1984 VW Golf Cabrio - 01/12 - On the Road

[Lord Sterling]

This is brilliant, the Cab' is already starting to look a lot better. Can't wait for more updates.

[Shep Shepherd]

That's a really lovely shade of blue. Is it a VAG hue?

[hairnet]

Shit brakes shit electrics

 

Golf normal

[EssDeeWon]

Had 2 of these, a 1987 E reg GTI Cab and then a later H plate in black, only probs I had was with the fuel filler necks, they rot like hell and cause further issues down the line. Tough as old boots and far better than the flimsey feeling Escort Cab of the same era.

 

If your going to replace the hood outta skin then also do the cables, there about £15/20 and keeps it all nice and tight, failing that get some good old duck tape

[Junkman]

Didn't they have to be Lhasa green or sum such in 1984? I think Lhasa green and golden BBS wheels were all the rage back then, no?

[Spiny Norman]

Blimey' you don't hang about do you? That's starting to look like quite a decent wee car VA.

[Sigmund Fraud]

Sterling work, sir !

 

We all expect you to have this looking and driving like new by the end of the week

[Cavcraft]

That actually looks really good. Does the dashboard make that stupid 'bonging' noise though until you've taken the keys out or whatever it's for?

[vulgalour]

@Shep:  I think it's an Audi colour but I genuinely don't know.  It's not original, that was a sort of browny-graphite hue.  I like the blue more.

 

@Cavmonsta: I don't have dashboard bongs, but then I don't have much of anything on the dashboard working so it's entirely likely that when everything is sorted it will bong.

 

@EssDeeWon:  already on the (surprisingly short) list.

 

@Stude:  it really is, I'm shocked at how good it is and how few faults it has.

 

@Sigmund:  Nearly have!

 

There's going to be another update in just a tick, I'm sorting through pictures.

[vulgalour]

Today I did some more work on the Golf.  My brother tried to sort out the brakes and while two bled up and some air was expelled, the other two on the passenger side decided to snap one bleed nipple and round another off so that put an end to that job.  We've found that the pedal won't return unless you bypass the brake servo.  Bypassing the servo results in brakes that work but are worse than even the ones on a Mk2 Polo and certainly inadequate for hauling the Golf to a reasonable stop so we've only done that for driveway manoeuvres.  The idling issue is very, very likely the carb gasket at fault as it behaves precisely the same and has to be driven in exactly the same way as mine and countless other old Polos.  I keep referring back to the old Polo because it's surprisingly similar mechanically and even construction wise to the Golf, unsurprisingly really.

 

Gave up trying to sort anything else mechanical out for now, the bank is empty so it'll have to wait for a couple of weeks to organise.  It's not like there aren't other jobs to be fettling with in the meantime.  The passenger seat was refitted and after getting one of the rear seat base brackets bent back to the proper shape, the rear seat was refitted too.  The parcel shelf was persuaded to be a little more flat and dropped in and the interior is looking and feeling much better for it.  Didn't get as far as dismantling the dashboard but I have found that the fan has to be unplugged as it is permanently on even with the ignition off and a cold engine.

 

The car has some amusing little foibles, apart from the silly carbon fibre inserts in the window adjuster toggles, there's the amusing front speakers.  Perhaps the car the door cards came out of had spacers on the window winders or something, but in mine the winders don't clear the speakers so you can't use them.  One of the mirror toggles pinged off today too and went into the car but do you think I can find it at all?

 

 

Next up, get the bumpers off.  I managed to shear a bumper bolt, I didn't even know this was possible.  Water had been getting in through the rear light clusters which haven't been sealing properly and that has led to some rust on the rear bumper bolts but not enough to rust everything solid... or so I thought.

 

With the bumpers removed I could clean them and the valances up.  This is probably the worst bit of rot on the car, in the usual place, I was aware of it and undaunted by it.

 

Other side was packed with moss and feathers, so I guess it was a nest or something.

 

Anyway, front bumper off and washer jets removed gives us this.  You can see what colour it should be where the grey is, the black paint rubs off on your hands and sticks in little flakes to everything which is really annoying, should make them easier to clean up though.

 

Not the tidiest install, but you can't tell when it's all together.  I wonder if these arent' original but are fitted by a previous owner?  Either way, I'm keeping them, headlight washers aren't commonly fitted.

 

One bolt had stuck, but it later freed off.  Just have to rebuild things properly.  It explains why one washer/over rider was wonky at least.

 

And the jets themselves.  They're black rubber, but they've been painted with satin spray paint anyway which I'll have to carefully remove.

 

Front valance is really tidy apart from a bash in the bottom corner.  There's also a scuff on the bumper and a tiny scuff on the front wing to match.  Strangely, the inside of the bumper and the back of the front valance had loads of small gravel all over too so I'm not sure what's going on there.  It's only superficial damage, there's nothing serious going on here happily.

