Since the cars off the road awaiting me shelling out for mot, tax and insurance again I thought I'd invest some time in to making it look half decent.

It is now half deep blue pearl and half classic grey primer!

... the battery in the rallye didn't really survive the wiring mishap. It charged disturbinly quickly and worked for a few drives but last night with the lights on and the wipers going for half an hour it seems it didn't really gain anything from the alternator so on attempting to start it leave my parents it just coughed at me.

'nother £70 down the drain on it. Money-pit!

Ohwell, atleast it's nothing major so far!

The rallye has had a fair amount of attention recently... I have started to clean up the interior and paint stuff. Also, after the wiring woes it's got a new dash and stuff.

Anyways, some pics:

Earlier today:


Now: (possibly in the dark thanks to some ijit deciding the best order to do things was put the car away in the garage *before* taking pics... d'oh

Well, we decided to go for a drive up to Stealth Racing to meet up with Rubbadubz but were forced to stop about half a mile short because of a wiring... er... issue.

Something clearly shorted out somewhere and caused a few wires to melt rather suddenly.

Recently purchased a little VW Lupo TDI to get us about reliably so there's a clio in the way of the garage at the moment.

Though... progress towards a more permanent acceptable rebuild is being made. I'm picking up a mk2 dash tonight to chop up a bit as stick in the rallye. All the wiring can then go back in as VW intended and hopefully we won't have any issues such as these again... hopefully! :)

T'is a shame though - it's truely awesome to drive!

The Rallye came home over the weekend. Just a minor oil leak to sort out at some point and a slight exhaust rub - otherwise mechanically it's top notch!

Lots of painting left to do though so it doesn't look quite so scrappy. It should brush up nice though :)

After a few weeks worth of wait all the bits arrived from various corners of the world and were put on the car.

Result: It's alive and runs SPOT ON.


GET IN!

I took a day off work last week to have a play with the car.

After a few hours of prodding everything in sight with a multimeter we have confirmed that the voltages to the maf sensor are all correct and the voltages to the ecu confirm what the maf is supposedly reading on the ecu.

We started comparing every inch of pipe to that of the working car a few yards away. Both cars have custom fabricated maf housings but there are some critical differences.

The tower that the maf sensor sits in on the rallye was taller than that on the working car and the rallye also has a 3 > 4" join and corner right next to the maf element.

So, we chopped 15mm off the top of the tower the element sits in and the car instantly ran better - confirming suspicions. The car is now 10% out fueling wise rather than 30-40% so a vast improvement. I have on order a genuine 4" housing so hopefully it'll arrive this week and the car will run correctly.

Just need to locate some front bumper indicator wiring now after some light fingered chap half-inched mine! :)

So, a slightly short day fiddling with the car shaped brain teaser that is the rallye today but a semi-productive one.

I believe we now officially hold the record for the long amount of time spent fixing two numberplates and a front grill to a car. I thankyou.

On the road the car is (going to be) awesome. You can hear every last sound it makes - the turbo whistle, the dump valve, the wastegate... the pinking...

We wired up the fuel pump direct from the battery and unfortunately it made little difference. After removing a buggered fuel pressure regulator fueling got a bit better so we began to push the car a bit more. At present as soon as it hits about 3500rpm (by which time it's made 0.5bar boost (oh goodie) it starts to knock like a bar steward. The cheaky VR6 rascal made a map that relaxed all the ignition timing and we tried again... same result. Arse.

At the end of the day we've ended back at the mysterious under reading of the maf. Something that we can account for in the map but something that I/we would much rather just fix properly.

So, hopefully next time we'll crack it. So far for the last few months its been a continuous string of little issues that cause big problems.

So, we acquired a VW fuel swirl pot and stuck that back on the car rather than having the chunky inline pump drag the stock lift pump for every mil of fuel.

In other news we compared the readouts of the MAF sensor between the rallye and another working OBD2 car and the rallye is significantly underreading. Swapping MAFs yielded no conclusions - the sensor from the rallye reads fine on the other car and the other cars sensor worked badly in the rallye.

After spending hours trawling the 'net researching sensors and finding reference values it seems the lengthened wiring can't (as far as my electronics knowledge stretches) significantly affect the readout of the sensor.

So, it looks like we have some type of power problem to the MAF...

During most of yesterday we had the fuel pump relay out because we thought it wasn't in use on the car as the pump is powered seperately... WRONG. The fuel pump relay also powers the lambda sensor heater and... yep... you guessed it... the MAF.

Half of me wishes it isn't that simple and the other half just wants it to work no matter how STUPID it makes me look.

Fingers crossed... a bit.

Well, after 2 days of screwing about it seems a dodgy socket in the ecu was to blame for our continued troubles.

The car now starts and runs and revs and stuff but its constantly lean and fueling is somewhat inconsistent. After discovering rather hot wiring to the fuel pump we started investigating its power requirements and have decided to bypass all of the VW loom and run a relayed power line straight from the battery to the pump. We rigged something up with some jump leads to test the theory and the pump sounded completely different!

