First off, sorry for the long post
As promised, this will be a buildup thread
This will be a long background story...
The first car I had was an 82 NA rabbit diesel LX. I hit a cow with it coming home from work @ three am in the morning.
Believe it or not, I escaped that crash with only cut knuckles! Scared the heck out of me, but did not make love for driving vw's any less!
The next car I had was an 85 8 valve gli, and I loved that car! I've been through a few since (only vw thank you very much.) All Gas though, I missed my diesel rabbit (how reliable it was, easy to work on, and the cheapness of parts... Vr6's are fun to drive, just expensive to maintain...) I bought a cheap(ish) yellow diesel rabbit which was in questionable shape (The intake was held on by zip-ties and 1 bolt!!!) The rest of the bolts had sheared off.... I was able to back most out of the block and got it up and running with 5 of the 7 bolts holding the intake on, the body unfortunately had quite a bit of the rust syndrome... But the engine started every time last winter!!! I drove it every day and did not put it on a block warmer once. (pretty impressive compared to my 1st car which needed the block heater to start in the 32 and below weather.) but with my first car I was young and inexperienced so I probably missed a simple thing I could have fixed it. Anyway here's a picture for the sake of the background story....
Through my lurking on Vortex I found some posts by Joe (RabbitGTDguy) about his GTD and I fell in love with his car. I was (am?) excited about the untapped prospect of power AND great gas milege! so I started to pull together some parts to build up a turbo diesel. But I started having second thoughts about dropping the $$$ on a motor to put into something who's body was 'questionable' at best.
Found a caddy which from the pictures I saw had quite a bit of potential, it didn't run but originally was diesel and had a clean title! so I traded the yellow Bomb and a cabrio that I had picked up for the caddy sitting in my garage
At the time it seemed like a good idea... from what I could tell in the pictures the body was in good shape.... Ahh not being able to see under the truck with 1 foot of snow hid the rust on it that... Anyway, I still was going to proceed with my TD project. In the meantime, I figured I may as well get it running and on the road. While I'm in the process of tearing down and rebuilding the 1.6td block.
The parts I bought, I bought 2 motors who's TB's had broken/slipped. One still had the head on and I had hopes that it only had 'slight' contact unfortunately it turned out to be the worse of the two. the other engine had major valve impressions on the cylenders. I traded a 1.6TD Injection pump to Joe for some 1.6 pistons which are in great shape. (compared to the others I got) and started tearing down the motor that was the better of the two.
The block appears to be in ok shape, there is a part that is broke off that apparently the power steering attaches to according to a friend of mine. I think I'm going to build it up anyway and run it. I have a few turbo's in various stages of disrepair, the one that is in the best shape is an eco turbo. It will be the 1st one to go on.
Here's a couple shots of the shell, in Joe's Garage it's got a couple rust spots that need to be taken care of. I will need to get a suspension for it, basically this is the blank slate to work from building the car from the ground (almost) up.
Found a sweet set of rims that I plan on running for a decent price (the pic is a little dirty but it's all I have at the moment)
That's pretty much it for now, I will post more when I get the shell here and the block back from being hot tanked and honed. I have a massive intercooler and new fender flares to go on. I haven't decided what else I want to do to the car, I've been kicking around the idea of a mk3 dash (and have a full swap) but I may go w/the old school style dash as well...
More to come as this project develops develops.
-Todd
Topic: rebirth of the the GTD (Read 8364 times)
