MKIV Daily Destroyer Build

[FlexYJeeper]

we used to have a place like that in windsor, it was privately owned and open to anyone. sadly it went under. but had lifts, air, welders, benders, even paint booths!!! it was incredible! i really wish it was still around since i would likely be getting more into painting - i think it's an epic skill to have.

you're lucky to have access to a place to work, even if it costs a bit.

that sounds incredible, we cant do any painting, welding, and no benders. personally i miss my garage back home and all my tools but ive gotten now to where i really only go there if i HAVE to use a lift. i have all the other tools i need. mostly because when i go there i cant get a spot and end up doing the work in the barracks parking lot. we just did the timing belt on a 99 A4 2.8L quattro in the parking lot haha...

 

[FlexYJeeper]

Well today was painful.




and for the rest of the build....

 

[FlexYJeeper]

havent updated been busy with life and the motor swap


my order with cascade arrived the following friday with only a day of wait for shipping!

received a huge box full of other boxes with writing i cant understand


that monday i used my tow bar to tow my golf to Pudman's shop where we did the swap. got there monday about 10 and it took most of the day to get the motor out

we left the AC condenser connected to save the Freon

we used the turbo off my old motor as the one on the new motor was in good shape but the actuator did not test properly. my turbo was still got so we swapped the turbos.

Tuesday night we had it all buttoned up and running. didnt get too many pictures as our hands were full most of the time and i was fighting a dying 3 year old phone. i did forget my front grill in the shop so im grilless for the time being.

i picked up my new phone when i got home and cleaned the golf up. 200 miles on this motor and it runs like a top. the shutter valve isnt closing but thats not a huge deal at the moment.

cleaned up the golf and tried out the camera on the new phone




the paint is pretty rough but i want to get a buffer and DA polisher and see if i can bring it back any. it has really bad watermarks that i believe would come out with buffing. you can see them right under the window


the paint is far from perfect. i want to have the dents fixed, get an R32 front bumper, remove the notch in the grill, R32 side skirts,R32 spoiler, and 20th rear bumper eventually. but money is tight at the moment and i still need decent coil overs and other parts.

still an improvement compared to a few weeks ago when i bought it

 

[bbarbulo]

Good recovery!!

 

[FlexYJeeper]

small update, been very busy with work and haven gotten to do much. the biggest eye sore of this car is the paint so yesterday i figured id try my hand at repainting the hood and see how i did, if it came out alright i might consider doing the whole car myself.it also gave me a chance to get rid of the notch for the emblem on the hood. ive never done body work on a car before so try not to roast me too bad, any advice greatly appreciated.

i shaped up the notch fill and sanded the hood with 400 grit. 20ft away doesnt look too bad


5ft away still not too bad


up close, hey this might actually come out alright


i prepped the hood and sprayed it earlier today with primer. one of the guys i work with is borrowing my truck so the golf is my only mode of transportation. took it out for lunch. you get odd looks driving with no hood.

 

[ModdedMach]

Nice mk4 2dr, they are ultra rare in the states. I found this out after I bought mine through a dealer friend at auction. I saw 2 in Italy while I was there, but never in the US.

Got mine with 123k, at 148k now and I'll drive it to 500k. 2 years of ownership and I absolutely love it. Diesel is addictive!

Sent from my SAMSUNG-SM-G930A using Tapatalk

 

[benIV]

Nice find! and nice work bringing it back. On a side note, I used to live in Oak Harbor when I was a kid. was there for four years (1990-1994) I have a lot of good memories from that area.

 

[AdamJonezy]

Nice Golf, got to love Indigo Blue even if i am being biased haha.

 

[FlexYJeeper]

Nice mk4 2dr, they are ultra rare in the states. I found this out after I bought mine through a dealer friend at auction. I saw 2 in Italy while I was there, but never in the US.

Got mine with 123k, at 148k now and I'll drive it to 500k. 2 years of ownership and I absolutely love it. Diesel is addictive!

Sent from my SAMSUNG-SM-G930A using Tapatalk

thats why i was willing to overpay for it haha wanted a 2dr 5spd TDI and nothing else would do. also nice to see another GA boy on here, im stationed in WA but Oakwood GA is home

Nice find! and nice work bringing it back. On a side note, I used to live in Oak Harbor when I was a kid. was there for four years (1990-1994) I have a lot of good memories from that area.

i hate this place

Nice Golf, got to love Indigo Blue even if i am being biased haha.

i love the color, sadly its going away




sorry i havent updated in awhile, got really busy and the photobucket scandal got me down. luckily there's a add-on for firefox and chrome that fixes all the embedded photos!

the car continues to run strong and seems to be reliable. its hard ro tell from some of the pics because i try my best to hide it, but my body is in really rough shape, peeling paint, dents, scraps, etc.

the undercarriage looks like the jacking points were chosen by helen keller. not to mention this car doesnt have options that i find useful. its non power windows, manual mirrors, non sunroof, as basic as it can get. not to mention while my car was on the lift while i was changing the oil i noticed the rear pass side shock was not bolted correctly. upon further investigation it looks like one of the bolts backed out and then the other side got ripped out of the tower

this is not good.

ive been hawking a VR6 that was about an hour away for the swap. the car has great paint besides some cracking on the front bumper, and has all the options i want. (climatronic, Power windows, power mirrors, sunroof, etc) ive messaged the seller some after the last 2 months and they wouldnt come down from $900 for the car with a blown VR6 (hole in block). after 2 months i ask to see the car in person and put some cash in their face and got it for what i consider a more reasonable price. im picking up the car tomorrow morning and will have more on it then. here a picture.

im very excited for the swap but the wiring i know is going to overwhelm me. luckily a user on here lives near me and has done this same swap. it took him 4 8-10 hour days. he's also the same user that saved me on the motor swap. could not have done it without him and his knowledge of the TDI. i may have to get together with him to help me figure out the wiring. i truly think i am over thinking it but after reading lagomorphs's thread of a ALH swapped wagon im a little on edge. his seemed like a nightmare.


oh well. if all goes wrong i'll take lots of pictures. sucess is okay... but EVERYONE loves fire.

i'll try to get a better walk through and new pictures of the black car tomorrow.