Watch this space!

Well, the dodgy OBD1 loom came out on Saturday and the new OBD2 loom went in on Sunday.

So:

The cam position fault is now gone! :o)

But:

The engine won't start. :o(

DVLA I LOVE YOU!

Reg number and tax disc just arrived :o)

Following the continued return of the cam position fault I made the rallye work significantly less on Saturday by removing half of the wiring. Rather than chase the fault round on the obd1 loom we thought we may aswell rip it out and stick obd2 in it with all the benefits that brings (like more power!:))

Bluebadger covered the job of changing the inlet manifold and throttle body over to obd2 whilst I, with a lot of help from the mysterious vr6 god (who knows what pretty much every wire on a vr6 loom does off the top of his rather large head,) isolated the engine management part of a new obd2 loom from the rest so we can transplant it in to the car.

Annoyingly, whilst doing this I realised that we've chopped in to the loom that's in the car quite heavily for various readouts for the boost controller and gauges so that all needs to be re-done too.

Still, hopefully it'll fix the problem!

On the non-mechanical side of things. I finally got the dating letter from VW and the application has been sent back to the DVLA - so now starts no doubt another 2 weeks of waiting for a verdict.

Well, the DVLA have got back to me and have rejected my regsitration application. Though, it could have been worse!

Basically they are saying that the date of original registration is not stamped on the german log book... which is strange. So, I assume they either cocked up or it's faded out having been stowed behind the dashboard outside by the previous owner for some years... :)

Apparently I need a letter confirming the original registration date back in 1990 from either ze german government or VW.

This could prove interesting...

*gulp*

In response to all those who claim "It's impossible to put a 3" exhaust on a Golf Rallye" I submit the following:





Turns out (we think) that it's not the cam position sensor that's faulty - it's actually part of the camshaft... so top of engine (inlet manifold, boost pipes, rocker cover, cam cover) has to come off to investigate/fix (2-3 hours max). We think the small magnet inside the camsprocket that the cam sensor reads has spun a little meaning the ECU thinks the sensor is faulty and as a result runs in safe mode - thus the relatively crap power and poor fueling.

Otherwise she's MOT ready! \o/

Well, we didn't get an aweful lot done at the weekend but one nice thing was that we wired in a diag port and the car only had 1 fault - a broken sensor. 5 minutes later the car runs perfectly! \o/

No wiring faults - hurrah!

Well, it feels like I had productive weekend... I'm aching!

Still, we got loads done to the rallye yesterday and certainly made major dents in our todo list:

Firstly, cool wheels:

Some silly sod decided to 'make' some 8" wide steel wheels so naturally we couldn't resist trying them on the rear of the rallye... I love it! Sadly, we'll need 16" ones because of the brakes... well, you never know!

Love em...


So, progress: Yesterday we sorted out bunging the large gaping holes in the bulkhead, made excellent headway in to proper securing of the battery behind the passenger seat, sorted out the oil catch tank and hosed up the screen wash.

To celebrate the ever increasing glare from the light at the end of the proverbial tunnel we took the car out and gave it it's first bath in 18 months...







Finished engine bay:


Oil catch tank: Not alot of room for one but with a bit of creative thinking (moving the filter to the side) it's functional of lacking in the capacity department...


Art farty :)


Exhaust finally going a golden brown... ahem

Well, a small and rubbish little update lacking in the pics and vids department... but... We finished off the vast majority of the wiring yesterday so the car now has a full complement of lights and a working windscreen wiper!

It's nice to feel like we are making progress again and at this rate it shouldn't be that much longer! We've all been just too damn busy to go down to the workshop for weeks... well, months.

We are back!

Had a slight problem with a drowned Clio that needed fixing so got a bit delayed on the Rallye front.

Small updates are that we now have working reliable A6 door handles on the Rallye - they look a bit swish!

Next task will be sorting out the remaining pipe work.

Well, what can I say.
10 days solid is certainly a fair old jaunt trying to sort the car out.

Both Nick and I had last week off to try and crack on with the car. Things were going semi-well mid-week until we spent 3 days trying to sort out brakes... Repeated failures from our piping supplier (who are normally excellent) meant a lot of wasted time. Over the weekend we started the engine and went for a little pootle up the farm trail and back to make sure the gearbox is functional.

Annoyingly we didn't take any photos through the week... I'll have to get some more next time we are down.

We did however take a little video of it running:
Right click - save as

Nick stayed down on Monday too whilst I was at work and cracked on with the exhaust and boost piping - all of which is now pretty much done.

Sadly, whilst idling away on Monday the timing slipped due to a loose cam shaft sprocket and piston met valve. Bit of a pain really and entirely our fault but hey, I guess it's just one of those things. Main cost is head gasket and bolts again.

Nick is down again today putting a new valve in it and changing the 268 cams for standard ones in the hope of obtaining a more agreeable boost delivery. It's really lucky it happened at idle otherwise it could have been byebye engine!

