Dirtydubbers Resto Corner MK2 Jetta 8v GTI.

Still following in awe

Buddy this really is turning int a restoration bible and it will be linked to from the front page when the new site goes live

Again thanks Ant most honered And hints of a new site like the sound of that when should we be expecting it

Its finally time to deal with that tank neck bracket so first of all a good clean of the mounting area.

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Then we put a layer of seam sealer on, this will make sure that anywhere we dont weld will not be left open to moisture and possible corrosion.

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This included the bracket itself. A little over the top perhaps but we like to know that its going to last, are motto at dirtydubs has always been and always will be RESTORATION BEFORE MODIFICATION.

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Once it was tacted in place we could fill the old spot weld points like this.

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Then to finish off a few nice thick coats of seam sealer again making sure we havent left any pin holes for moisture to get in

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Were really happy with the end result and feel confident that it will probably out live the rest of the car, plus now the the sealer is on you cant really tell we've been there .

Walst we were at it we did a few other points that were showing signs of the old tin worm, the mounting points for the tank straps. We will only post pics of the one, but they all needed doing. Before :

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During :

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After :

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It really is worth the time to do this as you only need basic tools and it will keep the MOT tester at bay for many years, but only take away the rust as the factory sealer is the best against rust and there is also the factory galve and primer there too if still intacted these will protect better then anything you can buy over the shelf, also only use a rubberised sealer like stone chip or seam sealer as oil based sealers like wax oil or black underseal will NOT last as they are porous if you use these they will make the problem worse trust us on this one it WONT do what it says on the tin . This one was close to the wax oil plug thankfully we court it in time.

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Well thats about it for now we promise to return in the future with something more interesting rather than just rust, rust and more rust, but for now we will leave you with this little spookie image that were pleased to see at last and remember DONT FORGET TO CLEAN THOSE INNER ARCHES THIS WINTER!!!!! Happy new year people.

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Brilliant work Al.
Great running commentary, i'm sure half of these places are not even known about by VW..yet you are finding them and fixing the problems they have caused.
Hope the snow has treated you well..
more pics please!

looking amazing good work ive got some pics of my filler cap which i might put into your thread in tech just tyo stress how bad it is

Thanks steve. Your motors looking top notch at the mo, have you made a choice on what engine your going for yet? or are you keeping that one under your belt? As for pics on the tech tread place um up there mate the more info in this little problem the better, plus be nice to see how it effects other cars im sure the rot will probably effect other cars in different ways.

bodyinboot wrote:Brilliant work Al.
Great running commentary, i'm sure half of these places are not even known about by VW..yet you are finding them and fixing the problems they have caused.
Hope the snow has treated you well..
more pics please!

cheers Andy, Cant really blame VW they probably didnt expect this car to still be on the road let alone some mad man wanting to resto it some 21 years later (sorry tom couldnt help myself ). The snows been a right pain in the butt , Weve been without heating then, it started snowing and snowed us out completely totally gutted so far its cost us three days work and it doesnt show any sign of letting up .

Well were do i start? Weve got quite a bit done since before the snow came but its been real tricky to get to the workshop so thats really slowed us up (sorry jettafan). We will start with the finishing touches to the petrol tank brace.

Since the sealer had set we thought it would be a good idea to help it fight against water even more so we gave the hole area a good thick coat of high temp black enamel paint.

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Now we all love everthing to be clean but preservation is the name of the game here so next came a good thick layer of waxoil and yes we did pump it into the inside of the brace through the bolt holes aswell, we dont think it will make that much difference but we were there with the gun so why not? .

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The only area to be left bare is the left bolt hole as the antistatic earth strap will mount to this more on that later. As you can also see we delt with a few specs of rust around the shock mounting points, we carried out the same method of repair here too. So that left us with a finished inner wheel tub ready for the tank!!

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Its great to have finally put this to bed now we can finish the rest of the floorpan and opposite inner wheel tub. Heres just a few pics so we dont bore the pants off you to much more.

