1985 Polo Mk2 Bready - 08/03 - Secret Progress

Right, go through this a third time since I seem to be on a few forums lately. So, in addition to the build over on Retro Rides and Club Polo, I'll do a brief update here.

I started building this car up to a decent standard a few years ago, but then a lot of stuff happened and I nearly gave up on the car (and a fair few other things) and the whole project stalled. However, this year everything got sorted out and I've been slogging away at the car for the past few weeks now making a fortnightly trip to a top secret location in Lincolnshire to work on the car with a good and patient friend. While I'm not up at the garage/workspace, I'm working on whatever I can at home. At the moment I'm focusing my attentions on getting the interior and bodywork tidied up at home and the mechanical gubbins sorted out in Lincolnshire so that I can get the car road legal (and myself driving it) by the end of September this year and maybe hit a small gathering or two before the year is out.

~

About 12 years ago, when we bought the car for my mother, brother and I to learn in. Not bad, cost £250. When Dad got a newer car he was going to scrap it, so I paid them £25 for it about 10 years ago.


Did some work on it, but I never really finished the job properly and after a while I lost my impetus. It sat like this for a while.


The interior I did faded quite badly too. I'd used the wrong fabrics for the job and it shows.



So I bought the correct fabric recently, and have started retrimming the interior.


Scored some Mk4 hubcaps on eBay for less than was polite. Oh, and a few years ago a neighbour wrote off his breadvan and I inherited the green parts off it, not much else was good enough to take.


Then, very recently, with the help of a borrowed Freelander, we ran away to a garage.


Some anti-glamour shots at the super-secret garage location.



There's only so much I can do here, since I only get to the garage once a fortnight. So, having to travel by train, there's a limited amount I can bring back to work on. Here's a tip though, if you want to part the crowds at the train station use four axle stands on string.


Better yet, bring two front wings back on the 3.5 hour train journey.



So, the most recent action has been brush painting coach enamel onto the wings and hubcaps. A slow process because of drying times, but gives a fantastic finish. These aren't quite finished yet, the red needs another coat or two and the whole lot will need cutting back and polishing when it's hardened up.



I've also being doing some smaller detailing, like the horn boss.



I'll try and keep this thread updated as I go along with the project. The target is to have the car and myself road legal by the end of September, and providing my income stays the way it is and I don't have a repeat of the past year or so, this should be eminently acheivable.

Oh, and before I forget, the madness that is my concept for the completed car. Not to everyone's taste, I'm fully aware, but that's half the fun.



Finally, tonight I managed to photoshop an idea I really want to put into practice eventually for the front end.

I've gone and exceeded my website bandwidth so I'll be moving the pictures when I get half a chance and/or upgrading my bandwidth.

Hopefully this issue will be resolved soon, apologies for the inconvenience.

Rain stopped play. Boo. I did get some work done and when I sat down to sort out new pictures and check e-mails I had one from Maccess http://www.maccess.co.uk/ who were offering me the opportunity to apply for job as regional sales manager of their paint division, which I found very peculiar. I'm going to pretend they were impressed by my painting skills and obvious manager type stuff.

Quick before and after, with the two wings on the lawn while there's a bit of good light outside. What a difference a week of work makes.




So, today the plan was to get outside and get to work on the other wing, really crack on and spend a decent amount of time steadily working through to getting it primed. My knee is almost better (sprained it badly a few days ago) so I can at least stand up for a bit longer. However, I got the first lot of paint stripping done and was ready to get the drill and wire brush out when the weather decided to save me the trouble of washing the panel down by doing it for me. Bumflaps.



Not to be defeated, I left the wing in the rain, it's not going to do much harm since I'm stripping it back to bare metal fully so it can stay outside for now. Cracked open the black paint and got on with the inside of the first wing and finishing off the detailing on the hubcaps, which now look great.





I've decided I'm leaving the hubcaps plain black and red rather than chrome/silver/gold for the VW logo since I think they look good just they way they are. Going to try them on the wheels to see if I like them on gold steels or if I need to repaint the steels as per my signature. Eventually I'll be paying Mr Whitewalls http://www.mrwhitewalls.com/ a visit too since I like the look of his work... but that's a present for myself much further down the line at this point.

Hopefully the weather is good over the weekend so I can get more paint done. If not, I'll just have to get some more work done on the interior instead. I doubt I can get the seats done by the 5th as well, but if I can they can go in the car along with the (bubblewrapped) front wings when I pootle off on the 6th.

