stripethree

I spent most of my weekend stuffed under one Volkswagen or another; I still haven’t gotten all the dirt out of my fingernails yet. First, the big things for the GTI in the coming months are a different motor and brakes off another Volkswagen, a Corrado G60. There’s a couple friends here, one of whom I’m buying the motor and brakes from, who know what they are doing when it comes to motor swaps, so everything should go smoothly when the time comes. Saturday I went up to the house where the Corrado sits to help pull some things apart and off the car, partly to lend a hand to a friend who is giving me a ridiculous deal on these parts, and partly to get more familiar with things so I’m not lost and useless when we are doing the swap. We got the transmission off the motor, since someone else is buying that, pulled the front brakes off, pulled the ECU, and starting pulling the electrical harness that would be needed also. I’ve never been this deep into any car, so it was one hell of a learning experience.

This morning I got some help replacing the drive shaft joint on the R32 as well as installed a larger, adjustable front sway bar. The joint was pretty beat up.

The car is almost back on the road again, the control arms are out and I need to get the new bushings pressed in, then bolt those up. I am still waiting on the third motor mount from VF Engineering, everytime I call they “think” it will ship on X day. False. They said this Wednesday, I’m not getting my hopes up until I have a tracking number or it’s at my door. This afternoon I went back to help with more disassembly on the Corrado. We pulled the rear brakes, emergency brake cables, and the rest of the electrical harness. Here’s the motor as it sat yesterday, and the extracted harness.

It was a lot of work but it’s was pretty cool, and there’s more to come… I’m going to have to think of a new ‘project’ name for the GTI, the current one just won’t fit as well anymore.