The rear top mount cups before :

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After :

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Around the tank service panel in the boot :

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We really are lucky with this car all of the rust patches have only been very minor like these on the inner arch lips.

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A bit around the open holes in the rear chassis rails.

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Anyway with it all repaired, sealed and given a coat of paint and waxoil were needed, it looked a little like this :

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Now we could get around to finishing the boreing job of cleaning, so to this point we have the hole floorpan cleaned by hand, upto the rear boot overhang section (the bit thats added to the rear of the original golf pan to make it a jetta) this we will do later as it also needs a little repair work. Before the tank could go back in there was a floorpan to waxoil, we could of used the gun but i prefer doing it by hand with a paint brush this way you can get it into all those little gaps that bit better and it makes your waxoil go alot further with the amount we get through every little bit helps. First above the tank and in the cavitys around the tank strap fixing points.

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Sorry it will get a bit more interesting in a mo . Lay it on nice and thick if your doing this at home it makes all the difference.

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Right that out of the way on with the tank. After a good clean (by hand because of a frozen water supply ) we could replace all the rusty pipe clips and replace the antistatic earth strap.

Before :

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After :

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As you have spotted some more waxoil has been used to seal up the new pipe clips.

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And a little tip for you all if you do take the tank out of yours, before you refit it just pop a ziptie around this vent pipe it will make putting the tank back in so much easier .

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Of course every part of the ventilation system was stripped, checked and clean to make sure it was all fine we really dont want to be doing this job twice. Then that missing earth strap first we brazed a new spade connector on to the tank neck then connected a new wire to that, then sealed it in with some black body masstix.

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Then soldered on a ring connector on the other end and ziptied it in place.

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This will contact the body through the left hand brace bolt hole the one we left bare earlier.
Well thats it for tonight we will post more pics tomorrow of the tank fitted sorry for this bit being sooooo boreing we will be onto the good stuff soon we promise till then thanks for reading... At least you will sleep better now youve read all that .

Now we can finally start to put things back on this car again and it feels good let me tell you. Time to get the tank back were volkswagen intended so to start the tank straps before we started looked like this.

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And after a good derust and acid etch they look... well a bit better we thinks!!

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After the floor above the tank got another coat of waxoil and a replacement clip for the fuel lines and pump electrics, We could install the tank and straps.

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First of all we made sure the straps had a good coating of waxoil on the inside surface as this was the rusty side when we took them out and of cause the old bolts simply would'nt cut it anymore so they were binned in favour for stainless steel items. This is how they all looked before they were installed.

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When refitting the tank dont forget the two fuel lines clipped to the floor above the tank (we nearly did ) also if your doing this on your own remember to position your tank support in a position that will not get in the way of your tank straps. So tank straps on it looked a bit like this.

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We also slapped on a good healthy coat of copper slip and injected the mounting cavitys with waxoil to help keep the rust at bay.

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With all the tank straps torqued up we could now turn are attention to the tank neck. Its at this point we were really hoping that all the time we invested in measureing the brace before welding it would pay off as it was going to be a real pain to put right if it didnt line up with the petrol flap . The neck bolts went in and lined up first time! as we mentioned earlier we were going to replace these with stainless steel so here they are, you can also see were the antistatic strap fits.

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To are total delight the tank neck lined up perfectly

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To get the tank back in feels like a total milestone it just leaves us to bolt all the new and shinny bits back on the car now. On that note as were on a roll, On with the fuel pump housing/accumulator. When we took it off it looked a bit tatty.

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The fuel filter hadnt been changed in a long time as the last dealer service this car had seen was over 16years ago!! We just dont understand how this is over looked by so many independent garages this in are own opinion is just plane lazy does it really take that much longer to fit as part of a service? (sorry rant over ).

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After a strip down and clean this included a clean of the pump and a wash out of the accumulator. We then detailed everthing ready for reasembly.