Then there's another driving lesson on Monday moved forward from last Thursday and another lesson again on next Thursday so I don't miss out on them... I just seem to be spending money like it's going out of fashion lately XD Which is why my usual visit to the farm on the 13th is looking likely to be cancelled, annoyingly. Friend said he might be able to do some work for me while I'm at home though, which is very good of him I thought.

cant wait 2 c this when its finished. think it'll look pretty cool m8

loving the paintwork looks mental shiny!

callum33 wrote:

loving the paintwork looks mental shiny!

It is! Coach paint is crazy stuff, when you open the tin it looks like a black hole and when it's polished (which it isn't yet) it looks like glass. Insane stuff.

Oh look, an update.

Solid and transparent red 3mm perspex. I wonder if you can guess what I'm doing with this?


NOS Desmo towing mirror extension arms. I do plan further down the line to have a mini-caravan built from a Mk2 Breadvan painted to match the car, so these were worth snapping up I thought. My partner also bought me a pair of NOS Desmo Boomerang mirrors and arms which mean I now have a full pair of Desmo mirrors, extensions and plinths for the nose end. The little plinths in the packets below are up for grabs if anyone wants them since I shan't be making use of them myself.


Finally, after about 10 years of trying to find an intact one, I have an early passenger side light cluster. Every one I've found in the past has been broken one way or another, but this one is in excellent shape. Many thanks to Narrow_Lane from the Club Polo forum for appearing out of the blue with this one.


So, when the sun came out I took the partially stripped driver's side wing out and began laboriously wire-brushing the grot and surface rust off.


Then it rained ¬.¬ So I put the wing in the cellar for now and I'll finish it off later tonight or tomorrow and get it primed up ready for paint.


Don't quite understand this weird crease in the bottom of the wing though, it appears to be a manufacturing flaw rather than a repair and disappears when paint is applied.


So now it's time for one of these before putting the last coat of paint on the inside of the other wing.

good progress keep us updated
shine on that paint in awesome

Finally, being a workaholic is paying off! Tonight is the milestone of the first completed panel on the car.

Got the second coat of paint on the back of this wing. The finish isn't as important as the waterproofness since it won't be seen but will be wet a lot of the time I expect. Dead chuffed with this.


from the front.


Next job was to do a bit of prep work on the fuel filler flap. Lots of fiddly hinge components, had to strip the whole thing down so I could clean all the stripped paint out before putting fresh paint on.


Black on the flap, red on the hinge, green plasticine to help things dry and be held without getting paint and fingerprints mixed up.


More tomorrow, perhaps. We'll see what the weather's up to. Really want to get the other wing stripped back and in primer ready for coach paint but I need to be able to do that outside.

good work there bud!

Been a while since I updated. Busybusy as always, but I got some work done today happily. I'm delighted that you're enjoying watching my progress, even if it is mostly a rinse and repeat of stripping, repairing and repainting panels.

Yesterday I got the replacement rear screen out of the cellar and cleaned off the overspray with a green scouring pad and some sugar soap. Came up really well. Put my special silver Club Polo sticker on too (pictures when the tailgate is finished). My Retro Rides sticker should be in the post by now I expect which will be going on the other corner. Should I get a VW Wold sticker too maybe? Having said that, I've no idea if you guys have one or not.

Today, I set about stripping the decidely dodgy paint off the tailgate. Of all the panels on the car, this one is the worst. At some point we think the previous owner reversed into a post or similar as well as using both hands to put matching dents in the rear panel when closing the tailgate.

Several different layers and kinds of paint, reactions, rust and neglect. I like the texture in a hang-it-on-the-wall-as-art sort of way, but not in a put-it-on-my-car sort of way.


This was Rover Nightfire Red pearlescent.


As I stripped the paint I had a tiny window of time before the jam-like goo dried and set and had to be reactivated. The various layers just sort of turned into this horrible gloop.


Once most of the paint was off (hadn't taken off the lock at this point) I got out the marker pen and figured out how much of the panel was deformed.




Oh well, lots of filling to do there. Thankfully the metal behind the lock was really solid with only minor discolouration type rust which mostly brushed off but was wire brushed too, just to be sure.


Tomorrow I'll have a go at doing the other side of the panel and the filling of those big shallow dents (I wonder if the previous owner closed the tailgate by using hammers?). My other job for tonight is to get the final coat of black on the back of the wing that's still here and then tomorrow I can look at putting the final coat of black on the outside before getting the red detailing finished.

List of jobs for the weekend is pretty extensive, but happily I have Mechanic friend and Just Getting Into Cars And Wants A Capri friend to help me out for which I'm very grateful.

At some point there will be a big mission to get all the body panels back to and on the car too, probably in about a month since that's how long it'll take me to finish everything I reckon.

Weekend plan:
Sort out and fit new front brakes. Fit new rear wheel bearings and brake drums.
Prepare and paint front valance (edges at least) so that front wings can be bolted on.
Put wheels back on, put petrol in, pootle around farm
Strip sills and rear arches, deal with rust, paint prepared bodywork.

