Whoops, Another Mk2 Jetta

[GingerBeef]

Re: Whoops, Another Mk2 Jetta

Nice, it's looking amazing, who's the new owner?

Getting dents out might be cheaper in Alberta than BC, I got quoted $150 for 3 dents here.

The new owner is Bryan Charles, the guy with the mint silver Mk1 GTI. As far as PDR, that sounds about right, Aaron's typical charge is $40 a dent.

Now, onto the nightmare that were the brakes. I'm trying to build this car to be as turn-key and dailyable for Bryan as I can. So every part I installed was mostly OEM, with a few quality aftermarket parts.

First off, Zimmerman rear drums. I noticed they surface rusted a little bit from sitting in my garage for a month. So, I wire wheeled them off, and painted them to protect them. Then, in pressed in new wheel bearings and greased them up.









I then installed all new brake drum hardware, and brake cylinders. Unfortunately, one of the line was too crusty, and stripped to a circle.








I went to Bowness auto, and got a generic brake line of the same length, with the same fittings, and bent it by hand.











I thought the front brakes would be quick and easy, but of course, I had some issues with parts. Turns out, Mk2 GTI brakes use the same calipers as regular Golfs/Jettas, but have thicker, vented rotors, so they require a thinner brake pad. I had GTI rotors, and Golf pads. The pic below shows the difference of thickness, I'd guess about 1/8 of an inch in difference on each pad.








The wrong pads delayed me for a few days, as I wanted to find suitable quality replacements. With the correct pads, the rest of the brake job went smoothly.

To recap, the parts serviced were:

-FK Cup Kit
-Brembo GTI front rotors
-OE ceramic brake pads
-rear wheel bearings
-OEM Honeywell rear drum hardware kit
-Zimmerman rear brake drums
-OEM VW rear brake cylinders
-new brake hard-line, passenger side
-OEM Hella rear brake shoes
-OEM VW e-brake cables


Sent from my P20-Pro

[stefan]

Re: Whoops, Another Mk2 Jetta

Good progress. Too bad Aboud the pad thickness delay, but she's coming along!

[GingerBeef]

Re: Whoops, Another Mk2 Jetta

So, I finally got the brakes all bolted on and bled... Now, I've bled some pretty old brakes, but the fluid that came out of this Jetta was something else.





I bled through probably 2L of brake fluid before it finally started coming out clear again. With the brakes sorted, I could finally drop the car on the ground again to see how it sits on the FK cup kit.







I also wrapped the headlights yellow, at the new owners request, and took it for a car wash.











That's all for now... It's been quite alot of work, and the cars getting closer and closer to getting ready for delivery, but there's still some final touches to do.

Sent from my CLT-L04 using Tapatalk

[GingerBeef]

Re: Whoops, Another Mk2 Jetta

So, I really want to get rid of this thing ASAP. As there's still a couple cars that also need my attention before the snow falls... Thus, Im gonna be blasting through stuff as quickly as I can in the coming week or so. I started of by cleaning the hell out of the interior, this took about 4 hours and the steam machine made everything smell terrible. There was just a cloud of ass steam that I was constantly enveloped in. Reminds me why I stopped detailing interiors for people..















As you can see, even after multiple passes with both the steam cleaner, and the upholstery machine, the fabric in the seats were still kinda gross.. So moving on, I want to get rid of this gross looking 90s head unit. Unfortunately, after yanking it out I found a mess of twisty capped wires...









To ensure future reliability (and also, I take pride in my work lol), this must go. So, I snipped all the garbage off, and started off fresh. I matched the wires to the diagram, and soldered, then heat shrinked each wire on the connector for the new head unit. Then, the excess wire was zip tied together into a loom, and then bundled up.









Speaking of head unit, it was finally time to install the new one. Well, new-ish. Instead of a brand new unit with Bluetooth, or even aux, an new old stock, period correct Toshiba TX-502 was chosen. The thing is so funny, I guess instead of removing the faceplate to deter thieves you just pop out a little handle thingy, and pull. The whole head unit then just quick-releases from its cage haha.










After the new head unit was tested and confirmed working, I moved on to swapping the OEM steering wheel for one out of a Mk1 Scirocco. The wheel was simple enough to install, one 24mm nut, as bolt on of a mod as you get. The last piece for now was a matching brown center console. For some reason, Mk2 Golfs had colour matched center consoles, while all Mk2 Jettas came with a black one. Technically the black still matched with some of the interior bits, but now I like how there's a theme to it. All the drivers controls (steering wheel, pedals, shifter, buttons/switches) are black, and everything else is brown.









Well, I think just those few parts made a huge difference to the appearance of the interior. The last item on the list for now was to swap the front bumper for a slimmer euro bumper. The euro bumper rebar was a little twisted so it was kind of a pain to bolt on, but I managed to wrestle it in place straight with minimal cursing. The good news is, I got lucky and NA small bumper tabs on the fenders are the same as the euro ones! On the flip side, I discovered that NA turn signals are too fat to fit in the euro bumper... So on the hunt for some of those..







