HERMAN THE GERMAN! '91 Scala 20vt

[Risocco]

Love those bumpers. Car is starting to look very special.

[treefingers]

Love those bumpers. Car is starting to look very special.

thanks buddy. :) I really hope so!

hmmm so what have I done in the last week?

-Test fitted my bonnet and I'm pleased to say that it fits :) Was worried that it wouldn't but we're all good. I seem to be on a home run with guessing so far..
-Hooked up the accelerator with a MK2 Golf 1.3 cable, so now we're up to two pedals, one to go! The cable doesn't route across the top of the engine like most 20v conversions, it goes around the alternator to the left of the aux belt back to the bulkhead, all out of the way :)
-Built most of the downpipe (pic soon), new 2.5" centre silencer in the post from Jetex
-Redone the bumpers in satin black, much better than gloss. The mirrors, grill and bumpers have all been done in the same paint now.

Beginning to feel happy with how it's looking, I feel like I'm getting close to the end now but I know it always takes longer than you think. Bonnet still needs paint!


Gearbox apart.. surprisingly not that daunting in the end. All hail google and the forum search function!


Ring gear removed from old diff..


..and pressed onto the Peloquin. Case cleaned and new cups pressed in ready for checking the preload tomorrow.


Two days til payday.. can't wait.

[treefingers]

new diff in, gearbox built up, back in the car :)

[treefingers]

Right time for a bit of an update. It's June so Herman is officially late now! :( In borrowed time now! Getting there though. We all like pics so I'll do less talking and more picking..

Test fit of the brown Storm seats, decided they need to be black so I'll get them blacked or if anyone wants to swap some leather.. :)


Downpipe made. It's mental how much stuff I had to avoid! Steering boot, steering rack, anti roll bars, gear shifter.. Took me ages. A lot of fitting, checking, removing, welding, checking, removing, welding..


Painted in Canbrush Hi Temp paint. Best hi temp paint I've tried so far.


In the car. Need to heat wrap when it comes in the post. It looks like it's touching the boot but it's not! It's bloody close though. I have to turn the steering full lock to get the pipe on!


Intercooler mounted with a bracket I fabbed up. It was a bargain too, £45 brand new! 2.5" either side.


Also made a bracket and mounted the fuel filter right above where the fuel lines come through the chassis


Waiting on more parts but I made a start on the intercooler plumbing. Decided against a universal kit, I sat down and wrote a list of every pipe join and clamp I'd need. It is 2" from the turbo to the intercooler. The cooler is 2.5" but I figure if the turbo is 2" there's no gain in using 2.5" pipe, I'm only creating more lag. Plus it's pretty tight with the turbo inlet pipe there too.


And down to the intercooler where there's a 2 to 2.5 coupler. I'll get all the pipes tig'd up sometime this week.


Note the accelerator cable routing.. as the throttle is from a 1.8t mounted longitudinally the throttle cable pulls 90 degrees out with normal 1.8t cable throttles. I quite like it though, once it's clipped in it should be nicely out of the way. No cables over the engine!

[G Beats]

Looking very good love the red colour engine looks lovely and powerful as well not to sure on the brown seats in a red car but each to there own.

[treefingers]

Thanks geebeats :) yeah i know the brown isn't working for me either, I'm going to black them with some leather dye.

Down to niggly bits now like trying to connect the coolant hoses up.. it seems every hose is a different size so I've had to make loads of reducers, still not quite there though. Got a nice rust free bonnet now tho from Isaidthephil. Stripped all the sound deadening gunk from the underneath by soaking with synthetic thinners for 10 mins and wiping off with a plastic filler card, comes off a treat :) Horrible gunk though, had to steam clean the bonnet straight away because normal paint hates synthetic thinners. It's also not a good move to set fire to said thinners drenched gunk on the workshop bench. Seemed like a cracking idea at the time.

Mmmm


Primer



I'm now up to two coats blocked back and ready for topcoat. Did my second coat way too thick which orange peeled and took me absolutely ages to flat back! Done now though. I'll get the man who gets paid to do resprays to do the top coat!

Found someone to do my wiring.. I've sent him this box and he's gonna mate the Scirocco loom with the Leon one and put a map on the ECU. Should come back labeled and hopefully plug and play in the next week or so.


And made myself a catch can today from 1mm steel and some hydraulic hose fittings! Just need a filter, mounting bracket and some paint/tab.



Herman also has hydro clutch pipework now! Pics of that later.

I've been telling people it's going to be running in a matter of weeks so that it actually will be! It better be soon.

So what's left to do? The big job is hook the wiring up when it comes. Then it's just joining up pipework, getting the correct fittings/pipes/clamps etc.

Need to finish coolant piping, vacuum lines, servo pipe, gear shifter cables, replace the new wheel bearings i screwed with some new wheel bearings, mount clutch reservoir and catch tank, fill fluids and oils, and hook this puppy up.. the recirculation valve.


