Contradiction's 1984 VW Rabbit GTI "Survivor" Build Thread

That'd be a tough decision for me to make: either completely restored stock or Resto-mod or whatever they call it.

Either way, I'm glad to see you're doing what you like with a car you love.

Nice work.

Pretty GTI - wish I had found one that clean to start with...

Back from the dead. I'm bumping this in the hopes that people hold me accountable for it. This car sat the entire summer and fall more or less as I collected parts and kept watching self-imposed deadlines pass me by. I kept saying to myself "I really want to get it done for this show in a month and a half but I don't think I can get it road worthy that soon" and so it sat.

My new goal, whether or not it gets there, is March 28th.

The suspension is stripped, 90% of the parts are in my possession, and I just need to start getting E36 M3 done. I think I'm going to write my "garage wall check list" soon as a motivational (or discouraging) aid so I can start crossing E36 M3 off.

Watching this for motivation.........

Get it done or I am going to come over there and kick you in the ass!!!

Will that work for holding you accountable?

Making some progress here. I'm in the process of rebuilding and painting my front calipers and rear drums. Hoping that some new tools I ordered will help me get the brake fittings that are presently stuck off without too much additional drama.

I'm working towards getting the brake lines replaced and the rear beam all put together.

Making some decent progress on it now. I've been going through the brake system lately. I'm just about done painting the rear drum backing plates and drums, the dust shields, and the calipers. I hit a road block tonight with rebuilding the calipers because the pistons don't want to budge. Compressed air didn't work, but that's also on my budget Harbor Freight compressor that doesn't seem to peak much over 90 PSI. I'm going to bring them into work tomorrow where we have an industrial air line system piped through the factory and see if that works. If not I'm going to attempt to try a grease gun to force it out next.

This weekend I should also have the necessary tools to try and get the rest of the bad brake line fittings loose. Trying a different style Vise Grip that is intended for hex head bolts and should work better for rounded heads or the soft brake line nuts because one side of the clamp is in a V shape. Here's a pic of them:

and a link to them:

Irwin Locking Wrench

I'll give some feedback on how effective these were later.

Hopefully that will do the trick.

If I have to I'm going to cut the rear lines and spline in with a union nut to the existing line. I'll have to do that in the front already and I'm going to be flaring and bending my own lines for the rear beam to the drum. Trying out the Calvan Inline Metric Bubble Flare Tool #155 thanks to the suggestion of multiple GRM members who chimed in when I was asking for Brake Flaring Tool recommendations:

Calvan Tools in line Metric Bubble Flaring Tool 155

These seem to be a better tool then the garden variety Auto Zone rental tool with the multi size clamp bar and the Pitman Arm Puller style Yoke that torques down the die.

I'll also give some feedback on this tool later.

And for the heck of it here is a good little illustration of the size difference between 180mm and 200mm drums in case anyone is curious about the visual size difference.

I think if you mod it thoughtfully/tastefully enough, it'll still keep climbing in value. Obviously, it's more rare in bone stock form, but whatever.

Looking forward to further updates.

If you need to make new hard lines, this stuff works great.

http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00651OAVS/ref=oh_aui_detailpage_o08_s00?ie=UTF8&psc=1

Won't rust out and can be bent by hand.

Thanks. I ended up ordering some from MK1Autohaus.com since the included the proper fittings with it.

Keep it rolling! I have a to-do list of my own for El Rabbito and recently posted it on the front of my garage beer fridge for motivation...

I believe the thing to do back in the day was to upgrade to the A2 16v disc brakes off the Scirocco or GTI front and rear.

amg_rx7 wrote: I believe the thing to do back in the day was to upgrade to the A2 16v disc brakes off the Scirocco or GTI front and rear.

I am upgrading to the larger 16v Scirocco rotors in front but I decided that the rear discs were not worth the hassle. The 200mm rear drums from the late MK2 and MK3s should be an improvement at least.

I have read about people having a lot of problems with the rear discs if they did not get the proportioning right. It can work fine if you have the larger 22mm Master Cylinder from the Scirocco and the proportioning valves and I suspect the people that had issues didn't, but it didn't seem like it was worth it to me on a 2,100 lb car.

Contradiction wrote:

amg_rx7 wrote: I believe the thing to do back in the day was to upgrade to the A2 16v disc brakes off the Scirocco or GTI front and rear.

I am upgrading to the larger 16v Scirocco rotors in front but I decided that the rear discs were not worth the hassle. The 200mm rear drums from the late MK2 and MK3s should be an improvement at least. I have read about people having a lot of problems with the rear discs if they did not get the proportioning right. It can work fine if you have the larger 22mm Master Cylinder from the Scirocco and the proportioning valves and I suspect the people that had issues didn't, but it didn't seem like it was worth it to me on a 2,100 lb car. Besides, in hard cornering one rear wheel is always going to be off the ground anyway.

Fixed that for you...

noddaz wrote:

Contradiction wrote:

amg_rx7 wrote: I believe the thing to do back in the day was to upgrade to the A2 16v disc brakes off the Scirocco or GTI front and rear.

I am upgrading to the larger 16v Scirocco rotors in front but I decided that the rear discs were not worth the hassle. The 200mm rear drums from the late MK2 and MK3s should be an improvement at least. I have read about people having a lot of problems with the rear discs if they did not get the proportioning right. It can work fine if you have the larger 22mm Master Cylinder from the Scirocco and the proportioning valves and I suspect the people that had issues didn't, but it didn't seem like it was worth it to me on a 2,100 lb car. Besides, in hard cornering one rear wheel is always going to be off the ground anyway.

