1982 VW Mk1 Golf Project

The strip down continues

Well the front calipers turned out to be a complete pain. I made a mess of getting the first retaining bolt off, which started to round, so I then went and bought a blow torch before I tried the others. With a bit of heat and a long lever, the others came off ok. But the first one did not want to budge at all.

So yesterday my friend and I took the hub off (together with the drive shaft and the brake caliper) and attacked the offending bolt with my pillar drill. It still didnt quite come off (mostly because the larger sized drill bits we had were blunt), a sharp whack with a chisel and lump hammer was enough to convince it to move.

At this point I remembered that I had forgotten to loosen the nut that holds the drive shaft into the hub whilst the engine was still in the car. Doah! So after trying to attach the driveshaft to the gearbox out of the car (which just span the dif) we put the gearbox back into the engine bay and attached the shafts to it. The nuts came off no problems at all then.

We then finished removing the dashboard (which was already mostly undone), and the heater matrix and blower. The wiring loom came then came out, with everything nicely labelled up. My friend then removed the steering rack and attempted to construct a temporary way to keep the wheels pointing in the same direction. In the end we decided it would be simpler just to put the steering rack back in and remove it when needs be.

The steering column and pedal box came out the car next leaving the interior pretty much empty. There are still some bits of trim to remove (in particular the head lining :( ). The engine bay is now empty apart from the brake lines.

All in all it was a nice and productive day with a lot less of the problem issues that plagued me the week before. Nice to keep moving at a decent rate. Soon the car will be completely stripped and I'll be able to start making the body good.

I'm going to build a four point stand to lift the car up off the floor as the axle stands cant get it high enough. When I'm removing the undercoat from the bottom of the car I am going to want as much space as possible.

posted by intraclast @ 12:57 PM