Oh and it needs a friggin wash :( Might do that tomorrow. I seem to drive myself a little bit crazy if there's nothing I can be getting on with.

[bengould]

Hey,

Hows the conversion getting on?
Just getting started with mine this weekend. Got pretty much everything apart from the intercooler pipework now, but want to wait until the engine is in the car before I start thinking about that. Everything is now on the engine and ready to drop in.
Do you by any chance have a template for the drivers side engine mount you made?

Ben.

[treefingers]

hey ben, yeah it's coming on! nearly there, will put some more pics up soon. I'm running late now but it's so close!

nice man get it done!! yeah wouldn't worry about pipework until you've got the engine and cooler mounted.

I don't have a template, I got loads of pics of mounts people had made and tried to match the angle and position. I was told (after i made mine!) you can use a hole in the mk1 mount (think it's the small hole?) as a pivot point, you'll have to research that tho, the info is out there somewhere. Found this on vwgolfmk1.org tho, any use?

[treefingers]

Trying to watch the British F1 but my internet keeps cutting out mid race aarrrgh! Update time it is then! I've been chipping and chipping away at bits here and there.. Exhausted today after a long old day yesterday and a long night friday night but I'm getting close now!

Herman needs a WAAASSSSSHHHHHH!!!!!

The new bonnet has been sprayed red now, should be able to fit it tomorrow :)

As the battery is in the boot I ran a nice thick cable from the + to the starter motor, and grounded from the gearbox onto an m10 on the front engine mount. Got my looms and ECU back from Scotland, I have ended up with three looms going through the bulkhead: the standard lighting loom, a loom to the ECU that connects to oil switches and MAF/O2 sensors and the main engine loom that also goes to the ECU, I had to holesaw a new hole for that one. Managed to run most of the bulky wiring down the underside of the passenger chassis leg so it's nice and out of the way. Made a bracket and mounted the digital throttle pedal from a MK4 16v Golf. Got a diagnostic plug in the loom too which is nice, and he's left in the plug for the second O2 sensor although this baby doesn't legally need a cat, it's inside the cat regulations by about 2 months :)


Left plug is for the accelerator pedal, and right is the diagnostic port. ECU was de-immobilised too and mapped to stage 2 for around 220bhp. I'll get him rolling roaded at some point. He also added a convertor to allow the rev counter to work meaning I will have fully working MK2 clocks with MFA!

Connected all the big plugs to the fusebox OK but I'm struggling with the random spade wires, trying to work out where they go. Got a black wire coming from the handbrake switch and a black wire coming from the handbrake warning light? There's also a 4 or 5 pin plug at the passenger footwell coming from a loom that runs on top of the exhaust tunnel that I don't know about.. Anyway I connected the battery and tried a few switches on the dash and Herman had working lights! I know it's only basic stuff getting the lights to work but it felt pretty good as it's the first time I've ever done this. Ok and they don't work 100% yet but they will!



Learnt the hard way it's not a good idea to connect things to P on the fuse box to see what lights come on. This was the handbrake switch that started melting pretty quickly as I was shouting No NO NO NO and trying to grab the burning wire out quickly with my bare hands.. screw my fingers Herman is more important!!


Finished off the PCV piping, put in a 18mm T piece between the crankcase pipe and the side outlet on the rocker cover and sent them to my now painted catch can. Gotta love Simoniz tough satin black paint. I've just about used it on everything black that doesn't need high temp.


Coolant piping all done too.. I made all the T pieces from stainless and painted them up. This was the only way I could match the ridiculous amount of different sized outlets from a BMW rad, a Seat engine and a Scirocco heater. I made a reducer from the top rad hose that had a T underneath for the feed from the expansion tank (strictly speaking the E30 rad isn't a top fill, it's a tank joined to the side), a T to the oil cooler, a reducer for the lower rad hose, and reducers for both the heater hoses. Phew! I also need a radiator switch to tell the fan when to turn on, I'll either tap a thread in the top T or weld a boss in when that comes.

Finally fitted new driveshaft seals, got flanges and driveshafts fitted and the second set of front wheel bearings fitted after the first set went AWOL while I pushed the car with no driveshafts! It's actually quite good screwing up a job as it means you can do it better the second time.

Some engine bay shots the, excuse the dirty washer bottle, I was test fitting :)


I reran the fuel lines in the engine bay so they weren't as close to the exhaust manifold and got a tiny little fuel filter as the MK3 Golf one wouldn't fit anywhere without some arsing about! Will probably need replacing a bit more often though!

