1985 Polo Mk2 Bready - 08/03 - Secret Progress

Right, lots of stuff has happened since last update.

I've moved house (mostly using the Polo, I might add)
I've been in hospital.
My parents borrowed my car while theirs was broken and put 500 miles on him in a fortnight.
I'm rebuilding my engine.


Here's some highlights.

The small sofa we collected. Later we got the bigger one that matches it.


The fridge-freezer I collected from Sheffield.


Shits and giggles courtesy of the family.


A bit more gold trim.


A garage I now have!


Fancy dress for a photoshoot.


My bonnet mascot fitted.


Front end stripped down, engine still to come out and more stuff to remove and label and photograph.


My to do list looks a bit like this:

Cash in road tax, there's still a few months left on it.
Completely strip the engine bay.
Dismantle the 160k engine, inspect for damage, if repairable rebuild it with new parts. If not, new engine time.
Tidy up and repaint the engine bay. Detail all the engine bits. Refit the engine.
Fit the quad lights and a custom grille (I've got all the part bar new H4 lights).
Finish the paint on the bonnet and wings.
Remove the windscreen, repair/rust treat and paint the surround. Fit new windscreen (not a second hand one again).
Find and fit crossover style wipers and motor, possibly from a Renault Scenic or Citroen Picasso or something like that.
Maybe customise the dashboard.

Today's update is woefully small, There's not really much I can do now on the engine apart from removing it.

First thing I did was to stand and stare at the engine, familiarising myself with bits I know and bits I don't and quickly working out there's very little I can now remove without pulling the engine itself out. So, I made a start by unclipping the wiring loom. I will be rerouting the wiring loom slightly more tidily I think, I'm not happy with how VW did it for what I want it to look like under here. Nothing too drastic, just a bit of a tweak, and something I'll work out when things go back together.


For now, I've stuffed the loom into the top corner where it will be easy to put out of the way when I get to painting.


One advantage of all that horrible crusty oil is that it's protected the bodywork. The paint does seem very thin in the engine bay so I'm actually glad of the leak and even gladder (is that even a word?) of the opportunity to repaint in here. This bit had been given a quick clean before I ran out of degreaser completely today.


Removed the indicators from the front end. I've got some chrome plinths I might be using when I put them back on, though it'll require more fabrication work. The front valance is now ready to be paintstripped and redone properly, it was a rush job last time and it shows now all the clutter is removed, though not so much in this pic because it's backlit.


I think I found the leak too. Water is getting into the passenger footwell when it rains a lot, especially so when the rain is driving at the front of the car. There's small rust bubbles on the outside of the surround, making the seal lift and this one matches them on the inside. I think I've caught it early enough not to worry beyond a wire brush and rust converter. I hope it won't need welding.




Dashboard is out, came out yesterday. As is the steering wheel and stalks. I wasn't going to do this job, but now I have I'm glad I have as I can fix a fair few other things.


We didn't put a final coat of paint on this repair and it's starting to show a few blebs of surface rust. I'll strip and repaint it properly before the dash goes back in.


From the top, the battery tray repair has fared well apart from a bit of surface flash rust because, like inside, I didn't make time to put proper paint on it.


So here's my dashboard and the Lexus stereo my Dad gave me from his old Lexus. I'll be wiring in some Lexus speakers too.


I'm going to customise this dashboard. I want it to be padded and vinyl covered. I'm going to do away with the tray under the steering wheel and the current radio location. The radio is not in the best place, it's difficult to operate when driving. So I'm going to sink the Lexus unit into the top of the dash, blending the original radio pod into the top of the dash. When this is all covered (a tricky job, I have no doubt) it will look pretty good. The lower part of the dash will be smoothed with more padded vinyl covering it and a slimline subwoofer hidden inside it.

Shonky photoshop.


Whatever vinyl I use on the dash I'll also use on the new doorcards I have designed in my head. I'm really unhappy with the current efforts now since I know I can and will do better. Might need a lot of buttons and foam though.

With work on the engine called to a halt, it was time to do something else. Got Dad to come up with some tools and see if he could help out with fitting my double headlamps.

First job was to mock everything up as before and figure out what needed cutting out. Working a bit at a time and gradually grinding back, we go the original brackets trimmed down. We trimmed them a bit more than this photo shows, but the fundamental part was getting rid of the obstructive upright.



