All Things Mk5 > Members Rides
LC5F's Graphite Blue GTI - Pilgrimage to Caffeine & Machine
LC5F:
Plan today was strip and clean the subframe, looking at it in the daylight made me realise the condition is too far gone for me to clean up, likely to take days of wire brushing with poor result...
So, I have opted to buy a good second hand rear axle from down south outside the rust zone, looks to be in a much better condition to rebuild.
In the meantime I will clean up 4 of the arms ready to go on. Upper arm crust was this:
Most of that flaked off with hammer and then wire brushed on an angle grinder to near bare metal. Next I pushed out the old bushes, only one came out clean, most left their metal casing - I had to file a groove and hammer/lever it out:
Also got round to installing the vice I got 7 months ago into my home built bench, this allowed me to remove the old bearings from the Scirocco hubs - I burnt out the bush centre, need to hacksaw through the remains of the bush:
Scirocco alloy Vs Golf cast iron hubs:
maxamplitude10:
How is it so rusty must have been parked in the sea for most of its life? That is an unseen amount of rust on a GTI....
Good Luck
Max
LC5F:
--- Quote from: maxamplitude10 on September 20, 2020, 02:02:59 pm ---How is it so rusty must have been parked in the sea for most of its life? That is an unseen amount of rust on a GTI....
Good Luck
Max
--- End quote ---
Thanks - Don't know where its been, except I got it in Aberdeen and was parked near the docks.
It was an Edinburgh registered car, so it has done a big loop back.
I need to dig out my registration and look through online MOT history for clues to where it spent its life.
All I can think is it may have been somewhere rural with Cow slurry - the ammonia really helps rust
So today I worked out I messed up the lower control arms for the PSB bushes - pretty random that they say you need to burn out the bush and retain the OEM metal outer for the PSB ones to slip into, I seem to recall Superpro come with the casing, but the big price - mine were rusted and splitting and I removed them yesterday.
Typically I found this out after wire brushing and rust converted both arms! - hopefully the ones on the axle coming up from London will be in better shape.
Upper control arms wire brushed back to metal and treated with rust converter, next step is some smoothrite and fit the bushes.
Scirocco hubs got a scrub down with wire brush and the remains of the control arm bush pushed out and PSB installed.
Don't think I mentioned the state of the exposed floor around and above the subframe:
After a reasonably thorough scrub with wire wheels I got it back to this:
The dust was terrible, should have put on a respirator to go with my safety squints behind glasses - I use the boot carpet from a Mk3 for rolling around on the ground, outline can be seen below:
Now treated with rust converter, not sure if I should stone chip or only paint with smoothrite:
Deano45:
Top work ,,, great progress on this restoration so far and some great upgrades ,,, :smiley:
LC5F:
--- Quote from: Deano45 on September 22, 2020, 11:41:30 am ---Top work ,,, great progress on this restoration so far and some great upgrades ,,, :smiley:
--- End quote ---
Thanks fella - I am more going for future proofing for a reliable good handling daily.
If it was full blown resto, despite the good spec I don't think I would have chosen this Golf, plus I would be powder coating everything.
Wednesday -
I got some bargain priced Passat front hubs, amazing packaging and DHL'd next working day all for £14 a side
They wont make it onto the Golf for a while. They came complete with discs, bearings, shields etc.
Getting the bearings off was easy once I worked out how to hold them rigid off a car:
They got a pretty good scrub down, but to give the cleaning a leg up, I decided to be naughty:
It was only a 30 minute wash cycle, couldn't risk a longer one!
Friday -
The Axle turned up on, the good news is this one has considerably more paint still on it:
Stripped it down to the usual 2 control arms - everything was in much better shape, even the ARB bolts came out. it took a 1/4 of the time my old one took!
Night time, I installed bushes into the upper control arms
Saturday -
First task was painting the boot floor, I opted for stonechip, 1.5 cans later I got this:
Not perfect, but it should help.
Second task was getting the last 2 control arm bolts out, they gave in to lots of heat, that left me with a bare subframe that I wire wheeled the crusty areas and then rust converted:
The milestone here is I have reached bottom on the axle rebuild, apart from cleaning up parts it now all going back on.
Rest of the day spent stripping out bushes and cleaning up parts-
I think I blew out the seal on my cheap ebay press trying to take out the 2nd trailing arm bushes - metal inner pushed out, but I had to cut the alloy outer case to push it out.
The Lower control arms I cleaned up by accident are noticeably lighter than the new ones, I didn't realised how pitted they are until I noticed the PN on the new ones. Wire wheeled, rust converted & smooth Hammerite'd:
Mid control arm:
For a break, I had a go at swapping the fuel filter - I was not successful.
On the rear of the filter - the Blue clip hose undidid, but black clip was previously out is now jammed in and refused to budge despite several doses of brake cleaner and penetrating fluid...
Everything has now had a good lick of paint, hopefully tomorrow it will just be some touch ups, pushing bushes into arms and then start re-assembly.
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