 

[FlexYJeeper]

got the VR6 home today and started tearing into it, the body could use a good clay bar, wet sand, and polish but im happy with it. no flaking or peeling paint.

and the tear down begins...

now everyone knows that VAG cars ONLY use red/pink G12 coolant. lets see what we get....

honestly not even surprised. this car has residue all over it where someone went crazy in auto zone and put stick on hood scoop, stick on chrome side vents, even chrome edged the rear hatch. no surprise it didn't have the right coolant

i threw the front radiator support back on before i remembered to take a pic. i have to keep the car looking like it runs or else the MA's give me a hard time. but the wiring harness is off, power steering is off, coolant hoses disconnected, power steering lines off, AC lines off, exhaust, shift linkages, slave cylinder, really all i have left is the CV axles the the motor is ready to come out. i cant get it into the shop until next weekend and i start working 1030pm to 8am tonight for the next 5 days so i will proibably sleep all day tomorrow. this week id like to get the CV axles out and pull the Fuel system

 

[FlexYJeeper]

ive been working mids shift this past week getting off at 8am then sleeping till 4pm doesnt give me much daylight to work but im still getting little bits done.

yesterday i took a break from destruction and decided to throw on some function and Form coilovers on the rear that i had from a part out. i want to get BC's eventually but these are better than the racelands that are on the blue car. i have to get some special tools to get the fronts off so until them its sittin cali.

stock vs new

after a little insight from Robert i pulled the harness that controls the injectors that goes to the ECU, i also pulled the 5 plugs that go through the firewall but the harness goes to the pass side so i need to trace it and see what it goes to.

on a side note when i pulled the tray under the wipers i was greeted buy 1cm of sludge. im looking forward to getting the motor out and being able to thoroughly clean the engine bay. i wanted to do this in the blue car when we did the swap but time was not of the essence.

motor comes out of the black car tomorrow!

 

[FlexYJeeper]

been busy working on the car and haven't updated.

Saturday was my Friday and since i was working mids shift i got off at 8am and went to sleep for 4 hours. got up at 12 and me and a buddy hooked the black car up and towed it to the shop to yank the motor.

about 45mins in:

motor pulled and everything cleaned up

picture of the VR6 carnage

^funny story, when i went to look at the the AD said "cranks but does not start) then when i got there the guy told me he was merging off the interstate and it just quit running. my best guess is he hit 2nd gear instead of 4th.


Sunday i pulled the rest of the VR6 wiring harness,installed the front coil overs, and started investigating the fuel tank situation. looks like im going and try to keep the VR6 tank.

engine bay all stripped

also spent a solid 2 hours with a water hose, scotch brite pad, and 4 bottles of super clean cleaning the engine bay

now the front is sitting lower with the coils. im kind of bummed, the function and form coils didnt get as low as i wanted. i like the height of my blue car for a daily. guess i'll be saving more to get BC coils soon. i also threw on a set of long beaches i had because the Subaru wheels were the wrong bore and getting them on and off was pissing me off. these look better anyway.

pick for comparison

today (Monday) i decided to take a break and go check out a junkyard i have never been to. i heard they had a few MK4 golfs and i was hoping to find a black hood, black driver side fender and maybe a TDI wiring harness to help keep me TDI-less for as little time possible.. HUGE disappointment, thy had one golf there and it was trashed. and they had 2 TDI but some one had hacked up the wiring harness bad trying to pull the IP's out of them. so on my way back i stopped by my favorite junkyard (like running motor for $100 CHEAP) and found a drivers door card is perfect shape. the sunroof drain on mine clogged and caused the door card to rot out because its just cardboard

new one

tomorrow i was planning on going to another junkyard i like and pulling the wiring harness out of a TDI i know will be good but instead im going with a friend to help him pick up a jetta wagon he'd TDI swapping. really excited to see it get finished! but probably wont get much done for the next week as im working day shift and it gets really dark here early

 

[FlexYJeeper]

well luckily i have a whole nother shell to swap this motor into. just finished Wednesday of the absolute worst work week ive ever had. on my way home after a long drive to clear my head this huge ass deer walks out in front of my car and like that 1.5 tons of German steel smashes into said deer. my freshly refinished passenger side OEM GTI headlight smashed, fender tweaked and smashed, and front passenger fender bent in. worst part is i was actually going to use these headlights on the black car, along with the hood because the one on the black car is dented up. after taking the blue paint off the black cars headlights i found that the passenger side light is not actually a GTI light. it was swapped at some point for a standard golf headlight.

**** ME.

i would say that at this point my week cant get any worse, but i really dont want to find out what can happen in the next 2 days.

 

[shizzler]

Oh no. The thread can't have ended like this! In 2017? eeesh.

Zombie bump to hope for some good news.