[franko180]

*** Note added 30/06/2017. All the photos that this build thread is supposed to display are broken as of 30/06/2017. Photobucket changed their terms and conditions and have now prevented users from linking uploaded photos to Forums. Its already common to find that lots of old forum guides and threads have broken links, this is usually due to users moving or renaming folders on their host service. In this case the broken image links are out of my control and the work required to move all the photos to a new host and edit all the posts with new links seems hardly worth the effort, so for the moment all the photos are broken in this build thread. You can thank Photobucket for this ****

If you use Google Chrome, you can install the "Photobucket Embeded Fix" that allows you to see most of the photos that people have linked from Photobucket to their forum posts, go to the following link to install it to - https://tinyurl.com/yaly67gq

My first ever build thread, be nice!

This build is for my R32 "rescue" daily driver and is a look back on when I built it and will go up to the present day and I still have some plans and stuff to add to the car, my spare room/parts stash is evidence of that

So I've been driving MK4s for a long time, I started with a (at the time) 3 year old "R" reg 1.8T AGU, but I don't think I have any photos of it, if I do I'll add them later.

I then had a brand new "W" reg 2000 MY 1.8T AGU, which I got rid of 3 years later with 98,000 miles on the clock, I had this car before the days of digital cameras (yes kids!) so the pic I've added is a scan.


Then I had my third mk4, a brand new 2003 1.8T AUQ (same running gear/engine/brakes/gearbox as a 1.8T Anniversary), this car had a bit of extra spec, cruise control, dash CD changer, winter pack and was a great daily car to rack up a hell of a lot of miles in. This car deserves a build thread of it's own as I did quite a lot of mods to it over the years, but I guess it's not an R or a V6 so perhaps shouldn't be on this forum?


Whilst keeping the 1.8T I also decided I should own a V6 in my life finally but to be different (as I already had a Golf) I went for a Bora V6 4-Motion, which I still have today. This has been a great car and I might pop a thread on here eventually for it:

 

[franko180]

So in 2013 I was still driving the AUQ 1.8T and I had put over 200,000 miles on it, original clutch, original gearbox, original engine and I decided that I'd had a very good run in it but for a daily it might be wiser to move on to another car with less mileage on it. I was wondering what to get and would probably have gone for something like an Audi S3

and keep the Bora V6 for weekends and messing about in, but then I stumbled across a project that I couldn't resist.

A relatively low mileage (but heavily stripped) MK4 R32 that was right on the edge of being scrapped/crushed, that I knew could be a cool project car to turn back into a daily driver:


So at this time, the car's condition was this - no front bumper/grill, no headlights, no seats, no wheels, no engine, no gearbox, some dents, very rough rear bumper, standard exhaust still attached, rear running gear all attached, brakes still attached (luckily really nice conditon OEM front brakes with no lip at all), all the interior still present (minus the seats). The car was looking very sorry for itself but it was easy see that it just needed stuff bolting back onto it, there was no body damage, it hadn't been crashed or stolen and even had both keys.


So I agreed a price and bought it and booked it to be recovered home, had to throw my spare 17" TT Ronal wheels on to it to get it back into a rolling chassis:


And then helped get it onto a recovery truck to bring it home to and have a look in the cold light of day and work out what's what:

 

[Andy]

Look forward to reading the rest

 

[franko180]

A bit more then...

So as a starting point I thought best to clean it out and then assess how much trouble I was in

The car had some parts thrown in it from when they ripped the R32 engine out, some of which were pretty useful, including 6 coil packs which I kept as spares and some other pipe work, alternator, air conditioning compressor, standard airbox and other bits and pieces that I've now ebay'd off:



Immediately worked out that this car had been used to ferry a dog around in the boot a lot as both panels in the boot compartment were covered in dog hairs and were a bit worse for wear they'd also half been pulled off by some tool who removed the rear light clusters. Also this car seemed to have had spent a lot of time in the countryside as there were lots of stones and muck on the carpet and in the boot, also the boot carpet was missing:






So I removed all the parts in the car, and hoovered it all out. I also took out the centre console just to look for any crap under there.Suprisingly the car didn't smell badly in this condition, but after thinking about it for about 1 second I realised the next thing to do was just strip it right out and clean everything properly as I couldn't know if that dog had "left his mark" anywhere in that car or not.