 

 

Grille off, cleaned down and looking very smart indeed.  I'm going to be parting with the spotlight grille in favour of a plain single headlight grille or better yet a single square light grille if I can find one at a time when I have money in my pocket.

 

Then it was time to make a start cleaning the sides down.  Removed the trims and found a lot of moss and dirt hiding just like there was in the door chromes too.  Funnily enough, I thought the chrome - well, stainless steel - door trims had been painted black when in actual fact they were just really, really mucky.

 

The bodywork has already been washed twice, so to find that this was lurking in the trims was a surprise.  This is bucket number two as well.

 

After some T-Cut and G3 action, I had most of the overspray off the panel.  This corner isn't too bad for it, and the lacquer looks nice and deep so I had plenty of material to work with.

 

 

Apart from a few tiny spots that I'll continue to work at by using G3 after the usual weekly wash, the rear quarter has cleaned up exceptionally well.  The door demonstrates just how much overspray there still is to come off, and it's on the glass too.  There's a fantastic looking car hiding underneath all this and all I have to do to find it is to put in some elbow grease.

 

Now that it's had a day to sit, the Autoglym treatment has settled out nicely on the roof to look less shiny, I'm really impressed with this.  Rear lights removed for cleaning.

 

Top has been broggled and cleaned but is awaiting a polish after drying out.  The bottom one has yet to be done.  All around the edge of the lens where it drains out excess water was blocked with algae and this, combined with seals that weren't working properly, had led to water ingress through the lights into the boot.

 

At the moment my focus really is on removing the overspray and fixing any faults that require time rather than money.  For a few weeks I'm cleared out so I'm pricing up parts and getting on with putting a plan together but I can't see it taking a lot to get this little car sorted out, it's far better than I expected in just about every way.

[barefoot]

 The cabrios seem more resistant to rust than the hatchbacks for some reason....

Is that because they were built properly by Karmann instead of being thrown together by VW?

 

Careful with this, it'll make your Princess look & feel like shit.

[Mr_Bo11ox]

nice bucket

[vulgalour]

@barefoot:  I think the Karmann connection has a lot to do with the quality, essentially the cabrio is a Karmann rather than a VW, as I understand it.  Having driven the Golf and the Princess in the same day I can say with massive amounts of confidence that the Golf simply doesn't measure up.  The Golf is kinda hard and bouncy and small and fun in small doses.  The Princess is a sumptuous waft-along that ticks far more boxes for me than the Golf ever will.

 

@Mr Boll:  I think bucket shots are a thing in my updates now, I'm not sure why.

[Spiny Norman]

You haven't shown us a picture of the second glovebox yet.

The one between the tail lights.....

 

BTW if the speakers foul the handles, you could always upgrade the window winders to 'redneck' mode.

[vulgalour]

The second glove box really is crap, wouldn't be so bad if it had a drop-down lid as at least then you could pretend it was a chute to get things in and out of it.

[Conrad D. Conelrad]

The speakers fouling the window winders is hilarious. That's like the time I spent ages fitting door mirrors which you couldn't see from the driver's seat. 

[Mr_Bo11ox]

'Bucket shots' LOL, love it. COME ON VULG, GET SOME BUCKET SHOTS UP!

[Pillock]

If the headlamp washers are factory, you'll have a MASSIVE washer bottle. Regular is about a gallon, if you have washer jets it's two gallons.

 

Remember VW just would have shipped loads of Golf front-end parts to Karmann who would have then crafted the back end stuff, perhaps it was cheaper to only send them bumpers without the holes and have some work-experience lad at Karmann drill wonky holes in them if required.

[Volksy]

I'm interested to see how you get all that black kack off the bumpers. I have the same issue with the 205 so any hints and tips are more than welcome!

[vulgalour]

I do have the mahoosive bottle, takes up almost as much space under the bonnet as the engine.  Bumper plan is to attack with hot soapy water, plastic bristle brush and green scourer.  Stubborn stuff to be attacked with a bit of thinners on a cloth, carefully so I don't melt the plastic.  This approach has worked for me in the past, but I've never tried it on a whole bumper just smaller plastic items.

[Junkman]

You get paint off plastic without damaging the plastic by using spray-on oven cleaner. Spray it on in the evening and let it do its magic over night.

[vulgalour]

I'm definitely trying that!

[vulgalour]

There's not going to be another update for a few days as I'm going to be travelling south of the (Watford) border this weekend for a bit of a jolly.

