Mr. E.'s 1976 Scirocco Refresh

Happy birthday you Burrito lovin' fool.

Man this is a lovely Scirocco. If I ever see a composite food fan thread that doesn't make me want to run out and buy a car, I'll know it's the end times.

Ok, so it turns out that the commutator rings are so worn on my unknown mile (likely about a billionty miles) alternator that the brushes weren't making very good contact with either used voltage reg that I had. A new voltage regulator with full length brushes and we are back on the road for $37. The alternator will probably need a rebuild before too long, but we are back in business for the time being. There's a good possibility of an engine swap in the not-too-distant future (and upgrading to a serpentine setup would be part of that), so I'm not too concerned about it.

Here's an absolutely pointless photo of the dirty engine bay with the alternator back in it's home.

Back From The Dead(ish)

Now that the 128 is somewhat trustworthy and is able to carry me to work, it's time to give the Scirocco some much needed love. The front fenders have been looking really rough for quite some time and it's been bothering me more than I like to admit. So, tonight I tore the passenger side fender off to see if it was salvageable and to see what horrors lurked beneath.

The fender itself appeared to be in quite nice shape, apart from the obviously rusty section.

But, upon closer inspection, they are full of filler.

Well over an eighth inch in places and rusty underneath.

So, the whole back half of the panel is faked in; floated, if you will. It could be repaired, heck, I could probably even make it passable, but it's probably not worth the effort. Especially since a dear friend of mine has a pair of early fenders that need a new home.

They may not win any beauty contests as they sit, but he claims they are solid and reasonably straight. Worst case, I can take two to make one.

Now, for some good news.

The inner fender is solid! Just a small amount of surface rust on the forward-most section of the rocker.

I'll be tearing into the driver's side tomorrow. Hopefully it will be no worse than this side. Depending on what I find and how the 128 does, I might start on the rocker panels next week.

It might seem silly to stop work on the 128 at this point, but I need to take a step back and do something else for a week or 3.

That was a longer absence than expected, but I finally got started on the rocker panels last night.

It took about 3 hours to drill out the spot welds, cut the panel off, grind off the little spot weld rings, and beat the pinch weld back to straight.

Great news, everyone! The inner sill is solid and doesn't need any patching. Just a little surface rust.

Here's the pile of Scirocker panel.

And as I left it for the night with rust converter smeared over everything in site.

I'm hoping 3 nights a side is enough to get the new rockers all lined up and burned it, time will tell.

What kind of rust converter are you using that can be welded through? I thought a lot of that stuff left behind a pretty nasty surface.

In reply to ssswitch:

I'm just using the Permatex stuff that you can get anywhere. As far as I know the chemical reaction only occurs on the surface, so I just sand it off everywhere that I'll be welding.

I've owned a very zippy 16V Scirocco and an 8V that was a dog - a torquey dog, mind you, but none of that rev-happy sweetness of the 16V. Much fondness.

Glad to see all the progress! Such a sweet car

Wait, you have two awesome build threads? Not fair.

I've always liked Sciroccos but never owned one.

JoeTR6 wrote: Wait, you have two awesome build threads? Not fair.

Uhh. Three, Three build threads.

The G13B powered Fiat 850 coupe

The Fiat 128

and the Scirocco

Plus he just bought a house. Duder is stretched thin. I am surprised he has time to make any updates

Jumper K. Balls wrote:

JoeTR6 wrote: Wait, you have two awesome build threads? Not fair.

Uhh. Three, Three build threads. The G13B powered Fiat 850 coupe The Fiat 128 and the Scirocco Plus he just bought a house. Duder is stretched thin. I am surprised he has time to make any updates

We haven't closed on the house yet (and don't until the 15th), hence the panic-mode rocker replacement.

Took yesterday off to watch the new Star Wars flick followed by beer and Gyros at a local watering hole. It was a nice 1 day vacation from the shop.

I didn't make as much progress tonight as I had wanted to, but getting the new panel lined up properly proved to be a bit trickier than I had anticipated.

I am pleased enough with the fitment up front and am slowly working my way back. I will need to pass the top rail through the shrinker to get it fully lined up with the upper pinch weld.

Hopefully tomorrow night will end with it tacked in place.

Every time I start working on this car, things get super busy and I get pulled away for a few days.

Anyways, last you guys saw I had the rocker fitting reasonably well. It always feels like the last 10% of the fitting takes 90% of the time with little progress to actually show, so we are just going to pretend like it didn't happen.

So, everything got scrubbed back and coated with my favorite sealer/weld-through-primer and we poked about a hundred holes in the flanges for plug welding.

Welding went well. The ol' Eastwood 135 is really happy at about C-3 on the butt welds and then about E-4 for the plug welds on 22ga with .023 wire and 75/25 MIG mix gas.

I still have a lot of grinding to do on the long rearward section, but everything inside the doorjamb is all cleaned off and primed. It's not quite seamless, but I'm happy with it overall.

The door fits and shuts as well as it did before, which is good because it was something I was stressing a lot towards the end.

I purposely kept the repair below the lowest body line to try and hide the repair a bit and I'm glad I did. It should be very easy to hide when it comes time to make the car all one color and shiny again. It's actually kinda hard to see right now even though the panel is obviously a different color and still has 18 inches of weld holding it on.

Overall, I am quite happy with the repair. I was really hoping I could get both rockers done before closing on our house, but since I have been a homeowner for about 4 hours now, that's just not going to happen.

In the meantime, I'm going to finish the remaining grinding, toss some mismatched fenders back on, and return the old girl to daily driving status.

Congrats on the new home. Must be a good feeling to finally be moved in...

Rockers look great!

It took about 3 hours to drill out the spot welds, cut the panel off, grind off the little spot weld rings, and beat the pinch weld back to straight.

Hence the reason I prefer the spotweld cutters that don't look like a hole-saw. Not only do the little islands left behind get in the way of the chisel when picking the last bits off (hence more distortion) but I hate grinding off the islands afterwards.

Looks fairly solid under there. My friend replaced an entire inner fender on a vw caddy that was newer than your scirroco. It could always be worse. Hahaha

Good job, sir. I'm really enjoying the updates.

i should get back to work on my own scirocco since you've gotten so much more done than i have and i even started before i did. keep the updates coming.

Commenting just so I can follow this. Love MK1 Scirrocos. I hope that someday I'll find one to compliment my 84 GTI I'm working on.