My MK4 Golf brought back to life

Over the past two years I have transformed my '99.5 Golf. I have replaced damn near every serviceable item. The original paint was in terrible shape with plenty of dents. The custom paint color is called Nimbus Grey from an Audi. Completely debadged. Here is what it looks like now:


Early in my ownership hauling 800 lbs of scrap metal. This was the "good side" of the car:

All stripped down for the respray:

Turning my garage into a paint booth:



First coat of primer:

Painting done:

My lovely wife was very helpful in organizing all the little parts for me. These are just some of the parts:

Beginning my 01M-to-02J swap with a beat up donor:

I drove the donor car before pulling the trans. It shifted totally fine. Not good enough for me. Tear down time:

After rebuilding:

01m on the left. My rebuilt 02J on the right just before dropping it in:

My 02J has the early 02A-type shift tower. One of the weakest points is that crappy plastic slider on this arm. I made my own replacement out of steel. It should outlast the car:

Some other nick-nacks during the swap, including GLI front brakes and stainless lines:


Made my own swaybar endlinks with SKF joints.

So what do you do when your coilover spring breaks and the manufacturer is out of stock? Weld it!

Control arm bushings after only 36k miles in new york city:


The final product:

Wow!!! What a beauty!!

The colour looks great!!

Maris

nice job man, keep up the great work

Fantastic job, but you should replace that spring as soon as the manufacturer has one. That weld is a weak spot.

awesome job
looks great

Looks Great!

Part Number of SKF heim joints you used?

As one really wouldnt adjust them much if ever, I wonder if using normal thread on both ends wouldnt work. Easier to tap and possibly a bit cheaper part.

If you want to adjust, you just take one of the end bolts out.

Is there any reason you would ever want to adjust them? Lowering a car maybe?

Scarry to think of welding a heat treated spring, I wouldnt run that long.

looks great!

duwem said:

Looks Great!

Part Number of SKF heim joints you used?

As one really wouldnt adjust them much if ever, I wonder if using normal thread on both ends wouldnt work. Easier to tap and possibly a bit cheaper part.

If you want to adjust, you just take one of the end bolts out.

Is there any reason you would ever want to adjust them? Lowering a car maybe?

Scarry to think of welding a heat treated spring, I wouldnt run that long.

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Part number is SAKB1. I'm not exactly sure what your question is. The threads are standard metric threads. What you don't see there are the locking nuts, in case that is what's confusing you. I made them purely for increased suspension performance. Eliminating the soft bushings effectively increases the torsional rigidity of the swaybar. The fact that they're adjustable lets you dial them in the case that your car is lowered and are having interference issues. Once you dial them in I don't see any reason to adjust them again.

I actually heat-treated the spring after I welded it. Just for your reference, the term for un-doing a heat-treatment is called annealing.

Your car is amazing. I think what the other poster was asking is most of these two ended joints have one left hand thread and one right hand. He was wondering if it would be cheaper to use two right hand threads, which I think is what you did. This would make for fine adjusting a little more difficult as one side would need to be unbolted, but really no big deal.

You still have decarbonization in the heat affected zone of the weld. Annealing or normalizing the steel will not correct this localized carbon loss and the spring will be weaker in that area.

How did you anneal the spring? Full annealing temperature for carbon steels is in the 1600-1700 Deg. F range. Did you also do the other spring so they will both have the same rate?

Tintman718 said:

...I actually heat-treated the spring after I welded it. Just for your reference, the term for un-doing a heat-treatment is called annealing.

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Unbelievable! That looks really, really incredible.

How did you remove the paint the first go-around?

1854sailor said:

You still have decarbonization in the heat affected zone of the weld. Annealing or normalizing the steel will not correct this localized carbon loss and the spring will be weaker in that area.

How did you anneal the spring? Full annealing temperature for carbon steels is in the 1600-1700 Deg. F range. Did you also do the other spring so they will both have the same rate?

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Nobody said it will be as good as new, just a temporary solution that I used for two weeks. I have an oven that reaches 1,400C and I case-hardened the spring with Cherry Red.

Are you referring to spring rate? If so, why would you think the spring rate changes due to hardening? Young's Modulus of steel does not change with heat treatment. It's roughly 200 GPa for any kind of steel. Hardness in engineering terms means something different than what is commonly used in the english language.

caseyfriday said:

Unbelievable! That looks really, really incredible.

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Thanks so much!

TomJD said:

How did you remove the paint the first go-around?

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Just an orbital sander @ 120 grit.

Tintman718 said:

Just an orbital sander @ 120 grit.

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That is quite impressive how you were then able to get in the little groves and curves.

Very nice job, especially the paint! Now come paint mine!! =)

I know that Young's Modulus is fairly constant between different steels, and I know what "hardness" means in reference to metals. Unless you heat treated the repaired spring to the exact same spec as it was originally, the steel's mechanical properties will be different. If you changed the Rockwell Hardness, you changed the yield strength, and the spring rate.

Tintman718 said:

...Are you referring to spring rate? If so, why would you think the spring rate changes due to hardening? Young's Modulus of steel does not change with heat treatment. It's roughly 200 GPa for any kind of steel. Hardness in engineering terms means something different than what is commonly used in the english language...

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1854sailor said:

I know that Young's Modulus is fairly constant between different steels, and I know what "hardness" means in reference to metals. Unless you heat treated the repaired spring to the exact same spec as it was originally, the steel's mechanical properties will be different. If you changed the Rockwell Hardness, you changed the yield strength, and the spring rate.

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Unfortunately that statement is not accurate. Regardless, let's leave that discussion for another thread or feel free to email me since this wasn't the intended topic of the thread.

Absolutely incredible rebuild! The colour is fantastic!

Wow, this is THE most beautiful TDI I've seen. I love grays and that is a gorgeous one, plus my favorite wheels and the black really works well with the car color. Plus it's been loved mechanically by you.

The only things I don't LOVE about my TDI are:
1) Badly scratched black paint
2) Scratched/discolored wheels

So obviously I'm jealous...

PS_How long did it take you to strip the old paint?

Great color!!! Very need build.

Did I miss it..... What color name and number is that?

I may use that for a repaint some day if you don't mind.

My car just has a few scratches, just need that awesome paintjob right now

Did you by any chance move to TX recently? At lunch today, I saw a MK4 Golf this exact same color with the same black rims drive by (in SAT). So weird...

The car lives in North Carolina now.

Can you give more details on your fan and filter setup in the garage paint booth?

Box fans and furnace filters???

flyinbrian said:

Can you give more details on your fan and filter setup in the garage paint booth?
Box fans and furnace filters???

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Exactly. All bought from home depot. Not really a draft room, but way better than nothing.

Paint job is nice, would love to paint mine my dog accidentally scratched the right side door.

My MK4 is in excellent mechanical shape and very nice on the inside but the black paint is scratched to hell, some rust spots on hood, and my fat five wheels have surface corrosion. I'm highly considering a nice paint job and having my wheels polished back to their former glory after checking out this thread...I don't plan on selling the car anytime soon...