I thought I should probably start a thread for my accidental project, an '87 Polo breadvan.
This car came about due to the old dilemma of affordable modern cars being unreliable over-complicated sh*te, and new cars being completely unaffordable and frankly very uncool 95% of the time.
I was at a hillclimb and Mrs Panelbeaterpeter saw a polo breadvan and said "that's cool". I hatched a plan to find a Mk2 Polo to use for the school run and take a bit of strain off our T4 which is too nice to use as a daily.
A few weeks later I saw one that was only an hours drive south, in Berwick upon Tweed. It was £750, and it had an MOT!
I arranged to go and look and with an envelope of cash in the glovebox we drove down in the T4 with the kids in the back, as a storm came in and it started getting dark. Not ideal car buying conditions.
When we got there it was p*ssing it down and dark. I had a quick look around the car, started it and it seemed fine.
Impatient to get out of the rain I gave the guy the cash, got the keys and signed the docs, jumped in and headed to Asda for petrol.
Obligatory fuel stop photo
We then headed to the harbour at St Abbs to spend the night in the T4 before driving home the next morning. Apart from a horrendous banging at much over 30mph and a petrol smell in the cab, it seemed good.
Who wants to play spot the Polo
The next morning was the first time I'd seen it in the daylight and it was a fair bit rougher than I had hoped, sporting a TERRIBLE DIY respray and plenty of signs of filler and overspray over everything. Oh dear.
The drive home was interesting, the knocking noise (pretty sure it's a failed driveshaft/CV joint) is very bad at anything over 30 which made the hours drive home quite nerve wracking. It made it home, and other than the noise it drove really nicely and is a fun little car.
Once home, I got some photos of it and then jacked it up to see how bad it was...
Mechanically it seems very good, but the body is very rough, found a few large holes which certainly haven't appeared overnight, no idea how the hell it had an MOT.
This was my pile of checking tools. I'm not sure what warranted 4 hammers, the pointy fella was the trouble maker.
These were the immediately obvious problem areas.
Hole in N/S rear sill
Innoffensive hole in N/S rear wheel arch
Jazzy cherry bomb holder upperer
This bit is by far the worst bit, rear O/S arch where the fuel filler neck goes. Hard to see here but this hole is big enough to fit my hand through and I have big gorilla hands.
O/S check strap was totally f*cked and displaying some fine welding. Note the ethereal mist of overspray on every f*cking thing.
Stripped some more bits off to determine quite how bad that rear arch was.
Not good. I messaged the pictures to the guy who sold it to me, he was a young guy and obviously had no clue it was so bad. I could have (should have?) kicked off and demanded some money back but it was in pieces on my drive by this point and I felt like it was kind of my own fault for not looking at it better the day before.
After a quick chat it was decided that we would fix it. It is ridiculous really, the car is pretty worthless, but I like it a lot and my son LOVES it. I feel like I'm kind of building it for him, though realistically I'll probably get bored of it and sell it before he's 5. It's a nice base spec carb car with only 60k on the clock, the interior is near mint and pretty much everything is original. Plus, I've finished the metalwork stage on my other two projects and that's the bit I enjoy the most. It's my therapy.
So step one was to move a load of curse word from my workshop and make space for it in there.
Started cleaning up the worst area and it just kept getting worse.
Parts of it were inaccesible so to do it properly I decided to remove the quarter panel.
Window came out, revealing another hole...
Drilled out the spot welds around the window opening and carefully cut around the edges of the panel.
Then pulled the panel off
Hmmm... crusty
Followed by the sill which was also rotten
At this point I'm equal parts depressed and excited.
Thanks for reading, more soon.
This car came about due to the old dilemma of affordable modern cars being unreliable over-complicated sh*te, and new cars being completely unaffordable and frankly very uncool 95% of the time.
I was at a hillclimb and Mrs Panelbeaterpeter saw a polo breadvan and said "that's cool". I hatched a plan to find a Mk2 Polo to use for the school run and take a bit of strain off our T4 which is too nice to use as a daily.
A few weeks later I saw one that was only an hours drive south, in Berwick upon Tweed. It was £750, and it had an MOT!
I arranged to go and look and with an envelope of cash in the glovebox we drove down in the T4 with the kids in the back, as a storm came in and it started getting dark. Not ideal car buying conditions.
When we got there it was p*ssing it down and dark. I had a quick look around the car, started it and it seemed fine.
Impatient to get out of the rain I gave the guy the cash, got the keys and signed the docs, jumped in and headed to Asda for petrol.
Obligatory fuel stop photo
We then headed to the harbour at St Abbs to spend the night in the T4 before driving home the next morning. Apart from a horrendous banging at much over 30mph and a petrol smell in the cab, it seemed good.
Who wants to play spot the Polo
The next morning was the first time I'd seen it in the daylight and it was a fair bit rougher than I had hoped, sporting a TERRIBLE DIY respray and plenty of signs of filler and overspray over everything. Oh dear.
The drive home was interesting, the knocking noise (pretty sure it's a failed driveshaft/CV joint) is very bad at anything over 30 which made the hours drive home quite nerve wracking. It made it home, and other than the noise it drove really nicely and is a fun little car.
Once home, I got some photos of it and then jacked it up to see how bad it was...
Mechanically it seems very good, but the body is very rough, found a few large holes which certainly haven't appeared overnight, no idea how the hell it had an MOT.
This was my pile of checking tools. I'm not sure what warranted 4 hammers, the pointy fella was the trouble maker.
These were the immediately obvious problem areas.
Hole in N/S rear sill
Innoffensive hole in N/S rear wheel arch
Jazzy cherry bomb holder upperer
This bit is by far the worst bit, rear O/S arch where the fuel filler neck goes. Hard to see here but this hole is big enough to fit my hand through and I have big gorilla hands.
O/S check strap was totally f*cked and displaying some fine welding. Note the ethereal mist of overspray on every f*cking thing.
Stripped some more bits off to determine quite how bad that rear arch was.
Not good. I messaged the pictures to the guy who sold it to me, he was a young guy and obviously had no clue it was so bad. I could have (should have?) kicked off and demanded some money back but it was in pieces on my drive by this point and I felt like it was kind of my own fault for not looking at it better the day before.
After a quick chat it was decided that we would fix it. It is ridiculous really, the car is pretty worthless, but I like it a lot and my son LOVES it. I feel like I'm kind of building it for him, though realistically I'll probably get bored of it and sell it before he's 5. It's a nice base spec carb car with only 60k on the clock, the interior is near mint and pretty much everything is original. Plus, I've finished the metalwork stage on my other two projects and that's the bit I enjoy the most. It's my therapy.
So step one was to move a load of curse word from my workshop and make space for it in there.
Started cleaning up the worst area and it just kept getting worse.
Parts of it were inaccesible so to do it properly I decided to remove the quarter panel.
Window came out, revealing another hole...
Drilled out the spot welds around the window opening and carefully cut around the edges of the panel.
Then pulled the panel off
Hmmm... crusty
Followed by the sill which was also rotten
At this point I'm equal parts depressed and excited.
Thanks for reading, more soon.
of this, I ran out of 0.8 steel and so used some 1mm which was far too thick to make a panel like this, I struggled getting the shape I wanted and I ended up having to make a few cuts and letting some fillets in. Cuts and fillets are terms used in butchery with is quite apt. It works fine though, and to continue on a butchery theme is quite beefy, but isn't pretty!
