The interior looked like a crime scene in a third-world country; there was a splattering of goo on just about every surface, and the seats were black with grime.
We’ve always heard that a clean car is a sign of a dirty mind. We must be world-class perverts then, because we love a clean car. The Golf that we’re building up, unfortunately, was quite disgusting when we purchased it. The interior looked like a crime scene in a third-world country; there was a splattering of goo on just about every surface, and the seats were black with grime. Time to get to work!
We started by giving the car a bath and a coat of wax. Next we vacuumed out the interior and cleaned the insides of the windows. We dove right into the upholstery cleaning with Formula 409 carpet cleaner and Resolve Pet Stain remover. The latter really had a knack for defunkifying our Golf’s super-cool plaid seats. We gave up when we got to the carpet, however; there was simply too much grunge ground into the fibers for us to make any real headway. We’ll be replacing the entire carpet with a new molded set.
Now that the car was sitting pretty, we could turn our attention to some of its basic issues. Our goal is to bring the car back to decent stock condition before the modifying starts. We “fixed” the dented rocker panel by replacing the factory side skirts, which were not present. A trip to our local junkyard netted a set of the plastic undergarments for just $20. While technically they didn’t repair the the dent, they completely covered it—no one will know it’s there.
Our next set of tasks will focus on restoring and improving the Golf’s mushy suspension for autocross and track action.
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