Mr. E.'s 1976 Scirocco Refresh

Nice work! Hopefully you don't have rust in your fuel tank like my 280Z did/does! Mine sat since 1990, though, not 2006, so I think your chances of having no issues are significantly better than mine are. Need some video of that maiden voyage!

I appreciate that! I've had 3 fuel tanks acid dipped now and I'd like to avoid that if at all possible on this one. I got a spare fuel filter just in case things start to break loose from the tank once the lovely E10 that we get here starts to eat at whatever lurks in the tank.

I'm hoping tomorrow is the day for the first drive. I unearthed my point and shoot digital camera in the garage while searching for the steering wheel adapter for my beloved Luisi. Now if only I could find the proprietary charge cable the image quality in this thread would go up.

SWMBO insists that this is her car and I am just confused. I'm trying to sell her on a nice Miami Blue German built Bunny to replace her E46 wagon.

In reply to Mr_Estrotica:

Did you do the acid dipping on those tanks or did you take it somewhere? I may have mine professionally cleaned, just wondering what you did.

Good luck on the test drive! And the Miami Blue Rabbit sounds cool too!

My favorite Miami Blue MKI is the one with BB Arrows that is up you way. Love that car!

Mr. Meister: I've had all of my dipping done by these guys in Eugene, OR. Probably not a solution for you, but you might find a someone a little closer to you to do yours. In my experience it's about $55 and a one week turnaround; totally doable for an essentially brand new tank. Another $30 for chemicals from Eastwood and it'll probably last a lifetime.

Chandler: I agree. I could come home to this is my driveway any day of the week. Oh yes.

I bought his spare set five years ago and they will never leave me!

A1/MKI is the best!

Still no test drive.

I've been trying to get the garage (it's a glorified shed, really) cleaned up enough to do actual work. In my whirlwind fury of cleaning I managed to find three things I've been looking for! I unearthed the Blaupunkt stereo from my old E30, the steering wheel adapter for my Luisi steering wheel, and the charge cable for the point and shoot camera. They were all hiding in the same box, those sneaky bastards. I took a picture of them for no apparent reason.
Also, check out that new work bench top! I feel so fancy.

Maybe one day there will be an update to this thread that goes beyond "hey, I found this thing" or "hey, I cleaned this". Maybe.

First things first. I drove it. It didn't kill me. I didn't get arrested. It's gonna be a quick little car, and I'm completely smitten with it.

It's barely left the driveway and it's already pulling in it's share of Bob Costas.

I got the Luisi wheel all mounted up. I can't seem to find the horn button for it, but I think it's hiding in the Fiat. I've had this steering wheel in every MK1 Volkswagen I've in the last 5 years. It almost makes me feel at home in there.

A guy on the Vortex was liquidating some unused parts so I nabbed these and the much loved oil pan gasket with integral windage tray. Which is not very exciting.

I put them on and cleaned the door jamb. Which is somehow even less exciting.

So. At this point I thought to myself "Man, that carpet is really damn gross. I'll pull it out and give it a good pressure washing."

...And that's when I found the berkeleying rust.

Having given it a good once over, I know exactly what caused this. Volkswagen in their infinite wisdom ran the brake lines in the car for the first few years of production on the Rabbits and Sciroccos. That line rusts out, spewing brake fluid everywhere. Lazy owners patch up the hardline with compression fittings and do nothing about the impending doom. It's almost like I've been here before... Oh wait. I have.

So once I finished complaining, I laced up my "be-a-berkeleying-adult, Erick" pants and I set in to see how bad it really was.

Ok. So it's not that bad. The front seat crossmember will need to be removed at least partially, and then re-established the material that has gone missing. The outer rocker appears to have been spared. I don't have to order new floor pans, and I have plenty of material to patch it with. I can deal with that. Hopefully the passenger side isn't any worse.

Looks like I'll be needing some dust masks and some of them plastic-coated-rope-fiber disc thingos.

In other news, I ordered the new carpet today. Such luxury.

Purchase a gallon of CLR. Lay some old towels in the floor and pour the CLR full strength all over, let soak for half an hour. Remove towels and scrub with more CLR and a red scotch brite pad, then rinse with water.