Hopefully my classes don't get too crazy this week, and I'll have some more time to work on this Jetta.
Untill then,

Cheers!

Sent from my CLT-L04 using Tapatalk

[Stonewall]

Re: Whoops, Another Mk2 Jetta

Pull out head units where pretty common back in the day. I remember having one in my old mk2 lol

[stefan]

Re: Whoops, Another Mk2 Jetta

yeah, you'd just pull out the deck and put it in your fanny pack.

[GingerBeef]

Re: Whoops, Another Mk2 Jetta

yeah, you'd just pull out the deck and put it in your fanny pack.

Hahahaha [emoji23][emoji23]
I guess this technology just predates my existence..

Now, some more maintenance to make sure this Jetta will have many years of worry free driving ahead... Starting with all the fluids.



Like everything else I've done on this car, OEM everything. Worth mentioning, I decided to go with the OEM GM gearbox oil as I've just found it to be the best performing in every car I've owned. The coolant and oil that came out was pretty decent, but the gearbox oil was horrific. The stuff was super thick, and pretty much pitch black...I wouldn't be surprised if it was the original stuff it left the factory with. The coolant that was in the car was the generic green stuff, so I drained that out, and flushed the entire system with water 3 or 4 times to make sure every trace of the green crap was out. Now, putting green coolant in a VW isn't as bad as some people make it seem, BUT make whatever colour of coolant you're putting in is purely that colour only. The issues arise when the red, and green coolants are mixed. They react chemically and create a horrible brown sludge that clogs everything.







While doing the brakes, I noticed that one of the CV boots looked pretty tired. A new axle didn't cost much, so instead of dealing with a CV rebuild, I just got a fresh axle and threw it in.







Next up, ignition related things. Started off with a new distributor cap and rotor. The old ones looked pretty worn when I took em off, I'm glad I decided to change em out. Somehow I forgot to swap the aprk plugs though... So that's still on the list.








With this quick service, the car drives even better now. I am extremely pleased with how smooth it runs and drives overall.

Sent from my CLT-L04 using Tapatalk

[witchcraftz]

Re: Whoops, Another Mk2 Jetta

Whoever is getting this car after you're done is quite lucky, lots of effort and quality work bringing this back to OEM.

[GingerBeef]

Re: Whoops, Another Mk2 Jetta

Another small update on Ol' Greg. I started off by changing the spark plugs. Like everything else I've done on this car so far, the old parts are tired, but still in fairly okay condition. I did notice that after changing the plugs the car hiccups less in the split second you go off throttle (typical CIS stuff).



I also picked up a nice pile of parts, all for $20! Score! These included really clean OEM tail lights, OEM roof racks, 2 pairs of clear turn signals (that also don't fit my bumper [emoji854]), and an OEM 16v lip!



I started by replacing the faded, stress cracked tail lights with these clean units. I also gave them a quick polish so they would pop just a little more. I think the difference these tail lights made speak for themselves. Here's a little before and after.





These tail lights also came with a (not so) hidden message lol.



Last thing for now was swapping on the 16v lip. It's crazy how much deeper it is than the 8v one, and also, IMO, the fake vents look awesome. It's a very 80s looking part, I'm actually quite surprised an OEM lip is so aggressive looking.





The lip was quite warped from sitting weird in storage for an unknown amount of years. But a few minutes of massaging with the heat gun fixed that. All I need now are the proper euro front indicators... But besides that, I wanna say that the front end is done?

Sent from my CLT-L04 using Tapatalk

[GingerBeef]

Re: Whoops, Another Mk2 Jetta

Finally got euro turn signals! I wanted orange ones, but clear ones are all Concept 1 had in stock.. Oh well. Also, turns out the wiring is different on the NA signals (euro ones don't light up as DRLs). So, I put the correct terminals on the ground and signal wires, and properly terminated the DRL power wire. That is all.













Sent from my CLT-L04 using Tapatalk

[witchcraftz]

Re: Whoops, Another Mk2 Jetta

If you really want orange ones you could put some amber tint vinyl on them.

[GingerBeef]

Re: Whoops, Another Mk2 Jetta

Welp, this may be the last update for a while haha. I decided to take the car out for a quick photoshoot, to recreate some of the original pics I took when i first got it. This has been a super satisfying little project, it feels good just giving an old car a new lease on life. Ive replaced pretty much every questionable component on this car now, and put around 2k problem free kms since then. I really hope the new owner gets a super reliable car out of this.
Here are some before/afters, and then just a dump from the latest shoot.















Thanks for following along ED fam. Even though my time owning this car is over, I doubt this build thread will be. Bryan's a good friend of mine, and theres still a couple of things he wants to do with this car.. Maybe he'll take over this thread, and even if he doesn't, I'm sure ill be turning wrenches on this car again soon!

[BaggedGLI]

Re: Whoops, Another Mk2 Jetta

What a transformation! Looks great, but I would definitely swap out the rounds if it were mine.

[stefan]

Re: Whoops, Another Mk2 Jetta

Looks great. Nice thread too. Fun to watch the restoration