After making a cardboard template and repeatedly offering up the headlight bracket we found that the headlight bracket had to have a notch removed to accomodate the dimple for the bonnet adjustment rubbers. After much fettling it finally fit. I'll need to put a screw or two in to fix everything firmly but apart from that it's ready for the headlamps to go in once I've bought them.


Adjusters are nicely accessible from the rear.


They sit back further than the original lights as these units are slimmer, they also have a more aggressive appearance, which is a good thing. The unit on the right is in the final place, the one on the left is how things were originally mocked up.



At some point we'll sort out the left hand side to match, I'll repaint the brackets and do some filing to get everything smoothed out nicely. Best of all, should I for any reason need to revert to the original 7" lamps, the fixing points for them are still in place on the car.

I'm going to slice up the Herald grille bars to make a vertical bar grille between the new headlamps and I'll be trimming the finishing surrounds down to fit the new headlamps too. I then just need to spend about £55 on a full set of H4 units. Sadly, I can't get H4 headlamps that look like the nice domed sealed beam headlamps for a sensible price and the sealed beam units I do have don't all work, I think at least one has blown.

An honest to goodness update.

I'm on part time hours while I wait for physio and allowing myself a little bit of time every day to work on the car. I'm a bit fed up of not being able to get more into things, but I'd be an idiot to overdo it and be out of action for another month, so we have to go slowly for now.

For Yule, my friends got me a bone china mug printed with the photoshop of Wilhelm with a fighter jet on his roof. This mug brings great happiness and just a little mockery. It's a good size for coffee too.


One of the jobs when preparing the wings for finishing paint was to remove the wing mirrors. The bolts felt very stiff but I couldn't see any sort of issue and they appeared to be coming loose until the head of both bolts sheared off. I wasn't even using that much force! It's clear that the steel bolt has seized into the aluminium body quite firmly so it'll be new mirror time if I can't get the bolt shafts out.


I found and bought some starlock washers for the bonnet mascot too. I thought maybe it would be more sensible to secure it better than wedging it into the holes and relying on it staying put in the long term even though I've had no issues with it in the short term. I'm going to be modifying this mascot too and have the parts to do that on order.


Finally, I spent another hour today sanding back one of the front wings. The majority of the black paint has gone back to satin very quickly and easily without cutting through to primer, apart from a few spots on the arch so I'm optimistic about these being a relatively quick job to finish off. I did trial fit some chrome trim (no pic) and it looked great. The bonnet will need considerably more work than the wings, I think, but I'm preparing the panels in tandem so I waste less materials and, hopefully, I'll be able to refit the finished panels soon.





I'm at that point where I'm racking up lots of jobs to do but don't have the ability to do them due to the old wrist problem. Hopefully my hours and pay will pick up and I'll have the cash together by the end of the month to get the engine removed and inspected. Once the block is out and my engine bay is clear I can get on with cleaning and painting it all.

For 2012, I want to get the following done by April.
- fit new headlining
- fit new doorcards
- clean and repaint engine bay
- finish customising headlights and grille
- finish paint on bonnet, wings and front valance
- get the engine fixed
- get everything ready for the MoT due on the 12th of April.

I might be swinging above my weight with that lot. :-/

After an aventure to collect some furniture and other stuff yesterday making use of Sheffieldcortinacentre and his Mk3 cortina pick up I got all the bits together to make a start on my new grille.



I mocked this up off the car as it was easier to put the bolts through the mesh that way. Offered up the mesh to find it can be screwed in using the original grille fixings (win!) and trimmed it down. I put the bonnet on and found I'd mounted all the bars one or two holes too low. Not a problem, I wanted to move them up a bit so they don't foul the bottom edge of the opening anyway. I'll screw the bottom of the grille to the lip, I just have to pick the fixings carefully for that since they'll be on show.

I'll repaint the mesh black and retrim the edges. The handles will get cleaned with the '60s ones getting black or red inserts to match the car. The handles are exactly the right size and profile for what I wanted, so some big thanks go out to Emdee for originally finding the inspiration pic for this.

Close up.


The curved handles are cast aluminium Ikea jobbies. Ideally, I want to get them chromed along with a few other bits on the car. The funny looking 1960s type handles are not, as I originally thought, silver but rather a gold finish with white paint insert. I'll change the colour of the paint on the '60s handles to red or black and just clean them up, I like the gold.

