8v on Wheels

I had an hour one evening earlier in the week so had the car out of the garage and ran the engine until the fan kicked in then carefully drove it back in. The only brakes the car had were the hand brake… Up on axle stands,Wheels off, drained the oil out of the block and left it dripping into the oil tray.

Bled the brakes again with the eezibleed and about 15psi fed off a spare wheel. I started with the O/S rear and an amazing amount of air came out and then progressively less as I worked around N/S rear, O/S front and then N/S front. Finished with a really firm pedal feel. Result!

Checked a few more things ahead of the MOT. Needs two bulbs – one rear indicator and one rear numberplate light. I think the hand brake needs tightening too, so will have to take the heat shield off the exhaust tunnel again. I wish I’d thought to check it when I was fitting the quick shift

Quite a lot of progress over the weekend. Gusset repairs are all done and top coated. Polybushed the front ARB and refitted the ARB (the bushes came off the 16v standard ARB as they’re surplus now as there’s a 19mm ARB going on). Fitted the new drop links on both sides.

I had a complete GTI loom as a spare. Dug it out and looked through it to find the connectors for the stereo. Some bugger had already chopped them off 🙄 Typical! So then had to go through the bag of bits that had come out of the 16v loom. Found them though and had to make a few repairs where the outer cable had been cut by tap connectors.

Soldered the connectors onto the main loom in the car and fitted the new stereo. It works 😀

The interior needed a full clean up before the carpet and seats were refitted. In cleaning up the interior footwells, there was a bit of surface rust and both the rear drain pugs were loose. Cleaned them up, etched primer with Rustoleum and once that was dry, siliconed in the plugs.

Finally put the car down onto wheels and took it outside for a wash. Unfortunately the brakes aren’t right… in that there aren’t any! I did the whole bleed, let it stand and then repeat again, but clearly there is still more air in the system. So will have to do it again, but will link it into doing the oil and filter change whilst is it up one stands again.

The passenger door was known to be FUBAR’d. Check out those panel gaps:

I think I may have found out the reason that the interior was damp – check out that gap between the door and B pillar! Yes the door is closed. Fortunately I picked up a new door at the weekend, so just need to swap them over.

Unfortunately, maybe I should have collected a pair of doors. This is the drivers side: