Dirtydubbers Resto Corner MK2 Jetta 8v GTI.

jedi16v wrote: mental as always how has jf had the car back ?

Cheers jedi, yours is coming on nicely I see, you have no idea how your valver reminds me of my own and just how much I miss her. I will put her back on the road some day. Jf's had her back for about 7/8 months now I've not heard to much from him to be honest but he does not live local to me so we only really expect to see him for servicing or if there's an issue of any kind. On that note i guess no news is good news, must of done something right .

Just a quick little update this time. With the wings left for a couple of days while we had a argument with a so called new rear bumper ,the seam sealer could set and we could then think about getting the front bumper on and lined up plus this meant the first items of trim could go on. Before the bumper can go on we had to refit the arch trims, front and rear, radiator fins and spot light splash gaurds. all the arch trims are original and undamaged apart from the drivers front arch which was to badly broken to reuse so we used a good secondhand item to replace it but even this had a broken rivet hole.

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After a bit of plastic welding.

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Again no fitted pictures really sorry.
After these were on we could get down to those sills, this was them after all the little spots of rust were sorted them seam sealed then three coats of black Hammerite over the seam sealer just for good measure .

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The sills on this vehicle were some of the best we've seen in all are years which was a great boaster at this stage in the game. Next it was the lower rad plastic as I forgot to refit this earlier .

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Now the spot light splash gaurds, this is um after a good clean.

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Again these are the vehicles original factory fitted items. I cant remember the last time I clapped eyes on a full set of these .

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Now we could refit the front bumper. And again this is another bit that the computer distroyed but here are the new stainless steal bolts that are now holding all the front end together (sorry about the quality its all I have left).

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The last part at this point was the grill. With this all done it looked like a real car again for the first time in what seemed ages . Again thanks for reading til next time. Alex.

Amazing to think this all took place so many months ago before I saw the car in the flesh/metal. Your work really inspired me Alex. Take care mate. Promise I will get round to putting some of my Jetta on the site soon!

dicko120 wrote:Amazing to think this all took place so many months ago before I saw the car in the flesh/metal. Your work really inspired me Alex. Take care mate. Promise I will get round to putting some of my Jetta on the site soon!

It was great to meat someone from here at last, I hope you havent been worked to hard of late I guess your stilll away at the mo?. Get a build thread up mate you know you want to. Are you still going with that the same set of wheels you mentioned last time?

Awesome work, got any pics of it as a whole?

Quick question; are stainless steel bolts ok to use in the front crossmember? Thought these bolts were high tensile...?

Simeon wrote:Awesome work, got any pics of it as a whole?

Quick question; are stainless steel bolts ok to use in the front crossmember? Thought these bolts were high tensile...?

Hi bud, as we went through the project we did check all the bolt strengths but found no oe bolts higher the 10.9 and all of the stainless stuff we use starts at a lowest of 12.9 so it should be ok but we did add thread lock to these just to make sure. It might be worth checking if your thinking of doing the same.
Hope that kind of makes sence?

Yeah that makes sense, although I was told by local bolt specialist that the highest tensile stainless bolts you can get are 8.8. Either way, I'm sure your research was correct, cheers for the reply

You've got me all worried now im going to have to check with are supplier now, I've got some left over from the job so I will check them over the weekend??

like the details ! got any pics yet?

looking good bud

wow just wow...

just spent almost 2 hours reading this...

top work...

wish i could see the finished article....

what happened to this??????????

ill have to get in contact with the guys see what stage they got too

What can I say to everyone....... Well I will start by saying Hi, I guess?. Im so very sorry for the very long absence in any updates I really cant apollogise enough. so much has happened since the last update things have changed in my life. Dirtydubs has been put on the bench for the mean time at least which took alot of doing let me tell you, we had a lot of history together . I did this for a few reasons but I wont bore you with all that rubbish. After all the hassle I had with my computers and all the pics I lost I have managed to get it all together and stored on a hard drive but at the moment I cannot get to the computer as its packed away in what was my office which is now a dumping ground for all my old stuff from my business which of course puts a lovely smile on my better half face . Speaking of which I also popped the question to my lovely lady so that was another milestone in my life passed now ive just got to put some money aside for the big day. Any how all this aside I plan to get on with the office in the new year so I can finish of this thread and show you the finished Jet in all its glory .

Again I cant say sorry enough and I hope you've all been well since I was last here nearly a year and a half ago

Many regards Alex.

congrats on the happy news dude

Tank you very much dude, should of done it years ago . Hows things still got the mk1?