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We replaced the screws that held the pump in place and the small section of fuel pipe with Goodyear 50psi double walled pipe, other than these we really didnt need to change much, all the mounting rubbers were in top notch condition for the age.

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We also made a new rear solid brake pipe, again the old one was fine really but brakes are of great importance and quite frankly it wouldnt have been right not changing it.

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With it all built up we can get it back on the car. For us this is were things started to feel like they were moving in the right direction it was nice to see all the dirt gone and some nice clean stuff going back. Was this how it looked some 21 years ago? who knows but it dont look to bad now, what do you guys think?

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Again all new nuts, bolts and washers used we even put all the plastic fuel line clips and brake line clips through the dishwasher.

These were the exhaust hangers before detailing.

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These were cleaned of all rust then acid etched then given a thick coat of HT Black engine enamel.

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This is the front one fitted note the waxoil on the handbrake cable guide tubs hopfully that will keep that water out .

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Everthing Copper slipped, Waxoiled and torqued up this is how it all looked.

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There was a slight problem with rust on the fuel lines, front to back and to the tank as shown here.

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So we delt with this and replaced the cracked fuel line at the same time again using 50psi hose clipped in place using the correct sized genuine VAG stainless steel "Click" clips. This saved jettafan a small fortune i nearly fell over when i asked what price these were at the dealer .

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A pic of these hoses going to the accumulator aswell.

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Well thats were we are for now some more waxoiling to come before the exhaust heat shelds go back on but that will be are next installement before the rear beam goes in .

Again thank you for spending what probably will of been way to much of your life reading this Let us know what you think as always we love reading your thoughts good or bad till the next time D D out.

Top photos as usual. Things getting put back together makes for exciting reading! Are there plans to have this car on the club stand at any show? Make a great display with some resto photos also on the stand!

Crazy Thorough!! Nice!

Thanks guys it feels real good to be putting bits back on at last, as far as the car being on the club stand at any shows well thats upto jettafan and the powers at be at JOC. He has said he plans to show it this year and im sure he would be honoured to show it on a JOC stand! We would really like it to get some coverage obvisualy from a business point of view this build was always destined to become more involved than first thought because jettafan is a personal friend aswell as a good customer and he waited for ages to get the money together for this build so it would be great to see him get some recognition for his vision.

We got some more bits and bobs done today so here goes.
First we need to get the exhaust heat shields back on so some more waxoil going on. This is what the rear section of floor between the wheel and tank above the exhaust looked like.

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After this was done we had to clean the heat shields up, these had collected a little dirt over the years.

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This is them after a good scrub.

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As VAG intended a good layer of waxoil on the top side, this dub really is eating up the waxoil love it

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We also added the rear exhaust hanger.

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With these in place it looked like this.

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Just a quick update today as we will be putting the beam back in tomorrow!!

Just a quick question, how much would a fuel filler cap repair set me back? It's starting to rust on my Vento!

Mr T wrote:Just a quick question, how much would a fuel filler cap repair set me back? It's starting to rust on my Vento!

Starting from 100 of your english squid for a simple repair but again hard to say for sure with out seeing it pm me some pics if you can. Has it gone in the same place as this jetta, on the neck brace? or is it on the body of the car? If its on the body then it can be hard to judge how far the rust has gone but there are repair panels out there for the actual petrol flap area so its all fixable .

At last the bit us at the shop have been waiting for the rebuild of the rear beam. We finally got the replacement nuts and bolt from VAG and the stainless stuff too so here goes. Like we did for the front subframe here it is before :

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And after we clicked are heels together just three times we were left with this (if only it was that easy )
After :

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Its at this point i will shut up and let the pics do the talking hope you like as much as we do .

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Are local metal finishers have done us proud with this, what better reason to support your local small business's than this, great job lads as always .

