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Part 5 - Ladies and Gentlemen, the doors... |
After several weeks of waiting and hoping, the doors I picked up from Theron earlier in
the year are ready to go on the car. Picked them up today; removing the rear seat
from the Jetta and placing the doors in the back seat bottom/foot well area as I did when
I brought them home.
Once I got the doors home, the first thing I had to do was
carefully remove the old doors from Project Golf. "Carefully" is the
operative word here, since these old doors are destined for the rally car. |
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With a little help from my father, the doors were quickly off,
and after dealing with a small hornet nest on the lower passenger door hinge, I went at it
with some Simple Green® and paper towels to clean up the door jambs.
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With a little more help, this time from my mechanically
inclined mother, the new doors went on. While the passenger door
(top right) looks and fits
perfect on the car, I have some concerns about the driver's side door (bottom right).
A closer look at the picture will uncover a big gap between the door and the
adjacent quarter panel. Hopefully the body shop will be able to fix that without
needing another door.
Once the doors were
bolted on, the latch assemblies were swapped over from the old doors. In addition,
the door handles and locks were swapped over from the Jetta, a precursor to tomorrow's
work involving switching ignition switches and hatch/trunk locks between cars. |
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After swapping the new doors over, the final pieces of the puzzle
fell into place, as the window gaskets and other assorted hardware were installed,
followed by the mirrors. The end result of all this work is a much more up-to-date
looking Golf; one that will look great with a fresh coat of silver and some nice wheels. |
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From the passenger side, you can see that there is still plenty of work for
the body shop to do before paint can be applied. One of these days,
when the car is pointing in the right direction, I will get a good picture
of the new Euro-spec front bumper. Side note, I wasn't happy with the
way the front bumper bolted up. It took a
little more tweaking of the brackets than I preferred. Look for that
issue to be addressed at the body shop. |
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I'll be off for the next couple weekends; down
to Florida for a quick vacation then up to Rumford, Maine the weekend after for the SCCA
Maine Forest Rally. When I get back, I will tackle the exhaust system, which needs
only a catalytic converter to be complete. I'm also working with the idea of
swapping over all the suspension and brake bits from the Jetta BEFORE sending the car to
the body shop. As long as I don't break anything, and can bolt the old parts from
the Golf onto the Jetta so it remains drivable, it shouldn't be a problem. |
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