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Members' Cars / "Helga" the 1988 8v GTI
I bought my GTI in 2013 from a work colleague who had bought it 10 years earlier with the intention of turning it into a track day car. He sent me a few pictures and said "I only want £300 for it" so I agreed to buy it.
He had used it for a couple of months before putting it in his garage and that is where it stayed for 10 long years!!!
The Rescue
This is the sight that greeted me the day I went to pick it up:
As you can see, it had not been stored very well so was pretty filthy!
The interior was partially stripped and filthy as well as having Mk3 front seats
All ready for the journey to a new home
Despite the general filth, the car is absolutely solid and once the MAF sensor was lubricated and a new battery fitted it burst into life and drove & stopped like it had never been off the road.
The Fixup - Part 1
First job was to get rid of the Mk3 front seats so I sourced a complete interior from a 1990 GTI and fitted it
Much better!!
After this brief flurry of activity and a partial service plus new grill and indicators, the Golf went into my garage where it sat for 2 years so I vowed to finally put the effort in to get it on the road again.
It is now booked in with a local mechanic (my brother-in-law :cool (y): ) to do whatever is needed to get it through it's MOT plus change the cambelt, waterpump and all the hoses so it will be mechanically sound.
The Fixup - Part 2
Below are a few pictures I took today:
No rust here!
This is the only "significant" spot on the car so I got rid of the rust and put rust killer on it. Just needs finishing off properly.
No sagging........
Even the light in the heater controls works and who needs a radio when you have a GTI soundtrack??
Think the tax may have expired.............
Not pretty but it all works and once again, there is no rust in here!!
The general condition of the car makes me believe that this is genuine
Work on the car will start tomorrow and we have provisionally booked an MoT for Friday so I will update on progress and I hope that I get to drive it for a while before winter sets in properly.
I would dearly love to do the mechanical work myself but I am undergoing some pretty intensive treatment for cancer which makes even the simplest tasks pretty challenging and it will be like this for the next couple of months. The car is one of the things that will get me through all this treatment and make a full recovery
The car was registered new in Brighton and I am led to believe that it spent all of it's life in that general area latterly being used as a trade vehicle between various VW enthusiasts so if anyone has any information on it's past, I would love to know.