The only thing I'm not sure of is how to finish the mesh where it meets the headlights, for now it's trimmed in a curve to clear the headlight bowl. The original aluminium trims for the headlight brackets are pretty chunky things, and oversized for the front of the Polo, I reckon if they could be trimmed down to fit the hole and polished or plated they'd look great, but weilding a grinder is not something I can do at the moment so it'll have to wait until my wrist is stronger or someone with skill comes along to help out.

The other thing I have are these Corsair rear lights. They're a smidge taller than the original units and the profile is different to my rear wing, but I do like them. I'll be modifying the tailgate so that the lights are fixed to it rather than the bodyshell. This should mean changing bulbs doesn't require my arm to have an extra joint as well as looking pretty neat.

Photoshopped the Corsair lights to the back of the car. I bought these on a bit of a whim, they cost me 99p plus a couple of quid postage from the eBays. They are missing the bulb holders, but I'm guessing that's not a big issue.

I'll work out what wires do what on the original cluster plug and then run appropriate wiring up the C pillar, through the rubber caterpillars at the top and down into the tailgate. The tailgate will have the centre section fully smoothed. The original holes in the bodyshell for the original light clusters will be left as is so that the new outer bulb backs can fit in when the tailgate is shut, though I may have to add a small rubber seal to keep things watertight of course.

I'll likely surface mount the new clusters to the tailgate, unless I can find someone able to french them just far enough for the chromed aluminium trim to be flush with the metal.

Proposal 1 - I think the red lights are too far inboard to be legal, also it looks ugly.


Proposal 2 - a tweak, putting the lights on the other sides and tilting them slightly. I like this but I am aware that the red lens has a drain hole and that there's a visible screw head on trim that's now at the top instead of the bottom. I'm not sure how much of an issue that will be if I do this.



Reverse and fog lights will move to the rear valance or hang off the rear bumper, ideally one per side, but I've not bothered to Photoshop those in.

I can't put the Corsair lights upright because nothing lines up and they're just a bit too tall. Having them poking out slightly on fins doesn't work either, all the lines conflict, so they have to be confined to the red area of the tailgate.

Yet another update. I've moved the grille bars down, painted the mesh black and mocked up the whole front end. Much happier with how it looks and shouldn't take too much effort to get it finished.







The new grille pushes the headlights back even further aesthetically, which is a good thing.


Fitted the passenger wing to see how much it alters the appearance of the front. No harm done, just tidies up the edges.


Then had a go at some arty night shots with mixed results. Am in a good mood about all this.

Turns out that apparently, you can't buy hoses off the shelf for my engine, that's a nuisance. So I'll be out with the measuring tape and ordering some custom-made nice red pipes at some point (it's not a setback, it's an opportunity ;D )

I've been busy tinkering lately. I'm slowly picking up the pace with my job after my physio appointment, a new splint and a new course of painkillers and feel much more able than I have in a while. This is a good thing.

So, first up I decided to have a look at those Corsair clusters. These were a 99p eBay bargain so I wasn't expecting great things. First job is to find out what that screw on the bottom holds on.



To answer Vdubbin's question, that screw holds on the aluminium trim and with it removed you could in theory bolt the cluster in from the back of the panel, thus allowing some frenching of them easily, providing I use the right studs to hide the fixings on the outside. Some photoshopping will be in order for this soon.


Took the lenses off and found both sets were broken. I was expecting this, in all honesty, it looks like the car they were on originally had received a bump one side due to gold overspray on the lens and a bashed trim. One of the foam-rubber seals is perished, the other is okay, but it looks very similar to the foam-rubber sheets available plentifully from craft shops so won't be hard to replace.


Bit of this.


And leave them both to cure. I'll fill the gaps to strengthen it and have some paint plans for these clusters that I'm keeping to myself for now.


Next job was the fancy-ugly grille bars. Bit of a mess when I got them, I think they must've been stored in a shed or something.


But a bit of soap and water and they came up lovely. White's not really right for the car, looks a bit odd...


So out came the craft kit. I really ought to finish that custom Moggy...


One coat of humbrol scarlet later and we have this. It's a fiddly job and will need probably 3 coats of paint to get right so I'm going to [s]play about with a masking idea to make life easier[/s] stop fannying about and use DW's awesome suggestion of applying the paint and polishing the excess off.