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It was time to get grubby finger prints all over it all, so time to put in the bushes. I think it was "re2" mentioned earlier in the build that Bugpack bushes are cheap but will hamper ride quality and we couldnt agree more the rear beam bushes for the mk2 are way to hard and the fit is quite poor too so we chose to use the more expensive but much better Powerflex items so here they are going in/on this bit might help any of you guys and girls thinking about doing this at home.

The first step is to lube up, oh eer! The kit comes with copper slip but im sure that this is only meant to lube the metal tube that goes through the middle not the bush to beam (we havent spoke to Powerflex on this one). We chose to use proper Red rubber grease for this as it is meant for this purpose, it will wash away leaving the bush to grip the metal of the beam just like the standard does.

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Then the other.

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Then we take the Nut securing clips and load a new stainless nuts in then, some copper slip then click um in.

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Then a new stainless bolt and washer for the bottom of the shock (we will copper slip that later when needed).

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Then the solid brake lines and goodridge stainless flexi's. We replaced the clips with new genuine VAG items, well the old ones had done 21years so these should too.

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Brake control valve next, for this we sourced a genuine ATE item. Again all nuts, bolts and washers have been upgraded to stainless. The only bolts & nuts we couldnt get are the beam bush bolts so we replaced these for genuine VAG items.

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Once everything has been given a good coating of copper slip and torqued up it looked like this.

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Finished well nearly got to get it on the car without scratching it .

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Sorry about the amount of pics but they really dont do it justice it looks sooooo good in the flesh better than we had ever hoped for.

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We will leave it there for now as ive got to get off this computer i think my eyes are going to dry up so till the next up date, Thanks for all your kind words, see you soon.

looks like youve doen a hell of a lot of work mate....well done...wish i had to motivation to do this kmind of work to my cars

One word Dirty "outstanding"

Gone for a tissue, be back soon!

That rear beam looks sexual mate, amazing work..cant wait to see it all finished and back on its wheels.. plus i have a feeling theres a queue of people waiting for this job to be finished so they can get theirs done too!

keep it up guys.

Andy

This bit of the project has been a real slog but its been well worth it for the end result, plus the responce from you guys on here has been the added bonus it really has cheers peeps. Should be able to post the pics of it in tomorrow if i get time so keep your eyes peeled .As for you andy, you need help seriously you do I will try to give you a ring tomorrow with those part numbers you need hope the jettas not to poorly well anymore than normal anyway .

insperational mate! top work fella!

i hear its back on its wheels?!! do share guys!!

xx

Hi everyone i feel i have neglected you over the last well.... month but i promise to reattend very soon and will bring some more updates and pics to boot, so again sorry for the delays please bare with us and see you all again soon .

Right! well, as promised some updates sorry for the delay this cold winter has caused a nightmare for many of you car lovers so the shops been a little busy of late! Great news for us not so great news for Jettafan sorry chap... Well were do i start?

Before the beam could go back in we had a little rust to deal with on the mounting points.

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After a clean up the offside was ready to go but the nearside had rusted through.

The offside :

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The nearside :

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So it was time to get the welder out again .

It turned out that after some closer inspection it needed a strip about 2inches long welding in so after welding it looked a little like this.

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Are plan was to do the same as the front subframe and trap the seam sealer between the beam and the floor so we got busy with the seam sealer....

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Now walst that was setting we could get the beam lined up and in. This turned out to be a little tricky as we had to take in a couple of factors..... So here are tips if doing this yourself. First make sure you grease the mounting brakets of the beam first as you will need to align the beam after installation to avoid "crabbing" or missalignment of all four wheels.

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Secondly if running shorted shock absorbers you will need to install the offside shock to the beam before fitting as you will not have the clearance from the petrol tank to fit the lower securing bolt.

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So here it is in stage by stage shots.

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Then onto a nice padded trolly.

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Then the shocks, another tip here pop a bit of red rubber grease (NOT normal grease) around the top mounts it will help everything to settle in just the bit better .

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Starting with the tank side.

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Now were ready to just swing the beam up in place.

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This is it for now as we will be back with some more detailed shots on the next update hope you like? see you soon.