Still gotta plumb in my recirc valve which will be interesting as the inlet on the TIP is right underneath where the strut bar is! The pressure side of the valve will be on the intercooler pipework and it'll feed into the TIP after the MAF with a vacuum line to the inlet manifold. Need to do this with the N75 valve too but I can't seem to find a plug in the original loom for this though which is a little worrying!


Ran some hydraulic hose from the clutch cylinder in the footwell through the bulkhead and mounted up a reservoir in the engine bay.. also robbed a MK4 Golf of its hydraulic line so I have full clutch connectivity now! I used the whole MK4 clutch pipe including the bit of flexy, although I had to cut it down and add an 3/16 M12 brake union to join it to the cylinder on the box. This stuff is pretty hard to flare, it's not copper!


In the post is:
Engine and gearbox oil
Coolant
Piping for the recirc valve
A new MAF as the last one I bought wasn't VAG!
A MK3 Golf coolant switch (can't run the MK4 one)
A MK2 Golf 1.3 speedo cable for the 02A box
Also got a brake bleeder that connects to a compressor, looking forward to trying that out.

Still need some Eibach anti-roll bars but I'm leaving them 'til last as they're only bolt on. Also need to find a MK3 style shifter tower that is a little taller than the Passat shifter tower as the shift cables currently bind on the gearbox cylinder. Need a wideband sensor too, then Herman should be good for a little key turning next week!!!

[treefingers]

Quick snap before I shut him up tonight..

[treefingers]

So I've been a bit slack on updating this, had so many little niggly jobs to sort out! Anyway I've still been busy chipping away, not as much as I'd like but it's not for trying!

Wiring is done
Bonnet is sprayed and on
Recirc valve and vaccum pipes on
02J shift tower fitted, just awaiting for the postman to deliver a mk4 style gear shifter, the later type has a better mechanism.
Seats are dyed black and in
Brakes bled up and working finally. Just ordered some greenstuff pads, when these arrive I think I will have maxed my braking performance without going for bigger discs/calipers.
Ordered some KW uprated anti roll bars, these look better than the Eibach ones as they look like they'll bolt to the rear beam mounting points.

And the engine runs! There's a bit of a vacuum leak somewhere as it hunts a little at idle, so I've gotta see if I can find it, gotta get the codes read too. I've driven the car a couple of laps around the workshop in first gear!

My current problems to sort are:

Low clutch biting point?
Idle stabilization problem
Get some gear shiftage!
Dash lights.. pulling full beam turns on the oil warning light!?
Get some clocks with working MFA screen
Adjust rear brakes so they match, it's pulling to one side
Fix a water leak
Get the heater to work, the blower wont blow!

Then once phase one is done..

MOT
Tracking/alignment
Rolling road tune..

And drive the bloody thing before winter comes!!!

[DrJ]

This is a thing of beauty. The quality of the work is just fantastic.

[treefingers]

Thank-you very much! :)

Mmm-kay so the car's not MOT'd yet which means I lost a £10 bet and a £5 bet that I could finish it before my boss's brand new Defender arrived last Monday. I was so sure. I'm still winning tho cos he bought an Elan three years ago to restore and it's still scattered about the workshop and a year in my car's body is joined to the chassis and it has some wheels and an engine..

Guess I've gotta be patient and just enjoy the process, there's no need to rush, better to take my time, have fun and do things properly (I'll come back to that last bit in a minute....)


Got me some good researching on MK4 style shifters and I'm quite a bit more knowledgeable about them then I was before.. couldn't find an 02A shift tower so I've fitted an 02J one from a MK4 Golf, and a ball-type shifter from an Audi TT. The cables lengths were all wrong and the bracket wouldn't mount to my 02A so I set up my parts gearbox on the floor and made up a new bracket from the old one, trying to keep the shifter motion as smooth as possible. It needs to be because of the gubbins the cables need to clear in the bay!


Early MK4 shifter on the left, later one on the right. The mechanism a much better design with less play and the adjustment method is just brilliant.


02J shift tower. The new bracket bolts hard onto the gearbox, it normally joins by rubber bushes which loosen the feel. The cable ends are rubber too, I'll hopefully get/make some nice rose-jointed ends and some sort of short shifter on the top of the tower, either Audi TT or the Diesel Geek one looks pretty good albeit a bit pricey. I swapped a bottom piece from the Rado 02a onto the Passat B3 02a to receive the 02j tower, the Passat tower has a longer thinner shaft. I'm now racking up a small list of different donor car parts, so far we have:-
Mk2 Golf - servo, MC, brake reservoir, front brake discs
Astra GTE - front brakes, braided lines
BMW E30 - rad
Audi TT - gear shifter
Seat Leon - engine
Passat B3 - gearbox with Corrado flanges
Golf MK4 - shift tower


So the shifting done! The feel is not bad too, miles and miles better than my ABF MK3. I've since welded the standard Scirocco gear stick and sealed it all up. You'd need stretch armstrong arms for the mk4 stick!


