according to my impeccable logic that that's the sort of car owned by old people and old people alone, it's unlikely to have been thrashed. Certainly seems to have good compression. Pretty much complete including the starter motor, almost seems a shame that I only want to use the bottom end. Cost me all of £40. :lol:


Intend on building it up on the aforemention subframe, possibly with a Passat gearbox so I can get a hydraulic clutch. Certainly makes some sort of sense since I have Passat wishbones and driveshafts already...

Well this weekend I managed to get a bit more done to *project 1908*, decided I'd finish off the brake lines, and whack in a flexi support when I found one. Made a bit of an of the line which does a sort of 's' shape on the passenger side, so was determined to make a proper job on the other side. A vice handle makes for an excellent former, as you can see!





Fitted up the axle on my own with the help of a couple of trolley jacks. That's a curse word of a job and one I have no wish to repeat. Someone to help would have been a massive bonus but at least I can say I did it on my own. Changed a gearbox on my own as well, working up to an engine by the looks of things. :lol:







After it being up on axle stands for so long I'd forgotten just how low it sits. Looks brilliant! It'll look a lot better when the front wing and all the G60 arches are on though!



It also has no brakes at the moment as I need to remake a few copper lines. While I'm doing that I figured I may as well change the master cylinder for my 22mm one and my front brakes for 256s. And if I'm doing that, well, I might as well complete the widetrack conversion. But since I've built that up on another subframe... you can see where this is going. :roll:

It's been a while since I updated this thread!
I've been busy as usual, but I've managed to get some stuff done...
After the chassis leg/front bumper debarcle I just had to get ripped in about the beast, so found me some blue insulating tape, a black marker and cracked on again:

All multiplugs labelled up:



Bits starting to get removed:





Most probably the easiest way to change a Golf's downpipe?





The pistons were severely manky but otherwise good! No scoring of the bores, original honing marks still very much in evidence too - so the smoking was most likely the valve stem oil seals. Confirmed later when I took them off, they were an absolute mess. :shock:

Tiny, tiny little update just to prove I'm still doing something.
These babies came through in the post the other day:



Front crossmember and PAS rack bushes, as mine were looking ever so slightly shot. Had a great time trying to put the bastarding things in! Hopefully I'll never have to do that job again. :lol:
Looks quite good though:





Told you it was a little update! :lol:

So the last post showing any real progress was the one with the snapped wishbone bolt? Yow, just shows how long I've been meaning to update this thread!
I got some heat on it that night and got it out, replaced it with one from the spare mk2. That thing's come in soooo handy, was well worth what I paid for it. :lol:
I'd already built up the new subframe, so it was just a case of slotting it in. Working on my own as always meant it wasn't the simplest of jobs, but I found that a couple of old tyres underneath the wishbones brought the subframe up close enough that I could waggle it about a bit, get a jack underneath and get the rear wishbone bolts in. Once they were tightened up, I whipped the tyres out and remembered that there was no way on earth that the forward subframe bolts were gonna go in with the Passat wishbones. Except if you push down on them with the ARB detached, in which case they go in just fine. Job jobbed!







Apart from the forgetting to bolt the column back to the rack. D'oh! I suspected that removing the dash and dropping the column would probably be easier than dropping the subframe again and lining it all up, so out came the 'rad dash. I needed to replace the headlight switch loom anyway, so no biggie. Except dropping the steering column isn't as easy as all that, because the pedal box needs to be unbolted too! Sack that, thinks me, who ends up dropping the subframe again! :lol:



Thought this made a nice pic too - my old Shell car park pass saying that you should wear your seatbelt, switch off your phone and observe the speed limit. Next to an old EMPI sticker, warning that you shouldn't be lowering the windows at speeds in excess of 120mph. :lol:



I always have a quick read over my previous posts before I update this thread and some throwaway comment struck my eye. The one about having changed a gearbox and a rear axle on my own and that I must be working up to an engine at this rate. Well. In all honesty, it isn't actually all that hard! All I had at my disposal was a few blocks of wood and my own brute force! I'd taken care to make sure that the rear engine mount bolts were close by, and I'd run a tap down the mount's threads after painting it so there shouldn't have been any problems there. Thankfully there weren't, and about twenty minutes later the engine was in!





The pictures of the length of hardwood and the gas hose, well, they were taken after the event when I was trying to get more wooden blocks under the sump to take some strain off that rear mount!



The engine should be sitting about here, there don't appear to be any problems down to the taller block but I guess I won't really know until it's in properly and has seen some road miles!



Since then, I've decided that although the 'rad dash looked great, to get it all working properly was going to be a massive pain in the hoop and I just want the Golf back on the road! So it might go back in after our Malaysian adventure, but the proper dash has gone back in for just now. And I keep looking at it as I walk past and think to myself that in all honesty, it doesn't look too bad at all. I might even ditch the Polo GT wheel and put the proper GTI one back on! The mk3 GTI column stalks are staying though, because they're brilliant.



Also, I've made a subtle modification to the rear - see if you can spot it and then tell me if you like it - because I'm not so sure! :lol:

Been having a few niggles to iron out with the grey beast this past wee while, first off the brakes just refused to bleed. It was only when I saw all the fluid coming from the front passenger side that I realised something was very up. Tried tightening up the bleed nipple a bit more as it looked not quite right. It wouldn't tighten. Took it out to find the threads were stripped. Bunged a new one in, job done! There's still some air in the system but it's not the easiest job bleeding brakes on your own with just a length of hose!
My indicators seem to have stopped working too - flipping them up or down, or turning on the hazards - makes the light on the dash light up, or the hazard switch, but they don't flash. Indeed, they don't actually do anything. Arming or disarming the alarm makes them flash as they should though! New column stalk?
Figured I should do something else to take my mind off it, so broke out the machine polisher in the hope that careful application of some G10 would bring a bit of a desperately-needed shine back to the paint.

Here's a 'before' pic:



And here's some 'afters':





Plus the obligatory reflection shots:





Maybe, just maybe, it'll be MoTd this week. But I doubt it somehow. :lol:

Didn't know you were on here.

Wish I had the skills and ability some of you guys have.

Good looking Mk2

Thanks! I'll keep this thread updated with the new engine build which will hopefully happen over winter. Think it would have turned out much better if I had a garage, hopefully that'll happen next year!
2.1 Supercharged mk2 FTW.