1998 SEAT Ibiza mk2 GTi 1.8T Track Project

Love these, keep it coming!

Love these, never seen one is this colour though. Good engine the ABF (would love one in my mk2 golf)

These are proper cool cars, not seen one for years though think a lot got broken for the engines as they always seemed to be cheaper than a ABF VW.

That's rather cool!
Haha, my guess is 20VT.
Maybe you have a spare ABF sitting around to sell me cheaply lol.
I need one on twin 45s for the sound more than anything:

I take it you mean the mk1 Cordoba GTi, which I think existed elsewhere? We did get the Cordoba SX, which had the same mechanicals and a 3-door body. You could even buy them in Kiwi. I would have liked to have seen the mk2 Cordoba Cupra 1.8T, which was available in LHD at the same time as the mk3 Ibiza Cupra 1.8T.

At this point I used the Ibiza on the road for a few months. I had a pretty good idea what needed sorting on it, but I wanted to work-out what I should simply repair, and what I should modify or upgrade. As it turned-out, the "repair" list was short, and the "modify or upgrade" list was long. That probably should not have come as a surprise.

Now I had realised what I had let myself in for, once the MOT expired I parked it up on the driveway and made a start. In retrospect, the order in which I did things was all over the place, but I will try to write it up so it sounds at least half sensible.

The clutch pedal had been making plenty of noise for a while, and it had got to the point that it felt like much of the movement of the pedal was doing nothing to actually operate the clutch. Clearly I had encountered the common issue with failure of the pedal box. I did a bit of research, which told me that a) it was not a fun job, and b) the steering column needed to come out to do it. I can agree with the former, but I did manage it with the column in place.

The best picture I found to show the parts of the pedal box which benefit from reinforcing was this one.


I cannot remember where I found this, so if the person who took this picture spots this and objects to me using it then just let me know. I gave this picture to a welder and he did the business with my pedal box so that hopefully I should not have to worry about it failing again.

I found a couple of pictures of the pedal box out of the car, but as it is not possible to tell whether they were taken before or after it had been repaired, I will not bother to add them to this thread. Getting the pedal box re-fitted (still with the steering column in situ) was a bit of a faff, but improved the feel (and sound) of the clutch hugely.

I found a company near me (sadly long since defunct) advertising Ibiza carbon fibre door cards for a reasonable price, so I treated myself. When I went to collect them, I picked-up some carbon fibre off-cuts, of which more later.

When I tried the (flat) carbon door cards against the (not flat) doors, it was pretty obvious that some metal fettling was required. To make this a bit easier, I decided to take the doors off the car. With each of the doors laid flat, it was obvious which bit had to go, as shown by the hatched section in the photo.


This photo shows the same door after I tickled it with the angle grinder.


Apparently I failed to take any photos of the carbon door cards fitted at the time, so this shot was taken more recently.

The ABF engine came out, and was sold. Strip-down continued with the front suspension, front sub-frame, and the crossmember. The sub-frame and crossmember went off to be shot blasted and powder coated, along with a pair of new wishbones.


All the bits were resplendent in gloss black when I collected them.