Congratulations buddy and sad news about dirty dubs but looking forward to seeing the old girl in all her glory

dont asks dude simerler situathion and yer ive still got her aloung with a few outhers

Welcome back dude, and congrats o the engagement

Thanks Ant and Robbie its good to be back, Ive been very busy since I was last on here and we did a few restos before we finally shut the doors i'll chuck some links on here if anyones interested. I will try and get everything in order as soon as some of the finished photos look amazing.

Welcome back and congrats !

lookin forward to it bud yeah throw the linkys up lets have a look

Will be making a return very soon, literally sorting through the pictures as we speak. Missed you guys   

In the words of Doctor Nick “Hello everybody”, I hope you are all well? It looks very quiet on here at the moment anyway I really can’t apologies enough for how this thread came to such an abrupt end but it’s always played on my mind and I've never wanted to leave it unfinished. Now that my life has started to sort itself out a bit I find myself with a bit more time in the evenings so hopefully I will FINALLY be able to get to the end of this build. I have changed jobs to many times to count and although I still have the shop and I still do a little on the side for close friends Dirtydubs has all but gone, I currently work in composites as a R+D technician most of my work is F1 for all sorts of Motorsport clients although this job looks great on my CV it’s as dull dishwater and demands a lot of hours at work (some of our guys do 17hours a day!!) so I will try my very best to get this thread updated at the weekends and hopefully get to the end  

The hardest part about this now is trying to remember just what I did next    The biggest problem on this build turned out to be the rear bumper although so it seems a fitting place to start. We ordered a brand new pattern part through VW Heritage it first failed to turn up then for the second time failed to turn up then it became unavailable then once I had cancelled the order it turned up!! So after that entire ball ache here it is

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But this is where are problems started after nearly six weeks of waiting this is what it looked like.

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Even though this lovely row of what looks like dents totally destroy the look of the bumper I was just pleased to see a bumper so I recalled a time back a few years ago on a mk2 Golf resto that these rear bumpers are fitted with screws and clips not just clips and I cured the row of dents that were in the bumper by removing the plastic skin from the bumper rail and placing 2mm washers between the rail and the skin around were the screws go. Again I don’t have any pics of this because of the computer issues we had but with a bit of heat the bumper looked ok again. Here is a pic of the screws that need spacing.

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Right now it was time for a test fit and low and behold another issue! This time the bumper was too wide and wasn’t molded right so it didn’t go with the contours of the car at all!

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On top of that issue was another, it didn’t even sit at the right height on the car it sat under the rear swage line not around it! I mean how hard is it to make something right? We’ve seen some ruff pattern parts in are time but this was worse fitting part we had ever come across.

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It was so bad we took a measurement of how far out each side it really was.
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And when I forced one side to fit just for a laugh this is how it looked.

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Part of the problem was the bumper had come with mk2 Golf rear bumper bars/hangers.

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This means there to short and don’t lift the bumper high enough. Here they are one on top of the other

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After all this waiting, all the time spent pissing about we were left with no choice but to reuse the original. This was a real low point for us as we were already way past are completion date I had already spent some time on the phone to jettafan trying to explain way his car still wasn't finished and now we had to refit the tired old original bumper which we knew wasn't going to do the car any favours in the looks department but at the end of the day needs must and we started to refurb the old bumper.
The old rear bumper was in a bit of a mess, at some point it had been given a bit of a tap this had left some nasty damage to the lower drivers side but after some time plastic welding and heating it up we got it back into shape and after some primer and a rub back it looked a bit like this.

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Unfortunately pics of it finished are long gone so again we’ll see it later on the car but before we could refit the bumper we had a second issue. The bumper iron to the driver’s side was badly damaged to the point that the only way we could get the bumper off the car was to cut through it this left us with only one iron so it was time to get a little clever and build one. The problem we had was simple the old iron was too badly bent to reuse so this is what we started with.

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Even the one remaining iron had issues as one of the captive nuts had snapped off

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Once that was sorted I started to scribe out on sheet of powder coated steel the outline of the bumper iron once this was done I gave it a 90deg bend and drilled two holes for the bumper bolts and trimmed the base shape so that it would locate into the chassis rail the same as the original this looked a bit like this.

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Then I cut it to length.

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I then shortened it by the amount I had left over from the old iron like this.

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Welded old to new like so

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Then welded on some captive nuts.

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Again this is where my pictures run out but needless to say both irons were given a full prime and paint before they were fitted to the bumper.

I'm literally doing these posts as I sort through what I have left of the photos so please bear with me and I will get to the end of this as soon as possible. Cheers guys.

mmmmmmmmm


this beats watching the news....

keep them pics coming.