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picking up a 90 cabriolet for my son- first car

7K views 139 replies 10 participants last post by  anextgli 
#1 ·
not sure if i should post here or mk2 forums.
so my kid is 16 getting his permit this week. picking up his brothers old 90 cabriolet thats been sitting at his moms house parked for a good while. his brother lost interest and bought a honda.
my son- well he wanted a honda- i pushed vw since i ran vw's for a long time- and his brother made em a deal- couple hundred to buy- good for 2 reasons i think. kid has to buy it. and we can fix it - hopefully- and then on xmas when he turns 17- he can drive or sell or whatever he wants to do when the time comes. he's only been working -1st job. for a little bit, but saved money to buy the car. so we went today to look at it. no pics yet sorry- but i just wanted to get an idea of whats coming. its old, been sitting, needs love and some extras im sure. but for a first car. should be fine.
much cleaner than most of the mk3s i had. rust/ rot wise.
so his brother gave us a quick run down of what it might need. apparently, transmission mount or mounts??? not sure how hard this job is to do- googled a bit and didn't find any good how to for this model car. says that is the issue right now with shifting. noticed vice grips at fire wall- apparently holding the cable that shifts the car. kid said the firewall rotted out and left him broke down. after towing car home- the fix was the vise grips..... rad is hanging in there. not fixed- or connected right. top leaks- think the kids messed something up trying to close it and a bar bent or something.

car comes with a new top- box of parts- another set of wheels and tires. so my son thought 800 in part in a box that come with the car plus all the extras was a good deal.

im not a mechanic. but can get my hands dirty - i like to save when possible as opposed to paying shops big money for small fixes. going to either get it towed here in the next few days or get a dolly and tow it with my tahoe.

any things i should look at right away?

will the trans mount be something we can do at home? will the vise grip thing be a fix we can do without having firewall welded or cut up to fix?

no looking to make a show car- we will fix as we go and would like to keep it. even if he dont want it. me and the wife are long time vw- so it can be hers down the road, my daughters first later....

mainly want to get it going, running and shifting fine- teach then both how to drive stick and go from there.

any advice or direction will be greatly appreciated. im in central jersey. and again- if for my kid. so we would appreciate any and all the help.
 
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#123 ·
Funny- I looked at a thread over the weekend about removing the ac- 22lbs less - or something like that- and if I’m not mistaken- he took alternator off- removed ac- bracket- and then mounted the alernator back on with spacer and had no issues- and I’m pretty sure he says he used the same belt-
Obviously I may be wrong- but seemed like a clean write up and all he did was pull the compressor and bracket that held it in place
Guess I’ll stop posting pics and questions with no real progress- and so now since I have no ac and parts off passenger side to get to the mount- I won’t be starting this car any time soon- sorry to have taken up page after page with no good or real progress-
 
#132 ·
Anyone that thinks you can leave a plastic piece in a transmission and expect no damage, does not know how plastic and metal gears work.

In my opinion there is no choice but to get the piece out. Of course, try your best to get it out and use any trick you may have. If you have a plastic magnet, use that. The issue I had is that it's real difficult to see in the hole to fish it out and I just pushed it further in. I doubt if you can get it out of the drain hole because the ring gear is in the way.

Not knowing what you are doing causes mistakes. We all started at not knowing what we were doing. We all did not listen to our parents and made the same mistakes they did. If you cannot fathom that dropping a small plastic gear into the transmission causing hours of extra work, it's time to bail.

Let's just hope when you start working on the brake system that you study on how that system works. It scares me that this country allows anyone to work on their cars.
 
#134 ·
Check the recent laws in CA prohibiting people from wrenching at their residence. Doesn't really apply to this thread (and neither does the previous post?), but is absolutely ludicrous. There is a huge portion of this country who wrenches on their own junk to help save money.

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#133 ·
4motion tigs have two fuel senders & pumps but one tank designed kinda like a horse saddle. One fuel pump & sender handles from 0 to 1/2 tank and the other from 1/2 to Full tank. The access ports to the pump & senders are under the rear seats under the carpet, there is a port on each side.
 