I wanted to find out if my suspicions about the Ikea handle grille bars were correct. I suspected they were cast aluminium with a light spray of silver paint. My suspicions were correct.

This is my novice guide to polishing.

You will need:
- An old sock, soft cloth or similar
- Brasso & cloth/kitchen towel for applying Brasso
- Autoglym Super Resin Polish (or similar)
- Various grades of wet-and-dry paper

I picked on the handle that looked the roughest, because I knew if I could get that something like I'd find the others very easy indeed. I'm aware aluminium oxidises and I'm not sure how precisely to protect it, which is what the Autoglym is for.

Start with the 400 grit paper. At this stage you can hold the item with your hand and not worry about fingerprints. Holding the paper against the handle with your fingertips, working in one direction until you have a uniform finish and no paint or tarnish left.

After you've got a uniform finish with the 400 grit, hold the handle with the sock/cloth to prevent getting fingerprints and grease on the metal and work through the papers until you get to 2000 grit. It's useful to wipe the metal occasionally to clear the powdery residue off. This is very much something you do by feel and by eye, once it looks and feels uniformly smooth (though you will get a swirl/stroke pattern from the paper) you can move on to the next finest grade.



Once you've got down to the 2000 grit, give the handle a wipe and then apply the Brasso as normal. Wait a bit for the Brasso to dry but not go fully cloudy before polishing briskly. Give a protective coat of Autoglym.



I found the results quite remarkable, especially when put next to an original.





I could have bought chromed items new, but the handles I bought were second hand, another eBay bargain. I estimate I spent 15-30 minutes on the one handle, time well spent... just another 15 to go!

Right, fiddly update again. Lot of pictures, not a lot of progress, lol.

I've successfully repainted the fancy grille bars. Seth has very kindly offered to polish the other bars providing I do a bit of prep first, which my wrist said "OHTHANKGOD" very loudly at me, so that's a good thing. Interestingly, I now suspect those Ikea bars are actually stainless steel rather than aluminium because they have more characteristics in common with the former than the latter.

Here we go then. Start out with a brush for dusting, a sharpish craft knife (not a sharp one or a blunt one, sharpish is best for this), some cotton buds and a bit of turps or other thinner.


Carefully scrape the paint off the raised areas with the knife. I tried using sandpaper to begin with which was too aggressive, and the cotton buds in turps which wasn't aggressive enough. This seems the happy medium.


Be sure to clean the scrapings away as you go. Don't worry too much about little bits in the dimples of the casting, we'll get those later.


Right, that's that all clean and ready for the next bit. There's a few tiny lines and dots of red still to remove.


So use a cotton bud tipped in turps. Removes the paint without removing the gold finish.


Before and after.


Finished all five.


Next job is to mount them in the grille. Got the ingredients - washers, nuts, threadlock and bolts - but I need to slice the bolts in half and I'm done with that for tonight, need to rest the old wrist (which is getting much better!)



So the other job I did was the red paint on the front panels. Done some more reading and research and I've been giving myself more work than I need to. I've spent many hours flatting back the old badly prepped but otherwise fine paint to get a nice smooth finish. The wings are a lot more forgiving, but the bonnet was a mess.


I used a bit more paint than before and moved it around a lot more with the roller which seems to have resulted in a better finish, especially when combined with HOURS of hand sanding to rectify previous mistakes.




After a while the paint had dried and looks spray-gun fresh which I'm quite excited about.


So even though I already knew that preparation was key and that I shouldn't rush a job or do it in less than ideal conditions, this has rather proved the point to me. I'm not going to make excuses for the previous paint attempts, the only good panels are the wings which I took ages over, rather I'm happy that I can at least rectify my mistake and get an excellent finish.

I plan to get all the red paint ready for polish, give it a quick buff and then mask it off before doing the black. That way the black can be got to the same standard, all the masking removed and the whole panel buffed uniformly to what should be a step-free mirror finish... I hope.

Time is at least on my side now.

some of the mods youve made arent my cup of tea to be fair! but then the car your building is for you not anyone else! im into the european look myself as most people are, lol! But its nice to see someone out there trying new styles! a friend of mine has made a few mods on his mk1 golf which id never dare do but at the shows it gets so much attention its unreal! good luck with the build mate!