Need to finish more stuff to feel like I'm actually getting somewhere with this. Right now it just feels like (and if I'm honest, actually is) a huge mountain of work.

awesome man lol! keep up the good work i hope my next project gets the same attention

dubway wrote:

awesome man lol! keep up the good work i hope my next project gets the same attention

Stay true to your vision and be enthusiastic and I'm sure you'll get plenty of attention

~~

The weekend was a very productive one. All four corners got new brakes and while we couldn't bleed all the air out of the system, that job will be done by my friend who's Dad's barn the car is currently living in. Had another friend join me to help with the car too, so he was a boon doing things like getting rid of rust and being a second pair of hands for a wide variety of jobs. On to the pictures.

New helper helping.






Mechanic friend, Adam, removing a strut to replace the strut top bushes so they don't fail on the new MoT.


He also replaced my shocking front discs. He'd refurbished the calipers since my last visit and painted them but I don't have a picture. In addition to that he replaced the rear drums and wheel bearings and the one corroded steel brake line with a shiny new copper brake line.






I did some work on the bodywork. Driver's side was given a quick coat of paint to keep it waterproof and I'll be going back to prepare that panel and smoothing it out at a later date. I also got two coats of paint on the roof and the passenger rear quarter. Finally fitted the front wings and the hub caps. Smallest job was clicking the newly detailed rear view mirror in.








I return to the workspace in three weeks time when I hope to have tailgate, bonnet and passenger door painted and fitted so that the car is waterproof and almost ready for an MoT.

Perhaps not as exciting an update as the previous one since nothing in this one is finished, but we shall see.

First of all, a while ago I started work on the sunvisors. I'm still working on the covers so they've stalled for a bit and since the body panels are more important they're very much on the back burner along with the seats and door cards.

Stripped, waiting to be cleaned.


After washing as much of the glue and foam off as I could, I tackled the remaining bits and flashing with a hand file. Took a while, but you'll see why this was done later in the build.


Surprised at how big these visors are, each one requiring an A3 sized amount of material to cover them.


Trimmed the pattern and checking fit.




Then it was on to the next sunvisor. This one was completely finished but because of the change to the interior there wasn't much point keeping it this way. It's a shame really, my partner spent ages hand sewing the edges of this visor to finish it off properly (and yes, I was duly berated for undoing hours of finger bleeding work).




Top visor is the one above stripped. Peculiarly the visor skeletons were not the same colour plastic, but since I want them black anyway it means I only have to spray one of them.



Next job was to tackle the aluminium lattice beauty rings I got from here (sorry, I've forgotten the name of the person I got them from!).


One was in really bad shape.


Before I straighten anything out, I get my trusty Sugar Soap. Need to buy more of this, I've been going through it like I'm addicted to it.


Bottom rings almost completely clean, top two not touched. With more time I'll get all the grot off but for now I just wanted to remove the loose stuff so I could see what I was doing.


It was getting late, so I didn't manage to finish straightening out that bad ring. Resorted to seeing how easy it was to polish with Brasso and discovered that I need to get something a bit tougher on it first to get the metal back to something like.


I don't think the lattice trims are beyond saving, but they're certainly going to give me a lot of work. I only hope they work on the car since it would be a shame to do all this work and find out they don't fit.

Day before yesterday I stripped the bonnet down to find no rust but one new dent (not sure where that's from) and primed the bonnet and the tailgate ready for today. First job was to apply the first coat of red paint this morning.


Pesky dent.


After the red was touch dry I could get the masking tape on the nice straight edges and apply the black paint. Took me a while to work out what it reminded me of until I realised it was the Lucky Strike colours... tempting.




After the black was done, which seemed to take a lot less time than usual, I pulled off the tape and was really pleased with the colour split. I must be getting the hang of these paints because I'm getting less and less problems.





This week should see the bonnet and tailgate finished front and back. I'll be squidging the rear window back in and refitting all the bits and bobs once I've cleaned them up. All being well next week I'll get both front doors finished since I have space to work on those in tandem and that should leave me a week to work on interior stuff.

I only wish my driving lessons went as smoothly as this!

Quality thread so far mukka, and yes, we do stickers.... and you can get em from me.......

Hmm... more stickers. I'm trying not to get more but really, this place is supportive and I feel I should support you guys in return so it wouldn't hurt I suppose.

What do they look like? I need to figure out if I have somewhere smart I can put one, probably a red one. (Have checked out the sticker thread, no pictures?).

Finding the work tough going at the moment, don't know why. I suppose it's because it's not as good as I want it to be and cash is tight... again.

u see the banner at the top,stickers are same as that but in red or silver,or u can mix n match to make our proper logo,but i cant find a pic to put on top atm!

