Locked

Finally managed to pick up the lock barrel I managed to track down at a VW dealers not so far from Oslo.
Despite not being exactly the same part number I was assured that it would fit 'no problem', something that always sets huge clanging alarm bells ringing in my head. Annoyance number two was that although I didn't really need a complete set of new brass tumblers for my lock the parts man at the VW garage was in no way letting me rummage through his parts bin to find what i needed, so i had to fork out an extra 50 kroner (plus VAT @ 25%) for him to recode the new lock barrel to fit my key too. Grrrr.

OK so reasonably happy that I was restoring the lock to its original glory (and of course a brick in my OCD wall) I bounced down to the workshop to swap the parts over.

one new lock.

 

a pencil was sacificed for some of its graphite for lubrication purposes.

 

took of the door handle dismantled the mechanism and tried to put it back together with the new barrel. But i couldn't.

Spot the difference?
OK, pretty impossible to see on the photo but the old one had a threaded hole in the end, the new one had just a hole, unthreaded. Pah.

 

OK so out with the tools to give the whole a thread. M4 flavour.

 

 

Voila. After that it went back together OK albeit a bit stiffer than it was.

Thanks

The golf continues to provide me with enjoyable everyday motoring, the cam belt is now changed along with the super stiff perished alternator belt and i have racked up a good few km recently.
No power assisted steering, no electric windows, no radio, no plastic cover for the engine to hide under, no problems, unless. Some a*#hole decides it would be a good idea to break into the golf despite it not having a radio or anything else much inside apart from a pair of elcheapo sunglasses and the parking permit for work, which they naturally took with them. That isn't so much of a problem, what is ever so slightly irritating is the fact that they stuffed a screwdriver into the drivers door lock after which it was fubared.
Great, thanks a bunch.
The lock was useless as the key no longer went in so i had to lock it from the passenger side (no central locking you see, remember those days?) a real pita.
Every cloud and all that. I got to take stuff apart a find out how it fits together.

 

So off with the handle

 

 

the lock gubbins

 

the brass tumblers from inside the lock barrel, four of which were beyond repair. A bit of internet searching gave me the info that there are only four different tumbler types so a quick call to a locksmith turned up some of these, unfortunately the lock barrel was also mashed and unobtainable from VW so i'm in the process of hunting one of these down. Until that time i reassembled without four of the tumblers, so you can probably open the car with a lolly stick now if you wanted, but at least i could lock it again. To be continued.

 

They don't make them like they used to

So holidays are over and the new boring box drove to Ff, to the summer house, back to Ff, and back to Oslo and what happened?

Nothing that is what, it drove and it drove and it drove, it sipped a little diesel juice (amazingly little), changed gears by itself, controlled the speed of travel by itself (yes it has cruise control) swallowed all the luggage, didn't need topping up with oil or water and generally behaved itself.
So now i feel the need to take it apart, naturally.
There were a few things that the used car salesman promised to fix for us but when i went to pick it up weren't done, i didn't have time to faff about as we needed the car for holidays so i took it away, i'll fix the niggles myself. I have already started and had the trim off around the boot catch to fix the flappy thing that coveres the lock mechanism, yes modern cars have flappy things to cover up the bits nobody wants to set eyes upon because they are too ghastly to contemplate.
I didn't even take any pictures of the car while we were away it was that invisible. So i'll have to make up for that next time.

taking stuff apart

Some general tidying and as previously described a thermostat change and new 'old' bumper.

The cambelt is now changed too thanks to the VW dealer, who were actually cheaper than anybody else.

Just have to give the brakes a good once over now and we are good to go.

Always worth checking under the scuttle panel as nobody else ever does, always a good collection of leaves and stuff untouvhed for the last 19 years.

new old bumper

old one off, you can see the previous owners dents, probably what prompted him to cut out most of the old bumper 'innards' too.

really wasn't much holding it on.

the old was was missing pretty much all of the actualt steel crossmember, so pretty useless as a bumper really. It should look like this.

and on, and cleaned up.

Hmm i am weak, very weak

Soooo, i bought this....the craving to drive a proper car got the better of me.

The Pasta Wagon was on borrowed time ever since the need for an extra child carrying space became an issue and also since it never really shook of the problems that arose after the last visit to the workshop. It needs a service, brake fluid change, 4 tyres, the fuel pump has started whining a bit when the tank gets low, it uses a stupid amount of oil, there is always some error code logged in the system, it generally just isn't very exciting to drive, own or work on.
The Pasta Wagon is off to the auction house that we just happen to have as next door neighbours. I really don't have time to sell a car and deal with the inevitable idiots who will pretend to want to buy it. Plus if the engine blows up after i sell it it won't be my problem it will be the auction companies problem. I might not get a s much for it as i would a private sale but ooooohhhh so much less hassle it should be.

So back to the albeit temporary replacement... Another VW but this time a Golf from 1991 ! so ten years in the right direction.

The guy bought it new in 1991, he was 70 years old then.
His son was now selling it on his behalf but it was badly advertised with no real description and only three small pictures of the exterior, other than stating a low mileage the only other "selling" points were that the cam belt needed changing and that the rear bumper had no insides, it is just the plastic cover, steel part has been cut out! Odd.

Anyway his mistake was my gain.

Here we have a 1991 Golf CL 1.6 which has done only 47200km from new! (ca. 29000 miles)

It was delivered from the dealers without a radio too! How fantastic is that.
Factory slide sunroof too, which I must admit I didn't see until after I picked it up and Silje pointed it out.
It starts effortlessly, but there is no PAS so takes a bit of getting used to after far too many miles in a modern.

As bought.

There is indeed no record of the cam belt ever being changed so that is obviously priority number one to get done.

It has a few parking dents on the rear quarters and the rear panel but otherwise is completely rust free. The old guy kept all the paperwork so I even have the original bill of sale, this also shows that the extra lights in the grill were added by the dealer before delivery.

It seems he'd had a go at giving it a good polish a few years ago but not cleaned it off the plastic on the doors and bumpers, hence the white staining.

When I picked it up it still had what I think were the original Michelen ZX L tyres, (according to the DOT codes on the side walls) except for one at the rear which was a newer Falken from 2005. So I needed new tyres ASAP. I did drive it the 5kms or so home on the Michelins though without any problems.

Week 48 1990 !!

So a quick trawl of the local ads threw up 4 nearly new tyres on MK3 golf rims so the added bonus of an increase from 13" to 14". They are ET45 though against the ET38 originally on the car. The seller lived 5 minutes drive away so I picked them up after bartering 1000 kroner off the asking price. I think they look quite good.

A quick switcheroo

After a quick clean up it looked like this. I'm happy.



I have already changed the gloopy coolant and swapped the thermostat for good measure (another free ads bargain)

I have also sourced a secondhand bumper for the pricely sum of 100 kroner and it is booked in for the cam belt change on friday (i really don't have time to do that myself plus it wasn't as expensive as i feared, the VW garage even gave me a 15% old car discount, wow) now i just need a bit of free time to change the bumper, do a bit of dent removal, give it a proper wash and some rustproofing and i'm ready for summer motoring.