Still, I guess we are now aiming for the Trax show in September - should be reasonably comfortable.

Till next time!

Nick and Camp Jeff did a sterling job yesterday building up the rest of the engine. We had to order a load of the parts for the main cooling waterways so they were put on.

Boost pipes are coming on... what colour do you think? Stealthy black? (good for heat disipation too!)

Long day today.

First: Fit the Helix clutch and gearbox


Pop it in the car connecting the prop and drive shafts (ish)


We had a play with fitted the bumper and tried to figure out mounting the intercooler. I reckon it looks great :)


Gratuitous up-bonnet shot:


Bags of room left for boost pipes - super!

Sorted all the wiring out today.

Also, it turns out that the paint I got from Halfords was a reasonable match... ish :)


Oh, got another new toy today, Helix full paddle clutch :)


Gearbox should be arriving this week. We're going to work on it again on Friday so if the gearbox turns up the engine is going in! \o/

We put the rallye rear back on the other day complete with a VR6 synchro rear diff and driveshafts ready for 4wd - just need to get hold of a vr6 synchro gearbox now - proving tricky!


Yesterday we started playing with interior wiring and such and ended up doing this:


Getting those pesky clocks out of the way! We couldn't think of a decent way to mounting them infront of the steering wheel so they've ended up in the middle. On the plus side it means that the passenger can see them, they'll be caught in the camera recording... and we can put important things infront of the steering wheel like AFR, oil pressure etc...

Looking a little more car-like now:

A very productive day was had on Saturday:

Clean up the bits where the cage feet go


Make up some plates

Weldy weldy


Sorted!

Well, at the end of a rather long and cold but highly productive week at the workshop here are some more pictures of our progress.

It's really taking shape now despite the snow trying to slow us down...

This may not look like much but this time round we are doing everything properly rather than just trying to get it done quickly so relatively simple things ended up taking a long long time.

We've tidied up the interior a little and mounted the pedal box on the correct side of the car. As you can see all the nasty heavy insulation is being removed. Next stop right hand steering...


Right hand drive conversion is complete and airbox is installed for sizing. We're keeping the heating system as it doesn't actually weigh a huge amount and it'll be nice not to freeze on those early morning jaunts up to the tracks.
The standard gearshift is way too low for track use so instead of mounting it under the tunnel in it's usual place we fabricated a bracket for it to sit on and welded it to the top of the tunnel. It now sits at least 6 inches higher and is about as close to the steering wheel as it'll ever be without investing a huge amount of time or money in it.


Quite a lot of the week was spent trimming down the front wiring looms - removing un-needed rubbish and running the wiring down the chassis legs rather than in side the engine bay. This makes the engine bay much neater and easier to work on and also should protect the wiring from the heat of the turbo - It'll get pretty hot in there after 20 minutes flat out round a track.
The beauty is in what you can't see in this one - only wiring that needs to enter/cross the engine bay does - everything else is hidden.

Like so... you have no idea how much of a pain in the arse it was to get a full front loom down there and pop the wires out through the correct holes...


This is kinda how we left it yesterday at the end of the week. Being a numpty I didn't take a photo right at the end... The bracket for the gearshift is now welded on and primed, the right hand drive conversion is complete, airbox fitted, wiring mainly tucked away. All insulation is now removed from the front part of the car - weight wise this really started adding up! After this point the only additions were clipping the loom under the throttle pedal so it rises up in to the top right corner where the fuse box will be without interferring with the pedals.


Still, she's coming on... Not bad for a week's work in freezing temperatures... I think we spent half of our time down there standing round the fire trying to keep warm!

Next job - weld in braces for the seats to sit on and make up brake lines for the rear brakes with a bias valve to stop em locking up when Mr Brembo at the front nearly lifts them off the ground :) After that she's pretty much drivable. \o/

Finally found a bumper from a rather helpful breakers in Nottingham thanks to a tip off from Lairy1 on ClubGTI.

Some more pics:



Looking pretty good I reckon :)

So, I've finally managed to get the pics off my phone:

Back before Christmas we hired a trailer for 4 hours on a Saturday morning and attemped to get the Rallye from Wycombe to the workshop and then get the trailer back within our 4 hour window - we made it with 10 minutes to spare - bit of a mission :)

We spent two days between Christmas and new years down getting stuff sorted out. First job was to strip the Rallye of it's 4 wheel drive. Up on the ramp it goes...


Old car comes in to be gutted


Underneath of the Rallye after 4wd was removed


Interior of the old car... Interior stripping begins



Time to remove the engine!


A handful of bolts later and the whole front construction comes off ready to be bolted straight on to the rallye... gotta love the way these VWs are put together :)



Stick engines and front axle etc... under the new car and lower it down


A few bolts later



Old car dangles between two hoists with no wheels... or anything really :)


Next jobs: Clean up interior, convert to right hand drive and weld some braces in to mount some seats on!