Dirtydubbers Resto Corner MK2 Jetta 8v GTI.

golfnut8v wrote:mmmmmmmmm


this beats watching the news....

keep them pics coming.  

Haha cheers dude.

great work dude looking forwerd to seeing more

Cheers chap will keep it coming.

Back again,
While the bumper was drying I had time to play with the interior There was minimal work to do here and other than the rather dodgy wiring to the stereo and a refit of the speakers in the rear shelf the interior was one of the best I've ever seen. But there was the case of the rather tatty boot this is what lurked under the carpet  .

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Now if you remember back to the repair we did on the mounting bracket that supports the fuel tank neck you will recall that this had left its mark on the inside of the inner wheel arch.

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With a swipe of seam sealer.

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Then finally a blow over.

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Now to clean the boot floor.

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We also gave the fuel tank sender cover a detail  .

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Replaced the foam pad for the plug.

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Finally the spare cleaned and put back where it belongs.

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The carpets cleaned and refitted.

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Next on my agenda was the rear shelf this was the state of play after the speakers had been removed  .

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Now we have to point out that this horrible massacre was not done by the current owner it was already there from the last but with the budget already smashed and the car well over its dead line a simple clean up and refit was in order well with a little twist of course But that I will do on the next update.

Thanks as always for all the nice comments I will try to get back soon.

WOW

Road Boss wrote:WOW

Cheers dude, Was it you that was building a valver coupe?? If so hows it going?

@Dirtydubber you have put a lot of man hours into this Jetta and it's a credit to you.. The attention to detail on this build is on an other level. Ive only just quickly scanned
thru the thread tonight I'm really looking forward to getting a good read at it tomorrow.. Can I ask where the car is now?

Wow, that's some amazing work. My mate's Jetta's big bumpers have seen better days. What's the best way to tidy them up? (The front one, has a "flat" area, where it has come into contact with a post....)

Tufty wrote:@Dirtydubber you have put a lot of man hours into this Jetta and it's a credit to you.. The attention to detail on this build is on an other level. Ive only just quickly scanned
thru the thread tonight I'm really looking forward to getting a good read at it tomorrow.. Can I ask where the car is now?

cheers tuft, The car is now back with its owner in the London area and is driven daily just the way it should be   

ValiantSaint wrote:Wow, that's some amazing work. My mate's Jetta's big bumpers have seen better days. What's the best way to tidy them up? (The front one, has a "flat" area, where it has come into contact with a post....)

Hi mate, Its very hard to say without seeing them but the front on this Jetta was swapped out for a almost perfect second hand item so that was just a case of painting it. The rear on the other hand was a hole load of fun, we used all sorts of tricks including plastic welding heating it with a paint stripping gun to reshape it you name it we did it lol.

Thanks for the reply, DD. I'll get some pictures of the bumpers and post them up on here, so you can see the damage. Would this get help get a better idea of what needs to be done?

Here's a few pictures of the front bumper:

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Is it save-able?

If I'm honest your probably better off looking for a good second hand item then having it painted I would cost you less in the long run. Try to find a genuine item as they fit soooo much better

Cheers, DD. Must be a like trying to find a needle in a haystack getting a decent front bumper for a Mk2 Jetta, these days? I've been told the Golf big bumpers don't fit either........

EDIT: Are the 3rd party front bumpers that Euro Car Parts sell, really that bad? (I have seen the trouble you've had with the rear one.....)

Its not that hard to find a front bumper as the golf mk2 big bumper IS the same.

I'm not to sure about the bumpers from euro as I've never used one but I'm fairly sure they don't do one for the rear well they didn't at the time we were restoring this one lol

Thanks for the update. So all I need now, is a perfect white MK2 Golf front big bumper in East Anglia, and I'm sorted (Not asking for much, am I?)

EDIT: What's the easiest way of removing side reapeaters on the Jetta? (Will I have to remove the arch skins?)

Attention to detail on this is insane! Great work as always.

Thanks as always for all the compliments.

I need to catch up on your builds Simeon I bet you've gone mad on your Jetta by now   .

Right as promised I will try to keep this rolling   
As mentioned before the interior of this car is one the best I've seen while its not terribly unheard of for this valour type cloth to last well the one thing that let it all down was the hideous fitment of some 6x9" speakers to the rear shelf this had left two massive hole in the rear deck.

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The idea was to simply do a proper job of mounting them but make it look as stock as possible. Step one remove the original deck board.

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This revealed the extent of the damage caused by some pillock in the past.

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Not pretty at all and a massive job to put right if we where going to go down the replacement metal route.
To start the tidy up we needed to reposition the speakers under the shelf. This was simply done by making two mounting plates out of 12mm MDF that could be bolted to the underside of the shelf then the speaker would attach to these instead. The bonus to doing this is that the speakers will now have there own little sound boards which should give them a nice rich sound.

So here they are, we cut out the corners so that they would not get in the way if anyone needed to work on the suspension in the future.

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Then a splash of paint so they blend in a bit better.

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Then we mounted the speakers.

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Its important to point out here that the MDf boards will not need to be removed to change speakers as the speakers will screw in from underneath. Top tip here, if you are using wood screws upside down like this its a good idea to use a bit of thread lock so they wont work lose over time (if you haven't got any thread lock then super glue will work just fine).

Before mounting the speakers we placed some neoprene pads on the top these would make sure there were no rattles from the MDF once it was mounted against the metal of the rear shelf.

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So now we could mount them to the underneath of the rear shelf like so.

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Then a good clean of the shelf and some new cables soldered on to the originals.

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Not perfect but much much better    We even made sure we used holes that were already in the rear shelf to bolt the MDF plates in.
Next was the factory carpeted board that would be going over the top. First step do away with the 6x9ish shaped holes with some acoustic speaker grill cloth. This needs to be pulled nice and tight over the holes so that it wont sag over time or stretch if anything gets placed over it. The key is to get it so tight that a pound coin will bounce on it.

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After the glue had dried we could go about recovering the shelf, if I'm honest I've never liked the grey cloth rear shelves so I made the executive decision to change it to black. We also decided to add a little something for jettafan as a surprise, a 3mm thick MDF VW logo was added before the cloth was re-trimmed.

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Out of the car it look a bit ott but once it was in the car and the factory speakers refitted it looked right at home.

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That just left refitting the seatbelt surrounds to make it all look as good as new   

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And finally a shot of the re-homed 6x9's from underneath the shelf, note the nyloc nuts again so they don't work lose over time.

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With that all done we were only missing one thing before we could refit the back seat and that was the little panel that fits to the right hand side of the ski hatch. These are usually covered in a black vinyl type material but this had got a bit scratched so we decided to carry on the theme we had started on the shelf and make use of the old front grill badge.

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First we took the grill badge and trimmed it down.

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Then drilled and countersunk some mounting holes like so.

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Once glued and screwed in place we re-trimmed the panel to match the shelf and boot carpet.

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Popped it back were it came from.

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Then refitted the back seat.

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One last shot of the shelf now the seat is in.

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I know this will not be to everybody taste but we just wanted to give jettafan something a bit different something a touch more personal and we think it works.

Well till the next update many many Thanks for reading Alex.

Like what you've done with the speakers, top work as always

cheers bud didn't think anyone was on here anymore tbh.