#135 ·
update. so the rad support of off. by the looks of it. someone smashed this car up and already replace the rad support - maybe with an aftermarket one ??? i can't seem to find anywhere so tracking down a replacement front 8 inches of a car i guess to get this thing fixed.
engines been out. now have 3. one thats going in- 2 broken bolts behind manifold. so thats on the to do list.
not sure if i can use the starter i took off 84 gti motor or not. trying to save a buck if possible.
still needs a lot. but think once the rad support is addressed , the motor can go in and then the kid can worry about interior- rug, seats, - find out whats bent in the top rails that makes it hard to move and get lined up- his brother gave him a new top. but i think there are issues with rails. maybe bent at some point thats why it sits fine on one side but off on passenger side. etc.....












2 of the transmissions i have - have this plug. the one i took off the car had a smaller plug. so i think i will be using the trans that was in the car with other digi motor we picked up.
not sure what that plug is. but the one on kids car is not the same.


think if i knew about all the damage and work needed, we might have passed on this car- specially for his first. but i like the idea of a vw in the garage and my kid behind the wheel of his own vw one day. when he was little we used to go up and down east coast to vw shows and gtg's so thought it would be cool that he got the vw bug.
im not a mechanic and i stated this several times. but willing to try. once we get it running, ill send a shop to go over the brakes. and give the car a good look.
 
#136 ·
If you dove in this far going over the brakes is a piece of cake. Tearing off the front apron assembly requires welding a new one back on, and that's well beyond checking over, replacing, and bleeding some brakes.

When you find a donor for the front apron assembly be sure to cut off more than you need. That way you can carefully whittle it back to what you need and you don't wind up with a big gap you can't fill properly.

Some of the flanges on the ends of your unibody rails look a bit small, perhaps a result of the previous repairs. This is something else to be mindful of as your sourcing a donor section. There should be around a 1/2" flare on the ends of those rails to spot weld the front apron to. You can still make do without, but it definitely makes it more difficult to do.

Glad to see you haven't given up. OTH, you are in deep, now, my friend. Everything is back to square one, with fuel, spark, timing, grounds, etc. Good luck!

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#138 ·
thanks man.
im trying. not going as planned, since i didn't really know what we were getting into. but we will continue.
do you know what the plug in the trans is? or why its different from my original trans? the engine and trans combo i bought which i intended to just put in- came out of same car and year i believe but it has that plug???

also, the starter? think i can use it or is it wrong? came out of the gti engine i got- thought i could save a buck using that one.

thanks again

not sure how im going to go about the rad support. i know i need to get a donor car - found. guy at junkyard told me i just need to tell him where to cut. once its cut.
do i take that piece to a shop and see if they will separate support from the rest? to then weld to kids car???
or do you guys cut one front end off- then cut kids car and have that welded together??

thanks again for reply
 
#139 ·
The difference in the reverse switch on the transmission is due to manufacturing differences over the years. Even if that drivetrain was removed from the same year and model doesn't mean that was the setup originally installed in that car from the factory. You can use the big plug switch just fine, you just need to cut the original connector off the wiring and install a female spade terminal on each wire and connect them to the proper pins on the big switch. See the write up here: http://brokevw.com/reverseswitch.html

You want the donor car cut at least an inch or two up the frame rail from the front apron/rad support. If you can get more, that may not be a bad idea, maybe 6-8". If you aren't going to be installing the new assembly yourself it's a good idea to consult the person who will be before you have the donor section cut. This way you will be sure to have enough of what they will need to properly reassemble the front end so everything is square and sound. You probably should have waited to cut the front end off if you won't be installing the new one. It's better to leave 100% of the heavy body work to the pros if you are having any done, it can sometimes make the job more difficult for them if you did something wrong.

The engine and transmission are generally removed as an assembly and dropped out the bottom on these cars. If you removed the front end to make engine/trans removal easier, just wanted to share. The best time to have the front end body repair done is while the engine and trans are out of the car. It gives the body shop more room to work and makes it easier to paint it all when finished. Then put the engine and trans back up in from underneath.

And the starter should work fine if it's from a manual trans.

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#140 ·
Thanks for the reply and information
I took the front off after having a guy from wife’s shop come take a look at it- she works as a body shop and the old timer- I thought came to help or give me a price to do the job- instead he gave me a bunch of ideas or suggestions
But did say to remove the rad support and go from there.
I pulled mine prior to getting rad support off
Up and over. But will put back in from below

Thanks again for the reply
 
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