Rabbit TDI Swap – Still More Teardown

I think I made some progress today…


when we were initially pushing the car around the driveway 4 of us couldn’t push it up the small incline to get the engine out – now I was able to push it around by myself to almost all the places it needed to go. it’s in its home for now, about 3 feet from the garage – going to construct a paint booth around it to keep all the particulates out for the paint job that will be going on soon.
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Rabbit TDI Swap – Teardown continued

The remnants of todays work


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Rabbit TDI Swap – Engine Removal Day

Engine removal day, sky was just waiting for me to get home from work but the weather held for a little while.

the engine bay all unmolested – you can see some of the crazy stuff the old owner did, like the metal overflow catch can

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Rabbit TDI Swap – Starting Teardown

It finally stopped raining, hurrah. time to strip the interior – hopefully no rust

started at the rear (thats where I like it, lololol) don’t really know why there is wood in the trunk but whatever, also something that looks like a giant ground cable

rear carpet removed and rear seats folded forward, only 2 clips hold the rear seats in!

all the seats out of the car

thats some damn dirty carpet

carpet pulled out, that glue is AMAZINGLY strong

NO RUST, its just dirt down there, absolutely NO rust on any of the floor panels


I don’t know how the fuck that boot is attached but that shit wasn’t moving, I was able to tear the carpet AND the sound deadening underneath it but wasn’t able to pry that thing off

seats, not looking so good after so many old man miles

goatse burn of some kind in the rear seats, the rear seat still looks good

started to rain so I put the tools and ish inside and put the drivers seat back in

I parked it at a slightly odd angle, some folks walking buy gave me some crazy looks

tomorrow i’m hoping to get the dash out and if the weather doesn’t poop on me most if not all of the engine

i’m trying to decide on color – the two that i’m looking at in the rustoleum lineup are the charcoal gray and smoke gray, if anyone has any pics of cars with the two colors I would very much like to see them

Rabbit TDI Swap – The Beginning

I went and looked at this car my friend’s GF’s granpa was getting rid of, he is a 93 year old man and bought it new in 1980. He is an old diesel head and had 2 spare motors and stacks of parts laying around.

this car is absolutely pristine! nothing but a few spots of surface rust, just impeccable condition.

The old guy was totally afraid of the car doing anything for him so he swapped out anything that might ever possibly fail with mechanical units, he made and installed his own damn thermostat!

engine is a fresh rebuild he did himself and it scoots the car right around, its got the 1.6 diesel with a 5 speed instead of the original 4 speed & 1.5 combo. car moves right along even with people in the car and gets rediculous gas mileage even running hard on the freeway.

pics!
before the wash after a 90 mile drive that netted me with 41mpg with a leaking injector pump (fixed it ! ) and driving it buried to the floor on the freeway the whole time

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Rabbit TDI Swap – Paintbooth & Teardown Continued

Another day another update

Weather was crappy today but turned around and got all nice – right after I got the plastic up of course. Got a better set of easy-outs (the kind that actually work) but the holes are already too stripped to make use of them, i’m going to have to drill into the holes a bit more to get some more meat for the easy outs to grab onto – Went and dropped suspension instead of wasting time on that for now.

Paint booth after just tossing the plastic over

booth after tacking everything

the inside view -have quite a bit more space towards the garage – I did this on purpose, its a lot easier to move a plastic wall then it is to move a garage. and I still have more then enough room to walk around the car with a spray gun at the proper distance.

OBVIOUSLY I did not put all the sides on – I’ll only be doing that when it comes to paint, no point in sealing myself into a plastic bag while i’m just cleaning the car up.

you can also see I got the wheels off – was slightly less easy with all the wheels off the ground but not really that hard.

dropping the front suspension as a full package – i’ll be disassembling these and reusing the A-arms & shock holders. Will be getting replacement ball joints and bushings as well as new hubs to accomodate the larger brakes, larger axles will also be required so these ones are done for (100mm vs 90mm)

Finally spent the time taking the brake booster out – damn it took SO long. found this neat brace behind it, pretty cool that in ’80 VW had this where as even today some cars could benefit from one and don’t have it.

all thats left are hard lines (the fronts will be coming out) and fuel lines. The exhaust is crazy, it has a full rotating joint right there after the bolt in to the downpipe. I thought I got most of the crunk out of the engine bay when I pressure washed it but it looks that I missed a good amount – probably should have waited on renting that pressure washer…

the damage for the day – both front suspension assemblies, the manual rack and hte brake booster.

pulled out the shifter assembly (I just snapped it to get it out rather then figure out how to do it properly, of course it all made sense once it was in 3 pieces

damn thats a lot of cleaning! 🙁

used to be a pedal cluster, steering linkage and a fuse box here.

I’m ending up going to portland this weekend so i’ll be hitting up the few junkyards I didn’t get last weekend – mostly shopping for the bumpers and lighting setup i’ve decided to go with. quad round setup – off of a cabrio. Done the proper way i’m going to have to remove the front of the car to get the quad round “grill” – looking to do the newer style plastic covered bumpers – I dig the look of the cabrio bumper but without putting on the full body kit it doesn’t look right.