Hmm... I think I have a spot for one of those. Just waiting for a few essential eBay items I'm watching/bidding on to end before I buy one, but I will buy one, of course.

Things are storming along at the moment. It's amazing how much faster the painting goes when I don't have to strip the panel back to bare metal, treat rust and fill dents.

Today I'm ahead of schedule, which has me grinning quite a lot.

With a little help from the significant other I got the doors out of the cellar and onto the lawn. I'd already got the blue sliding glass out of the white door and removed the chunky bumpstrip, but I can't get the quarter light out, frustratingly.


We then pulled off the door handles and mirrors ready for paint.


I thought I ought to check the doors were the same for the door cards I'm making. The white door is from a newer car, possibly a Parade model, and has a slightly different release handle which I'll swap for my old one, blue tinted glass, cable-operated door mirror and a strengthening/side impact bar. However, the shape of the door card and the metalwork is essentially identical so all is good.


Next job was to make a template for my new, flat door cards. They'll have a slight compound curve due to the shape of the inside of the door, but should look nice and smart.


Took some time to flat back the paint on the old door. Surprisingly there was only a small amount of rust on the underside which was easily dealt with.


Then I could get the firstcoat of black on. It's so much faster without the pfaff of stripping back to bare metal and removing rust and priming. Makes me a happy bunny.


Took the wire brush to the bumpstrip glue on the white door, happily getting to use the new drill after the old cheap one was burnt out from the last visit to the workspace.


First coat of black and an alternative colour option should I get bored of the red further down the line... but I'm going to resist the urge to Art Deco the car for now.


Interior of the tailgate painted. Needs a second coat and the glass fitting to be finished.


Bonnet now finished.


What car today would be complete without stickers? I'm keeping to stickers for the places I update the build thread at and a couple of funny-because-they're-true type stickers.


More soon, I have no doubt.

Little update this time. My new bumper arrives tomorrow, which I'm excited about.

Today I put the petrol filler flap back together, being sure to touch up the red where it got slightly damaged due to the way the hinge fits back in one piece. Red hinges are going to be carried throughout the car so that it's a nice matching detail.


Then, after flatting back the black on the doors, I put the second coat on. Some detritus had got on the panels from somewhere so I had to flat that out too. One more coat of black should see the paint ready for polishing. The red (which looks nearly like it does in real life in this picture, rather than the usual pinkish hue) needs another two coats to be finished, ideally.

Loving this thread, keep up the good work.

Is that paintwork really hand painted? Looks an awsome finish if it is.

Yup, paint all done by brush and hand. It's not perfect yet, I still need to get the car together and go over it with fine wet and dry and a bit of filler to eliminate all the tiny dings, but it's glorious stuff to work with and should polish up a treat.

Today was a good day. I sorted all the smaller bits and pieces out that need to be taken up to the car in a couple of weeks and this is the pile I've got to shift.


Then it was the usual drill of flatting back and painting. The black just needs a polish, while the red needs a final coat. I'll probably switch to painting the back of the doors and do the red last now because that will make life slightly easier. Getting there though.




My parents kindly delivered the second Hillman Imp/Sunbeam Stilleto bumper today. The pair of bumpers only cost £10 (less than getting proper Polo bumpers!), and they mostly just need a bit of TLC to make them shiny enough to look smart on the car. Eventually I'll probably get them rechromed.






I hadn't thought of using Imp bumpers because I thought they'd be too small, but when the above appeared about 10 minutes from where my parents lived for such a low price I couldn't pass on the opportunity really. Turns out they're likely to be a perfect fit. The bottom of the black on the tailgate is the widest point of the car and the bumpers just fit over it, so it should look good.


I would quite like to have my house back now though.

Update time, again. This bank holiday weekend will see the paint on the bits I can do here finished and next week I'll be moving on to the interior, finally.

So, on to today's update I suppose.

6 brass door pulls from eBay for 1p + £2.50 postage? Yes please and thank you. Nice long screws to fix them to the door cards and just the right size for my hands.




Interior of both doors given the first coat of black. The white one needs flatting and giving a second coat and while the blue doesn't need it, I'll do it anyway for completeness. The hinges will go red.




Outside of this door finished all bar a good polish and the refitting of the various bits of trim. Well chuffed.


Finish isn't as good on this one, but again should polish out okay.


Mind you, I got my masking a bit wrong, so I'll have to fix this. At least it's an easy job.


Finally, a revision of the custom concept. Much closer to how I want it to look, but still in need of some tweaking. Inspired in part by the Austin A40 Farina and the Riley/Wolseley Elf/Hornet.

god luck changeing on of them rear wheels unless you put citroen bx style suspension on it