Fixed that for you...

LOL noddaz it most certainly will! :)

My official t-shirt for autocross days will be this one I bought from Blipshift:

And I snapped the damn "nipple" off of the end of the bubble flare die while I was doing some practice flares. :banghead:

Congruently I'm also not having any luck getting the rear brake lines free from the brake hoses either. Since I have help lined up for the weekend I'm going to pay a visit to Auto Zone tomorrow and borrow one of their brake flare kits and pray that it works long enough to help me make a union section in the rear and the front.

On the agenda for this weekend is getting the fuel pump, accumulator, and gas tank mounted up again and getting the rear shocks and the rear beam back in place. I haven't tackled assembling the rear drums yet but I will at least get the stub axles, backing plates, wheel cylinders and beam hardlines on.

I am excited to say that I scored a NOS OEM replacement gas tank so I will finally no longer be driving a NASCAR rabbit. No more coasting to a stop after I make a right turn with less then 3/4 of a tank of gas in the car. :( All things considered I did get to make due with it and I made a couple of long 300 or 400 mile round trips, but it was a bit nerve racking always watching the gas gauge and trying to plan my next stop. This is also what really prompted the massive suspension and braking tear down that I undertook because I foolishly decided that if I was going to take everything apart I was going to "do it right" to fix things.

Just in case this info is useful to anyone else I thought I would show what I did for heat shielding and other prep for putting the gas tank in.

Because the OEM heat shield was almost entirely covered in rust scale and didn't look as if it would survive a sand blasting session I decided to ditch it and come up with another solution. I decided to go with an adhesive backed heat shield material. I wanted to basically cover the area that the heat shield did to protect it from exhaust heat. This is NOT Dynomat style sound proofing material with a thick backer, but more like a fiberglass mat type of backing material and adhesive. I bought 2 rolls of 12" W x 24" long material from Autozone:

adhesive heat shield

This was enough to cover the tank as shown below. It definitely took some extra cutting and overlapping to get what you see there though. I found that as I went along I had to peel it back and make some diagonal cuts, etc. to get good coverage. It's a pretty irregular shape with the stamping so you can't just slap it on and hope it smooths out without wrinkles. I think this was 7 or 8 pieces that I cut it into in total. The adhesive did seem pretty forgiving for reapplication so let's hope that it holds once on the car too.

I also applied 3/8" adhesive backed foam strips to the top of the tank where either VW or some previous owner had done at one time. I figure this can't hurt to prevent vibration.

And I feel like I have to show the original shipping label that was slapped on the tank off because I didn't have to use a Spectra tank. ;)

If all goes well this weekend I'll be getting ready to put my drum brakes back together and focus on the front end suspension next. I got the caliper pistons free using the grease gun method so I am going to clean them up and drop them off to be sandblasted and powdercoated black next week.

After over 9 months of looking at this thing with a frown on my face when I go out to the garage to get my lawn mower or bike and I've decided that I need to get going on it again.

Instead of pretending that I'm really going to try to work really hard to loose weight or some other bull***t self-actualization goal that I'm going to fail miserably at THIS is my New Years Resolution. My goal is to drive it to Euro District near Louisville, KY on April 16th.

The reality is most of the parts are already sitting here waiting to go on it. I need to decide what brake pads I'm using, powdercoat some odds and ends, and conquer these damn brake lines and the main fuel line. The brake lines and the fuel line fittings being seized was pretty much what made me quit progress on it before.

So with that being said, if I can't get the accumulator to fuel line fitting free soon, I'm going to reassemble the suspension and trailer it to a shop where they can replace all of the brake lines and the fuel line in more suitable conditions then a cold ass garage floor with 18" of head room beneath a car on jack stands.

Sometimes it's best to just pay the man.

Yup, the time has come. This has been the road block for me finishing the car for quite some time. Time to let someone with a lift and a good brake flairing tool go at it.

Contradiction wrote: My goal is to drive it to Euro District near Louisville, KY on April 16th.

I marked it on my calendar. I'll be checking this thread to make sure you're ready.

xflowgolf wrote:

Contradiction wrote: My goal is to drive it to Euro District near Louisville, KY on April 16th.

I marked it on my calendar. I'll be checking this thread to make sure you're ready.

Good! I need someone to hold me accountable!

Not much new to report other then I think I've found the last of the parts I can pull off the suspension and get powdercoated and those are getting dropped off tomorrow.

Almost every part I can think of that I need is on hand. I just have to decide what damn brake pads I want to run.

I'm going to start rebuilding the rear drums next and getting replacing the inner and outer tie rods. Hopefully by mid month I can get it to the point that it's a roller and I can take it in to have all of the brake lines replaced and the fuel line if necessary.

After WAY overthinking things I finally decided on brake pads. I'm going with XP8s on plain old Brembo Blank Rotors. If they are too aggressive for street use I'll buy a set of Bobcat 1521s to swap in.

Starting to make some decent progress too. My goal is to get the rear beam mounted up this weekend with some help. Then I can finish putting together the rear drums and focus on getting the front end assembled. The goal is to have it ready to drop off at a shop to replace my brake lines in 2 weeks.

Sweet.

Lists. Lists help everything. Make a list. Start checking E36 M3 off.