So I removed the carpet and the sound deadening, so I could clean the floor properly with some nice scented cleaner (and also to see if there were any hidden surprises under the carpet/sound proofing).



Once the carpet was out I decided again that I couldn't trust what the previous owner and his doggy had done to the car (maybe the dog had 'scented' the car, who knows, maybe the owner also did?), so I hired a Rug Doctor and gave the carpet a thorough clean up:



I decided to ditch the sound deadening and replace it with new, again didn't want to risk them stinking like Grimsby docks when summer comes. I also took the instrument cluster out as it would need pairing to whatever ECU I ended up with, but also after having full FIS clocks in my 1.8T and Bora V6, I wasn't going to live with gash looking 1990s style half FIS clocks for long:




I think at this point the neighbours thought I had stacked my 1.8T when they saw a "black Golf" on the drive way looking like it had been recovered from a field trip.

 

[franko180]

Engine bay clean up:

"That's what your problem is!" - no engine. So the engine bay was filthy, I want to give it a basic clean up, but also remove some junk out of it that wouldn't be needed. I didn't photograph it, but I also eventually replaced the scuttle panel later in the build. I bagged the end of the downpipe and removed some of the wiring and put it to one side to stop things from getting wet during the clean up.

 

[franko180]

So whilst working on the car I noticed another nice surprise. The headlining was sagging in the middle on the passenger side over the rear window.



Only one thing for it, strip it all off and see what's up:
I didn't photo all of the stages of this (common theme on my builds, when I get stuck in and forget the camera), but basically some of the sun roof drain pipes had either perished slightly or the VW boys in Bratislava had a "friday afternoon" when fitting the hoses during the original car build in 2003. Either way, I realised there was only one way - rip out and replace the hoses and do something about the sagged headlining.



So bottom line is that I removed all of the headlining, A/B/C pillars, and sun roof drain hoses so I could clean behind everything, check for any surprises and work out what to replace.

 

[Wömble]

Next update please.... This looks top !

 

[mattdub]

Good job man! See you got your photos to load too

 

[franko180]

Ay up Matt, yup, thanks for the assistance with that comedy

More updates to come...

 

[Andy]

Really enjoying reading this thread

 

[franko180]

Cheers Max!

So during the strip down and clean up of the car, I had to start sourcing some of the parts needed to build it back up. This isn't everything as other parts came later and there's stuff I forgot about or didn't photo.
Seats, these were temporary (yes not R32 Konigs) but they were all I could find at the time and they were a bargain. A3 leather sports seats, the fronts are very similar to MK4 leather recaros but with some extra features. Rears I think look crap compared to Golf ones, but they weren't staying long term. Pictures here are when they were fitted to my AUQ 1.8T just to get them home, they didn't get fitted to the R32 for a while as I Was still doing work on the interior.



Boot panels to replace the "hairy" (dog loved) panels. Also a bonus, noticed the replacement driver side boot panel also had a +12v power socket, the dogged panel didn't. These photos are rough and its hard to see the difference between the dogged panels and the replacements, but they cleaned up well and look fine.


Sun roof drain hoses:



Front bumper (OEM and with open grills, to make up for the earlier seats)

 

[Wömble]

Is this going back to original pretty much or you changing things as you go ?

 

[franko180]

All these nice shiney shiney cars on here and I keep posting pictures of my messed up R32

It will get more shiney eventually, but it's a long way off that, more nasty bits need fixing first.

So time to look at that leaky sun roof which had ruined the headlining.I wondered if the old hoses had any blockage from a build up of 10 years of dust/rubbish, so did some testing.



Not much happening? Blocked!


Got persistant and years of built up dust and gunk came out.

The front driver's side also had rubbish in the hose, but not as much

So anyway removed the old hose and fed through and connected a new hose on the rear left side.





Pulled the old front (blue) hoses through (was replacing all four hoses, better to be safe than sorry)




Old junkers Vs a new front


Worked out an easy way to pull the hose through the very tight 'run' it has to pass through, got a couple of long zip/cable ties and locked them together to make a very long "puller" and threaded it through and then taped it very securely the end of the blue hose on so I could pull it through. Wasn't sure if it would jam or the cable tie rip out as it's pretty tight to pull through.



