Red Mk2 GTI
I am a Volkswagen chap through and through, apart from a slight weakness for things Jaguar, one day…
A large part of this love is for the Golf 2, usually referred to as the Mk2 Golf and these were built for the European market from August 1983 up until August 1992 although in South Africa it carried on for a few years and is sort of still in production in China in its Jetta incarnation.
I bought my first one in 1992 for the business and modified it heavily for publicise our work and we still own it, up until then I had owned (and still do) a Mk1 GTI but my business partner had a Mk2 from 1989. In 2001 I bought a mildy modified eight valve GTI example for my wife which we had built for a customer who found it too much of a handful. With the addition of power steering, the car suited her down to the ground and although the paint did not bear close up scrutiny, it was not bad a few feet back. For the last nine years the car has been a faithful servant only letting her down twice, once blowing its head gasket because I had neglected (why is it always the mans fault?) to info her that Super Plus unleaded was de rigueur on the car from new but especially when modified. Then a few years later it spat its differential out in a fit of pique, the only upside of this being that it splattered the front of a tailgating BMW with shrapnel, oil and smoke. Both these problems were easy for me to deal with; the head gasket put her off the road for two days and the box less than a day as I had a used one to hand.
All through our tenure, rust had been an issue but mainly underneath, for some reason it rusted very badly under the factory applied underseal and it was a constant battle to keep it under control. This is something I have only encountered on a few 1988 and 1989 Golf 2′s, earlier and later cars faring much better.
A few years ago, I gave the car a quick cosmetic makeover with some new wings, rear panel, one arch and a half re-spray and I acquired purely by luck a genuine full 1989 black leather interior which was in near perfect condition. The old girl (the car that is) trundled on for another couple of years until about three weeks ago it would not start one morning, my birthday to be precise. A bit of prolonged cranking got it running and the coolant light stared flashing. A quick look under the oil filler cap showed the dreaded mayonnaise and it was obvious the head gasket had gone, again! I took the car into work, pulled the head to refurbish it, and soon noticed that the bulkhead behind the engine was heavily corroded, a common issue on non 16 valve models without a bulkhead heat shield. I gutted the interior to prevent weld spark damage and sourced an excellent condition used heater box, as this was not working very well. I already had a spare bulkhead I had taken out of another car so I cut out the rot and extremely neatly let in the new section by butt welding with a chap inside backing the seam with a copper pad. After grinding the weld back, it was an almost invisible repair and after applying some primer and seam sealing, looked as though it would last at least 20 years.
At this point, I stood back and looked at the car and thought, OK let?s go for a full hit (paint the whole car) and get it looking spot on. I decided that the best plan of action would be to make sure the underside was perfect before attacking the outside so I set to with my trusty needle-descaling gun and angle sander for a determined attack on anything that looked mildly below par. A few hours later I stood back in a very low state, I had punched through the floor, inner wings, axle mounts, front and rear chassis legs and other areas in twenty two different places. Certainly, it was nowhere near beyond my abilities but it was beyond what I had the energy, time and willingness to deal with. In fact, after chatting with my business partner I decided the only approach would be to strip the car completely to the last nut and bolt and acid dip the shell to be sure all rust was eradicated. Looking at this from a detached perspective, it was madness and would cost around £10,000 to get it back to a point I could start reassembling it and probably another £5,000 spent on other parts, plus take me many months of free time, simply not sensible.
Reluctantly and after discussing it with a sad Mrs Crasher it was decided to break the car up for spares and put half of what we would spend restoring it into buying a three year old Polo GTI, sometimes you just have to let go.
Posted by qw2w 