New anti-roll bars came in the post, these are made by KW and the design is a lot better than the Eibach ones I had planned on getting as they are longer and bolt to the lower suspension mounts, allowing better load distribution and avoiding those ridiculous Scirocco ARB clamps! Very strangely all the bolts in the kit were imperial, not metric, and way smaller than the M10s that should go through the shocks! Will be changing those then...


Fitted the front one and thought it would be a great idea to gently give Herman a short road test and this happened! Luckily I fitted it as a front wheel ejected itself at about 50mph! Lucky I was driving in a straight line, and if I hadn't fitted the ARB the sump would have taken the damage.. lucky the bloody wheel didn't hit anyone. It was a mismatch between spacer and spigot ring, think i've sorted the problem by ordering some new parts. Bodywork is pretty much OK. Phew.



Really trying to get through the little last jobs. I've found a solution to the Astra braided lines rubbing against the rims on full lock. These little brackets allow the brake lines contact free movement when the wheels turn. The edges are chamfered to protect the line.

I'm not sure how the cooling system at the moment.. it heats up OK, the rad gets hot and the fan kicks in but the dash reads that the engine is stupid hot and the MFA reads oil temp at 160.. something not right somewhere?

[treefingers]

Thank-you very much! :)

Mmm-kay so the car's not MOT'd yet which means I lost a £10 bet and a £5 bet that I could finish it before my boss's brand new Defender arrived last Monday. I was so sure. I'm still winning tho cos he bought an Elan three years ago to restore and it's still scattered about the workshop and a year in my car's body is joined to the chassis and it has some wheels and an engine..

Guess I've gotta be patient and just enjoy the process, there's no need to rush, better to take my time, have fun and do things properly (I'll come back to that last bit in a minute....)


Got me some good researching on MK4 style shifters and I'm quite a bit more knowledgeable about them then I was before.. couldn't find an 02A shift tower so I've fitted an 02J one from a MK4 Golf, and a ball-type shifter from an Audi TT. The cables lengths were all wrong and the bracket wouldn't mount to my 02A so I set up my parts gearbox on the floor and made up a new bracket from the old one, trying to keep the shifter motion as smooth as possible. It needs to be because of the gubbins the cables need to clear in the bay!


Early MK4 shifter on the left, later one on the right. The mechanism a much better design with less play and the adjustment method is just brilliant.


02J shift tower. The new bracket bolts hard onto the gearbox, it normally joins by rubber bushes which loosen the feel. The cable ends are rubber too, I'll hopefully get/make some nice rose-jointed ends and some sort of short shifter on the top of the tower, either Audi TT or the Diesel Geek one looks pretty good albeit a bit pricey. I swapped a bottom piece from the Rado 02a onto the Passat B3 02a to receive the 02j tower, the Passat tower has a longer thinner shaft. I'm now racking up a small list of different donor car parts, so far we have:-
Mk2 Golf - servo, MC, brake reservoir, front brake discs
Astra GTE - front brakes, braided lines
BMW E30 - rad
Audi TT - gear shifter
Seat Leon - engine
Passat B3 - gearbox with Corrado flanges
Golf MK4 - shift tower


So the shifting done! The feel is not bad too, miles and miles better than my ABF MK3. I've since welded the standard Scirocco gear stick and sealed it all up. You'd need stretch armstrong arms for the mk4 stick!


New anti-roll bars came in the post, these are made by KW and the design is a lot better than the Eibach ones I had planned on getting as they are longer and bolt to the lower suspension mounts, allowing better load distribution and avoiding those ridiculous Scirocco ARB clamps! Very strangely all the bolts in the kit were imperial, not metric, and way smaller than the M10s that should go through the shocks! Will be changing those then...


Fitted the front one and thought it would be a great idea to gently give Herman a short road test and this happened! Luckily I fitted it as a front wheel ejected itself at about 50mph! Lucky I was driving in a straight line, and if I hadn't fitted the ARB the sump would have taken the damage.. lucky the bloody wheel didn't hit anyone. It was a mismatch between spacer and spigot ring, think i've sorted the problem by ordering some new parts. Bodywork is pretty much OK. Phew.



Really trying to get through the little last jobs. I've found a solution to the Astra braided lines rubbing against the rims on full lock. These little brackets allow the brake lines contact free movement when the wheels turn. The edges are chamfered to protect the line.

I'm not sure how good the cooling system is at the moment.. I hope I've plumbed it in well enough. it heats up OK, the rad gets hot and the fan kicks in but the dash reads that the engine is stupid hot and the MFA reads oil temp at 160.. something not right somewhere?

[mark1gls]

Is your front anti roll bar on the wrong way round, upside down?
The ends of mine are fitted to the top of the wish bone so you may need to turn the whole thing over or I could be wrong?????