It worked..



Decided to PVC tape the end of the hose to the new "nipple" just to give a bit more of a seal, probably not needed but did it anyway



Did the same on the passenger side, all new parts


Old hoses, do all the leaking you want now, in the rubbish bin


R32 rescue continues...

 

[franko180]

Is this going back to original pretty much or you changing things as you go ?

Bit of a mix, but it isn't one of those "strip down the front/rear subframe and rebuild/paint everything" builds as it is a daily driver, not a show car, at the same time I wanted it to be comfortable, so I didn't turn it into a caged / track day / quarter mile bandit either

When things were off the car I took the chance to change a few bits here and there, despite appearances it was a pretty low mileage car and a lot of stuff didn't need to be changed mechanically.

 

[franko180]

So.. The excitement, erm... Next thing, I changed the aerial

The headlining was off so it was easy access, a quick job so got it done.
I upgraded the aerial in the likely hood I'd eventually fit a navigation head unit to the car. I decided to stick an original MK4 OEM Triplex antenna in, pretty straight forwards with no headlining.







This pic is trying to show a subtle detail just for anyone who might do this, the Triplex antenna is a different part to the standard antenna. I'm not sure what happens if you try an "it'll be alright" job on it and force the standard antenna into the triplex base, bad signal or even cross threaded world of fail?

Running the GPS cable however was a bit more tedious, I didn't photo it but I ran it all along the right side of the roof behind the curtain airbags and down the A Pillar then under the back of the dash to reach to near the headunit. I secured it to the roof with tape here and there to hope it wouldn't tap/rattle, but the VW way would be to foam it I think. Either way the foam eventually persishes and the tape probably will also over time, so I just did what I could.

Done:


Looking back I wish I'd used a more modern shark fin to give a DAB feed also, this is something I might come back to eventually.

 

[franko180]

So the interior was all still out and it means easy access for any wiring. Not really any good pictures but I fitted a fairly standard aftermarket amp wiring kit in whilst the interior was out, to save any battles doing it later. Main thing here was that the route for the thick +12V power cable goes through an OEM grommet through the bulkhead and was very secure and tight, so shouldn't end up with a a mysterious wet carpet in in the near future.

Glove box out


Power cable through to the engine bay


Power cable routing secured


And pulled through to the rear compartment


No plans to fit an amp and full on system as I need the boot space, but you just never know, so whilst the car was in bits, was rude not to add the wiring.

 

[ClintonB]

Lovely to read this resurrection project.

 

[franko180]

Lovely to read this resurrection project.

Cheers Clint!

 

[franko180]

So this car is not trying to be a stripped out, roll caged, weight saving, track day monster, I wanted it to be a nice comfortable daily to rack miles up in. It's never going to be a Mercedes, but I thought I'd just try to soften the road noise and make those longer journeys more relaxed and maybe hear the music system a bit more clearly.

At this stage the car is still stripped, easy access..


So a bit of sound insulation, first the layer that I believe is supposed to dampen "metallic" noises and then the outer layer to dullen noises further. I didn't go for the thickest stuff as it does weigh a bit and didn't want issues refitting panels over it etc.

I'm no audio expert, I didn't take any advice, but got stuck in anyway. The main VW sound proofing under the carpet is good stuff, pretty thick, so I just added a bit extra near the front pedals to dampen it a bit more and then did the rear of the car under the bench where there is very little sound proofing apart from the bench itself.

















Prefer a spare wheel to the R32 kit, though i do like that blue compressor, useful for pumping the mountain bike tyres

 

[franko180]

So the sound proofing was done, some extra wiring was added and it was time to put the new "dog free" OEM VW insulation in. Whilst at it I decided to add a driver side heating vent to mirror the passenger side. Not always noticed, but all UK MK4s have a vent in the footwell on the passenger side but not on the driver side. The driver side footwell heating duct vents above/behind the pedals,but if the passenger side can have a side vent, then the bloody driver side can have one too.

Laid the sound insulation in place and measured up/cut out for the vent




Laid the carpet in place and cut out for the vent




Done, glad to get the carpet back in the car. Getting there..