Hi all, long time lurker, first time poster!
I've had my Miami Blue 1.6 GTI for over a decade now, and for about 9 1/2 of those years it has been sat in a shed collecting dust while I got on with other things. The time has finally come for my beloved GTI to get the attention it deserves.
My plan originally was to just do a bog-standard restoration, then a kind of "resto-plus" with a few modern touches, and now it's going to be a little more than that. I have a habit of getting carried away. If you're a fan of 205s you may have seen some of my other builds - a space-frame T-16 I built for someone else, and a wildly over-ambitious space-frame build of my own that ultimately got abandoned. I swear this one won't end up that extreme - hence the title.
My background is in chassis & suspension design, and as a motorsport fabricator, so the plan is shaping up like this: completely standard-looking GTI from the outside, with some fancy goings-on underneath. I'll get in to more detail on all that as this project moves along.
So yeah, I bought the car in (I think) 2010 and tidied it up a bit, and it looked like this:
I drove it around over the summer then decided I wanted to do a more thorough restoration, so about six months later I took it all apart and it stayed that way for a long time.
Over the years I accumulated parts and bided my time. I managed to get together a full un-molested set of interior trim parts and got the seats reupholstered. I adjusted my plan to include a heated windscreen and a decent stereo, but keep it otherwise standard. That's now become something more. I dislike the standard 8V engines and think the suspension is a bit whatever (it was fine in the 90's, but not now) so am going to update it a little. I want to keep it 1.6l capacity and looking as close to standard from the outside as I can - just freshening things up underneath. I'll make it some better suspension and update the electrics, plus a respray and all that other good stuff. This is going to be a fun road car, first and foremost.
For a while I thought about fitting a 1.6 turbo THP 200 engine (EP6) from the RCZ, but while it would be suitably mental I don't think it fits what I want from the car, so eventually settled on a 1.6 16V N/A engine from the Citroen C2 VTS. The 16V TU is a nice little engine and has decent tuning potential - arguably better than the 2.0 16V XU engines which are pretty dated and suffer all sorts of problems. I got the engine and gearbox in January this year and binned my old XU 8V.
The problem with the TU engine though, is it sits really far forwards in the engine bay. I plan to remedy that as best I can.
As for the "better suspension" part, I'll keep it as simple as possible. I want to do as much as I can with as little body modification as I can, so won't be going down the double wishbones route. (For info, I've converted one of these to DW before but it required some fairly major work) I'll stick with struts up front but make some improvements to the geometry and overall design. I also don't want to tub or turret the rear, so will go with some kind of multi-link if I can make it fit, or a twist beam if not.
So yeah that's about it for the wordy intro! This isn't my full-time job anymore, so will probably develop over the next 2-3 years. I'd like to have it done before I hit 40 lol.
Will add some pics of where I am in the next post.
I've had my Miami Blue 1.6 GTI for over a decade now, and for about 9 1/2 of those years it has been sat in a shed collecting dust while I got on with other things. The time has finally come for my beloved GTI to get the attention it deserves.
My plan originally was to just do a bog-standard restoration, then a kind of "resto-plus" with a few modern touches, and now it's going to be a little more than that. I have a habit of getting carried away. If you're a fan of 205s you may have seen some of my other builds - a space-frame T-16 I built for someone else, and a wildly over-ambitious space-frame build of my own that ultimately got abandoned. I swear this one won't end up that extreme - hence the title.
My background is in chassis & suspension design, and as a motorsport fabricator, so the plan is shaping up like this: completely standard-looking GTI from the outside, with some fancy goings-on underneath. I'll get in to more detail on all that as this project moves along.
So yeah, I bought the car in (I think) 2010 and tidied it up a bit, and it looked like this:
I drove it around over the summer then decided I wanted to do a more thorough restoration, so about six months later I took it all apart and it stayed that way for a long time.
Over the years I accumulated parts and bided my time. I managed to get together a full un-molested set of interior trim parts and got the seats reupholstered. I adjusted my plan to include a heated windscreen and a decent stereo, but keep it otherwise standard. That's now become something more. I dislike the standard 8V engines and think the suspension is a bit whatever (it was fine in the 90's, but not now) so am going to update it a little. I want to keep it 1.6l capacity and looking as close to standard from the outside as I can - just freshening things up underneath. I'll make it some better suspension and update the electrics, plus a respray and all that other good stuff. This is going to be a fun road car, first and foremost.
For a while I thought about fitting a 1.6 turbo THP 200 engine (EP6) from the RCZ, but while it would be suitably mental I don't think it fits what I want from the car, so eventually settled on a 1.6 16V N/A engine from the Citroen C2 VTS. The 16V TU is a nice little engine and has decent tuning potential - arguably better than the 2.0 16V XU engines which are pretty dated and suffer all sorts of problems. I got the engine and gearbox in January this year and binned my old XU 8V.
The problem with the TU engine though, is it sits really far forwards in the engine bay. I plan to remedy that as best I can.
As for the "better suspension" part, I'll keep it as simple as possible. I want to do as much as I can with as little body modification as I can, so won't be going down the double wishbones route. (For info, I've converted one of these to DW before but it required some fairly major work) I'll stick with struts up front but make some improvements to the geometry and overall design. I also don't want to tub or turret the rear, so will go with some kind of multi-link if I can make it fit, or a twist beam if not.
So yeah that's about it for the wordy intro! This isn't my full-time job anymore, so will probably develop over the next 2-3 years. I'd like to have it done before I hit 40 lol.
Will add some pics of where I am in the next post.