That stuff kills rust fast and will make welding later easier.

awesome. . . love the early roc. cant wait to see more!

Good thinking, Trent. A gallon of CLR, coming right up!

Stole a few minutes this morning to check out the passenger floor.

After pounding away with Ye Olde Wood Chisel and a reasonably sized hammer to remove the old sound deadening, I was left with a solid but crusty floor. No holes over here.

I'm not even going to bother scrapping the rear section of the right floor. There's three small holes that somebody drilled in it's past. I'll plug those up with some hot metal. They were properly rust proofed with duct tape in it's past. Classy.

I proceeded to pound more old sound deadening off of the drivers side rear section. Again, crusty but no rot. Several man-made holes with duct tape covering them on the top side. This guy did good work, obviously.

I need to make a little tool to help bang the drivers floorboard back down to where it should be. I've always referred to this as rally damage. No MK1 is complete without it. Surely at some point the car took an agricultural field trip.

I got a box of pretty new roloc discs. They're essentially my favorite thing in the whole wide world of fabricating.

Tomorrow I will begin the rust and rot removal. A plan has been made, all I have to to is wield the tools.

In reply to Mr_Estrotica:

Roloc?

I want a The-Matrix-style mental download of all the neat things you guys learned in that maintenance shop...

That doesn't look so bad. Wire wheel, glob weld patch the holes, grind and POR15.

ransom wrote: In reply to Mr_Estrotica: Roloc? I want a The-Matrix-style mental download of all the neat things you guys learned in that maintenance shop...

Yep. Roloc. Quick change little scrubbers for your die grinder. I hate going after fresh sheet metal welds with a 4-1/2" stone or flap disc. It always seems like you spend more time on the surrounding material than you do on the intended weld. Sure, it might take slightly longer with a wee little 2" disc, but you're not pouring all that extra heat into your work piece that you tried so hard not to warp. I find these to be my best friend when doing this type of work and trying to make it look purdy. Plus, the little right angle die grinder fits in all kinds of awkward places.

I had just a few minutes to do some SCIENCE today. I was pressed for time and I don't think I let the CLR stew for long enough.

From: To: I only let the chemical sit on there for about 5 minutes. I'll give it a good 30 minutes next time around.

While I'm not blown away by the results, I am mildly impressed. I'll give it another go tomorrow.

The good news is, I have an entire weekend off! So, as long as I pick up some gas for the MIG, I should have the floors patched up this weekend. Unfortunately the carpet is still 2 weeks out.

What size wheels and tires are those?

The wheels are 14x7 and the tires are T1Rs in 195/45-14.

I snuck into a weld shop today and picked up a 40cf bottle of 75/25. I managed to not buy everything in the store, but I certainly could have.

Lunch time.

I cut a rather large chunk of rusty, nasty stuff out and made a chunk to replace it.

Then I welded the chunk in, ground down the boogers, and threw paint at it. Gotta fix one little pinhole that I didn't see until I it was in red oxide. I'll move straight forward from the unwelded portion of this patch for the next piece. Still not very exciting.

Hopefully tomorrow is a little more productive.

I took a little time to mount a small electrical cabinet to my welding cart to house my welding critical supplies in a "clean" environment. I think that'll do nicely.

Then a little more of the same from yesterday.

A little movie magic and the center seat area is almost all stitched back together and solid. I need to make a small part on a brake before I can call it done. I only got about 5 hours in the garage and I feel good about my progress today, but I did find quite a bit more rust to take care of.

Unfortunately today was my last day off until Thanksgiving Day, but that's a 4 day weekend and we have no plans of skipping town.

Oh, and bonus points: The seat still slides front to back and latches as it should!

Most excellent progress sir!

This thread encouraged me to spend an hour last night researching gen 1s. They have really started to disappear! I always felt it was the perfect 2 door hatch, just the right size. Still miss mine after 30 years.

In reply to Hasbro:

Considering the fact that it wasn't even supposed to be made as the 924 was originally proposed to fill that gap. Luckily, VW didn't have the sack to stick with the project and Porsche bought it away from them and it eventually grew into the 968.