Project Golf - '83 Mk1 16v

needs some loving but looks solid,.

are those mk2 astra GTE seats??

Hey Lee,

How many projects do you want! ;-) Looks fun though and kinda familiar, did it used to be purple?

Marc

Things are good mate cheers. Finally got a house with a decent amount of parking space and a garage, I still pop back to the island every now and then for work too which is nice, Looks pretty cold from the pictures though! Thought i recognized the seats and lets face it there cant be that many mk1's on the island. Never knew which engine it had as he seemed to change it more times than I had hot dinners! What are the plans for it then?

So, my bits have arrived and I've done a touch more today.

Little box of goodies tot he left of the car, this little lot cost me the best part of £400. Was hoping I'd get a decent ebay bargain....didn't happen Also, no idea what the checker plate is hiding on the back of the car, but's it's coming off. Looks horrid and should only be found on 4x4's.



So yeah, bike carbs are off and I've obviously done the easy bit of bolting things up. I like bolting things up, it's easy. Makes you feel manly too. Obviously I haven't removed the fuel pressure regulator that's on there but it's not high on the list yet, just waiting for the replacement fuel pump set up to swap over from the current low pressure carb set-up before I faff around with that.



Which leads me to the next part, the headache stage. It's no secret that I hate wiring, infact despise it would be a more accurate term. My greatest success to wiring is managing to wire up a electric mirror plug from a Scenic onto a Clio and then for it to actually work. Well, today I think I've spent about 3 or 4 hours just staring at the damn things. I've got a loom that came with the Megasquirt ECU that came off a Corrado with the same engine (ABF), it's all labelled up but I've no idea what I should be removing from the existing loom or even if I should be.... Any auto-sparks here work for biscuits and tea?? My view for most of the afternoon...








So then, another day of staring aimlessly under the bonnet awaits.....

Finally getting there with the wiring so turned my attention for the meantime to the gash indicators that *were* on the front. So then, choices choices... What would Jebus do?

Ford Transit



Corolla GTI



Saxo

Lol, nice try. I'm running low on funds so will be using one of the freebies above that came from a mate. Have to say it's a toss up between the Transit & Corolla ones at the moment.... The Saxo one's just don't quite look right for some reason.

Corolla suit best IMHO. Just curious.. you say this is a '83? I'm confused by the reg plate layout, my old van was an imported '69/70 with an age related plate which read CAU 101H, yours also has an H at the end..? am i being thick or..?

So then, finally get to make another post about this car. First thing's first, how it looks since dragging it back out of the hay barn....inch thick in dust and covered in bird curse word!



Have to admit, doing all this wiring malarky and installing a Megasquirt has been a bit of a steep learning curve for me, in the past I've always managed to palm it off onto someone else and even on occasion just sold the car on.... However I thought I'd press on with this, got to learn at some point eh? I must have spent about three months working away on the wiring alone, following guides and replacing absolutely everything in order to get a spark but to no avail. I ended up sending the ECU off to the guy who originally built it so he could test it and it turned out I'd been sold a pup, which was a bit gutting. The ECU would power up but it wasn't sending a signal to the TCI unit for it to spark.

A couple of months down the line it'd been repaired, tested and posted back out to me so I've managed to crack on and tidy up the engine bay wiring:




Tidied up the passenger side footwell, although I do still have the centre console to sort out:




And found a home for the now working Megasquirt ECU, which should make mapping quite convenient:





I've done a test fire using a base map and it actually runs, which is a mega boost! So all I've got left to do now (wiring wise) is to do the centre console, hook up the high/low oil pressure switches, oil temp and fit the O2 sensor.... which leads me to this little discovery tonight, welding by Stevie Wonder:



This side's not as bad but the hole needs opening up at the very least in order to fit the mount for the O2 sensor:



So that's tomorrows nights job: carry on grinding the welds down, open up hole for the lambda and get my weld on!


Also checked out the underside a bit while I had it on the ramp, found just a couple of small issues:

Good size dent in the sill/floor pan:




Blowing exhaust hung with zipties:




And I've found out why the checkerplate is on the rear valance....it's hiding a chuffing big hole on each side:





So yeah, a few more little jobs left to do but progress finally!!