 

I'd already decided it was likely the Golf would need a complete brake rebuild, it seems fairly standard for any 80s VW that's been sitting around doing nothing for a while.  Therefore, anything broken on the brake system wasn't going to come as a surprise to me.  After bleeding the driver's side and ending up with broken passenger side bleed nipples we moved on to the master cylinder and bled that to discover it too was full of air, just like on my old Polo.  Somehow, the brake reservoir had flies in it and the brake fluid stank so a full system flush is going to have to be done anyway.  We'd checked the pipes and flexis were okay, which they do seem to be, and determined that one slave cylinder is either sticking or dead and now all the brakes operate as they ought.  However, we were still getting problems with the pedal.

 

When the servo is connected and the engine turned on, the brake pedal will not return on its own when depressed.  Turn the engine off and the pedal will return partially.  Bypass the servo and the pedal functions normally.  After checking everything else it has been determined that the servo has broken, which is an uncommon fault but always going to be a consideration.  At the moment I'm likely going for a second hand servo at £40 as the £200+ for a new servo is a bit on the steep side.  An alternative is to find a larger servo from another VW model and use that instead as any improvement in braking efficiency is not going to be a bad thing.  So while broken brakes wasn't a surprise, it being the servo very much was, that's the one component that is usually quite reliable.

 

So with the boring find-out-what's-broken job out of the way, I decided to spend a couple more hours on the paintwork since it's been a nice day again here.  Got the rear lights refitted and the broken bit of lens repaired.  You can't see the broken bit, but I glued it back on for the sake of completeness.  I also got the T-Cut and G3 on the back panel work to clear off the very minor overspray.  The badges were loose so I removed them so I don't lose them, they were held on with sticky foam rather than the proper VW gromits.  Somewhere I think I still have some proper gromits, but I couldn't find them, for now I'll leave the badges off and reinstate when I have the proper fixings.

 

Then it was time to remove some more of this.  Where the overspray is bad the paint feels rough to the touch and looks really dirty, it is not great.  However, I'm really getting the hang of T-Cut and G3 now so it doesn't take long for me to blitz a panel.

 

All of the passenger side panels are now cleaned up so the trim could go back on.  There's still the odd cluster of white spots here and there but they're small enough to pass off as reflections most of the time.  If I G3 the car every time I wash it eventually they'll all disappear.  Were the paintwork pristine I'd obviously want to clear all the spots off completely but really, unless your face is mushed up against the panels, you can't tell there's overspray on the car at all on this side.

 

 

You can even use T-Cut and G3 on glass.  Brasso can also be effective but it has a habit of leaving micro-scratches that don't look so great.  I didn't want to risk using a razor blade and Fairy Liquid on the glass, I've had that go badly in the past, but if you're good you can clean overspray off glass very quickly with that method.  Really happy at how black the roof is staying too.

 

I did make a start on the bumpers but I've not made enough progress to show anything of worth.  I need to try a few different methods out, including the spray-on oven cleaner that's been suggested to me.  Getting the black paint off the chrome inserts and raised edges of the plastic of the bumpers is easy, but it stays stubbornly stuck in the little dimples all over the bumper so I need to try a few different things out for that.

[Parky]

I have often wondered if duct tape applied to crappy paint would rip the paint off? Rather like autoshitist bikini waxing?

[vulgalour]

Yes, it does.  I found this out by accident on the Princess.  Unfortunately, it can also take off good paint that's over not so good metal.

[plasticvandan]

i have ALWAYS used wire wool and glass cleaner to get paint or dirt off glass,it doesnt scratch it either,and works a treat (practice on something crap first if your worried tho

[Junkman]

Have you considered claying it? This worked wonders to get the overspray off my Rover.

[Rusty_Rocket]

Looking amazing, great work. With my 106 van, I had so much paint to remove from the rear (textured) bumper as the previous owner was a painter and decorator!!! The only thing that worked was a brillo pad and neat fairy liquid. It's heavy going but the results are good.

Go easy with the G3 (unless it's the weaker off the shelf stuff)- it really is 'rocks in a bottle' and you will get breakthrough eventually.

[Vince70]

I did the same thing many years ago and gave my lovely little metallic brown 1983 polo classic cl to one of my younger brothers and bought myself a 1987 golf gti c/c edition.

 

A new roof on the golf is quite cheap to get fitted I think in the region of £250 but normally the rear window frame can rot internally which I can imagine will be quite a tricky find these days cheap.

 

The brakes on the cabriolet are known to be terrible due to being a LHD set up converted to RHD.

Back in the day I remember being told that the rear axle off a mk2 gti bolted up so you could have a disk brake conversion on the back to help with the stopping power.

 

I bought a complete running golf gti mk2 for £50 to do the conversion but never got round to doing it,

But I did have the gearbox and head off the old girl and stuck them on my car and refitted the old gear on the gti and sold the Pirelli P alloys for £50 then sold the mk2 GTi for £100 so it was a fantastic buy for me.

 

If only mk1/2 Gti's could still be picked up for that kind of money.

[Danblez]

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