Thank you I like some of the Euro look myself, I like all sorts of things and I now know it would've been easier to follow an established route, this thing doesn't fit in anywhere. Nearest style to what I'm going for is probably traditional custom/kustom but even that's not precisely it.

I'm just happy doing my own thing, seeing what I can achieve that will satisfy me first and if other people like it that's a bonus. I just wish I was driving it rather than working on it, I don't have a second car.

23rd January.

We had typical weather, on the nicer side.


There were lots of windy roads.


We got a bit lost. This is probably North Hykem.


But eventually we got to 80mojo's place an hour late. Had an oggle at his Mantas, but the light wasn't great so I only got the one picture come out.


Got back home and straight in the garage. Discovered my passenger seat had gone a bit fuzzy, my own fault for not leaving a window down a little bit. I knew the carpet was a little damp but I didn't expect to be laying up the car for as long as I have so I made no precautions. Should clean off easily enough though.


Trial fit of the wheel just rested against the car. Needs spacers.


The calipers get in the way of the wheel, or vice versa.


It's okay though, they made me this happy.



24th January
Went out to the garage with the housemate to have a proper look at how the wheels fit.

I now know the wheels are Lancia 1500 GT items, they're superlight so I wonder if they might be magnesium. Importantly I had to test the centre bore and happily, it seems to be identical, the wheel fits firmly and snugly against the hub and doesn't wobble or jiggle about, it also won't hold itself on the hub but neither do my other wheels when the car is jacked up on one side. Housemate can blur his face at will like that, comes in handy.




With shorter tyres and some air pressure they should just about clear the stock arches, but some massaging may be required. This is not a problem, I'll be altering the rear arches anyway, probably widening them a touch for a little extra clearance.


No poke.


But yes... happy enough with these. Just need a set of wobble bolts all round and some 25mm spacers at the front to get them all to fit.


So in conclusion:
At least 25mm (the distance from edge of hub to edge of caliper) spacers for the front.
Wobble bolts.
Chromed/polished Bullet centre caps
Suitable wheel nut covers - I've found some with green crystals I like, or I could just get more bullets.
60 or 65 profile tyres, but not as thin as 55
Whitewalls or redlines, I'll have to do some mock-ups to decide.

Went over to Sheffield to see Tony (Midniteclassix) who is breaking a metallic blue high spec (for a Polo) Mk2 B reg Polo. I initially wanted the windscreen and seal, but got more than that.

Typically, as we set off it started to snow, by the time we arrived it was settling. Chances for removing the screen with the seal intact (my seal is split and not in great condition) were slim. Sure enough, as the first corner popped free the screen cracked corner to bottom. However, this did turn out to be fortuitous as the car had other parts I wanted.

I still got the windscreen seal which is in much better condition than mine (this is a picture of a windscreen seal... boring, I know).


A look around the car revealed other goodies, like this under bonnet seal and scuttle tray thing (I don't know what it's called properly) which I've been after a good example of for some time.

It also had some vinyl B pillar trims, another thing I often get pipped to the post on but I was here first this time so I could nab them both.


Inside the car has blue seats, carpet, parcel shelf and doorcards but the usual black dash (did they ever have a blue dash? I expect not) but in that dash was a luxury item.


I say luxury... What I mean is it has an instrument cluster with a trip meter and a clock, things I did not have!

The other item I bought I couldn't remove, frustratingly. The cold, my lack of tools - I'd only taken screwdrivers for removing the screen, left my toolbox at home stupidly - and some seized screws meant I couldn't remove the split rear seat. The split rear seat is a thing of myth and legend, I've only seen a couple of pictures and never seen one in a Polo but always wanted one. My current rear seat can be swapped out and the cover modified to fit, I just have to find a day to go back up with tools and WD40 (unless Tony removes it before me) so I can strip them and recover them.

Finally, the car has a pristine tailgate with wiper. I very much wanted that tailgate but since funds aren't there for it and I'd only be ditching the wiper motor anyway hopefully someone else will grab it for their Polo.

Progress has been made, but it has been requested I keep just what that progress is to myself for now. I'm keeping a log of what's being done and I'll have a mega upload in a few weeks or so when the car should be looking very different, but also mostly the same.

Watch this space.